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diff --git a/40650-0.txt b/40650-0.txt index 4b1fc0f..9094d08 100644 --- a/40650-0.txt +++ b/40650-0.txt @@ -1,27 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. 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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/license - - -Title: Christmas Roses and Other Stories - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: September 2, 2012 [EBook #40650] -[Last updated: December 20, 2012] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -CHRISTMAS ROSES -AND OTHER STORIES - -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Slincourt) -_Author of "Tante," "The Third Window," etc._ - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge -1920 - -COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SLINCOURT - -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - - - -CONTENTS - -CHRISTMAS ROSES 1 - -HEPATICAS 63 - -DAFFODILS 92 - -PANSIES 121 - -PINK FOXGLOVES 147 - -CARNATIONS 168 - -STAKING A LARKSPUR 208 - -EVENING PRIMROSES 253 - -AUTUMN CROCUSES 279 - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -Christmas Roses - - -I - -THEY were coming up everywhere in their sheltered corner on the -wall-border, between the laurustinus and the yew hedge. She had always -loved to watch their manner of emerging from the wintry ground: neck -first, arched and stubborn; heads bent down as if with held breath and -thrusting effort; the pale, bowed, folded flower, when finally it rose, -still earthy, still part, as it were, of the cold and dark from which it -came; so that to find them, as on this morning, clear, white, -triumphant, all open to the wind and snow, was to renew the sense of the -miraculous that, more than any other flower, they always gave her. More -than any other flower, they seemed to _mean_ to come, to will and -compass it by the force of their own mysterious life. More than any -other flower, winter piled upon their heads, unallured by spring and the -promise of sunlight, they seemed to come from the pressure of a gift to -bring rather than a life to seek. She thought always, when she saw them, -of Christmas bells over snowy fields, in bygone centuries; of the Star -in the East, and of the manger at Bethlehem. They were as ancient as -that tradition, austere and immaculate witnesses in an unresponsive -world; yet they were young and new, always; always a surprise, and even -to her, old as she was, bereft and sorrowful, a reminder that life was -forever a thing of births, of gifts, of miracles. - -They did not fail her this morning when she came out to them, and she -thought, as she stopped to look at them, that one was not really old -when, in the shock of sheer happiness, one knew childhood again and its -wonder. Yet, as she worked among them, cutting away dead leaves and -adjusting sprays of evergreen so that the rains should not splash them -with mud, it was a new analogy they brought; and, for the first time, -measuring her resource after the appeal Tim's letter had made upon it, -she reflected that the Christmas roses were rather like herself. She, -too, in this wintry season of her life, was still determined and -indomitable. Widowed and childless, with many mournings in her heart, -griefs and devastations in her memory, she, too, was a force, silent and -patient; and it was this that people still found in her. For the appeal -always brought the answer. She had felt herself, so often, benumbed into -lethargy, and, yielding to the mere mute instinct of self-preservation, -had so often folded herself up and lapsed into the blank darkness of her -grief (her husband's death, so many years ago; and Miles's, and little -Hugh's, and her dear, dear Peggy's). But it had always been to hear -herself, as if in a dream, called to from the outside world, and to feel -herself, in answer, coming up again, rising, if only to snows and -tempests, in a renewal of life which brought with it, always, a renewal -of joy in life. - -For months now, since August, she had been sunken in the last grief--it -must be--that could come to her; for Miles was the last, of her own, who -had remained--Peggy's youngest boy. The oldest, already a soldier, had -been killed in the first months of the war, and, after all his years of -peril, it had seemed as if Miles was to escape. But, cruelly, just at -the turning of the tide, when victory had become assured, he had been -shot down, and in his crashing fall through the air she had felt the end -of everything, Peggy dying again with him; for Peggy, too, had died like -that, crashing and falling and dragged, in a horrible hunting accident. -There seemed, now, nothing more left to suffer, and nothing more to live -for, either, unless it were her poor Tim; and it had, exactly, been -Tim's letter that had driven her out to wrestle with the elements, after -her wont in any disturbance or perplexity, so that she could think over -what he told her while she wielded her trowel and fork on the convenient -wall-border. - -She had, on rising from the breakfast-table, sent Tim a wire: "I shall -expect her. Writing later," and had then called to Parton to bring her -old warm coat, her hood with its satin lining, and her buckled galoshes. - -Parton was accustomed to her mistress's vagaries in regard to gardening, -and made no comment on the enterprise except to express the hope that it -would not snow again. Parton, in spite of her youth a most efficient -combination of parlourmaid and lady's-maid, was devoted to her mistress; -the little pat and tweak she gave to the bow of the hood, and the -gentleness with which she adjusted the galoshes, expressed a close yet -almost reverential relationship. - -It was not freezing, and under the light fall of snow the ground was -soft. Mrs. Delafield found herself enjoying the morning freshness as she -tidied and weeded, and had her usual affectionate eye for the -bullfinches nipping away at her plum-buds and the tits and robins at the -little table spread with scraps for them near the house; while all the -time Tim's letter weighed on her, and the problem it presented; and as -she pondered on it, and on Rhoda, her niece, Tim's only child, her firm, -square, handsome, old, white face was not devoid of a certain grimness. - -Mrs. Delafield was very handsome, perhaps more handsome now than she had -been in youth. Her brow, with the peak of thick white hair descending -upon it, her thick black eyebrows and her rather thick, projecting nose, -were commanding--almost alarmingly so to those who in her presence had -cause for alarm. The merely shy were swiftly reassured by something -merry in her gaze and by the benevolent grace still lingering on her -firm, small lips. She had square eyes clearly drawn, and with an oddity -in their mountain-brook colouring, for one was brown and one was freaked -with grey. Her form was ample and upright, and in all her gestures there -was swiftness and decision. - -It was of Tim she thought at first, rather than of Rhoda, the cause of -all their distresses. But she was not seeing Tim as he now existed, -bleached, after his years of India, invalided, fretted by family cares, -plaintive and pitiful. She saw him as a very little boy in their distant -Northern nursery of sixty years ago, with bright curls, ruddy cheeks, -and the blue eyes, candid and trusting, that he still kept; standing -there, bare-armed and bare-legged, in his stiff, funny little dress of -plaid, before the fire-guard, while nurse, irate, benevolent figure, cut -bread and butter for breakfast. Dear little Tim! still her younger -brother; still turning to her, as he had always done, for counsel or -succour in any stress or anxiety. It was nothing new that the anxiety -should be about Rhoda; there was nothing, even, that had surprised her -in Tim's letter; yet she knew from the sense of urgency and even -breathlessness within her that the blow which had been dealt him could -not leave her unaffected. She could, after all, still suffer in Tim's -suffering. And even before she had let her thoughts dwell decisively on -Rhoda, she had found herself thinking, while the grimness settled on her -face, "I shall know how to talk to her." - -She had always known how to talk to the moody young beauty; that was why -Tim had sent off this letter of desperate appeal. She never quite saw -why Rhoda had not, from the first, felt in her merely an echo of her -father's commonplace conventionality and discounted her as that. Rhoda -had never, she felt sure, guessed how far from conventional she was; how -much at heart, in spite of a life that had never left appointed paths, -she knew herself to be a rebel and a sceptic; no one had ever guessed -it. But there had always been between her and Rhoda an intuitive -understanding; and that Rhoda from the first had listened and, from the -first, had sometimes yielded, proved that she was intelligent. - -Mrs. Delafield saw herself so accurately as Rhoda must see her. The -terse, old-fashioned aunt in the country residence--yes, dear Fernleigh, -square and mid-Victorian, with its name, and its creepers, its -conservatory, and its shrubberies, was so eminently a residence; and she -had never wanted to alter it into anything else, for it was so that she -had found it when, on her mother-in-law's death, she and the young -husband of so many years ago had first gone there to live. Rhoda must -see her, her hair so smooth under its cap of snowy net, her black -gowns--stuff for morning wear, silk for evening--so invariable, with the -frills at neck and wrists, thick gold chains and the dim old brooches -that went with them, as belonging almost to an epoch of albums on -centre-tables, of Mendelssohn's sacred songs, and archery tournaments; -an epoch of morning family-prayers and moral categories, where some -people still believed in hell and everybody believed in sin. She didn't -think that Rhoda had ever seen through all these alienating appearances -to the reality she herself knew to be so different; but it had always -been evident that she felt it through them; that she was at ease with -her aunt, candid, even if angry, and willing, even when most silent and -recalcitrant, to come down to Fernleigh, when her distracted parents -could deal with her no longer, and to "think things over," as they put -it to her, imploringly. - -Mrs. Delafield could see Rhoda thinking things over from a very early -age, from the earliest age at which recalcitrancy could count as -practically alarming. She could see her walking slowly past this very -border at the time that she had determined to go on the stage,--she had -only just left the hands of her devastated governesses,--pausing now and -then to examine unseeingly a plant, her hands clasped behind her, her -dark, gloomy, lovely, young head brooding on the sense of wrong, and, -even more, no doubt, on plots and stratagems. Her aunt had always -watched her, while seeming, in the most comfortable manner possible, to -give her no attention; noting everything about her,--and everything -counted against poor Tim's and Frances's peace of mind,--from the -slender, silken ankles to the tall column of the proud young throat; all -of it, every bit of Rhoda, so determined by an insatiable vanity, which -was the worst of her, and by a sardonic pride, which was the best. - -Rhoda, to do her further justice, was even more wonderful in the eyes of -her admirers than in her own. Her consciousness was not occupied so much -with her own significance as with all the things due to it; and it was -upon these things, and the methods of obtaining them, that she brooded -as she walked. "Naughty girl," had been her aunt's unexpressed comment; -and perhaps one reason why Rhoda had found it comfortable, or, at least, -composing, to be with her, was that it was a relief to be seen as a -naughty girl rather than as a terrifying portent. - -Mrs. Delafield had determined at once that Rhoda should not go on the -stage, though not, really, because Tim and Frances had begged her to -dissuade the child. She could perfectly imagine having wished to go on -the stage herself in her young days; and it was this consciousness, -perhaps, that made her so fair to Rhoda's desire. She had taken her -stand on no conventional objection; she had not even argued with Rhoda; -she had simply been able to make her feel, bit by bit, that she hadn't -one little atom of talent. - -It had been the same thing, really, when Rhoda had announced her -intention of marrying a dreadful young man, a bad young man,--Mrs. -Delafield knew where to apply her categories,--who had a large studio -where he gave teas and painted small, disagreeable pictures. They were -clever pictures; Mrs. Delafield was aware of this, though Tim and -Frances saw them only as disagreeable; and the young man, if bad, was -clever. Mrs. Delafield had travelled up to town several times in this -emergency, and had even accompanied Rhoda to the studio, where a young -lady with bare legs and feet was dancing, with more concentration than -spontaneity, before a cigaretted audience. Oddly enough, after this -visit, it had been much easier to make Rhoda give up Mr. Austin Dell -than it had been to make her give up the stage. Mrs. Delafield had -merely talked him over, very mildly, him and his friends, asking here -and there a kindly question about one or a slightly perplexed question -about another. It had been Rhoda herself who had expressed awareness of -the second-rate flavour that had brooded so heavily over dancer and -audience, not leaving Mr. Dell himself untouched. On the point of Mr. -Dell's income Mrs. Delafield soon felt that Rhoda knew -misgivings--misgivings as to her own fitness to be a needy artist's -wife. She made no overt recantation, but over her tea, presently, agreed -with her aunt that it was a pity to dance with bare feet unless the feet -were flawlessly well-shaped. "She is such a little fool, that Miss -Matthews!" Rhoda had remarked. And after this there was no more talk of -Mr. Dell. - - -II - -When, in the second year of the war, poor Tim and Frances, dusty, jaded, -nearly shattered, but appeased at last, were able to announce the -engagement of their daughter Rhoda to the unexceptionable Niel Quentyn, -Mrs. Delafield's special function seemed ended; but, looking back over -her long intercourse with her niece, she knew that Rhoda had felt her a -relief rather than an influence; that she had made things easier rather -than more difficult to her; that, in short, she had always successfully -appealed to the girl's intelligence rather than to what poor Tim and -Frances called her better self; and it was of Rhoda's intelligence, and -of what possible pressure she might be able to bring to bear upon it, -that she thought finally, as she worked at her border and waited for the -fly that was to bring Rhoda's baby and its nurse from the station. - -She had not been able to rejoice with her brother and his wife over -Rhoda's match. She who had measured, during her years of -acquaintanceship with her, her niece's force, had measured accurately, -in her first glance at him, Niel's insignificance. He was good-looking, -good-tempered, and very much in love; but caste, clothes, code, and the -emotion of his age and situation summed him up. He had money, too, and -could give Rhoda, together with a little handle to her name, the dim, -rich, startling drawing-room in which her taste at once expressed -itself, and a pleasant country house, where, as he confided to Mrs. -Delafield, he hoped to inspire her, when the war was over, with his own -ardour for hunting. - -Rhoda was far too clever to quarrel with such excellent bread and -butter; but what could he give her more? for Rhoda would want more than -bread and butter; what food for excitement and adventure could he offer -her indolent yet eager mind and her nature, at once so greedy and so -fastidious? Mrs. Delafield asked herself the question, even while she -watched Rhoda's wonderful white form move up the nave at her splendid, -martial wedding; even while poor Frances wept for joy and "The Voice -that breathed o'er Eden" surged from the organ; and she feared that Niel -was getting far more than he had bargained for and Rhoda far less. - -The first year, it was true, passed successfully. Poor Frances, who had, -fortunately, died at the end of it, had known no reason for abated -rejoicing. She lived long enough to see the baby, little Jane Amoret, as -Rhoda persisted in calling the child; and she had welcomed Niel home -once on leave--Niel as much infatuated as ever and trying to take an -intelligent interest in Picasso. It was since then, during the past -year, that Tim's letters had expressed a growing presage and appeal. -Moved by the latter, and only a short time before her own grief had -overtaken her, she had gone up to London and stayed with him for a few -days, and had taken tea with Rhoda. - -At Rhoda's it had been exactly as she expected. The drawing-room was -worthy of its fame; so worthy that Mrs. Delafield wondered how Niel -afforded it--and in war-time, too. Rhoda, as she often announced, was -clever at picking up things, and many of the objects with which she had -surrounded herself were undoubted trophies of her resource and -knowledge. But all the taste and skill in the world didn't give one that -air of pervading splendour, as of the setting for a Russian ballet, in -which the red lacquer and the Chinese screens, the blacks and golds and -rich, dim whites were, like Rhoda herself, sunken with her customary air -of gloomy mirth in the deepest cushions and surpassingly dressed, merged -in the soft, unstressed, yet magnificent atmosphere. It was the -practical side of matters--the depth of good, dull Niel's purse measured -against the depth of Rhoda's atmosphere--that alarmed Mrs. Delafield, -rather than Rhoda herself and Rhoda's friends, of whom poor Tim had so -distressingly written. - -There were many suave and merry young men, mainly in khaki, and various -ladies, acute or languorous, who had the air of being as carefully -selected as the chairs and china. There were tea and cigarettes, and an -abundance of wonderful talk that showed no sign of mitigation on account -of her mid-Victorian presence; though, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, -musing on the young people about her, no one could say, except their -clever selves, how much mitigation there might not be. Like Rhoda, no -doubt, they felt her reality through her mid-Victorianism. Her small -black bonnet with its velvet strings, and her long, loose jacket trimmed -with fringe, would not restrain them beyond a certain point. Yet she -suspected that they had a point, and she wondered, though the question -did not alarm her, where it could be placed. - -They talked, at all events, and she listened; at times she even smiled; -and since by no possibility could her smiles be taken as complicities, -she was willing that they should be taken as comprehensions. Rhoda's -friends, though so young, were chill and arid, and the enthusiasms they -allowed themselves had the ring of provocation rather than of ardour. -Yet she did not dislike them; they were none of them like Mr. Dell; -and, though so withered by sophistication, they had at moments flashes -of an uncanny, almost an ingenuous wisdom. - -The occasion had not alarmed her, and she had found but one moment -oppressive, that of the appearance--the displayal, as of a Chinese idol, -indeed, or a Pekinese spaniel (Rhoda had three of these)--of poor little -Jane Amoret. She rarely disliked her niece, even when feeling her most -naughty; but she found herself disliking her calculated maternity, with -its kisses, embraces and reiterated "darlings." Jane Amoret had eyed her -gravely and, as gravely, had held out her arms to her nurse to be taken -back when the spectacle was over. Jane Amoret's attire was quite as -strange as her mother's drawing-room, and Rhoda had contrived to make -her look like a cross between an Aubrey Beardsley and a gorgeous, -dressed-up doll Madonna in a Spanish cathedral. - -On returning to Tim, Mrs. Delafield found that she could not completely -reassure him, but she laid stress, knowing it would be, comparatively, a -comfort, on Rhoda's extravagance, eliciting from him a groan of "I -know!--I know!--Poor Niel's been writing to me about it!--Dances; -dinners; gowns. One would say she had no conscience at all--and at a -time like this!" But he went on, "That's nothing, though. That can be -managed when Niel gets back--if he ever does, poor fellow!--and can put -his foot down on the spot. You didn't see him, then? He wasn't -there--the young man?" - -Tim had never before spoken definitely of a young man. - -"The young man?" she questioned. "There were a dozen of them. Of -course, she'll have a special one: that's part of the convention. Rhoda -may cultivate--like all the rest of them--every appearance of lawless -attachment; but you may be sure, dear Tim, that it's only a pose, a -formula, like the painted lips and dyed hair, which doesn't in the least -mean they are demi-mondaines." - -"Painted lips? Dyed hair? Demi-mondaines?" Tim had wanly echoed. "Do you -really mean, Isabel, that Rhoda paints and dyes?" - -"Not her hair. It's too lovely to be dyed. But her lips,--why, haven't -you seen it?--ever since she was eighteen. It is all, as I say, a pose; -a formula. They are all afraid of nothing so much as of seeming -respectable. I imagine that there's just as much marital virtue at large -in the world nowadays as when we were young.--Who is the young man?" she -had, nevertheless, ended. - -"My dear, don't ask me!" Tim had moaned, blanched and battered in his -invalid's chair. (Why wouldn't he come down and live with her? Why, -indeed, except that, since Frances's death, he had felt that he must -stand by, in London, and watch over Rhoda.) "I only know what I've -heard. Amy has talked and talked. And everybody else is talking, -according to her." Amy was Frances's sister, a well-meaning, but -disturbing woman, with a large family of well-conducted, well-married, -unpainted, and unfashionable daughters. "She is here every day about it. -They are always together. He is always there. The poet--the new young -poet. He has a heart or a chest or a stomach--something that has sent -him home and that keeps him safe at Whitehall, while poor Niel fights in -France. Surely, Isabel, you've heard of Christopher Darley? Wasn't he -there? Young. Younger than Rhoda. Black hair. Big eyes. Silent." - -Silent.--Yes, there had been, beside Jane Amoret, one silent person in -Rhoda's drawing-room. And she had been aware of him constantly, though, -till now, unconsciously. Very young; very pale; aloof, near a window, -with an uncalculated aloofness. She reconstructed an impression that -became deeper the further she went into it. Thick backward locks that -had given his forehead a wind-blown look, and a gaze now and then -directed on herself, a gaze grave, withdrawing, yet scrutinizing, too. - -"Yes; I think, now that you describe him, I must have seen him," she -murmured; while a curious alarm mounted in her, an alarm that none of -Rhoda's more characteristic circle had aroused. "He wasn't living by a -formula of freedom," she reflected. "And he wasn't arid." Aloud she -said, "He looked a nice young creature, I remember." - -"He writes horrible poems, Amy says; blasphemous. There they are. I -can't understand them. He casts down everything; has no beliefs of any -kind. Nice? I should think that's the last adjective that would describe -him." - -She had picked up the unobtrusive volume and found herself arrested; not -as she had been by the memory of the young man's gaze, nor yet in the -manner that Tim's account indicated; but still arrested. Very young--but -austere, dignified, and strange, genuinely and effortlessly strange. So -a young priest might have written, seeking in close-pressed metaphysical -analogies to find expression for spiritual passion. She stood, puzzled -and absorbed. - -"No, it isn't blasphemous," she said presently. "And he has beliefs. -But surely, Tim dear, surely this young man can't care for Rhoda." - -How could a young man who wrote like that about the mystic vision care -for Rhoda? - -"Not care for Rhoda!" Tim's voice had now the quaintest ring of paternal -resentment. "The most beautiful young woman in London! Why, he's head -over heels in love with her. And the worst of it is that, from what Amy -sees and hears, she cares for him." - -"It's curious," Mrs. Delafield said, laying down the book. "I shouldn't -have thought he'd care about beautiful young women." - -And now Tim's letter, on this December morning, announced that Rhoda had -gone off with Christopher Darley; and Mrs. Delafield could find it in -her heart, as she worked and pondered, to wish that her dear Tim had -followed Frances before this catastrophe overtook him. - -"Good heavens!" she heard herself muttering, "if only she'd been meaner, -more cowardly, and stayed and lied--as women of her kind are supposed to -do. If only she'd let him die in peace; he can't have many years." - -But no: it had been done with _le beau geste_. Tim had known nothing, -and poor Niel, home for his first peace leave, had come to him, -bewildered and aghast, with the news. He had found a letter waiting for -him, sent from the country. Tim copied the letter for her:-- - - DEAR NIEL: - - I'm sure you felt, too, that our life couldn't go on. It had become - too unsatisfactory for both of us. Luckily we are sensible people - nowadays, and such mistakes can be remedied. You must mend your - life as I am mending mine. I am leaving you, with Christopher - Darley. I am so sorry if it seems sudden; but I felt it better that - we should not meet again. - - Yours affectionately - - RHODA - -"If only the poet hadn't had money, too!" Mrs. Delafield had thought. -For this fact she had learned about Mr. Darley in London. Rhoda would -never have abandoned that drawing-room had she not been secure of -another as good. - -Tim wrote that nothing could have been manlier, more generous, than -Niel's behaviour. He was willing, for the sake of the child, to take -Rhoda back, reinstate her, and protect her from the consequences of her -act; and what Tim now begged of his sister was that she should see -Rhoda, see if, confronting her, she could not induce her to return to -her husband. Meanwhile Jane Amoret would be dispatched at once with her -nurse to Fernleigh. Tim had written to his child in her retreat, and had -implored her to go to her aunt. "I told her that you would receive her, -Isabel," so Tim's letter ended; "and I trust you now to save us--as far -as we can be saved. Tell her that her husband will forgive, and that I -forgive, if she will return. Let her see the child. Let that be your -appeal." - -Poor, darling Tim! Very mid-Victorian. "Forgive." Would "receive" her. -The words had an antediluvian ring. With what battledore and -shuttle-cock of mirth and repartee they would be sent sailing and -spinning in Rhoda's world. All the same, she, who was mid-Victorian in -seeming rather than in reality, would make other appeals, if Rhoda -came. Already she could almost count the steady heads of her intentions -thrusting up as if through the ground. Even in Rhoda's world repartee -and mirth might be displayed rather than acted upon, and Rhoda might -find herself, as a result of _le beau geste_, less favourably placed for -the creation of another drawing-room than she imagined. That, of course, -was the line to take with Rhoda; and as she reflected, carefully now, on -what she would say to her,--as she determined that Rhoda should not -leave her until she had turned her face firmly homeward,--the sound of -wheels came up the road, and outside the high walls she heard the -station fly drawing up at her gates. In another moment she was welcoming -Jane Amoret and her nurse. - - -III - -SHE had not seen the child for five months now, and her first glance at -her, for all its sweetness, brought something of a shock, revealing as -it did how deeply she cared for the little creature. She was not a -child-lover, not undiscriminatingly fond of all examples of the -undeveloped, though her kind solicitude might have given her that -appearance. Children had always affected her, from the cradle, as -personalities; and some, like the mature, were lovable and some the -reverse. Jane Amoret had already paid her more than one visit--she had -been more than willing that Rhoda should find her a convenience in this -respect; and she had, from the first, found her lovable. But the five -months had brought much more to the mere charm of babyhood. She was now -potent and arresting in her appeal and dignity. She sat in her nurse's -arms, her eyes fixed on her great-aunt, and, as Mrs. Delafield held out -her hands to her, she unhesitatingly, if unsmilingly, answered, leaning -forward to be taken. - -She was a pale, delicate baby, her narrow little face framed in -straightly cut dark hair, her mournful little lips only tinted with a -rosy mauve; and, under long, fine brows, her great eyes were full of -meditativeness. Rhoda, though now so richly a brunette, had, as a baby, -been ruddy-haired and rosy-cheeked, with eyes of a velvety, submerging -darkness. Jane Amoret's grey iris rayed out from the expanded pupil like -the corolla of a flower. There was no likeness between the child and her -mother. Nor was there anything of Niel's sleepy young countenance, with -its air of still waters running shallow. - -Mrs. Delafield, something of a student of heredity, saw in the little -face an almost uncanny modern replica of her own paternal grandmother, -whose pensive gaze, under high-dressed powdered hair, had followed her -down the drawing-room in the home of her childhood. In Jane Amoret she -recovered the sense of that forgotten romance of her youth--the -wonderful, beautiful great-grandmother with the following eyes. Had they -not, even then, been asking something of her? - -"It isn't everyone she'll go to, ma'am," said the nurse, as they went up -the path to the house, Mrs. Delafield carrying Jane Amoret. - -Nurse was a highly efficient example of her type--crisp, cheerful, a -little glib. Mrs. Delafield had never warmly liked her, and felt -convinced now, that in spite of her decorous veneer of reticence, the -servants' hall would be enlightened as to the whole story before many -hours were over. Well, it could not be helped. - -They went up to the big nursery overlooking the walled garden at the -back of the house, where, since the morning's post and its -announcements, a great fire of logs had been blazing. Nurse made but one -respectful, passing reference to Rhoda. The country air would do Lady -Quentyn good. She had, nurse thought, over-tired herself of late. What -else she thought, Parton and the others were soon to hear hinted. And as -Rhoda's calculated maternity had chilled her aunt on that day five -months ago, so she was chilled now to think that Rhoda should have had -more taste in the choice of her drawing-room than in that of her baby's -nurse. - -While, in the next room, the unpleasing woman was unpacking her own and -Jane Amoret's effects, Mrs. Delafield was left alone with the child. She -had found, on a shelf, a box of well-worn blocks, and seating herself in -the low, chintz-covered wicker chair beside the fire, she placed them, -one by one, before Jane Amoret, who, on her white wool rug, gave them a -gentle attention. She had been too young for blocks on her last visit. - -The old chair, as Mrs. Delafield moved in it, leaning down, creaked -softly, and she remembered, a curious excitement stirring under all -these recoveries of the past, that it had been condemned as really too -decrepit when Peggy had been a baby. Yet the threat had never been -carried out. It had gone on through Peggy's babyhood and through the -babyhood of Peggy's children, and, unused for all these years, here it -gave forth again just the plaintive yet comfortable sounds which, even -more, it seemed, than another baby's presence, evoked Peggy and her own -young maternity. - -The chair, the blocks, the firelight playing on the happy walls, with -their framed Caldecotts and Cherry Ripes and Bubbles, all evoked that -past, filling her with the mingled acquiescence and yearning of old age. -And Jane Amoret evoked a past far, far more distant. Peggy had not been -like the great-grandmother. None of them had ever reincarnated that -vanished loveliness. But here, mysterious and appealing, it was before -her; and it seemed to brush across her very heartstrings every time -that, from the blocks, the child lifted the meditative grey of her eyes -to her great-aunt's face. - -Far too mysterious, far too lovely, far too gentle, this frail -potentiality, for any uses ever to be made of it by Rhoda, by Niel, or -by nurse. And the yearning became a yearning over Jane Amoret. - -Yes, there the edifice rose, block by block--her deft, deliberate -fingers placed them one after the other, under Jane Amoret's eyes, -absorbed in this towering achievement. The miniature Alhambra finished, -she sat and gazed, and her little chest lifted in a great sigh of wonder -and appeasement. Then, her baby interest dropping, she looked round at -the flames, and, for a little time, gazed at them, while her -great-aunt's hand moved softly to rest upon her head. It seemed then, as -if in answer to the rapt and tender look bent above her, that Jane -Amoret's eyes were again raised and that she stretched up her arms to be -taken. - -"She really loves me," said Mrs. Delafield, as touched and trembling as -a young lover. She lifted her, pressing the little body against her -breast; and, as Jane Amoret gave herself to the enfolding, a thought -that was as sharp and as sudden as a pang flashed through her -great-aunt's mind. "I can never give her up." - -What came to her first, as she sat there, Jane Amoret's head leaning -against her, was the thought of Christmas roses. It was a gift, a -miracle. And to what depths of loneliness the gift had been given; with -what depths of life she answered it! But she was breathless while she -tried to think, knowing something terrible in her own swift acceptance; -seeing for the first time something lawless and perilous in her own -nature. Never in her life had she betrayed a trust; never broken a law. -Yet often, through the years, she had paused, contemplative and -questioning, to gaze at something her mirror showed her, an implication -that only she could see, a capacity never realized. And what she saw -sometimes, with discomfort and shrinking, in those freaked eyes, those -firm lips, was an untamed wildness that had come to her from much -further back than a great-grandmother; something predatory and reckless, -perhaps from the days of border robbers, and Highland chiefs whose only -law was their own will. - -She knew now what were the faces waiting to seize upon her accusingly. -Not Rhoda's. She swept Rhoda and her forfeited claim aside. Let her stay -with her poet, since that was what she had chosen. It was Niel and poor -Tim who looked at her aghast. But another face hovered softly and -effacingly before them; a pale young face with rosy-mauve lips and -following eyes that said, "They will never understand me. This is what I -was trying to tell you, always. I knew that I was coming back. This is -what I was asking you to do." - -It was superstition; it did not deceive her for a moment. Desire -dressing itself in a supernatural appeal. Absurd and discreditable. But, -in all truth and honour, wasn't there something in it? Wasn't there a -time, once in a blue moon, for lawlessness, when it came as a miracle? -Whom would she harm, really? What could his paternity mean, really, to -drowsy young Niel? And could she not salve Tim's wounds? - -The only thing that could count,--she came to that at last, feeling the -child, with sleeping, drooping head and little hands held within her -hand, already so profoundly her own,--the only thing was Jane Amoret -herself. Had she a right to keep her from what was, perhaps, her chance -of the normal, even if the defective, life? Wasn't even a bad and -foolish mother better than no mother at all, and an untarnished name -supremely desirable? She struggled, her eyes fixed on the fire, her hand -unconsciously closing fast on the little intertwined hands within it. -And with the face of the great-grandmother came again the thought of the -Christmas roses, of the gift, the miracle. - -She had not sought anything. She had not even chosen. It was rather as -if Jane Amoret had chosen her. She need not make an effort to keep the -gift. She need merely make no effort to give it back. If Rhoda came (oh, -she could but pray that Rhoda would not come!), she need not find the -right words for her. She had only to remain the passive spectator of -Rhoda's enterprise and not put out a hand to withdraw her from it. And, -thrusting, feverishly, final decisions from her, her mind sprang out -into far projects and promises. She could, with a will, live for twenty -more years yet and fill them full for Jane Amoret. Niel must not lose -his child, evidently. She would arrange with Niel. He had always liked -her and turned to her. Let this be his home, and welcome. But of course, -he would marry again. She could persuade him not to take Jane Amoret -from her to give to a step-mother. Niel would be easy. - -And Tim, now, must come, of course. Tim should, with her, enjoy Jane -Amoret to the full. What a happy childhood she could make it! It was, to -begin with, quite the happiest nursery she knew, this long-empty nursery -of hers. In a few years' time Jane Amoret would be old enough to have -her own little plot in the garden--Peggy's plot; and a pony like Peggy's -should come to the empty stables. She saw already the merry, instructed -girl she would choose as Jane Amoret's governess: some one young enough -to play out of lesson hours; some one who would teach her to know birds -and flowers as well as history and Latin. She would keep Jane Amoret's -hair cut like this,--it was the only point in the child's array in which -her taste was Rhoda's,--straight across the forehead and straight across -the neck, until she was fifteen, and she should wear smocked blue linen -for morning and white for afternoon, as her own children had done. With -good luck, she might even see Jane Amoret married. - -Actually, she was thinking about Jane Amoret's marriage, actually -wondering about the nice little eldest boy at the manor,--while her arms -tightened in instinctive maternal anxiety around the sleeping -baby,--when Parton, doing her best not to look round-eyed, announced -Lady Quentyn. - - -IV - -SHE knew, as she waited for Rhoda to come up, that something she had -forgotten during this last half-hour--perhaps it was her -conscience--steeled her suddenly to the endurance of a test. Tim had -worded it, "Let her see the child. Let that be your appeal." Would it -not appease her conscience to stand or fall by that? It should be her -appeal. But the only one. - -Jane Amoret had waked, and now, dazed but unfretful, suffered herself to -be placed again on the rug among the blocks, one of which Mrs. Delafield -put into her hands, bidding her build a beautiful big house, as -great-aunt had done. The anguish of her own suspense was made manifest -to her in the restless gesture with which, after that, and while she -waited, she bent to put another log on the fire. - -Rhoda's soft, deliberate rustle was outside. In another moment she had -entered, and the effect that Mrs. Delafield dreaded seemed produced on -the spot; for, arrested at the very threshold, almost before her eyes -had sought her aunt's, Rhoda stared down at the child with knotted, with -even incredulous brows. - -"Oh! He's sent her already, then!" she exclaimed. - -What did the stare, the exclamation, portend? - -"Yes. He sent her, of course, as soon as he came back." - -"But why?--until our interview is over?" - -"Why not? She'd been alone for a week." Mrs. Delafield spoke with the -mildness which, she determined, should not leave her. "Niel, of course, -wanted to have her cared for." - -Rhoda, during this little interchange, had remained near the door; but -now, perceiving, perhaps, that she had come near to giving herself away, -she cleared her brows of their perplexity and moved forward to the fire, -where, leaning her velvet elbow on the mantelpiece, she answered, drily -laughing; "Oh! Niel's care! He wouldn't know whether the child were fed -on suet-pudding or cold ham! She's not alone, with nurse. There's no one -who can take such care of her as nurse. I knew that." And she went on -immediately, putting the question of Jane Amoret's presence behind her -with decision, "Well, poor Aunt Isabel, what have you to say to me? -Father wrote that you would consent to be the go-between. He absolutely -implored me to come, and it's to satisfy him I'm here, for I really -can't imagine what good it can do." - -No; Mrs. Delafield had grasped her own security and her own danger. It -had not been in remorse or tenderness that Rhoda's eyes had fixed -themselves upon her child, it had been in anxiety, lest Jane Amoret's -presence should be the signal of some final verdict against her. She had -come because she hoped to be taken back; and if there was all the needed -justification in Rhoda's callousness, there was an undreamed-of danger -in her expectation. - -"Well, we must see," Mrs. Delafield remarked; and already she was -measuring the necessities of Rhoda's pride against the urgencies of -Rhoda's disenchantment. It was Rhoda's pride that she must hold to. -Rhoda, even if she had come, had only come to make her own terms. - -"Did you motor over?" she asked. "You are not very far from here, are -you?" - -No train could have brought her at that hour. - -"Twenty miles or so away," said Rhoda. "I was able to hire a motor, a -horrible, open affair with torn flaps that let in all the air, so that -I'm frozen." - -Her loveliness did, indeed, look a little pinched and sharpened, and -there was more than the cold drive to account for it. But she was still -surpassingly lovely, with the loveliness that, once you were confronted -with it, seemed to explain everything that might need explanation. That -was Rhoda's strongest card. She left her appearance to speak for her and -made no explanations, as now, when, indeed, she had all the air of -expecting other people to make them. But her aunt only said, while Jane -Amoret, from her rug, kept her grave gaze upon her mother, "Won't you -have some hot milk?" - -"Thanks, yes, I should be glad of it," said Rhoda. "How lucky you are to -have it. We are given only condensed for our coffee at the hotel. It's -quite revolting." And after Mrs. Delafield had rung, and since no -initiative came from her, she was, in a manner, forced to open the -conversation. "Niel has only himself to thank," she said. "He's been -making himself too impossible for a long time." - -"Really? In what way? Perhaps the hard life over there has affected his -temper." - -Mrs. Delafield allowed herself the irony. Rhoda, indeed, must expect -that special flavour from her. - -"Something has certainly affected it," said Rhoda, drawing a chair to -the fire and spreading her beautiful hands before it. "I'm quite tired, -I confess,--horrid as I'm perfectly aware it sounds to say it,--of -hearing about the hard life. Life's hard enough for all of us just now, -heaven knows; and I think they haven't had half a bad time over there, -numbers of them--men like Niel, I mean, who've travelled comfortably -about the world and never had the least little wound, nor been, ever, in -any real danger, as far as I can make out; at least, not since he's had -the staff work. It's very different from my poor Christopher, who rotted -in the cold and mud until it nearly killed him. There would be some -point in his talking of a hard life." - -This was all very illuminating, and the bold advance of Christopher won -Mrs. Delafield's admiration for its manner; but she passed it over to -inquire again, "In what way has Niel been making himself impossible?" -The more impossible Rhoda depicted him, the easier to leave her there, -shut out by his impossibility. - -"Why, his meanness," said Rhoda, her cold, dark eyes, as she turned them -upon her aunt, expressing, indeed, quite a righteous depth of -reprobation. "For months and months it's been the same wearisome cry. -He's written about nothing but economy, fussing, fuming, and preaching. -It's so ugly, at his time of life." - -"Have you been a little extravagant, perhaps? Everything is so much more -costly, isn't it? He may well have been anxious about your future, and -the child's." - -It was perfectly mild, and the irony Rhoda would expect from her. - -"Oh, no he wasn't," said Rhoda, now with her gloomy laugh. "He was -anxious about his hunting. I don't happen to care for that primitive -form of amusement, and Niel doesn't happen to care about anything else; -certainly he doesn't care about beauty, and that's all I do care about. -So in his view, since, precisely, life has become so costly, beauty had -to go to the wall and I mustn't dress decently or have a decently -ordered house. I haven't been in the least extravagant," said Rhoda. -"I've known what it is to be cold; I've known what it is to be hungry; -it's been, at times, literally impossible to get food and coal in -London. Oh, you don't know anything about it, Aunt Isabel, tucked away -comfortably down here with logs and milk. And if Niel had had any -appreciation of the position and had realized at all that I prefer being -hungry to being ill-dressed, he would have turned his mind to cutting -down his own extravagances and offered to allow me"--and now, for an -instant, if velvet can show sharpness, Mrs. Delafield caught in the -sliding velvet eye an evident edge of cogitation, even, of -calculation--"at least two thousand a year for myself. Money buys -absolutely nothing nowadays." - -So there it was, and it amounted to an offer. Or, rather, it amounted to -saying that it was the sum for which she would be willing to consider -any offer of Niel's. Mrs. Delafield, measuring still Rhoda's pride -against Rhoda's urgency, mused on her velvet garments, the fur that -broadly bordered her skirts, slipped from her shoulders, and framed her -hands. Poor Tim had been able to give his daughter only a few hundred a -year, and Niel's hunting must indeed have been in danger. Rhoda's pride, -she knew, stood, as yet, between herself and any pressure from the -urgency; she could safely leave the offer to lie and go on presently to -question, "And you'll be better off now?" - -Inevitably unsuspecting as she was, Rhoda, all the same, must feel an -unexpectedness in her attitude, and at this it was with a full, frank -sombreness that she turned her gaze upon her. Anything but a fool she -had always been, and she answered, after the moment of gloomy scrutiny, -"Don't imagine, please, Aunt Isabel, that because I speak openly of -practical matters I left Niel to get a better establishment. I left him -because I didn't love him. I was willing to sacrifice anything rather -than stay. Because it is a sacrifice. I took the step I've taken under -no illusion. We are too uncivilized yet for things to be anything but -difficult for a woman who takes the step, and the brave people have to -pay for the cowards and hypocrites." - -This, somehow, was not at all Rhoda's own note. Mrs. Delafield felt sure -she caught an echo of Mr. Darley's ministrations. She was glad that -Rhoda should receive them: they would sustain her; and since she was -determined--or almost--that Rhoda should stay with Mr. Darley, it was -well that she should receive all the sustainment possible. - -"It certainly must require great love and great courage," she assented. - -Rhoda's eyes still sombrely scrutinized her. "I didn't expect you to see -it, I confess, Aunt, Isabel." - -"Oh, but I do," said Mrs. Delafield. - -The milk was now brought and Rhoda began to sip it. - -"As for my being better off, since you are kind enough to take an -interest in that aspect of my situation," she went back, "Christopher -hasn't, it's true, as much money as Niel. But our tastes are the same, -so that I shall certainly be very much better off. We shall live in -London--after Niel sets me free." And here again she just glanced at her -aunt, who bowed assent, murmuring, "Yes; yes; he is quite willing to set -you free; at once."--"And until then," Rhoda went on, as if she hadn't -needed the assurance,--second-rate assurance as, Mrs. Delafield felt -sure, she found it,--"and until then I shall stay in the country. -Christopher has his post still at the Censor's office, and won't, I'm -afraid, get his demobilization for some time. He translates things, you -know. So we are going to find a little old house, for me,--we are -looking for one now,--and I shall see a few friends there, quite -quietly, and Christopher can come up and down, until everything is -settled. I think that's the best plan." - -Rhoda spoke with a dignity that had even a savour of conscious -sweetness, and, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, was running herself very -completely into her corner. - -There was silence now for a little while. Rhoda finished her milk, and -Jane Amoret, gently and unobtrusively moving among her blocks, -succeeded, at length, in balancing the last one on her edifice and -looked up at her great-aunt for approbation. - -"Very good, darling. A beautiful house," said Mrs. Delafield, leaning -over her, but with a guarded tenderness. What a serpent she had become! -There was Rhoda's jealousy to look out for. She might imagine herself -fond of Jane Amoret, if she saw that some one else adored her. - -"She's quite used to you already, isn't she?" said Rhoda, watching them. -"I wonder what you'll make of her. She strikes me as rather a dull -little thing, though she's certainly very pretty. She's rather like -Niel, isn't she? Though she certainly isn't as dull as Niel!" She -laughed slightly. "All the same,"--and Mrs. Delafield now, in Rhoda's -voice, scented the close approach of danger, and was aware, though she -did not look up to meet it, that Rhoda's eyes took on a new -watchfulness,--"All the same I must consider the poor little thing's -future. That is, of course, my one real difficulty." - -"Was it? In going away? In having left her, you mean?" Mrs Delafield -prayed that her mildness might gloss, to Rhoda's ear, the transition to -conscious combat that her instinctive change of tense revealed to her -own. "Oh, but you need not do that. Don't let that trouble you for a -moment, Rhoda. I will take charge of her--complete charge. I can do it -easily. My house is empty, and the child will be a companion to me. I -don't find her dull. She is a dear little thing, so good and gentle. You -need really have no anxiety." - -"Oh, I see." Rhoda was gazing at her earnestly. "Thanks. That's -certainly a relief. Though all the same I don't suppose you'd claim that -you could replace the child's mother." - -"Yes. I think so, Rhoda. A mother who had left her for a lover." - -Mrs. Delafield kept her eyes fixed on the fire. Rhoda stood up and -leaned her back against the mantelpiece. She could no longer control the -manifestations of her impatience and her perplexity. - -"That would be your view, of course; and father's; and Niel's. It's not -mine. I consider the responsibility to be Niel's." - -"Well, whosesoever the responsibility, the deed is done, isn't it?" -Mrs. Delafield observed. "I'm not arraigning you, you know. I'm merely -stating the fact. You have left her." - -Rhoda's impatience now visibly brushed past these definitions. "You say -that Niel is ready to set me free. I took that for granted, of course. -It's only common decency. But that's hardly what father could have meant -in imploring me to come to--you. He told me nothing--only implored, and -lamented. And, since I am here, I'd like some information, I confess." - -It was the first step away from pride, and it was a long one. And Mrs. -Delafield knew that with it came her own final turning-point. Here, at -this moment, she must be true to Tim and Niel, or betray their trust. -And here no less--for so it seemed to her--she might, in betraying them, -take the law into her own hands and promise herself, and them, that, in -breaking it, she would make something better. Yet she did not feel these -alternatives, now, at war within her mind. She knew that they were -there, implicit, but she knew them already answered. Rhoda had answered -for her; and Jane Amoret had answered. It took her, however, a moment to -find her own answer, the verbal one, and while she looked for it, she -kept her eyes on the fire. - -"Your father wants you to go back," she said at last. "Niel is willing -to take you back. That is the information I had for you. Not for a -moment because he would accept your interpretation of responsibility, -and not for a moment because of any personal feeling for you; which must -be a relief to you. Merely for your sake, and the child's. But I don't -know how to plead such a cause with you, Rhoda. I understand you, I -think, better than your father does. I've always seen your point of view -as he could never see it, and I see it even now. So that I should feel -that I asked you something outrageous in asking you to go back to your -husband when you love another man. If you should want to go back, that -would be a very different matter--if, by chance, you feel you've made a -mistake and are tired, already, of Mr. Darley." - -She had time, in the pause that followed, the scales pulsing almost -evenly--it was as if she saw them--between Rhoda's pride and Rhoda's -urgency, to wonder at herself. And most of all to wonder that she -regretted nothing. She kept her eyes on the fire, but she knew that -Rhoda, very still, scrutinized her intently. The sharply drawn tension -of the moment had resolved itself, to her imagination, into a series of -tiny ticks, as if of the scales settling down to the choice, before -Rhoda spoke. Then what she found to say was, "That's hardly likely, is -it?" - -"I felt it impossible, you will be glad to hear," said Mrs. Delafield. -"No one who understands you could suspect you, whatever your faults, of -two infidelities in the space of a fortnight." - -And now again there was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of -the flames up the chimney and the soft movements of Jane Amoret among -her blocks. - -Rhoda turned away at last, facing the fire and looking down at it, her -hands on the edge of the mantelpiece, her foot on the fender; and she -presently lifted the foot and dealt the logs a kick. - -It was all clear to Mrs. Delafield. She was tired of her poet, or, at -all events, did not, in the new life, find compensations enough. She -had come, hoping to have her way made clear for a rentry, dignified, if -not triumphant, into the old life. And here she was, in her corner, her -head fairly fixed to the wall. - -Meanwhile, what had become of the mid-Victorian conscience? What had, -indeed, become of any conscience at all, since she continued to regret -nothing? She even found excuses, perfidious, no doubt, yet satisfactory. -It had been the truth she had given Rhoda--the real truth, her own, if -not the truth she owed her, not the truth as Tim and Niel had placed it, -all confidently, in her hands. But since it was preminently not the -truth that Rhoda had come to seize, she was willing, now that she had -fixed her so firmly, to give her something else, and she really rejoiced -to find it ready, going on presently and with a note of relief that -Rhoda's ear could not fail to catch:-- - -"Not only from the point of view of dignity one couldn't suspect it of -you, Rhoda, but--I want to say it to you, having had my glimpse of Mr. -Darley--from the point of view of taste. If you were going to do -anything of this sort,--and I don't need to tell you how deeply I -deplore it nor how wrong I think you,--but if you were going to do it, -you couldn't have chosen better. He is gifted; he is charming; he is -good. I saw it all at once." - -There was her further truth, and really it was due to Rhoda. Rhoda, at -this, faced her again and, highly civilized creature that she was, it -was with her genuine grim mirth. - -"Upon my word, Aunt Isabel!" she commented. "You are astonishing." - -"Am I? Why?" asked Mrs. Delafield, though she knew quite well. - -"Why, my dear? Because you are over sixty years old and you wear caps. I -expected to find dismay, reproach, and lamentations--all the strains of -poor old father's harmonium; to have you down on your knees begging me -to return to the paths of virtue. And here you are, cool and unperturbed -and, positively, patting us on the back; positively giving us your -blessing. Well, well, wonders will never cease! Yes, he is charming, no -one can deny that; and good and gifted, too. But to think of your having -spotted it so quickly! Why, you only saw him once, if I remember, and I -don't remember that you talked at all." - -"We didn't. I only saw him once." - -"And it was enough! To make you understand! To make you condone!--Come, -out with it, Aunt Isabel, you wicked old lady! I see now why I've always -got on so well with you. You _are_ wicked." - -"To make me understand. I won't say condone." - -"You needn't say it. You've said enough. And certainly it is a feather -in Christopher's cap. But he is the sort of person one falls in love -with at first sight." - -"So I see." - -"And so do I," said Rhoda, still laughing. But her slightly avenging -gaiety dropped from her after the last sally, and turning again to the -fire, and again kicking her log, she said, almost sombrely, "He -absolutely worships me." - -Was not this everybody's justification? Mrs. Delafield seized it, -rising, as on a satisfying close. - -"Will you stay to lunch?" she asked. - -"Dear me, no!" Rhoda laughed. "I must get back to Christopher. And the -motor is there waiting. So you'll write to father and tell him that I -came here and that you advised me to stick to Christopher." - -"Advised? Have I seemed to advise, Rhoda? Do you mean"--it was, Mrs. -Delafield knew, the final peril--"that you had considered not sticking -to him?" - -Rhoda continued to laugh a little, drawing up her furs. - -"Rather not! It couldn't have entered my head, could it, either from the -point of view of dignity or of taste--as you've been telling me? You -have been very wonderful, you know! Tell father, then, if you like, that -you gave us your blessing." - -"I'll tell him," said Mrs. Delafield, "that I'm convinced you ought not -to go back to Niel." - -"I see,"--Rhoda nodded, and their eyes sounded each other, -curiously,--"though father thinks I ought." - -"Of course. That's why you're here." - -"Father would have gone down on his knees to beg me." - -"Yes. Down on his knees. Poor Tim!" - -She was horribly frightened, but she faced Rhoda's grim mirth deliberate -with gravity. And Rhoda, whatever she might have seen or guessed, -accepted her defeat; accepted the dignity and taste thrust upon her. - -"Father, in other words, isn't a wicked old gentleman as you are a -wicked old lady. I see it all, and it's all a feather in Christopher's -cap. Well, Aunt Isabel, good-bye. Shall I see you again? Will you come -and call when I'm Mrs. Darley? I don't see how, with a clear conscience, -you can chuck us, you know." - -"Nor do I," Mrs. Delafield conceded, after only a pause. "I don't often -go to London, but, when I do, I shall look in upon you, if you want me -to." - -"Rather!" Rhoda, now gloved and muffled, had fallen back on her normal -rich economy of speech. "You'll be useful as well as pleasant. And -Christopher will adore you, I'm sure. I'll tell him that you think him -charming." - -"Do," said Mrs. Delafield, following her to the door. - -She had forgotten even to kiss Jane Amoret good-bye. - - -V - -Still Mrs. Delafield knew no remorse. Rather, a wine-like elation filled -her. She thought of her state of consciousness in terms of wine, and -ordered up from her modest cellar a special old port, hardly tasted -since her husband's death, and, all alone, drank at lunch a little glass -in honour of Jane Amoret's advent. Also, though elated, she was -conscious of needing a stimulant. The scene with Rhoda had cost her more -than could, at the moment, be quite computed. - -What it had won for her she was able to compute when, after lunch, she -went upstairs to look at Jane Amoret asleep in her white cot. She did -not feel like a robber brooding in guilty joy over ill-gotten booty. She -could not feel herself that, nor Jane Amoret booty. Jane Amoret was -treasure, pure heaven-sent treasure, her flower of miracle. Christmas -roses had been in her mind since morning, and the darkness, the -whiteness of the child, as well as her beautiful unexpectedness, made -her think of them anew; her gravity, too; something of melancholy that -the flowers embodied; for they were not smiling flowers--gazing rather -at the wintry sky in earnest meditation. - -Jane Amoret's black lashes lay upon her cheek, ever so slightly turned -up at the tips, and her great-aunt, leaning over her, felt herself -doting upon them and upon the little softly breathing profile embedded -in the pillow, a bud-like, folded hand beside it. - -"Little darling, we will make each other happy," she whispered. - -Rhoda had passed from their lives like a storm-cloud. - -Jane Amoret was still sleeping, and she had gone downstairs to the -little morning-room where, since the war, she had really lived, to -settle with herself what she must say to Tim, when there came a ringing -at the front-door bell. The morning-room, at the back of the house, like -the nursery, overlooked the southern lawn and the walls of the -kitchen-garden; but she could usually hear if a motor drove up, and, in -her still concentration upon the empty sheet lying before her on the -desk, she was aware that there had been no sound. It was too early for a -visitor, too early for the post, and she looked up with some curiosity -as Parton came in. - -"It's a gentleman, ma'am, to see you," said Parton; and her young, -trained visage showed signs of a discomfiture deeper than that Rhoda's -coming had evoked. "Mr. Darley, ma'am; and he hopes very much you are -disengaged." - -Mrs. Delafield had, as a first sensation, that of sympathy with Parton. -Parton evidently knew all about it and was evidently in distress lest -her face betrayed her knowledge. In her effort to maintain her own -standards of impassivity she suddenly blushed crimson, and Mrs. -Delafield then felt that she was very old and Parton very young, and -that in that fact alone was a bond, even if there had been no other. She -had many bonds with Parton, and now, seeing her so soft, uncertain, and -dismayed, she would have liked to pat her on the shoulder and say, -"There, my dear, it doesn't make any difference. I assure you I'm not -disturbed." And since she could not say it, she looked it, replying with -the utmost equability, "Mr. Darley? By all means. Show him in at once, -Parton." - -There was, after Parton had gone, a short interval, while Mr. Darley -doubtless was taking off his coat, and during which she felt herself -mainly engaged in maintaining her equability. But, after her encounter -with Rhoda, wasn't she equable enough for any situation? Besides, Mr. -Darley could in no fashion menace Jane Amoret, and under all her -conjectures and amazements there lay a certain satisfaction. She knew, -from her encounter with Parton, that she was interested in all young -creatures when they were nice, and she was not sorry to have another -look at Mr. Darley. - -When he entered and she saw him,--not in khaki as that first time, but -in a gray tweed suit,--when Parton had softly and securely closed the -door and left them together, she found herself borne along on a curious -deepening of the current of sympathy for mere youth. She had not -remembered how young he was; she had not had that as her dominant -impression at Rhoda's tea, as she had it now. He must be several years -younger than Rhoda; hardly more than twenty-two or three, she thought; -and it must have been as a mere child that the war had swept him out -into maturing initiations. Something of an experience, shattering yet -solidifying, was in his face, fragile, wasted, yet more final and -finished than one would have expected at his time of life; and also, in -curious contrast to his boyish, beardless look, a deep line was engraved -across his forehead; whether by suffering or by the trick she soon -discovered in him of raising his eyebrows in an effort of intense -concentration, she could not tell. - -She gave him her hand simply, and said, "Do sit down." - -But Mr. Darley, though he looked at the chair she indicated, did not -take it. He remained standing on the hearthrug, facing the windows, his -hands clasped behind him, and she then became aware that he was enduring -a veritable agony of shyness. It did not take the form of -blushes,--though his was a girlish skin that would display them -instantly,--or of awkward gestures or faltering speech. It was a shyness -wild, still, and bereft of all appeal, like that of a bird,--the simile -came sharply to her,--a bird that had followed some swift impulse and -that now, caught in a sudden hand, relapsed into utter immobility. His -large eyes were on hers--fixed. His expression was like a throbbing -heart. She knew that all she wanted, for the moment, was to show him -that the hand was gentle. - -"I'm afraid you came hoping to find Rhoda," she said, looking away from -him and giving her chair, as a pretext, sundry little adjustments before -drawing it to the fire. "But she left this morning, after seeing me, and -you must have crossed her on the road. At least--have you motored?" - -The large eyes, she found, were still fixed on her as, with the -question, she glanced up at him; but he answered immediately--rather as -if with a croaking cry from the blackbird when one pressed it,-- - -"No; I came by train. I left a little after Rhoda did." - -"By train?" she marvelled kindly. "But we are four miles from the -station here. Aren't you, at your end, as far? And such roads!" She saw -now that his boots and upturned trousers were, indeed, deeply mired. - -"Oh--I didn't mind the walk," said Mr. Darley. "It wasn't far." - -She was sure he hadn't found it far. His whole demeanour expressed the -overmastering impulse that had, till then, sustained him. - -"Have you had any lunch?" she went on. "I can't think where you can have -lunched. There's nothing at the station. Do let me send for something. -I've only just finished." - -It seemed strangely indicated that she should, to-day, feed Rhoda and -her lover. - -But the caught blackbird was in no state for feeding. More wildly, yet -more faintly than before he gave forth the croaking cry with, "Oh, no. -Thanks so much. Yes. At our station. I found something at our station. -Sandwiches; no, a bun. I had a cup of Bovril." - -And now, curiously, poignantly to her, he began to blush as though -suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of himself and of how idiotically he -must be behaving. Poor child! How young he was! And how ill he had been -in the trenches; and how beautiful it was to remember--as she did -suddenly, and not irrelevantly, she knew, though she could not trace the -relevance--that, in the little volume, written since his return, there -had not been a shadow of the ugly rancour, revengeful and provocative, -one met in some other soldier-poets whom one might have fancied to be of -his kind. For how he must have hated it! And, at the same time,--memory -brought back a line, a stanza here and there, from her snatched -reading--how holy he had found it; seeing so much more than error, -death, and suffering. - -Her eyes dwelt on him with something beyond the kindly wish to spare him -as she said, "Please sit down. You must be very tired and you are not -strong, Rhoda told me. Don't be afraid of me. I am an old lady who can -listen to anything and, I think, understand a great deal. I've already -heard a great deal from Rhoda. I'm anything but unfriendly to you, I -assure you." - -It was--she was aware of it when it had crossed her lips--a curious -thing to say to her niece's lover, to the man who had destroyed Tim's -happiness and wrecked Niel's home; but it was too true not to be said. -And she was perfectly sure now that it was not Mr. Darley who had -wrecked and destroyed. It was Rhoda who had taken him, of course; not he -Rhoda. He would never take anybody. He would stand and gaze at them as -he now gazed at her, and only when they threw out appealing arms would -he move towards them. Rhoda had thrown out appealing arms--after she -discovered that alluring arms had no effect. Mrs. Delafield's -impressions and intuitions tumbled forth in positive clusters as she -took in her companion. Allurements, Russian-ballet back-grounds, snowy -throats and velvet eyes, would have no effect upon him at all; he cared -as little about them at one end of the scale of sensations as about rats -and corpses at the other. He would not even see them. It was something -else he had seen in Rhoda; something she had found herself driven to -display. And if she were getting tired of him already, it was simply -because, having trapped him with the artifice, she now found herself -shut up with him in a cage, which, while it was of her own making, was -extremely uncongenial to her. - -Mr. Darley was far too absorbed in what she had just said to him to -think of taking the chair. It had helped him incalculably--that was -quite apparent; for though the blush stayed, and though he was still -wild and shy, they had already, indubitably, begun to understand each -other. - -"Do you mean," he asked, "not unfriendly to me or not unfriendly to -Rhoda?" - -This was an unexpected question, and for a moment, not knowing what it -portended, she hardly knew how to meet it. But the understanding that -seemed to deepen with every moment made truth the most essential thing, -and she replied after only a hesitation, "To you." - -Mr. Darley looked all his astonishment. "But why? Do you feel that you -like me, too? Because, of course, I've never forgotten you. That's why I -felt it possible to come to-day." - -And since truth was essential, it was she, now, who looked, with her -surprise, something that she felt to be a recognition, as she replied, -"I suppose it must be that. I suppose we liked each other at first -sight. I certainly didn't know the feeling was reciprocal." - -"Nor did I!" Mr. Darley exclaimed. He took the chair at the other end of -the hearthrug, facing her, his knees crossed, his arms clutched tightly -across his chest; and now he was able to reach his journey's goal. As -all, on Rhoda's side, had been made clear to her that morning, so on -his, all was clear, as he said, with a solemnity so young, so genuine -that it almost brought tears to her eyes, "Then since you do like me, -please don't let her leave me!" - -The situation was before her, definite and overpowering; but how it -could have come about remained veiled like the misty approaches to a -mountain. - -"Does Rhoda want to leave you?" she questioned. - -"Why--didn't you know?" Mr. Darley's face flashed with a sort of stupor. -"Didn't she come for that?" - -"You answer my questions first," Mrs. Delafield said after a moment. - -He was obedient and full of trust. "It's because of the child, you know, -that lovely little creature in London. From the first--you can't think -how long ago it already seems, though we have hardly been a week -together--I've seen it growing, that feeling in her that she couldn't -bear it. Other things, too; but that more than all. At least," he was -truthful to the last point of scruple, "I think so. And though she did -not tell me that she was saying good-bye this morning, I knew--I -knew--that she was coming to you because she wanted her child, and would -accept anything, endure anything, to be with it again." - -"What do you think Rhoda had to endure?" Mrs. Delafield inquired. - -"Oh--you can't ask me that! I saw you in it and you saw me!" Mr. Darley -exclaimed. "You _will_ be straight with me? You saw that soulless life -of hers, with that selfish figurehead of a husband for all guide. She -was suffocating in it. She didn't need to tell me. I saw it in her face -before she told me. How can a woman live with a man she doesn't love? -When you said not unfriendly to me, did you mean to make a difference? -Did you mean that you don't care for Rhoda? Yet she's always loved and -trusted you, she told me, more than any one. You were the one reality -she clung to. That's why _she_ could come to you to-day." - -"What I mean is that I'm on your side, not on Rhoda's," said Mrs. -Delafield, and at the moment her charming old white face expressed, -perhaps as never before in her life, the quality of decisiveness. "I am -on your side. But I have to see what that is." - -He was feeling her face even more than her words. He was gazing at her -with a rapt scrutiny which, she reflected, exonerating Rhoda to that -extent, would make it difficult for a woman receiving such a tribute not -to wish to retain it permanently. It enriched and sustained one -and--although it was strange that she should feel this--troubled and -moved one, too. A sense of pain stirred in her, and of wonder about -herself and her fitness to receive such gazes. One really couldn't, at -sixty-three, have growing pains; yet Mr. Darley's gaze filled her with -that troubled consciousness of expanding life. He wanted Rhoda. She -wanted Jane Amoret. So, wasn't it all right? Wasn't she all right? His -side was her side. They wanted the same thing. But the troubled sap of -the new consciousness was rising in her. - -"My side is really Rhoda's side," said Mr. Darley, as if answering her -thought. He held his knee in gripped hands and spoke with rapid -security. He was still shy, but he now knew exactly what he wished to -say, and how to say it. "It's Rhoda's side, if only she'd see it. That's -why I was not disloyal in asking my question when you said you weren't -unfriendly. Really--really--you _will_ believe me--it's for her, too. I -wouldn't have let her come with me if it hadn't been. I'm not so selfish -as I seem. I know it's dreadful about the child. But--this is my secret; -Rhoda does not guess it and I could never tell her--she doesn't love the -child as she thinks she does. Not really. In spite of her longing. She -longs to love it, of course; but she isn't a mother; not to that child. -That's another reason. It was all false. The whole thing. The whole of -her life. The real truth is," said Christopher Darley, gazing large-eyed -at her, "that Rhoda is frightened and wants to go back. She's not as -brave as she thought she was. Not quite as brave as I thought. But if -she yields to her fear and leaves me,--she hasn't yet, I know, I see -that in your face--but if she goes back to her old life, it will mean -dust, humiliation, imprisonment forever." - -"That's what I told her," Mrs. Delafield said, her eyes on his. - -"I knew! I knew!" cried the young man. "I knew you'd done something -beautiful for me--for us. Because you see the truth. And you were able -to succeed where I failed! You were able to convince her! You've saved -us both! Oh, how I thank you!" - -"It wasn't quite like that," said Mrs. Delafield. "It wasn't to save -either of you. I don't think it right for a woman to leave her husband -with another man because she has ceased to love her husband. But I made -her go back. I wouldn't even let her tell me that she wanted to leave -you. I didn't convince her. I merely made it impossible for her. She -left me reluctant and bewildered. You haven't found out yet,"--Mrs. -Delafield leaned forward and picked up the little poker; the fire needed -no poking and the movement expressed only her inner restlessness,--"you -haven't found out that Rhoda, at all events, _is_ very selfish?" - -Christopher Darley at that stopped short. "Oh, yes, I have," he answered -then; but the frightened croak was in his voice as he said it. - -"And have you found out, too," said Mrs. Delafield, eyeing her poker, -sparing him, giving him time, "that she's unscrupulous and cold-hearted? -Do you see the sort of life she'll make for you, if she is faithful to -you and stays with you, not because she's faithful, not because she -wants to stay, but gagged and baulked by me? Haven't you -already--yourself, been a little frightened sometimes?" she finished. - -She kept her eyes on her poker and gave Mr. Darley his time, and indeed -he needed it. - -"If you've been so wonderful," he said at last, with the slow care of -one who threads his way among swords; "if, though you think we're -lawbreakers, you think, too, that we've made ourselves another law and -are bound to stand by it; if you've sent her back to me--why do you ask -me that? But no," he went on, "I'm not frightened. You see--I love her." - -"She doesn't love you," said Mrs. Delafield. - -"She will! She will!"--It made Mrs. Delafield think of the shaking -heart-throbs of the blackbird.--"All that you see,--yes, yes, I won't -pretend to you, because I trust you as I've never before trusted any -human being, because you are truer than any one I've ever met,--it's all -true. She is all that. But don't you see further? Don't you see it's the -life? She's never known anything else. She's never had a chance." - -"She's known me. She's had me." - -Mrs. Delafield's eyes did not leave the poker. But under the quiet -statement the struggle in her reached its bitter close. She had lost -Jane Amoret. She must give her up. Not for her sake; nor for -Rhoda's,--oh, in no sense for Rhoda's,--but for his. She could not let -him pay the price. She must save him from Rhoda. - -"What do you mean?" he asked; and it was as if crumbling before her -secure strength, almost with tears. - -"I mean that you'll never make anything different of her. I never have, -and I've known her since she was born. You won't make her, and she'll -unmake you. She is disintegrating. She has always been like that. -Nothing has spoiled her. From the first she's been selfish and untender. -I don't mean to say that she hasn't good points. She has a sense of -humour; and she's honest with herself: she knows what she wants and why -she wants it--although she may take care that you don't. She isn't petty -or spiteful or revengeful. No,"--Mrs. Delafield moved her poker slowly -up and down as she carved it out for him, and it seemed to be into her -own heart she was cutting,--"there is a largeness and a dignity about -Rhoda. But she feels no beauty and no tragedy in life, only irony and -opportunity. You'll no more change her than you'll change a flower, a -fish, or a stone." - -Holding his knee in the strained grasp, Christopher Darley kept his eyes -on her, breathing quickly. - -"Why did she come with me, then?" he asked, after the silence between -them had grown long. (Strange, she thought, so near they were, that he -could not know her heart was breaking, too. All the time it was Jane -Amoret's sleeping eyelashes she saw.) "Why did she love me? I am not -irony or opportunity." - -"Do you think she ever loved you?" said Mrs. Delafield. "Was it not only -that she wanted you to love her? Wasn't it because you were different, -and difficult, and new? I think so. I think you found her at a bored, -antagonistic moment; money-quarrels with her husband,--he is a good -young fellow, Niel, and he used to worship her,--the war over and life -to take up again on terms already stale. She is calculating; but she is -adventurous and reckless, too. So she went. And of course she was in -love with you then. That goes without saying, and you'll know what I -mean by it. But Rhoda gets through things quickly. She has no soil in -her in which roots can grow; perhaps that's what I mean by saying she -can't change. One can't, if one can't grow roots. But now you are no -longer new or difficult. You are easy and old--already old; and she's -tired of you. You bore her. You constrain and baffle her--if she's to -keep up appearances with you at all; and she'd like to do that, because -she admires you exceedingly. So she wants to go back to Niel. I know," -said Mrs. Delafield, slightly shaking her poker, "that if I'd given her -a loophole this morning, she'd be on her way to London now." - -"And why didn't you?" asked Christopher Darley. - -Ah, why? Again she brooded over the softly breathing little profile, -again met the upward gaze of Jane Amoret's grey eyes. Well might he ask -why. But there was the one truth she could not give him. There was -another that she could, and she had it ready. "I hadn't seen you," she -said. - -"You thought it right for her to come back to me, until you saw me?" - -"I thought it beneath her dignity--as I said to her--to be unfaithful to -two men within a fortnight." - -"But why should you care for her dignity?" Mr. Darley strangely pressed. -"Why shouldn't you care more for your brother's dignity, and her -husband's, and her child's--all the things she said you'd care for?" - -He had brought her eyes to his now, and, for the first time since they -met, it was he who had the advantage. Frowning, yet clear, he bent his -great young eyes upon her and she knew, dismayingly, that her thoughts -were scattered. - -"I have always cared for Rhoda." She seized the first one. - -"Is it a future for Rhoda to disintegrate the life of the man who loves -her and to get no good of him? Isn't it better for a woman like Rhoda to -go back to the apparent dignity, since she has no feeling for the real? -Isn't that what you would have felt, if you'd been feeling for Rhoda? It -wasn't because you felt for her," said Christopher Darley. "You had some -other reason. You are keeping another reason from me. You know," he -urged upon her with a strange, still austerity, "you know you can't do -that. You know we must say the truth to each other. You know that we -simply belong to each other, you and I." - -"My dear Mr. Darley--my dear young man!" - -She was, indeed, bereft of all resource. She laid down her poker and, as -she did so, felt herself disarming before him. His eyes, following her -retreat, challenged her, almost with fierceness. - -"I know--I know that you are giving up something because of me," he -said. "You want her to go back to her husband now, so that I may be -free. It wasn't of me you thought this morning; nor of your brother, nor -of Rhoda. Everything changed for you after you saw me. What is it? What -is it that made you send Rhoda back to me and that makes you now want to -free me? You are beautiful--but you are terrible. You do beautiful and -terrible things. And you must let me share. You must let me decide, too, -if you do them for me!" - -He had started up, but not to come nearer in his appeal and his demand. -Cut to the heart as he was,--for she knew how she had pierced,--it was -rather the probing of some more intolerable pain that moved him. And -looking down at her with eyes intolerant of her mercy, he embodied to -her her sense of a new life and a new conscience. Absurd though his -words might seem, they were true. Though never, perhaps, again to meet, -she and Christopher Darley recognized in each other some final affinity -and owed each other final truth. - -She no longer felt old and wise, but young and helpless before the -compulsion of the kindred soul. She owed him the truth, and in giving it -she must risk his freedom and his happiness. Looking up at him, that -sense of compulsion upon her, she said, "It was because of Jane Amoret. -It was because I loved her and wanted to keep her." - -Christopher Darley grew paler than before. "She is here?" - -"Yes. She came this morning. She is upstairs, sleeping." - -"Rhoda saw her?" - -"Yes." - -"And left her? To you?" - -"Yes. Left her to me." - -He raised his head with a backward jerk and stared out of the window -before him. She kept her eyes on his face, measuring its strength -against hers. He was not measuring. He seemed to be seeing the beautiful -and terrible things of which, he had told her, she was capable. She -felt, when his eyes came back to her, that he had judged her. - -"You see you can't," he said gently. - -"Can't what? Can't keep her, you mean, of course." - -"Anything but that. You can't abandon her--even for my sake." - -So that had been the judgment. He saw only beauty. - -"I shan't abandon her. I shall always be able to see as much of her as I -did of Rhoda, and more. And she is different from Rhoda. I shan't have -the special joy of her, but I shall have the good." - -"Moreover," he went on, with perfect gentleness, putting her words -aside, "I can't abandon Rhoda. All that you have said is true. But it -doesn't go far enough. You yourself, you know, see life too much in -terms of irony, of fact rather than faith. You've owned that Rhoda is -adventurous and honest; you've owned that she doesn't lie to herself. -Then she has growth in her. No human being can be like a flower or a -fish or a stone. It was mere literature, your saying that. Every human -being has futures and futures within it. You know it really. Why you -yourself, though you are so old and fixed, are different now from what -you were an hour ago. I am different, of course. And Rhoda will be -different, too. She won't disintegrate me. She'll make me very -miserable, doubtless; she has already. And I shall make her angry. But I -shall hold her, and she'll change. You shall see. I promise you. And you -will keep Jane Amoret, and she will be eternally different because of -you." - -Mrs. Delafield, while he spoke, had risen. She stood before him, -grasping her gold chain on either side, her eyes very nearly level with -his, and she summoned all her will, her strength, her wisdom to meet -him. Yes, they had come to that, she and this boy. - -"I accept all your faith," she said. "Only you must help me to make my -world, and not yours, with it. Don't be afraid for Jane Amoret. I shall -be firmly in her life. Rhoda shan't keep me out. She won't want to keep -me out. Rhoda has far more chance of changing, of learning something -from this experience, as a disconcerted and forgiven wife than as a -sullen adventuress; and you--you will not be miserable; not with Rhoda, -at all events; and you will be free. I am going to send a wire to Rhoda, -at once, and tell her that I have reconsidered my advice to her. That, -in itself, will show her how I managed her this morning. I shall tell -her that she must go to London to-night, to her father. And to-morrow -I'll take Jane Amoret up and bring Rhoda and Niel together." - -He took it all in, wide-eyed, he too now measuring the threat. - -"You can't," he said; "I won't let you!" - -"You'll have to let me. I have the fact on my side as well as the faith. -She wants to leave you. She wants only the excuse of being asked. You -can't stop my giving her the excuse." Yes, after all, her fact against -his faith, she must have her way. What could his love for Rhoda and his -feeling for herself do against the ironic fact that Rhoda, simply, was -tired of him? "You must see that you can't force her to stay," she said. -"You couldn't even prevent her coming to me this morning." - -She looked at him with all the force of her advantage and saw that -before the cruel fact, and her determination, he knew his helplessness. -It was, again, the bird arrested in its impulse; and a veil seemed to -fall across his face, a shyness, almost a wildness to shut them out from -each other. He dropped his eyes before her. - -"Dear Mr. Darley, my dear young friend, see that it's best. See that -it's best all round. See it with me," she begged. "I was wrong this -morning; wrong from the very first. Let it come to that only. Count -yourself out. It was of myself, of my own delight in the child that I -was thinking. No, not even thinking; I tried to think it was for her; -but it was my own feeling that decided. If you had never come, it would -still have been right to give her up--though I should never have seen it -unless you'd come. It was almost a crime that I committed. They had -asked me to implore her to go back; they trusted me. And I prevented the -message coming to her. I did not believe the things I said to her--not -as she thought I believed them. I did not care a rap about her dignity; -you saw the falsity at once. I cared only about keeping Jane Amoret." - -He stood there before her, remote, unmoved, with downcast, unanswering -eyes. - -"Are you angry? Don't you see it, too?" she pleaded. - -"No." He shook his head. "You had a right to keep the child." - -"Against all those other reasons? Against my own conscience?" - -"Yes. Because you were strong enough. You were right, because you were -strong enough. I believe in law, too, you see--unless one is strong -enough to break it for something better. You were. It was a beautiful -thing to do." - -"But then, if you think me so strong, why not trust me now? This, now, -is the thing I want to do." - -"Because of me. It isn't against the law you are acting now; it's -against your own life. I am not angry. But it crushes me." - -They stood there then, she deeply meditating, he fixed in his unyielding -grief, for how long she could not have said. Parton's step outside broke -in upon their mute opposition. - - -VI - -She and Mr. Darley, Mrs. Delafield was aware, presented precisely the -abstracted, alienated air that Parton would expect. The young man moved -away to the window while she took from the salver the note Parton -presented. Then, her hand arrested in the very act by a recognition, - -"Is there an answer?" she asked. - -"No answer, ma'am." - -"Who brought it?" - -"A man from the station, ma'am." - -"Very well, Parton." - -Parton was gone. Mr. Darley kept his back turned. She held the note in -her hand and stared at it. The writing was Rhoda's; the envelope one of -the station-master's. She had been at the station, then, when she wrote, -four miles away. The London train, for which she had been waiting, had -gone long since; it had gone before the arrival of Mr. Darley's. - -An almost overpowering presage rose in her mind; she could hardly, for a -moment, summon the decision with which to open the envelope. Then, -reading as she stood, she felt the blood flow up to her face. - -For it was almost too much, although it was, through Rhoda's act, she -who had won finally. Even she, then, had not yet correctly measured -Rhoda's irony or Rhoda's sardonic assurance. Rhoda, after all, did not -care to keep up appearances with her, and, after all, why should she? -Here was fact, and it had been fact all through. She wanted most to go -back. She wanted it more than to be dignified in her aunt's eyes, or, -really, in anybody else's. Once back Rhoda would take care of her -dignity. In a flash Mrs. Delafield saw how little, when all was said and -done, Rhoda would pay. - - DEAR AUNT ISABEL [she wrote, in her ample, tranquil hand]: I've - been thinking over all you said and have come to the conclusion - that you are considering me too much. I feel that I must consider - my child. I have made a grave mistake and am not too proud to own - it. Christopher and I are not at all fitted to make each other - happy. So I have wired to father that I arrive this afternoon, and - to Niel that I will see him to-morrow. I have written too, of - course, to my poor Christopher. But he will understand me. Thank - you so much, dear Aunt Isabel, for your kindness and helpfulness. - -Your affectionate RHODA - - P.S. Will you send nurse up with Jane Amoret within the week? Not - at once, please; that would look rather foolish. - -With the accumulated weight of absurdity, relief, dismay, she had sunk -down into her chair, still gazing at the letter, and it was dismay that -grew. As if with a violent jolt back to earth, Rhoda seemed to show her -that life was not docile to nobilities. She hated to think that he must -feel with her that shattering fall. There was nothing for them to do now -for each other; no contest and no sacrifice. Rhoda had settled -everything. - -She spoke to him at last, and, as he came to her, not looking around at -him, she held out the note. He stood behind her to read it; and after -that he did not speak. - -She heard him move presently, vaguely, and then, vaguely, he drifted to -and fro. He walked here and there; he paused, no doubt to feel his bones -and to count how many had been broken, and then, with a start, he went -on again. - -"Please come where I can see you," she said at last. - -He came at once, obediently, standing as he had stood a little while ago -before the fire, his hands locked behind him, but now with face bent -down, fixed in its effort to see clearly what had happened to them. - -"You see, it was over. You see, you couldn't have made anything of it." -It was almost with tears that she besought him not to suffer too much. -"You have nothing to regret, except having believed in her. Tell me that -you are not too unhappy." - -"I don't know what I am," Christopher said. "But I know I've more to -regret than having believed in her. I've all the folly and mischief I've -made." He had thought it out and she could not deny what he had seen, -not even when he went on, "If it could have been in our way,--yours and -mine, or, at least, what was yours this morning, when you thought you -had kept her with me,--everything might have been atoned for. It might -have meant a certain kind of beauty, and a certain kind of happiness, -even, perhaps. But in this way, the way she's chosen, it only means just -that--folly, mischief,"--he turned to the fire and looked down into -it,--"sin," he finished. - -She could not deny it, even to give him comfort; but she could find -something else. "It was Rhoda who chose. You, whatever your mistakes, -chose very differently. I'm not trying to shift responsibility; to make -mistakes is to be foolish and mischievous. But can't even sin be atoned -for? Doesn't it all now depend on you? That you should make yourself -worth it. You are the only one of us who can do that." - -He turned to her and his eyes studied her with an unaccepting -gentleness. - -"You mean because I'm a poet? It isn't like you, really, to say that. -You don't believe in poets and their mission in that sense. It's too -facile." - -"Not only because you are a poet. I wasn't thinking so much of that, -although your gift helps. But simply because you are young and good." - -"I'm not good enough," said Christopher. "And I'm too young. You've -shown me that. I am afraid of myself. I see what one can do while -meaning the best." - -She watched him with grave tenderness, feeling again, in his -dispassionate capacity for accepted experience, his strange maturity. -And knowing all that might be difficult, yet knowing that it would be, -after all, to a decision like her own, the merest gossamers of -convention that she must brave, she said,--and as she looked up at him -his face seemed to blend with the face of her little, sleeping, lost -Jane Amoret,--"Don't you think I, perhaps, could be of help, while you -are so young?" - -He did not understand her at all. He, too, was absorbed in his inner -image of loss, yet he, too, was almost as aware of her as she of him, -and his eyes, with their austere gentleness, dwelt on her, as if -treasuring, of this last encounter, his completed vision of her. - -"Yes, you will be. I shall never forget you and what you've been to me. -I'll do my best," he promised her. "But I seem to have lost everything. -I could be strong for her; I don't know that I can be strong enough for -myself." - -"That's what I mean," said Mrs. Delafield. "It takes years to be strong -enough for one's self, and even when one's old one hasn't sometimes -learned how to be. I'm not sure, after this morning, that I've learned -yet. But I know that I could be strong for you. Will you let me try? -Will you let me take care of you a little and guard you from the Rhodas -until the right person comes?" - -"What do you mean?" he asked; and, answering the look in her face, tears -sprang to his eyes. - -"We belong to each other. Didn't you say it?" she smiled. "We are -friends. We ought not to lose each other now." - -"Oh! But--" He gazed at her. "How could you! After what I've done!" - -"You've done nothing that makes me like you less." - -"Oh--I can't! I can't!" said Christopher Darley. "How could I accept it -from you? Already you've been unbelievably beautiful to me. It's not as -if you were a Bohemian sort of creature, like me. Appearances must count -for you. And the appearance of being friends with your niece's discarded -lover--no--I can't see it for you. I can imagine you being above the -law, but I can't imagine you being above appearances. I don't think that -I should want you to be. I care about appearances, too, when they are -yours." - -It crossed her mind, with almost a mirthful sense of the sort of -appearances she would have to deal with, that Parton's face would be -worth watching. Poor Tim's hovered more grievously in the background. -But, after all, it would be a Tim with wounds well salved. - -"It's just because mine are so secure and recognized, don't you see, -that I can do what I like with them," she said. "It's not for me a -question of appearances, but of realities. After all, my dear young man, -what am I going to get out of it all? My roots have been torn up too, -you know." - -"Because of me! Because of me!" Christopher groaned. "Do you think you -need remind me of that? Shall I ever forgive myself for it? Get out of -it? You'll get nothing. You've been tormented between us all, and you -lose Jane Amoret." - -"Then don't let me lose you too," said Mrs. Delafield. - -Again, with the tears, his blush sprang to his face, and he stood there -incredulous, looking down at her, almost as helpless in the shyness the -unexpected gift brought upon him as he had been when he first came in to -her. - -"Really you mean it?" he murmured. "Really I can do something for you, -too? Because, unless I can, I couldn't accept it." - -"You can make me much less lonely, when she's gone," said Mrs. -Delafield. - -She knew that this was to give the gift in such a way as to ensure its -acceptance; but he murmured, stung again intolerably by the thought of -Jane Amoret, "Oh--I can't bear it for you!" - -"You can help me to bear it." - -Still he pressed upon her what he saw as her sacrifice. - -"You mean that I may see you when I like? I may always write and you'll -always answer? I can sometimes, even, come and stay, like any other -friend? Please realize that if you let me come down on you like that, I -may come hard. I'm frightfully lonely, too." - -"As hard as you like. I want you to come hard. Like any friend. Yes." - -She was smiling up at the young man, and, as she had promised herself -years for Jane Amoret, she promised herself now years--though not so -many would be needed--for Christopher Darley. It was in the thought of -what she could do for Christopher Darley that she saw Rhoda's -punishment. Not for having left him, but for having taken him; for not -having known what to do with him without taking him. And Rhoda would see -it with her, if no one else did. - -"Come, you must quite believe in me," she said. "Give me your hand, dear -Christopher, and tell me that you take this meddling, commanding old -woman to be your friend." - -He had no words as he took the hand she gave him, but from his look it -might have been as if he at last received into his keeping the great -gift, the precious casket of the future; and his eyes, like those of a -devout young knight, dedicated themselves to her service. - -It was again gift and miracle; and though in her mind was the thought of -all her mournings, and of the lost Jane Amoret, she felt, rooting itself -in the darkness and sorrow, yet another flower. - -"And now," she said, for they must not both begin to cry, "please ring -the bell for me. The time has not quite come for your first visit; but, -before you go, we will have our first tea together." - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -HEPATICAS - - -I - -OTHER people's sons were coming home for the three or four days' leave. -The first gigantic struggle--furious onslaught and grim resistance--was -over. Paris, pale, and slightly shuddering still, stood safe. Calais was -not taken, and, dug into their trenches, it was evident that the -opposing armies would lie face to face with no decisive encounter -possible until the spring. - -There was, with all their beauty and terror, an element of the facetious -in these unexpected holidays, of the matter-of-factness, the freedom -from strain or sentiment that was the English oddity and the English -strength. Men who had known the horrors of the retreat from Mons or the -carnage of Ypres, who had not taken off their clothes for ten days at a -stretch or slept for four nights, came home from trenches knee-deep in -mud, from battlefields heaped with unburied dead, and appeared -immaculate and cheerful at breakfast; a little sober and preoccupied, -perhaps; touched, perhaps, with strangeness; but ready for the valorous -family jest, and alluding to the war as if, while something too solemn -for adequate comment, it were yet something that lent itself to -laughter. One did such funny things, and saw them; of the other things -one did not speak; and there was the huge standing joke of an enemy who -actually hated one. These grave and cheerful young men hated nobody; but -they were very eager to go back again; and they were all ready, not only -to die but to die good-humouredly. From the demeanour of mothers and -wives and sisters it was evident that nothing would be said or done to -make this readiness difficult; but Mrs. Bradley, who showed serenity to -the world and did not even when alone allow herself to cry, suspected -that the others, beneath their smiles, carried hearts as heavy with -dread as her own. - -It had been heavy, with hope now as well as with dread, for the past -week. It was a week since she had last heard from Jack. Mrs. Crawley -over the hill, had had a wire, and her husband was now with her; and -Lady Wrexham expected her boy to-morrow. There was no certainty at all -as regarded herself; yet at any moment she might have her wire; and -feeling to-day the stress of waiting too great to be borne in passivity, -she left her books and letters and put on her gardening shoes and gloves -and went out to her borders. - -For weeks now the incessant rain had made the relief and solace of -gardening almost an impossibility; but to-day was mild and clear. There -was no radiance in the air; curtains of pearly mist shut out the sky; -yet here and there a soft opening in the white showed a pale, far blue, -gentle and remote as the gaze of a wandering goddess, and the hills -seemed to smile quietly up at the unseen sun. Mrs. Bradley, as she went -along the river-path, could look across at the hills; the river-path and -the hills were the great feature of Dorrington,--the placid, comely red -brick house to which she and Jack had come fifteen years ago, after the -death of her husband in India. Enclosed by woods, and almost catching -sight of the road,--from its upper windows and over its old brick -wall,--the house would have seemed to her too commonplace and almost -suburban, in spite of the indubitably old oak-panelling of the -drawing-room, had it not been for the river and the hills. Stepping out -on to the lawn from the windows of the drawing-room, she and Jack, on -that April day, had found themselves confronting both--the limpid, rapid -little stream, spanned near the house by its mossy bridge, and the -hills, beyond the meadows, streaked with purple woodlands and rising, -above the woods, to slopes russet, fawn, and azure. Jack, holding her by -the hand, had pointed at once with an eager "Isn't it pretty, -mummy!"--even at eight he had cared almost as much as she, and -extraordinarily in the same way, for the sights of the country; and if -the hills hadn't settled the question, it was settled, quite finally, -ten minutes later, by the white hepaticas. - -They had come upon them suddenly, after their tour of the walled kitchen -garden and their survey of the lawn with its ugly shrubberies,--now long -forgotten,--penetrating a thicket of hazels and finding themselves in an -opening under trees where neighbouring woods looked at them over an old -stone wall, and where, from an old stone bench, one could see the river. -The ground was soft with the fallen leaves of many an autumn; a narrow -path ran, half obliterated, down to the river; and among the faded -brown, everywhere, rose the thick clusters, the dark leaves, and the -snowy flowers,--poignant, amazing in their beauty. - -She and Jack had stopped short to gaze. She had never before seen such -white hepaticas, or so many, or so placed. And Jack, presently, lifting -his dear nut-brown head and nut-brown eyes, had said, gazing up at her -as he had gazed at the flowers, "They are just like you, mummy." - -She had felt at once that they were like her; more like than the little -boy's instinct could grasp. He had thought of the darkness and -whiteness; her widow's weeds and pale face had suggested that; but he -could not know the sorrow, the longing, the earthly sense of irreparable -loss, the heavenly sense of a possession unalterably hers, that the -dark, melancholy leaves and celestial whiteness of the flowers expressed -to her. Tears had risen to her eyes and she had stooped and kissed her -child,--how like her husband's that little face!--and had said, after a -moment, "We must never leave them, Jack." - -They had never left them. Dorrington had been their home for fifteen -years, and the hepaticas the heart of it. It had always seemed to them -both the loveliest ritual of the year, that early spring one when, in -the hazel copse, they would find the white hepaticas again in flower. -And of all the garden labours none were sweeter than those that -cherished and divided and protected the beloved flowers. - -Mrs. Bradley, to-day, worked in her long border, weeding, forking, -placing belated labels. She was dressed in black, her straw hat bound -beneath her chin by a ribbon and her soft gardening gloves rolling back -from her firm, white wrists. Her gestures expressed a calm energy, an -accurate grace. She was tall, and when she raised herself to look over -the meadows at the hills, she showed small, decisive features, all -marked, in the pallor of her face, as if with the delicate, neutral -emphasis of an etching: the grey, scrutinizing eyes, the charming yet -ugly nose, the tranquil mouth that had, at the corners, a little fall, -half sweet, half bitter, as if with tears repressed or a summoned smile. -Squared at brow and chin, it would, but for the mildness of the gaze, -have been an imperious face; and her head, its whitened hair drawn back -and looped in wide braids behind, had an air at once majestic and -unworldly. - -She had worked for over an hour and the last label was set beside a -precious clump of iris. The hazel copse lay near by; and gathering up -her tools, drawing off her wet gloves, she followed the path under the -leafless branches and among the hepatica leaves to the stone bench, -where, sinking down, she knew that she was very tired. She could see, -below the bank, the dark, quick stream; a pale, diffused light in the -sky showed where the sun was dropping toward the hills. - -Where was Jack at this moment, this quiet moment of a monotonous English -winter day?--so like the days of all the other years that it was -impossible to think of what was happening a few hours' journey away -across the Channel. Impossible to think of it; yet the thick throb of -her heart spoke to the full of its significance. She had told herself -from the beginning--passionate, rebellious creature as, at bottom, she -knew herself to be, always in need of discipline and only in these later -years schooled to a control and submission that, in her youth, she would -have believed impossible to her--she had told herself, when he had gone -from her, that, as a soldier's widow, she must see her soldier son go -to death. She must give him to that; be ready for it; and if he came -back to her it would be as if he were born again, a gift, a grace, -unexpected and unclaimed. She must feel, for herself as well as for her -country, that these days of dread were also days of a splendour and -beauty unmatched by any in England's history, and that a soldier's widow -must ask for no more glorious fate for her son than death in such a -cause. She had told herself all this many times; yet, as she sat there, -her hands folded on her lap, her eyes on the stream below, she felt that -she was now merely motherhood, tense, huddled, throbbing and longing, -longing for its child. - -Then, suddenly, she heard Jack's footsteps. They came, quick and light, -along the garden path; they entered the wood; they were near, but -softened by the fallen leaves. And, half rising, afraid of her own joy, -she hardly knew that she saw him before she was in his arms; and it was -better to meet thus, in the blindness and darkness of their embrace, her -cheek pressed against his hair, his head buried close between her neck -and shoulder. - -"Jack!--Jack!" she heard herself say. - -He said nothing, holding her tightly to him, with quick breaths; and -even after she had opened her eyes and could look down at him,--her own, -her dear, beautiful Jack,--could see the nut-brown head, the smooth -brown cheek, the firm brown hand which grasped her, he did not for a -long time raise his head and look at her. When, at last, he did look up, -she could not tell, through her tears, whether, like herself, he was -trying to smile. - -They sat down together on the bench. She did not ask him why he had not -wired. That question pressed too sharply on her heart; to ask might -seem to reproach. - -"Darling--you are so thin,--so much older,--but you look--strong and -well." - -"We're all of us extraordinarily fit, mummy. It's wholesome, living in -mud." - -"And wholesome living among bursting shells? I had your last letter -telling of that miraculous escape." - -"There have been a lot more since then. Every day seems a miracle--that -one's alive at the end of it." - -"But you get used to it?" - -"All except the noise. That always seems to daze me still. Some of our -fellows are deaf from it.--You heard of Toppie, mother?" Jack asked. - -Toppie was Alan Graham, Jack's nearest friend. He had been killed ten -days before. - -"I heard it, Jack. Were you with him?" - -"Yes. It was in a bayonet charge. He didn't suffer. A bullet went right -through him. He just gave a little cry and fell." Jack's voice had the -mildness of a sorrow that has passed beyond the capacity for emotion. -"We found him afterwards. He is buried out there." - -"You must tell Frances about it, Jack. I went to her at once." Frances -was Toppie's sister. "She is bearing it so bravely." - -"I must write to her. She would be sure to be plucky." - -He answered all her questions, sitting closely against her, his arm -around her; looking down, while he spoke, and twisting, as had always -been his boyish way, a button on her coat. He was at that enchanting -moment of young manhood when the child is still apparent in the man. -His glance was shy yet candid; his small, firm lips had a child's -gravity. With his splendid shoulders, long legs, and noble little head, -he was yet as endearing as he was impressive. His mother's heart ached -with love and pride and fear as she gazed at him. - -And a question came, near the sharp one, yet hoping to evade it:-- - -"Jack, dearest, how long will you be with me? How long is the leave?" - -He raised his eyes then and looked at her; a curious look. Something in -it blurred her mind with a sense of some other sort of fear. - -"Only till to-night," he said. - -It seemed confusion rather than pain that she felt. "Only till to-night, -Jack? But Richard Crawley has been back for three days already. I -thought they gave you longer?" - -"I know, mummy." His eyes were dropped again and his hand at the -button--did it tremble?--twisted and untwisted. "I've been back for -three days already.--I've been in London." - -"In London?" Her breath failed her. The sense of alien fear became a -fog, horrible, suffocating. "But--Jack--why?" - -"I didn't wire, mummy, because I knew I'd have to be there for most of -my time. I felt I couldn't wire and tell you. I felt I had to see you -when I told you. Mother--I'm married.--I came back to get married.--I -was married this morning.--Oh, mother, can you ever forgive me?" - -His shaking hands held her and his eyes could not meet hers. - -She felt the blood rush, as if her heart had been divided with a sword, -to her throat, to her eyes, choking her, burning her; and as if from -far away she heard her own voice saying, after a little time had passed, -"There's nothing I couldn't forgive you, Jack. Tell me. Don't be afraid -of hurting me." - -He held her tightly, still looking down as he said, "She is a dancer, -mother, a little dancer. It was in London, last summer. A lot of us came -up from Aldershot together. She was in the chorus of one of those -musical comedies. Mother, you can never understand. But it wasn't just -low and vulgar. She was so lovely,--so very young,--with the most -wonderful golden hair and the sweetest eyes.--I don't know.--I simply -went off my head when I saw her. We all had supper together afterwards. -Toppie knew one of the other girls, and Dollie was there. That's her -name--Dollie Vaughan--her stage name. Her real name was Watson. Her -people, I think, were little tradespeople, and she'd lost her father and -mother, and an aunt had been very unkind. She told me all about it that -night. Mother, please believe just this: it wasn't only the obvious -thing.--I know I can't explain. But you remember, when we read _War and -Peace_"--his broken voice groped for the analogy--"You remember Natacha, -when she falls in love with Anatole, and nothing that was real before -seems real, and she is ready for anything.--It was like that. It was all -fairyland, like that. No one thought it wrong. It didn't seem wrong. -Everything went together." - -She had gathered his hand closely in hers and she sat there, quiet, -looking at her hopes lying slain before her. Her Jack. The wife who was, -perhaps, to have been his. The children that she, perhaps, should have -seen. All dead. The future blotted out. Only this wraith-like present; -only this moment of decision; Jack and his desperate need the only real -things left. - -And after a moment, for his labouring breath had failed, she said, "Yes, -dear?" and smiled at him. - -He covered his face with his hands. "Mother, I've ruined your life." - -He had, of course, in ruining his own; yet even at that moment of -wreckage she was able to remember, if not to feel, that life could mend -from terrible wounds, could marvellously grow from compromises and -defeats. "No, dearest, no," she said. "While I have you, nothing is -ruined. We shall see what can be done. Go on. Tell me the rest." - -He put out his hand to hers again and sat now a little turned away from -her, speaking on in his deadened, bitter voice. - -"There wasn't any glamour after that first time. I only saw her once or -twice again. I was awfully sorry and ashamed over the whole thing. Her -company left London, on tour, and then the war came, and I simply forgot -all about her. And the other day, over there, I had a letter from her. -She was in terrible trouble. She was ill and had no money, and no work. -And she was going to have a child--my child; and she begged me to send -her a little money to help her through, or she didn't know what would -become of her." - -The fog, the horrible confusion, even the despair, had passed now. The -sense of ruin, of wreckage almost irreparable, was there; yet with it, -too, was the strangest sense of gladness. He was her own Jack, -completely hers, for she saw now why he had done it; she could be glad -that he had done it. "Go on, dear," she said. "I understand; I -understand perfectly." - -"O mother, bless you!" He put her hand to his lips, bowing his head upon -it for a moment. "I was afraid you couldn't. I was afraid you couldn't -forgive me. But I had to do it. I thought it all over--out there. -Everything had become so different after what one had been through. One -saw everything differently. Some things didn't matter at all, and other -things mattered tremendously. This was one of them. I knew I couldn't -just send her money. I knew I couldn't bear to have the poor child born -without a name and with only that foolish little mother to take care of -it. And when I found I could get this leave, I knew I must marry her. -That was why I didn't wire. I thought I might not have time to come to -you at all." - -"Where is she, Jack?" Her voice, her eyes, her smile at him, showed him -that, indeed, she understood perfectly. - -"In lodgings that I found for her; nice and quiet, with a kind landlady. -She was in such an awful place in Ealing. She is so changed, poor little -thing. I should hardly have known her. Mother, darling, I wonder, could -you just go and see her once or twice? She's frightfully lonely; and so -very young.--If you could.--If you would just help things along a little -till the baby comes, I should be so grateful. And, then, if I don't come -back, will you, for my sake, see that they are safe?" - -"But, Jack," she said, smiling at him, "she is coming here, of course. I -shall go and get her to-morrow." - -He stared at her and his colour rose. "Get her? Bring her here, to -stay?" - -"Of course, darling. And if you don't come back, I will take care of -them, always." - -"But, mother," said Jack, and there were tears in his eyes, "you don't -know, you don't realize. I mean--she's; a dear little thing--but you -couldn't be happy with her. She'd get most frightfully on your nerves. -She's just--just a silly little dancer who has got into trouble." - -Jack was clear-sighted. Every vestige of fairyland had vanished. And she -was deeply thankful that they should see alike, while she answered, -"It's not exactly a time for considering one's nerves, is it, Jack? I -hope I shan't get on hers. I must just try and make her as happy as I -can." - -She made it all seem natural and almost sweet. The tears were in his -eyes, yet he had to smile back at her when she said, "You know that I am -good at managing people. I'll manage her. And perhaps when you come -back, my darling, she won't be a silly little dancer." - -They sat now for a little while in silence. While they had talked, a -golden sunset, slowly, had illuminated the western sky. The river below -them was golden, and the wintry woodlands bathed in light. Jack held her -hands and gazed at her. Love could say no more than his eyes, in their -trust and sorrow, said to her; she could never more completely possess -her son. Sitting there with him, hand in hand, while the light slowly -ebbed and twilight fell about them, she felt it to be, in its accepted -sorrow, the culminating and transfiguring moment of her maternity. - -When they at last rose to go it was the hour for Jack's departure, and -it had become almost dark. Far away, through the trees, they could see -the lighted windows of the house that waited for them, but to which she -must return alone. With his arms around her shoulders, Jack paused a -moment, looking about him. "Do you remember that day--when we first came -here, mummy?" he asked. - -She felt in him suddenly a sadness deeper than any he had yet shown her. -The burden of the past she had lifted from him; but he must bear now the -burden of what he had done to her, to their life, to all the future. -And, protesting against his pain, her mother's heart strove still to -shelter him while she answered, as if she did not feel his sadness, -"Yes, dear, and do you remember the hepaticas on that day?" - -"Like you," said Jack in a gentle voice. "I can hardly see the plants. -Are they all right?" - -"They are doing beautifully." - -"I wish the flowers were out," said Jack. "I wish it were the time for -the flowers to be out, so that I could have seen you and them together, -like that first day." And then, putting his head down on her shoulder, -he murmured, "It will never be the same again. I've spoiled everything -for you." - -But he was not to go from her uncomforted. She found the firmest voice -in which to answer him, stroking his hair and pressing him to her with -the full reassurance of her resolution. "Nothing is spoiled, Jack, -nothing. You have never been so near me--so how can anything be spoiled? -And when you come back, darling, you'll find your son, perhaps; and the -hepaticas may be in flower, waiting for you." - - -II - -Mrs. Bradley and her daughter-in-law sat together in the drawing-room. -They sat opposite each other on the two chintz chesterfields placed at -right angles to the pleasantly blazing fire, the chintz curtains drawn -against a rainy evening. It was a long, low room, with panelled walls; -and, like Mrs. Bradley's head, it had an air at once majestic, -decorated, and old-fashioned. It was a rather crowded room, with many -deep chairs and large couches, many tables with lamps and books and -photographs upon them, many porcelains, prints, and pots of growing -flowers. Mrs. Bradley, her tea-table before her, was in her evening -black silk; lace ruffles rose about her throat; she wore her accustomed -necklace of old enamel, blue, black, and white, set with small diamonds, -and the enamel locket that had within it Jack's face on one side and his -father's on the other; her white hands, moving gently among the teacups, -showed an ancient cluster of diamonds above the slender wedding-ring. -From time to time she lifted her eyes and smiled quietly over at her -daughter-in-law. It was the first time that she had really seen Dollie, -that is, in any sense that meant contemplative observation. Dollie had -spent her first week at Dorrington in bed, sodden with fatigue rather -than ill. "What you need," Mrs. Bradley had said, "is to go to sleep for -a fortnight"; and Dollie had almost literally carried out the -prescription. - -Stealing carefully into the darkened room, with its flowers and open -windows and steadily glowing fire, Mrs. Bradley had stood and looked for -long moments at all that she could see of her daughter-in-law,--a -flushed, almost babyish face lying on the pillow between thick golden -braids, sleeping so deeply, so unconsciously,--her sleep making her -mother-in-law think of a little boat gliding slowly yet steadily on and -on, between new shores; so that, when she was to awake and look about -her, it would be as if, with no bewilderment or readjustment, she found -herself transformed, a denizen of an altered world. That was what Mrs. -Bradley wanted, that Dollie should become an inmate of Dorrington with -as little effort or consciousness for any of them as possible, and the -drowsy days and nights of infantine slumbers seemed indeed to have -brought her very near. - -She and Pickering, the admirable woman who filled so skilfully the -combined positions of lady's maid and parlourmaid in her little -establishment, had braided Dollie's thick tresses, one on either -side,--Mrs. Bradley laughing a little and both older women touched, -almost happy in their sense of something so young and helpless to take -care of. Pickering understood, nearly as well as Jack's mother, that -Master Jack, as he had remained to her, had married very much beneath -him; but at this time of tragic issues and primitive values, she, nearly -as much as Jack's mother, felt only the claim, the pathos of youth and -helplessness. It was as if they had a singularly appealing case of a -refugee to take care of; social and even moral appraisals were -inapplicable to such a case, and Mrs. Bradley felt that she had never so -admired Pickering as when seeing that for her, too, they were in -abeyance. It was a comfort to feel so fond of Pickering at a time when -one was in need of any comfort one could get; and to feel that, -creature of codes and discriminations as she was, to a degree that had -made her mistress sometimes think of her as a sort of Samurai of -service, a function rather than a person, she was even more -fundamentally a kind and Christian woman. Between them, cook -intelligently sustaining them from below and the housemaids helpful in -their degree, they fed and tended and nursed Dollie, and by that eighth -day she was more than ready to get up and go down and investigate her -new surroundings. - -She sat there now, in the pretty tea-gown her mother-in-law had bought -for her, leaning back against her cushions, one arm lying along the back -of the couch and one foot in its patent-leather shoe, with its sparkling -buckle and alarming heel, thrusting forward a carefully arched instep. -The attitude made one realize, however completely tenderer -preoccupations held the foreground of one's consciousness, how often and -successfully she must have sat to theatrical photographers. Her way of -smiling, too, very softly, yet with the effect of a calculated and -dazzling display of pearly teeth, was impersonal, and directed, as it -were, to the public _via_ the camera rather than to any individual -interlocutor. Mrs. Bradley even imagined, unversed as she was in the -methods of Dollie's world, that of allurement in its conscious and -determined sense she was almost innocent. She placed herself, she -adjusted her arm and her foot, and she smiled gently; intention hardly -went further than that wish to look her best. - -Pink and white and gold as she was, and draped there on the chesterfield -in a profusion of youth and a frivolity that was yet all passivity, she -made her mother-in-law think, and with a certain sinking of the heart, -of a Dorothy Perkins rose, a flower she had never cared for; and Dollie -carried on the analogy in the sense she gave that there were such -myriads more just like her. On almost every page of every illustrated -weekly paper, one saw the ingenuous, limpid eyes, the display of -eyelash, the lips, their outline emphasized by just that touch of rouge, -those copious waves of hair. Like the Dorothy Perkins roses on their -pergolas, so these pretty faces seemed--looped, draped, festooned--to -climb over all the available spaces of the modern press. - -But this, Mrs. Bradley told herself, was to see Dollie with a dry, hard -eye, was to see her superficially, from the social rather than from the -human point of view. Under the photographic creature must lie the young, -young girl,--so young, so harmless that it would be very possible to -mould her, with all discretion, all tenderness, into some suitability as -Jack's wife. Dollie, from the moment that she had found her, a sodden, -battered rose indeed, in the London lodging-house, had shown herself -grateful, even humble, and endlessly acquiescent. She had not shown -herself at all abashed or apologetic, and that had been a relief; had -counted for her, indeed, in her mother-in-law's eyes, as a sort of -innocence, a sort of dignity. But if Dollie were contented with her new -mother-in-law, and very grateful to her, she was also contented with -herself; Mrs. Bradley had been aware of this at once; and she knew now -that if she were being carefully and commendingly watched while she -poured out the tea, this concentration did not imply unqualified -approval. Dollie was the type of young woman to whom she herself stood -as the type of the "perfect lady"; but with the appreciation went the -proviso of the sharp little London mind,--versed in the whole ritual of -smartness as it displayed itself at theatre or restaurant,--that she was -a rather dowdy one. She was a lady, perfect but not smart, while, at the -same time, the quality of her defect was, she imagined, a little -bewildering and therefore a little impressive. Actually to awe Dollie -and to make her shy, it would be necessary to be smart; but it was far -more pleasant and perhaps as efficacious merely to impress her, and it -was as well that Dollie should be impressed; for anything in the nature -of an advantage that she could recognize would make it easier to direct, -protect, and mould her. - -She asked her a good many leisurely and unstressed questions on this -first evening, and drew Dollie to ask her others in return; and she saw -herself stooping thoughtfully over a flourishing young plant that yet -needed transplanting, softly moving the soil about its roots, softly -finding out if there were any very deep tap-root that would have to be -dealt with. But Dollie, so far as tastes and ideas went, hardly seemed -to have any roots at all; so few that it was a question if any change of -soil could affect a creature so shallow. She smiled, she was at ease; -she showed her complete assurance that a young lady so lavishly endowed -with all the most significant gifts, need not occupy herself with mental -adornments. - -"You're a great one for books, I see," she commented, looking about the -room; "I suppose you do a great deal of reading down here to keep from -feeling too dull"; and she added that she herself, if there was -"nothing doing," liked a good novel, especially if she had a box of -sweets to eat while she read it. - -"You shall have a box of sweets to-morrow," Mrs. Bradley told her, "with -or without the novel, as you like." - -And Dollie thanked her, watching her cut the cake, and, as the rain -lashed against the windows, remarking on the bad weather and cheerfully -hoping that "poor old Jack" wasn't in those horrid trenches. "I think -war's a wicked thing, don't you, Mrs. Bradley?" she added. - -When Dollie talked in this conventionally solicitous tone of Jack, her -mother-in-law could but wish her upstairs again, merely young, merely -the tired and battered refugee. She had not much tenderness for Jack, -that was evident, nor much imaginativeness in regard to the feelings of -Jack's mother. But she soon passed from the theme of Jack and his -danger. Her tea was finished and she got up and went to the piano, -remarking that there was one thing she _could_ do. "Poor mother used to -always say I was made of music. From the time I was a mere tot I could -pick out anything on the piano." And placing herself, pressing down the -patent-leather shoe on the loud pedal, she surged into a waltz as -foolish and as conventionally alluring as her own eyes. Her inaccuracy -was equalled only by her facility. Smiling, swaying over the keys with -alternate speed and languor, she addressed her audience with altogether -the easy mastery of a music-hall _artiste_: "It's a lovely thing--one of -my favourites. I'll often play, Mrs. Bradley, and cheer us up. There is -nothing like music for that, is there? it speaks so to the heart." And, -whole-heartedly, indeed, she accompanied the melody by a passionate -humming. - -The piano was Jack's and it was poor Jack who was made of music. How was -he to bear it, his mother asked herself, as she sat listening. Dollie, -after that initiation, spent many hours at the piano every day,--so many -and such noisy hours, that her mother-in-law, unnoticed, could shut -herself in the little morning-room that overlooked the brick wall at the -front of the house and had the morning sun. - -It was difficult to devise other occupations for Dollie. She earnestly -disclaimed any wish to have proper music lessons, and when her -mother-in-law, patiently persistent, arranged for a skilful mistress to -come down twice a week from London, Dollie showed such apathy and -dulness that any hope of developing such musical ability as she -possessed had to be abandoned. She did not like walking, and the sober -pageant of the winter days was a blank book to her. Sewing, she said, -had always given her frightful fidgets; and it was with the strangest -sense of a privilege, a joy, unhoped-for and now thrust upon her, that -Mrs. Bradley sat alone working at the little garments that meant all her -future and all Jack's. The baby seemed already more hers than Dollie's. - -Sometimes, on a warm afternoon, Dollie, wrapped in her fur cloak, would -emerge for a little while and watch her mother-in-law at work in her -borders. The sight amused and surprised but hardly interested her, and -she soon went tottering back to the house on the preposterous heels that -Mrs. Bradley had, as yet, found no means of tactfully banishing. And -sometimes, when the piano again resounded, Mrs. Bradley would leave her -borders and retreat to the hazel-copse, where, as she sat on the stone -bench, she could hear, through the soft sound of the running water, -hardly more than the distant beat and hum of Dollie's waltzes; and -where, with more and more the sense of escape and safety, she could find -a refuge from the sight and sound and scent of Dollie,--the thick, -sweet, penetrating scent that was always to be indelibly associated in -her mind with this winter of foreboding, of hope, and of growing -hopelessness. - -In her letters to Jack, she found herself, involuntarily at first, and -then deliberately, altering, suppressing, even falsifying. While Dollie -had been in bed, when so much hope had been possible of a creature so -unrevealed, she had written very tenderly, and she continued, now, to -write tenderly, and it was not false to do that; she could feel no -hardness or antagonism against poor Dollie. But she continued to write -hopefully, as every day hope grew less. - -Jack, himself, did not say much of Dollie, though there was always the -affectionate message and the affectionate inquiry. But what was -difficult to deal with were the hints of his anxiety and fear that stole -among the terse, cheerful descriptions of his precarious days. What was -she doing with herself? How were she and Dollie getting on? Did Dollie -care about any of the things she cared about? - -She told him that they got on excellently well, that Dollie spent a good -deal of time at the piano, and that when they went out to tea people -were perfectly nice and understanding. She knew, indeed, that she could -depend on her friends to be that. They accepted Dollie on the terms she -asked for her. From friends so near as Mrs. Crawley and Lady Wrexham -she had not concealed the fact that Dollie was a misfortune; but if -others thought so they were not to show it. She still hoped, by degrees, -to make Dollie a figure easier to deal with at such neighbourly -gatherings. She had abandoned any hope that Dollie would grow; anything -so feeble and so foolish could not grow; there was no other girl under -the little dancer; she was simply no more and no less than she showed -herself to be; but, at this later stage of their relationship, Mrs. -Bradley essayed, now and then, a deliberate if kindly severity,--as to -heels, as to scents, as to touches of rouge. - -"Oh, but I'm as careful, just as careful, Mrs. Bradley!" Dollie -protested. "I can't walk in lower heels. They hurt my instep. I've a -very high instep and it needs support." She was genuinely amazed that -any one could dislike her scent and that any one could think the rouge -unbecoming. She seemed to acquiesce, but the acquiescence was followed -by moods of mournfulness and even by tears. There was no capacity in her -for temper or rebellion, and she was all unconscious of giving a warning -as she sobbed, "It's nothing--really nothing, Mrs. Bradley. I'm sure you -mean to be kind. Only--it's rather quiet and lonely here. I've always -been used to so many people,--to having everything so bright and jolly." - -She was not rapacious; she was not dissolute; she could be kept -respectable and even contented if she were not made too aware of the -contrast between her past existence and her present lot. With an air -only of pensive pride she would sometimes point out to Mrs. Bradley, in -the pages of those same illustrated weeklies with which her -mother-in-law associated her, the face of some former companion. One of -these young ladies had recently married the son of a peer. "She _is_ in -luck, Floss," said Dollie. "We always thought it would come to that. -He's been gone on her for ages, but his people were horrid." - -Mrs. Bradley felt that, at all events, Dollie had no ground for thinking -her "horrid"; yet she imagined that there lay drowsing at the back of -her mind a plaintive little sense of being caught and imprisoned. Floss -had stepped, triumphant, from the footlights to the registrar's office, -and apparently had succeeded in uniting the radiance of her past and -present status. No, Dollie could be kept respectable and contented only -if the pressure were of the lightest. She could not change, she could -only shift; and although Mrs. Bradley felt that for herself, her life -behind her, her story told, she could manage to put up with a merely -shifted Dollie, she could not see how Jack was to manage it. What was -Jack to do with her? was the thought that pressed with a growing weight -on her heart. She could never be of Jack's life; yet here she was, in -it, planted there by his own generous yet inevitable act, and by -hers,--in its very centre, and not to be evaded or forgotten. - -And the contrast between what Jack's life might have been and what it -now must be was made more poignantly apparent to her when Frances Graham -came down to stay from a Saturday to Monday; Frances in her black, tired -and thin from Red-Cross work in London; bereaved in more, her old friend -knew, than dear Toppie's death; yet with her leisurely, unstressed -cheerfulness almost unaltered, the lightness that went with so much -tenderness, the drollery that went with so much depth. Dearest, most -charming of girls--but for Jack's wretched stumble into "fairyland" last -summer, destined obviously to be his wife,--could any presence have -shown more disastrously, in its contrast with poor Dollie, how Jack had -done for himself? She watched the two together that evening, Frances -with her thick crinkled hair and clearly curved brow and her merry, -steady eyes, leaning, elbow on knee, to talk and listen to Dollie; and -Dollie, poor Dollie, flushed, touched with an unbecoming sulkiness, -aware, swiftly and unerringly, of a rival type. Frances was of the type -that young men married when they did not "do for themselves." There was -now no gulf of age or habit to veil from Dollie her disadvantage. She -answered shortly, with now and then a dry, ironic little laugh; and, -getting up at last, she went to the piano and loudly played. - -"He couldn't have done differently. It was the only thing he could do," -Frances said that night before her bedroom fire. She did not hide her -recognition of Jack's plight, but she was staunch. - -"I wouldn't have had him do differently. But it will ruin his life," -said the mother. "If he comes back it will ruin his life." - -"No, no," said Frances, looking at the flames. "Why should it? A man -doesn't depend on his marriage like that. He has his career." - -"Yes. He has his career. A career isn't a life." - -"Isn't it?" The girl gazed down. "But it's what so many people have to -put up with. And so many haven't even a career." Something came into her -voice and she turned from it quickly. "He's crippled, in a sense, of -course. But you are here. He will have you to come back to always." - -"I shall soon be old, dear, and she will always be here. That's -inevitable. Some day I shall have to leave her to Jack to bear with -alone." - -"She may become more of a companion." - -"No; no, she won't." The bitterness of the mother's heart expressed -itself in the dry, light utterance. It was a comfort to express -bitterness, for once, to somebody. - -"She is a harmless little thing," Frances offered after a moment. - -"Harmless?" Mrs. Bradley turned it over drily and lightly. "I can't feel -her that. I feel her blameless if you like. And it will be easy to keep -her contented. That is really the best that one can say of poor Dollie. -And then there will be the child. I am pinning all my hopes to the -child, Frances." - -Frances understood that. - -Dollie, as the winter wore on, kept remarkably well. She had felt it the -proper thing to allude to Jack and his danger; and so, now, she more and -more frequently felt it the proper thing to allude, humorously if with a -touch of melancholy, to "baby." Her main interest in baby, Mrs. Bradley -felt, was an alarmed one. She was a good deal frightened, poor little -soul, and in need of constant reassurances; and it was when one need -only pet and pity Dollie that she was easier to deal with. Mrs. Bradley -tried to interest her in plans for the baby; what it should be named, -and how its hair should be done if it were a little girl,--for only on -this assumption could Dollie's interest be at all vividly roused; and -Mrs. Bradley more than ever hoped for a boy when she found Dollie's -idle yet stubborn thoughts fixed on the name of Gloria. - -She was able to evade discussion of this point, and when the baby came, -fortunately and robustly, into the world on a fine March morning, she -could feel it as a minor but very real cause for thanksgiving that -Dollie need now never know what she thought of Gloria as a name. The -baby was a boy, and now that he was here Dollie seemed as well pleased -that he should be a commonplace Jack, and that there should be no -question of tying his hair with cockades of ribbon over each ear. -Smiling and rosy and languid, she lay in her charming room, not at all -more maternal--though she showed a bland satisfaction in her child and -noted that his eyes were just like Jack's--yet subtly more wifely. Baby, -she no doubt felt, with the dim instinct that did duty for thought with -her, placed and rooted her and gave her final rights. She referred now -to Jack with the pensive but open affection of their shared complacency, -and made her mother-in-law think, as she lay there, of a soft and sleepy -and tenacious creeper, fixing tentacle after tentacle in the walls of -Jack's house of life. - -If only one could feel that she had furnished it with a treasure! -Gravely, with a sad fondness, the grandmother studied the little face, -so unfamiliar, for signs of Jack. She was a helplessly clear-sighted -woman, and remembrance was poignantly vivid in her of Jack's face at a -week old. Already she loved the baby since its eyes, indubitably, were -his; but she could find no other trace of him. It was not a Bradley -baby; and in the dreamy, foreboding flickers of individuality that pass -uncannily across an infant's features, her melancholy and steady -discernment could see only the Watson ancestry. - -She was to do all she could for the baby; to save him, so far as might -be, from his Watson ancestry and to keep him, so far as might be, Jack's -and hers. That was to be her task. But with all the moulding that could, -mercifully, be applied from the very beginning, she could not bring -herself to believe that this was ever to be a very significant human -being. - -She sent Jack his wire: "A son. Dollie doing splendidly." And she had -his answer: "Best thanks. Love to Dollie." It was curious, indeed, this -strange new fact they had now, always, to deal with; this light little -"Dollie" that must be passed between them. The baby might have made Jack -happy, but it had not solved the problem of his future. - - -III - -A week later the telegram was brought to her telling her that he had -been killed in action. - -It was a beautiful spring day, just such a day as that on which she and -Jack had first seen Dorrington, and she had been working in the garden. -When she had read, she turned and walked down the path that led to the -hazel-copse. She hardly knew what had happened to her; there was only an -instinct for flight, concealment, secrecy; but, as she walked, there -rose in her, without sound, as if in a nightmare, the terrible cry of -her loneliness. The dark wet earth that covered him seemed heaped upon -her heart. - -The hazel-copse was tasselled thickly with golden-green, and as she -entered it she saw that the hepaticas were in flower. They seemed to -shine with their own celestial whiteness, set in their melancholy green -among the fallen leaves. She had never seen them look so beautiful. - -She followed the path, looking down at them, and she seemed to feel -Jack's little hand in hers and to see, at her side, his nut-brown head. -It had been on just such a morning. She came to the stone bench; but the -impulse that had led her here was altered. She did not sink down and -cover her face, but stood looking around her at the flowers, the -telegram still open in her hand; and slowly, with stealing calm, the -sense of sanctuary fell about her. - -She had lost him, and with him went all her life. He was dead, his youth -and strength and beauty. Yet what was this strange up-welling of relief, -deep, deep relief, for Jack; this gladness, poignant and celestial, like -that of the hepaticas? He was dead and the dark earth covered him; yet -he was here, with her, safe in his youth and strength and beauty, -forever. He had died the glorious death, and no future, tangled, -perplexed, fretful with its foolish burden, lay before him. There was no -loss for Jack; no fading, no waste. The burden was for her and he was -free. - -Later when pain should have dissolved thought her agony would come to -her unalleviated; but this hour was hers and his. She heard the river -and the soft whisperings of spring. A bird dropped lightly unafraid from -branch to branch of a tree near by. From the woods came the rapid -insistent tapping of a woodpecker; and as in so many springs she seemed -to hear Jack say, "Hark, mummy," and his little hand was always held in -hers. And everywhere telling of irreparable loss, of a possession -unalterable, the tragic, the celestial hepaticas. - -She sat down on the stone bench now and closed her eyes for a little -while so holding them more closely--Jack and the hepaticas--together. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -DAFFODILS - - -I - -THOUGH he knew that he was going to die, Marmaduke Follett as he lay in -the hospital on the French coast had never in his life been so happy. -Until these last days he had not been able to feel it in its -completeness. Of the great engagement where he had fallen he remembered -only the overwhelming uproar, the blood and mud; and after that, -torments, apathies, dim awakenings to the smell of ether and relapses to -acquiescent sleep. Now the last operation had failed--or rather, he had -failed to recover from it--and there was no more hope for him; but he -hardly suffered and his thoughts were emerging into a world of -cleanliness, kindness, and repose. - -The hospital before the war had been a big hotel, and his was one of the -bedrooms on the second floor, its windows crossed by two broad blue -bands of sea and sky. As an officer he had a room to himself. The men -were in the wards downstairs. - -One of his nurses--both were pleasant girls but this was the one who -with a wing of black hair curving under her cap reminded him of his -cousin Victoria--had put a glass of daffodils beside his bed, not -garden daffodils, but the wild ones that grow in woods; and if she made -him think of Victoria how much more they made him think of the woods in -spring at Channerley! - -He was dying after a gallant deed. It was a fitting death for a Follett -and so little in his life had been at all fitted to that initial -privilege: it was only in the manner of his death that his life matched -at all those thoughts of Victoria and Channerley. - -He did not remember much of the manner; it still remained cloaked in the -overwhelming uproar; but as he lay there he seemed to read in the -columns of the London papers what all the Folletts were so soon to -read--because of him:-- - -"His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to award the Victoria -Cross to the under-mentioned officers, non-commissioned officers and -men:-- - -"Sec. Lt. Marmaduke Everard Follett. For most conspicuous bravery. - -"He was directed with 50 men to drive the enemy from their trench and -under intense shell-and machine-gun fire he personally led three -separate parties of bombers against a captured 325 yards of trench; -attacking the machine gun, shooting the firer with his revolver, and -destroying gun and _personnel_ with bombs. This very brave act saved -many lives and ensured the success of the attack. In carrying one of his -men back to safety Sec. Lt. Follett was mortally wounded." - -He felt himself smile, as he soberly spaced it out, to remember that the -youths at the office used to call him Marmalade. It was curious that he -most felt his present and his present transfigured self, when he thought -of Cauldwell's office, where so many years of his past had been spent. -When he thought of that, of the jocund youths, of the weary hours and -wasted years, it was to feel himself transfigured; when he thought of -the Folletts and of Channerley, to feel that he matched them; to feel at -last as if he had come home. What to the grimy, everyday world counted -as transfiguration, counted as the normal, the expected, to the world of -Channerley. - -He wondered, lying there and looking out past the daffodils, where -Victoria was; he had heard that she was nursing, too, somewhere in -France; and again, as he had smiled over the contrast of "Sec. Lt. -Marmaduke Everard Follett" and the "Marmalade" of Cauldwell's office, he -smiled in thinking of the difference between Victoria and the nice young -nurse who, for all her resembling curve of hair, was also second-rate. -It would have been very wonderful to have been nursed by Victoria, and -yet his thought turned from that. There had never been any sweetness, -never even any kindness for him, in Victoria's clear young gaze; when it -came to nursing, he could imagine her being kind to a Tommy, but not to -him, the dull, submerged cousin; and the nice though second-rate nurse -was very kind. He would rather die under her eyes than under Victoria's. - -And he would rather think of Victoria as he had last seen her at the big -London dance to which, most unexpectedly, he had found himself asked -last spring--the spring before the war. He had decided, as with nervous -fingers he tied his white cravat,--how rarely disturbed had been that -neat sheaf lying in his upper drawer!--that he must have been confused -with some other Follett, for he was so seldom asked anywhere, where he -would be likely to meet Victoria. However, it was a delight to see her -in her snowy dress, her beautiful hair bound with silver, and to feel, -as he watched her dancing, that she belonged, in a sense, to him; for -he, too, was a Follett. - -How much more did she belong to him now! And not only Victoria, but all -of them, these Folletts of his and the Folletts of past generations; and -Channerley, centre of all his aching, wistful memories. It had been for -him, always, part of the very structure of his nature, that beautiful -old house where he had spent his boyhood. Perhaps it was because he had -been turned out of the nest so early that he never ceased to miss it. -His thought, like a maimed fledgling, had fluttered round and round it, -longing, exiled, helpless. - -If, now, he could have survived, his eldest brother, he felt sure, must -have asked him oftener to stay at Channerley. It still gave him a pang, -or, rather, the memory of many pangs, to recall that Robert had not -asked him for two years, and had seemed to forget all about him after -that. They had all seemed to forget about him,--that was the trouble of -it,--and almost from the very beginning: Robert, who had Channerley; -Austin, who had gone into the army and was now in Mesopotamia; Griselda, -married so splendidly up in her northern estate; and Amy, the artistic -bachelor-girl of the family, whom he associated with irony and -cigarette-smoke and prolonged absences in Paris. Even cheerful Sylvia, -of South Kensington, with her many babies and K.C. husband, whom he -always thought of, for all her well-being, as very nearly as submerged -as himself,--even Sylvia saw little of him and asked him only to family -dinners,--Mr. Shillington's family, not hers,--at depressingly punctual -intervals. - -But Sylvia, the one nearest him in years, was the one who had forgotten -least, and she had, after her fashion, done her best for him. Confused -at study, clumsy at games, shy and tongue-tied, he had not in any way -distinguished himself at a rather second-rate public school; and to -distinguish himself had been the only hope for him. The Folletts had -never had any money to spare, and Eton and Oxford for Robert and -Sandhurst for Austin fulfilled a tradition that became detached and -terse where younger sons who could not distinguish themselves were -concerned. Still, he had always felt that, had his father lived, -something better would have been found for him than to be bundled, -through the instrumentality of Mr. Shillington, into a solicitor's -office. There he had been bundled, and there he had stuck for all these -years, as clumsy, as confused as ever; a pallid, insignificant little -fellow (oh, he had no illusions about himself!) with the yellow hair and -small yellow moustache which, together with his name, had earned for him -his sobriquet. - -They had not disliked him, those direfully facetious companions of his. -_Noblesse oblige_ was an integral part of his conception of himself, -however little they might be aware of his unvarying courtesy towards -them as its exercise. He suspected that they thought of him as merely -inoffensive and rather piteous; but shyness might give that impression; -they could not guess at the quiet aversion that it covered. He was aware -sometimes, suddenly, that in the aloofness and contemplative disdain of -his pale sidelong glance at them, he most felt himself a Follett. If -his mind, for most practical purposes, was slow and clumsy, it was sharp -and swift in its perceptions. He judged the young men in Cauldwell's -office as a Follett must judge them. In the accurate applying of that -standard he was as instinctively gifted as any of his race; and if he -knew, from his first look at her, that the nice young nurse was -second-rate, how coldly and calmly, all these years, he had known that -the young men who called him Marmalade were third-rate. And yet they -none of them disliked him, and he wondered whether it was because, when -he most felt disdain, he most looked merely timid, or because they -recognized in him, all dimly as it might be, the first-rateness that was -his inherently and inalienably. - -Just as the third-rate young men might recognize the first-rate but -dimly, he was aware that to the world the Folletts, too, were not -important. It was not one of the names, in spite of centuries of local -lustre, to conjure with; and he liked it all the better because of that. -They had never, it was true, distinguished themselves; but they were -people of distinction, and that was, to his quiet, reflective, -savouring, an even higher state. He sometimes wondered if, in any of -them, the centring of family consciousness was as intense as in himself. -If they were aloof about third-rate people, it was not because they were -really very conscious about themselves. They took themselves for -granted, as they took Channerley and the family history; and only Amy -was aware that some of the family portraits were good. - -The history--it was not of course accurate to call it that, yet it -seemed more spacious and significant than mere annals--pored over -during long evenings, in faded parchments, deeds, and letters, was known -in every least detail to him. How the Folletts had begun, very soberly -but very decorously, in the fifteenth century, and how they had gone on: -rooting more deeply into their pleasant woodlands and meadows; -flowering, down the centuries, now in a type of grace--that charming -Antonia who had married so well at James the First's court; and of -gallantry--a Follett had fallen at Naseby, and a Follett had fought at -Waterloo; or of good-humoured efficiency, as in the eighteenth-century -judge and the nineteenth-century bishop. And he, who was neither -graceful nor gallant nor good-humoured (sour and sad he felt himself), -never could resist the warming, revivifying influence of these -recognitions, stretching himself, sighing, smiling happily before his -Bloomsbury fire on a winter's evening, as he laid down the thick pile of -yellowed manuscripts to think it all over and feel himself, in spite of -everything, a link with it all. - -Robert had always been very decent about letting him have and keep the -documents for as long as he liked. - -It was strange to think that he was never to see his Bloomsbury lodgings -again, and stranger, really, that a certain tinge of regret was in the -thought; for how, for years, he had hated them, place of exile, of -relegation, as he had always felt them! Yet he had come to be fond of -his little sitting-room, just because, to his eye, with its mingled -comfort and austerity, it was so significant of exile. If a Follett -couldn't have what he wanted, that was all he would have--his rack of -pipes, his shelves of books, his little collection of mostly marginless -mezzotints ranged along the dark, green walls. The room was a refuge and -did not pretend to be an achievement, and in that very fact might, to an -eye as sharp as his for such significance, suggest the tastes that it -relinquished. He had indeed all the tastes and none of the satisfactions -of Channerley. - -There it was; he had come back to it again, as, indeed, he had, in -spirit, never left it--never for a moment. He felt himself, lying there -in the hospital on the French coast, with the soft spring sea lapping -upon the beach under his window--he felt himself drop, drop, softly, -sweetly, deeply, back to his childhood. From his high nursery-window he -saw the dewy tree-tops,--the old hawthorn that grew so near the house, -and the old mulberry,--and the rooks wheeling on a spring sky so many -years ago. The dogs, at that early hour, just released, might be racing -over the lawns: idle, jovial Peter, the spaniel, and Jack, the plucky, -hot-tempered little Dandy-Dinmont. - -Below the lawns were the high grey garden walls, and above, rising a -little from the flagged rose-garden, were the woods where the daffodils -grew, daffodils like those beside him now, tall and small, their pale, -bright pennons set among warrior spears of green. Little bands of them -ran out upon the lawn from under the great trees, and one saw their gold -glimmering far, far along the woodlands. Oh, the beauty of it, and the -stillness; the age and youth; the smile and the security! How he had -always loved it, shambling about the woods and gardens; creeping -rather--he always saw himself as creeping somehow--about the dear, gay, -faded house! Always such an awkward, insignificant little boy; even his -dear old Nanna had felt dissatisfied with his appearance, and he had -always known it, when she sent him down with the others to the -drawing-room; and his mother, she had made it very apparent, had found -him only that. - -He shrank from the thought of his mother; perhaps it was because of her, -of her vexed and averted eyes, her silken rustle of indifference as she -passed him by, that he saw himself as creeping anywhere where she might -come. He only remembered her in glimpses: languidly and ironically -smiling at her tea-table (Amy had her smile), the artificial tone of her -voice had even then struck his boyish ear; reading on a summer -afternoon, with bored brows and dissatisfied lips, as she lay on a -garden chair in the shade of the mulberry tree; querulously arguing with -his father, who, good-humoured and very indifferent, strolled about the -hall in his pink coat on a winter morning, waiting for the horses to be -brought round; his mother's yellow braids shining under her neatly -tilted riding-hat, her booted foot held to the blaze of the great -log-fire. A hard, selfish, sentimental woman; and--wasn't it really the -only word for what he felt in her?--just a little shoddy. He -distinguished it from the second-rate nicely: it was a more personal -matter; for his mother, though certainly not a Follett, was of good -stock; he knew, of course, all about her stock. It always grieved him to -think that it was from her he had his yellow hair and the pale grey of -his eyes; his stature, too, for she had been a small woman; all the -other Folletts were tall; but she had given him nothing more: not a -trace of her beauty was his, and he was glad of it. - -It was curious, since he had really had so little to do with him, as -little, almost, as with his mother, how blissfully his sense of his -father's presence pervaded his childish memories. He was so kind. The -kindest thing he remembered at Channerley, except his dear old Nanna and -Peter the spaniel. It used to give him a thrill of purest joy when, -meeting him, his father, his hands clasped behind his back after his -strolling wont, would stop and bend amused and affectionate eyes upon -him; rather the eyes, to be sure, that he bent upon his dogs; but -Marmaduke always felt of him that he looked upon his children, and upon -himself, too, as parts of the pack; and it was delightful to be one of -the pack, with him. - -"Well, old fellow, and how goes the world with you to-day?" his father -would say. - -And after that question the world would go in sunshine. - -He had always believed that, had his father lived, he would never have -been so forgotten; just as he had always believed that his father would -never have allowed one of his pack to be bundled into the solicitor's -office. For that he had to thank, he felt sure, not only Sylvia's -negative solicitude, but his mother's active indifference. Between them -both they had done it to him. - -And he never felt so to the full his dispossession as in thinking of -Robert. He had always intensely feared and admired Robert. He did not -know what he feared, for Robert was never unkind. But Robert was -everything that he was not: tall and gay and competent, and possessing -everything needful, from the very beginning, for the perfect fulfilment -of his type. The difference between them had been far more than the ten -years that had made of Robert a man when he was still only a little boy. -There had been, after all, a time when they had been a very big and a -very little boy together, with Austin in between; yet the link had -seemed always to break down after Austin. Robert, in this retrospect, -had always the air of strolling away from him--for Robert, too, was a -stroller. Not that he himself had had the air of pursuit; he had never, -he felt sure, from the earliest age, lacked tact; tact and reticence and -self-effacement had been bred into him. But his relationship with Robert -had seemed always to consist in standing there, hiding ruefulness, and -gazing at Robert's strolling back. - -The difference from Austin had perhaps been as great, but it had never -hurt so much, for Austin, though with his share of the Follett charm, -had never had the charm of Robert. A clear-voiced and clear-eyed, -masterful boy, Austin's main contact with others was in doing things -with them, and that sort of contact did not mean congeniality. Austin -had made use of him; had let him hold his ferrets and field for him at -cricket; and a person whom you found useful did not, for the time being, -bore you. - -But he had bored Robert always--that was apparent; and beautiful -Griselda, who was older than either of them, and Amy, who was younger. -Griselda had gazed rather sadly over his head; and Amy had smiled and -teased him so that he had seldom ventured on a remark in her presence. -Even fat little Sylvia, the baby, had always preferred any of the others -to him as she grew up; had only not been bored because, while she was -good-humoured, she was also rather dull. And at the bottom of his -heart, rueful always, sore, and still patiently surprised, he knew that, -while he found them all a little brutal, he could not admire them the -less because of it. It was part of the Follett inheritance to be able to -be brutal, unconsciously, and therefore with no loss of bloom. - -And now, at last, he was not to bore them any longer; at last, he was -not to be forgotten. How could he not be happy,--it brought back every -blissful thrill of boyhood, his father's smile, the daffodil woods in -spring, heightened to ecstasy,--when he had at last made of himself one -of the Folletts who were remembered? He would have his place in the -history beside the Follett who fell at Naseby. No family but is glad of -a V.C. in its annals. They could no longer stroll away. They would be -proud of him; he had done something for all the Folletts forever. - - -II - -The nice young nurse came in. She closed the door gently, and, with her -smile, calm before accustomed death, and always, as it were, a little -proud of him,--that was because they were both English,--she took his -wrist and felt his pulse, holding her watch in the other hand, and asked -him, presently, how he felt. Only after that did she say, contemplating -him for a moment,--Marmaduke wondered how many hours--or was it perhaps -days?--she was giving him to live,-- - -"A gentleman has come to see you. You may see him if you like. But I've -told him that he is only to stay for half an hour." - -The blood flowed up to Marmaduke's forehead. He felt it beating hard in -his neck and behind his ears, and his heart thumped down there under the -neatly drawn bed-clothes. - -"A gentleman? What's his name?" - -Was it Robert? - -"Here is his card," said the nurse. - -She drew it from her pocket and gave it to him. It couldn't have been -Robert, of course. Robert would only have had to come up. Yet he was -dizzy with the disappointment. It was as if he saw Robert strolling away -for the last time. He would never see Robert again. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe was the name. The address was a London club that -Marmaduke placed at once as second-rate, and "The Beeches, Arlington -Road," in a London suburb. On the card was written in a neat scholarly -hand: "May I see you? We are friends." - -It was difficult for a moment to feel anything but the receding tide of -his hope. The next thing that came was a sense of dislike for Mr. Guy -Thorpe and for the words that he had written. Friends? By what right -since he did not know his name? - -"Is he a soldier?" he asked. "How did he come? I don't know him." - -"You needn't see him unless you want to," said the nurse. "No; he's not -a soldier. An elderly man. He's driving a motor for the French Wounded -Emergency Fund, and came on from the Alliance because he heard that you -were here. Perhaps he's some old family friend. He spoke as if he were." - -Marmaduke smiled a little. "That's hardly likely. But I'll see him, yes; -since he came for that." - -When she had gone, he lay looking again at the blue bands across the -window. A flock of sea-gulls flew past--proud, swift, and leisurely, -glittering in the sun. They seemed to embody the splendour and -exultation of his thoughts, and, when they had disappeared, he was -sorry, almost desolate. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe. He took up the card again in his feeble hand and looked -at it. And now, dimly, it seemed to remind him of something. - -Steps approached along the passage, the nurse's light footfall and the -heavier, careful tread of a man. An oddly polite, almost a deprecating -tread. He had gone about a great many hospitals and was cautious not to -disturb wounded men. Yet Marmaduke felt again that he did not like Mr. -Guy Thorpe, and, as they came in, he was conscious of feeling a little -frightened. - -There was nothing to frighten one in Mr. Thorpe's appearance. He was a -tall, thin, ageing man, travel-worn, in civilian clothes, with a dingy -Red-Cross badge on the sleeve of his waterproof overcoat. Baldish and -apparently near-sighted, he seemed to blink towards the bed, and, as if -with motoring in the wind, his eyelids were moist and reddened. He sat -down, murmuring some words of thanks to the nurse. - -A very insignificant man, for all his height and his big forehead. -Altogether of The Beeches, Arlington Road. Had he turned grey, he might -have looked less shabby, but dark thin locks still clustered above his -high crown and behind his long-lobed ears. His eyes were dark, his -moustache drooped, and he had a small, straight nose. Marmaduke saw that -he was the sort of man who, in youth, might have been considered very -handsome. He looked like a seedy poet and some sort of minor civil -servant mingled, the civil servant having got the better of the poet. -Marmaduke also imagined that he would have a large family and a harassed -but ambitious wife, with a genteel accent--a wife a little below -himself. His tie was of a dull red silk. Marmaduke did not like him. - -Mr. Thorpe glanced round, as if cautiously, to see if the nurse had -closed the door, and then, it was really as if more cautiously still, -looked at Marmaduke, slightly moving back his chair. - -"I'm very grateful to you, very grateful indeed," he said in a low -voice, "for seeing me." - -"You've come a long way," said Marmaduke. - -"Yes. A long way. I had heard of your being here. I hoped to get here. I -felt that I must see you. We are all proud of you; more proud than I can -say." - -He looked down now at the motoring-cap he held, and Marmaduke became -aware that the reddened eyes were still more suffused and that the mouth -under the drooping moustache twitched and trembled. He could think of -nothing to say, except to murmur something about being very glad--though -he didn't want to say that; and he supposed, to account for Mr. Thorpe's -emotion, that he must be a moving sight, lying there, wasted, bandaged, -and dying. - -"You don't remember my name, I suppose," said Mr. Thorpe after a moment, -in which he frankly got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. - -"No, I'm afraid I don't," said Marmaduke very politely. He was glad to -say this. It was the sort of thing he did want to say. - -"Yet I know yours very, very well," said Mr. Thorpe, with a curious -watery smile. "I lived at Channerley once. I was tutor there for some -time--to Robert, your brother, and Griselda. Yes," Mr. Thorpe nodded, "I -know the Folletts well; and Channerley, the dear old place." - -Now the dim something in memory pressed forward, almost with a physical -advance, and revealed itself as sundry words scratched on the schoolroom -window-panes and sundry succinct drawings in battered old Greek and -Latin grammars. Robert had always been very clever at drawing, catching -with equal facility and accuracy the swiftness of a galloping horse and -the absurdities of a human profile. What returned to Marmaduke now, and -as clearly as if he had the fly-leaf before him, was a tiny thumb-nail -sketch of such a galloping horse unseating a lank, crouching figure, of -whom the main indications were the angles of acute uncertainty taken by -the knees and elbows; and a more elaborate portrait, dashed and dotted -as if with a ruthless boyish grin--such an erect and melancholy head it -was, so dark the tossed-back locks, so classical the nose and -unclassical the moustache, and a brooding eye indicated in a triangular -sweep of shadow. Beneath was written in Robert's clear, boyish hand, -"Mr. Guy Thorpe, Poet, Philosopher, and Friend. Vale." Even the date -flashed before him, 1880; and with it--strange, inappropriate -association--the daffodils running out upon the lawn, as no doubt he had -seen them as he leaned from the schoolroom window, with the Greek -grammar under his elbow on the sill. - -So that was it. Mr. Guy Thorpe, placed, explained, disposed of--poor -dear! He felt suddenly quite kindly towards him, quite touched by his -act of loyalty to the old allegiance in coming; and flattered, -too,--yes, even by Mr. Thorpe,--that he should be recognized as a -Follett who had done something for the name; and smiling very -benevolently upon him, he said:-- - -"Oh, of course; I remember perfectly now--your name, and drawings of you -in old schoolbooks, you know. All tutors and governesses get those -tributes from their pupils, don't they? But I myself couldn't remember, -could I? for it was before I was born that you were at Channerley." - -There was a moment of silence after this, and in it Marmaduke felt that -Mr. Thorpe did not like being so placed. He had no doubt imagined that -there would be less ambiguous tributes, and that his old pupils would -have talked of him to the younger generation. - -And something of this chagrin certainly came out in his next words as, -nodding and looking round at the daffodils, he said:-- - -"Yes, yes. Quite true. No, of course you couldn't yourself remember. I -was more though, I think I may fairly say, than the usual tutor or -governess. I came, rather, at Sir Robert's instance."--Sir Robert was -Marmaduke's father.--"We had met, made friends, at Oxford; his former -tutor there was an uncle of mine, and Sir Robert, in my undergraduate -days, used to visit him sometimes. He was very keen on getting me to -come. Young Robert wanted something of a firm hand. I was the friend -rather than the mere man of books in the family." - -"Poet, Philosopher and Friend"--Marmaduke had it almost on his lips, and -almost with a laugh, his benevolence deepened for poor Mr. Thorpe, so -self-revealed, so entirely Robert's portrait of him. Amusing to think -that even the quite immature first-rate can so relegate the third. But -perhaps it was a little unfair to call poor Mr. Thorpe third. The -Folletts would not be likely to choose a third-rate man for a tutor; -second was kinder, and truer. He had, obviously, come down in the world. - -"I see. It's natural I never heard, though: there's such a chasm between -the elders and the youngers in a big family, isn't there?" he said. -"Griselda is twelve years older than I am, and Robert ten, you remember. -She was married by the time I began my Greek. You never came back to -Channerley, did you? I hope things have gone well with you since those -days?" - -He questioned, wanting to be very kind; wanting to give something of the -genial impression of his father smiling, with his "And how goes the -world with you to-day?" But he saw that, while Mr. Thorpe's evident -emotion deepened, it was with a sense of present grief as well as of -retrospective pathos. - -"No; I never came,--that is--. No; I passed by: I never came to stay. I -went abroad; I travelled, with a pupil, for some years before my -marriage." Grief and confusion were oddly mingled in his drooping face. -"And after that--life had changed too much. My dear old friend Sir -Robert had died. I could not have faced it all. No, no; when some -chapters are read, it is better to close the book; better to close the -book. But I have never forgotten Channerley, nor the Folletts of -Channerley; that will always remain for me the golden page; the page," -said Mr. Thorpe, glancing round again at the daffodils, "of friendship, -of youth, of daffodils in springtime. I saw you there," he added -suddenly, "once, when you were a very little lad. I saw you. I was -passing by; bicycling; no time to stop. You remember the high road -skirts the woods to the north. I came and looked over the wall; and -there you were--in your holland pinafore and white socks--digging up the -daffodils and putting them into your little red-and-yellow cart. A -beautiful spring morning. The woods full of sunshine. You wouldn't -remember." - -But he did remember--perfectly. Not having been seen; but the day; the -woods; the daffodils. He had dug them up to plant in his own little -garden, down below. He had always been stupid with his garden; had -always failed where the other succeeded. And he had wanted to be sure of -daffodils. And they had all laughed at him for wanting the wild -daffodils like that for himself, and for going to get them in the wood. -And why had Mr. Thorpe looked over the wall and not come in? He hated to -think that he had been watched on that spring morning--hated it. And, -curiously, that sense of fear with which he had heard the approaching -footsteps returned to him. It frightened him that Mr. Thorpe had watched -him over the wall. - -His distaste and shrinking were perhaps apparent in his face, for it was -with a change of tone and hastiness of utterance, as though hurrying -away from something, that Mr. Thorpe went on:-- - -"You see,--it's been my romance, always, Channerley--and all of you. -I've always followed your lives--always--from a distance--known what you -were up to. I've made excuses to myself--in the days when I used to go a -good deal about the country--to pass by Channerley and just have a -glimpse of you. And when I heard that you had done this noble -deed,--when I heard what you had done for England, for Channerley, for -us all,--I felt I had to come and see you. You must forgive me if I seem -a mere intruder. I can't seem that to myself. I've cared too much. And -what I came for, really, was to thank you,--to thank you, my dear -boy,--and to tell you that because of you, life must be nobler, always, -for all of us." - -His words had effaced the silly, groping fear. It was indeed, since his -colonel's visit, the first congratulation he had had from the outer -world. The nurses, of course, had congratulated him, and the surgeons; -but no one who knew him outside; the kindly telegrams from Robert and -Sylvia did not count as congratulations. And in a way poor Mr. Thorpe -did know him, and though it was only from him, it had its sweetness. He -felt himself flush as he answered, "That's very kind of you." - -"Oh, no!" said Mr. Thorpe, shaking his head and swinging his -foot--Marmaduke knew that from the queer movement of his body as he sat -with very tightly folded arms. "Not kind! That's not the word--from us -to you! Not the word at all!" - -"I'm very happy, as you may imagine," said Marmaduke. And he was happy -again, and glad to share his happiness with poor Mr. Thorpe. "It makes -everything worth while, doesn't it, to have brought it off at all?" - -"Everything, everything--it would; it would, to you. So heroes feel," -said Mr. Thorpe. "To give your life for England. I know it all--in every -detail. Yes, you are happy in dying that England may live. Brave boy! -Splendid boy!" - -Now he was weeping. He had out his handkerchief and his shoulders -shook. It made Marmaduke want to cry, too, and he wondered confusedly if -the nurse would soon come back. Had not the half hour passed? - -"Really--it's too good of you. You mustn't, you know; you mustn't," he -murmured, while the word, "boy--boy," repeated, made tangled images in -his mind, and he saw himself in the white socks and with the little -red-and-yellow cart, and then as he had been the other day, leading his -men, his revolver in his hand and the bullets flying about him. "And I'm -not a boy," he said; "I'm thirty-four; absurdly old to be only a second -lieutenant. And there are so many of us. Why,"--the thought came -fantastically, but he seized it, because Mr. Thorpe was crying so and he -must seize something,--"we're as common as daffodils!" - -"Ah! not for me! not for me!" Mr. Thorpe gulped quickly. Something had -given way in him--as if the word "daffodils" had pressed a spring. He -was sobbing aloud, and he had fallen on his knees by the bed and put up -his hand for Marmaduke's. "I cannot keep it from you! Not at this last -hour! Not when you are leaving me forever!--My son! My brave son! I am -your father, Marmaduke! I am your father, my dear, dear boy!" - - -III - -It was the stillest room. The two calm bands of blue crossed the window. -In the sunlight the gulls came flying back. Marmaduke looked out at -them. Were they the same sea-gulls or another flock? Then quietly he -closed his eyes. Stillness--calm. But something else was rising to him -from them. Darkness; darkness; a darkness worse than death. Oh! death -was sweet compared to this. Compared to this all his life had been -sweet; and something far dearer than life was being taken from him. He -only knew the terrible confusion of his whole nature. - -He opened his eyes again with an instinct of escape. There were the -bands of blue, and, still passing in their multitudes, leaving him -forever, the proud, exultant sea-gulls. The man still knelt beside him. -He heard his own voice come:-- - -"What do you mean?" - -"I never meant to tell you! I never meant to tell you!" a moan answered -him. "But--seeing you lying there!--dying!--my son!--who has given his -life for England!--And how I have longed for you all these years!--My -romance, Marmaduke--How could I be silent? Forgive me! Forgive me, my -boy. Yes, mine. My known children are dear to me, but how far dearer the -unknown son, seen only by stealth, in snatched glimpses! It is true, -Marmaduke, true. We were lovers. She loved me. Do not ask. Do not -question. We were young. She was very beautiful. It was springtime; -daffodils were in the woods. She said that she had never known any one -like me. She said that her life was hollow, meaningless. I opened doors -to her, I read to her. Browning--I read Browning," he muttered on, "in -the woods; among the daffodils. It was a new life to her--and to me. And -we were swept away. Don't blame us, Marmaduke. If there was wrong, there -was great beauty--then. Only then; for after, she was cruel--very cruel. -She turned from me; she crushed and tore my heart. Oh!--I have -suffered! But no one knew. No one ever dreamed of it. Only she and I. -My God!--I see her in your hair and eyes!" - -It was true. It was absolutely true. Through his whole being he felt its -inevitability. Everything was clear, with a strange, black, infernal -clearness. His life lay open before him, open from beginning to end: -that beginning of tawdry sentiment and shame--with daffodils; and this -end, with daffodils again, and again with tawdry sentiment and shame. - -He was not a Follett. He had no part in the Folletts. He had no part in -Channerley. He was an interloper, a thief. He was the son of this -wretched man, in whose very grief he could detect the satisfaction--oh, -who more fitted to detect such satisfaction!--of his claim upon a status -above his own. He was all that he had always most despised, a -second-rate, a third-rate little creature; the anxious, civil, shrinking -Marmalade of Cauldwell's office. Why (as the hideous moments led him on, -point by point, his old lucidity, sharpened to a needle fineness, seemed -to etch the truth in lines of fire upon the blackness), hadn't he always -been a pitiful little snob? Wasn't it of the essence of a snob to -over-value the things one hadn't and to fear the things one was? It -hadn't been other people, it had been himself, what he really was, of -whom he had always been afraid. He saw himself reduced to the heretofore -unrecognized, yet always operative, element in his own nature--a timid, -watchful humility. - -Oh, Channerley! Channerley! The wail rose in his heart and it filled the -world. Oh, his woods, his daffodils, his father's smile--gone--lost -forever! Worse than that--smirched, withered, desecrated! - -A hideous gibbering of laughter seemed to rise around him, and pointing -fingers. Amy's eyes passed with another malice in their mockery; and -Robert would never turn to him now, and Griselda would never look at -him. He saw it all, as they would never see it. He was not one of them, -and they had always felt it; and oh,--above all,--he had always felt it. -And now, quite close it seemed, softly rustling, falsely smiling, moved -his loathsome mother: not only as he remembered her in youth, but in her -elegant middle years, as he had last seen her, with hard eyes and alien -lips and air of brittle, untouched exquisiteness. - -Suddenly fury so mounted in him that he saw himself rising in bed, -rending his dressings, to seize the kneeling man by the throat and -throttle him. He could see his fingers sinking in on either side among -the clustered hair, and hear himself say, "How dare you! How dare you! -You hound! You snivelling, sneaking hound! You look for pity from me, do -you!--and tenderness! Well, take this, this! Everything, everything I am -and have that's worth being and having, I owe to them. I've hated you -and all you mean, always--yes, your fear and your caution and your -admiration and your great high forehead. Oh, I see it! I see it!--it's -my own! And though I am only that in myself, then take it from me that I -hate myself along with you and curse myself with you!" - -It came to him that he was slowly panting, and that after the fever-fury -an icy chill crept over him. And a slow, cold smile came with it, and he -saw Jephson, the wit of the office, wagging his head and saying, "Little -Marmalade take a man by the throat! Ask me another!" - -No; little Marmalade might win the V.C.; but only when he thought he was -a Follett. Was that what it all came to, really? Something broke and -stopped in his mind. - -He heard his father's voice. How long ago it had all happened. He had -known for years, hadn't he, that this was his father? - -"Marmaduke! Mr. Follett! What have I done? Shall I call somebody? Oh, -forgive me!" - -His father was standing now beside him and bending over him. He looked -up at him and shook his head. He did not want any one to come. - -"Oh, what have I done?" the man repeated. - -"I was dying anyway, you know," he heard himself say. - -What a pitiful face it was, this weary, loosened, futureless old face -above him! What a frightened face! What long years of slow disgarnishing -lay behind it: youth, romance, high hopes, all dropped away. He had come -to-day with their last vestiges, still the sentimental, romancing fool, -self-centred and craving; but nothing of that was left. He was beaten, -at last, down into the very ground. It was a haggard, humiliated, -frightened face, and miserable. As he himself had been. But not even -death lay before this face. For how many years must it go on sinking -down until the earth covered it? Marmaduke seemed to understand all -about him, as well as if he had been himself. - -"Sit down," he said. He heard that his voice was gentle, though he was -not aware of feeling anything, only of understanding. "I was rather -upset. No; I don't want any one. Of course I forgive you. Don't bother -about it, I beg." - -His father sat down, keeping his swollen eyes on the motoring-cap -which, unseeingly, he turned and turned in his hands. - -"Tell me about yourself a little," said Marmaduke, with slow, spaced -breaths. "Where do you live? How? Are you fairly happy?" - -He knew that he was not happy; but he might, like most people with whom -life had not succeeded, often imagine himself so, and Marmaduke wanted -to help him, if possible, to imagine it. - -"I live near London. I used to do a good deal of University Extension -lecturing. I've a clerkship in the Education Office now." Mr. Thorpe -spoke in a dead obedient voice. "A small salary, not much hope of -advance; and I've a large family. It's rather up-hill, of course. But -I've good children; clever children. My eldest boy's at Oxford; he took -a scholarship at Westminster; and my eldest girl's at Girton. The second -girl, Winnie, has a very marked gift for painting; she is our artist; -we're going to send her to the Slade next year when she leaves the High -School. Good children. I've nothing to complain of." - -"So you're fairly happy?" Marmaduke repeated. Oddly, he felt himself -comforted in hearing about the good and happy children, in hearing about -Winnie, her father's favourite. - -"Happy? Well, just now, with this terrible war, one can't be that, can -one? It is a great adventure for me, however, this work of mine, -motoring about France. I don't think I've ever done anything I cared so -much about since--for years," said Mr. Thorpe. "It's a beautiful -country, isn't it? and the soldiers are such splendid fellows! One gets -a lot out of it. But happy? No, I don't suppose I am. I'm pretty much of -a failure, and I started life with great imaginings about myself. One -doesn't get over that sort of disappointment; one never really gets over -it in a way." Mr. Thorpe was looking at him now, and it was as if there -were a kindliness between them. "Things have been rather grey and -disagreeable on the whole," he said. - -"They can be very grey and disagreeable, can't they?" said Marmaduke, -closing his eyes. - -He was very tired, and as he lay there quietly, having nothing further -to know or to suffer, having reached the very limits of conscious -dissolution, something else began to come to him. It seemed born of the -abolition of self and of the acceptance of the fact that he was dead to -all that had given life worth or beauty. It would have been very good to -be a Follett; though, he saw it now, he had over-prized that special -sort of goodness--with so much else from which he had been, as really, -shut out; but he was not a Follett; nor was he merely this poor, -insignificant father. He did not quite make out in what the difference -lay and he did not rejoice in it, for there was no rejoicing left in -him. But, even if the difference were only an acquired instinct (dimly, -the terms of his complacent readings in biology and sociology returned -to him), even if it were only that, not anything inherent and -transmissible, it was, all the same, his own possession; something that -he and the Folletts had made together; so that it was as true to say -that he had won the V.C. as to say that they had. The lessened self that -was left to him had still its worth. To see the truth, even if it undid -you, was worthy; to see so unwaveringly that it was good to be a Follett -even when you weren't one, had the elements of magnanimity; and to -accept the fact of being second-rate proved, did it not?--if you still -cared to prove it; he felt himself smile as gently at the relinquished -self as he had smiled at his father,--that you were not merely -second-rate. - -There was now a sound of stumbling movement; doors opening and shutting; -nurses, surgeons in the room; and his father's face, far away, against -the blue bands, looking at him, still so frightened and so miserable -that he tried again to smile at him and to say, "It's all right. Quite -all right." - -At all events he had been decent to the poor old fellow. His thoughts -came brokenly, but he was still seeing something, finding something; it -was like a soft light growing. At all events, he had behaved as a -Follett would wish to behave even when brought to such a pass. No--but -it wasn't quite that, either; it was something new. He had behaved as -any one decent should wish to behave. And the daffodils glimmering to -his vision seemed to light him further still. "We are as common as -daffodils," came back to him. Daffodils were for everybody. Foolish -little boy who, on the distant spring morning in the woods of -Channerley, dug them up to take them to his own garden! - -He was there among them with his little red-and-yellow cart, and the -thrush was singing high above him, in the rosy topmost branches of an -elm. - -Beautiful woods. Beautiful flowers of light and chivalry. How the -sunshine streamed among them! - -"Dear Channerley," he thought. For again he seemed to belong there. - -Gentle hands were tending him and, as he turned his cheek on the -pillow, it was with the comfort--almost that of the little boy at -Channerley being tucked up in the warm nursery to go to sleep--of -knowing that he was dying, and that, in spite of everything, he had -given something to the name. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PANSIES - - -I - -"OF course it is a horrid little garden, but one gets so fond of one's -own things, even when they are horrid," said Miss Edith Glover, with her -gentle deprecatory laugh. - -She stood with her friend at the door of the conservatory that led from -the sitting-room to the oblong plot of garden--a small, middle-aged -woman, with soft brown eyes, and hair the colour of a faded leaf; her -wasted throat and transparent temples and faint yet feverish flush -marking her already with menacing symptoms. - -The conservatory was of the sort that crops out irrelevantly at the back -of the many suburban houses, like glaucous fungi; but in Miss Glover's -little establishment, its shelves filled with neatly ranged boxes of -seedlings, with bundles of raffia, tidy baskets, and carefully garnered -labels, it was completely utilitarian, with never a fern or begonia to -recall its usual state. Miss Glover's house was suburban, or nearly so, -for though it stood in secure detachment from other villas on the -southern slopes of a small Surrey town, the town, on its northern side, -spread into ugly patches of red brick that devoured the woods and fields -and ran long tentacles almost up to London. Acacia Road was removed -from this peril of vitality, and its upper windows looked over pleasant -stretches of untouched hill and meadow. - -The Nook had been left to Miss Glover by an aunt five years ago, and to -her it was, from its porch before to its garden behind, a paradise pure -and simple, though she described her garden now, in showing it to -Florrie Lennard, so disparagingly. If she called it horrid, however, it -was only because, with her strong sense of other people's claims and -opinions, she recognized that to Florrie, accustomed to grand week-ends -at big country-places, it must, _qua_ garden, look very dim and meagre. -That it must also look, in its humility, very lovely, she took for -granted. - -Mrs. Lennard, however, standing with her on the conservatory step, her -robust silken arm protectingly and benevolently laid within hers, did -not contradict her, though her cheerful eyes roamed kindly over the -borders of pansies, the beds of mignonette, and the clumps of sweet peas -in the corners; but her kindness was for her friend rather than for the -garden, and she said, "You haven't had strength, I expect, for doing -more with it." - -"I've never had much strength," said Miss Glover. "It doesn't want much -hard work, luckily. The pansies go on from year to year and only need -dividing in the autumn, and then there are the bulbs, of course, in -spring; I have crocuses and daffodils and narcissi and some beautiful -tulips. The rest I do with penny packets. All those sweet peas and all -that mignonette came from two penny packets." - -"You can't expect much for a penny, can you?" said Mrs. Lennard with -her rather jovial air; and now she stepped down onto the narrow strip of -lawn that had a bird-bath sunken in the middle and a rose-bush at each -corner, of the kind now seldom seen, known as Prince Charlie or Maiden's -Blush--dark and small of foliage, with flat flowers that would be snowy -were they not tinged with a cold pink. They always made Miss Glover -think of an old Scotch ballad. Their flowering season was over, now, -however. The old Pyrus japonica that grew against the wall was also, -long since, over, though its fresh, vigorous green embossed the dull -bricks; but on the wall opposite, a Madame Alfred Carrire was throwing -out a second blooming, dreamy, melancholy and romantic as only she could -be. Madame Alfred Carrire made Miss Glover think of a Chopin waltz, and -she hoped that Florrie might at all events remark favourably on her -abundance. But Florrie hardly glanced at her. Pausing, as they paced the -lawn, to look with tolerant interest at the bird-bath, she observed, - -"I've just been staying with the Isaacsons in Hertfordshire. Such a -lovely place. They've a broad sanded walk leading from the house to the -rose-garden, as long as--well, to the end of this road, and it's arched -with roses all the way, a regular roof of roses, the latest climbers; I -never saw such a sight. And their herbaceous border, even now, is a -blaze of colour. I wish you could see it. It would do you good. It did -_me_ good, I know. I told Mrs. Isaacson I always feel a better woman -after a week-end in her garden. Flowers mean so much to me. I can't get -on without them. I run down to the Isaacsons whenever, as I say to her, -I need an sthetic cocktail. Of course they've half a dozen gardeners -working from dawn till dewy eve. You can do pretty much what you want in -the way of gardens when you're as rich as the Isaacsons. What it must -have cost them to make that sunken rose-garden!--all flagged between the -beds, with a sun-dial, and a fountain in the middle and bowers of roses -all about. They terraced the lawns, too, with flights of stone steps -leading down one from the other, and great white stone vases on the -pilasters simply foaming over, my dear, with pink geraniums. Against the -blue sky it's dazzling. - -"Such nice people they are, too, the Isaacsons. Di, the eldest girl, is -marrying Lord Haymouth next week, you know. People says it's a _mariage -de convenance_, of course, for she's to have 50,000 and he's without -the proverbial penny. But I happen to know it's a love match: love at -first sight; a regular _coup de foudre_. I was with the Isaacsons at -Ascot this spring when they met, and I saw in a moment that Di's fate -was sealed. Do you remember the big photo of Di in court dress on the -piano in the flat? No? Well, I should have thought it couldn't have -escaped notice. Such a splendid young creature; dark, proud, glowing -beauty. I think, when they're young, there's nothing to beat a beautiful -Jewess. She has a gorgeous voice, too, Di; could have made her fortune -in grand opera. I've given her a gold cigarette-case with her monogram -in diamonds and rubies. It nearly broke me; but they've always been -simply sweet to me. She's very fond of smoking. Smokes too much, her -mother and I tell her, though I'm afraid _I'm_ not a very good example -to set before the young!" - -Mrs. Lennard's face, while she thus spoke, expressed her contentment -with the Isaacsons, with herself, the cigarette-case, and life in -general. It was large and ruddy and masterful, with aquiline nose and -small, jocund mouth creasing to the chin in a deep line that spoke of -good nature and ingenuous sensuality; the full throat supported by a -high lace collar, well boned up behind the ears; the prominent blue eyes -at once bland and beaming. She was tall, of a fine presence, her -handsome bosom thickly decorated with turquoise ornaments, her shoes of -glittering patent leather; and from her wrist dangled a purse of fringed -and woven gold--an offering to her from the proprietor of the lady's -paper that, for many years, she had edited with so much _flair_ and -ability. - -She had made a very good thing of her life, had Mrs. Lennard; and, -nearing the fifties as she was, she had amassed a small but secure -income and a large number of affluent friends; friends always engaged in -vigorous and costly pursuits that involved many rich toilettes, meals to -the sound of orchestras in sumptuous restaurants and constant motoring -from place to place. Among such friends poor Edie Glover had not -counted. She and Mrs. Lennard had been schoolmates in early days when -their fortunes, one as the daughter of a poor parson and one of a poor -doctor, were equally unpromising. But Florrie had married an ambitious -young journalist, typified always, in Miss Glover's memory, from her one -rather dazed and shrinking impression of him, by extraordinarily smart -mustard-coloured spats and the weighty and imposing seal ring on his -finger; and, though early widowed, Florrie had followed along the paths -where he had set her feet with an energy and shrewdness that he could -not have bettered. - -Meanwhile, poor Edie--for so Mrs. Lennard always thought of -her--struggled through many years of waning youth to make her living, -and support her mother, as a music-teacher in London. Mrs. Lennard, even -when the tides of her own fortune ran low, never lost sight of her. She -had always been the kindest of friends, sowing the Glovers' dun-coloured -days with "complimentary" theatre or concert tickets and asking them -frequently to tea with her at her club. Even after Edie, now alone in -the world, had retired to Acacia Road and left youth and London behind -her, Mrs. Lennard, who had the air of fully possessing both, kept -constantly in touch. She had never before managed, it was true, but for -one half hour as she motored by on a winter's day, to visit Acacia Road; -but it was to her flat in Victoria Street that Miss Glover always came -when called to London by mild necessities or pleasures. Florrie insisted -on it; and though, in some ways, Miss Glover would have preferred the -house of her cousin in Bayswater,--overflowing with children as it was, -and offering only the tiniest of back bedrooms on the top floor,--or the -villa of a school-mistress friend at Golder's Green, it had always been -impossible to resist Florrie's determined benevolence. - -"Nonsense, my dear Edie," she would say. "Your cousin can't want you. -You'll only be in the way, with those dozens of children. And as for -Golder's Green, what can you see of London from Golder's Green?" -(Florrie overlooked the fact that for forty-odd years Miss Glover had -done nothing but "see" London.) "You'll be worn out with tubes and -motor-buses if you go to Golder's Green. Whereas with me you are ten -minutes from everywhere, be it dentist or dressmaker or concert, and -your bedroom's waiting for you--Muriel Lestrange left me only last -Monday; and you can't make me believe you'd not rather have your bath in -my lovely porcelain tub, with steaming hot water day and night, than in -one of those awful, antediluvian, blistered monsters, that fold you up -like a jack-knife--and the tin of tepid water hauled up four flights by -a slavey. I know my London, my dear, through _and_ through, and any -pleasure here depends upon how you start your day; upon your bath and -your breakfast. I can't offer much, but I can offer both of those, A -number one." - -So she could. Miss Glover could not deny it, though loyally and -unheededly murmuring that the villa at Golder's Green had also its -bathroom. It couldn't, however, compare with Florrie's, all snowy tiles -and glittering taps and ranged jars and bottles of salts and scents. -Florrie's bathroom seemed to her always to be the very centre and symbol -of Florrie's life--modern, invigorating, rejuvenating, at once -utilitarian and decorative. It was a sort of brilliant magician's cave -from which all the rest radiated: the compact yet so sumptuous little -drawing-room with its baby-grand and its palm, its silver-framed -photographs, frilled crtonnes, and rose-coloured carpet; the -dining-room, even more compact, yet, in its sobriety, as -sumptuous--where the breakfasts always, in spite of familiarity, broke -upon Miss Glover as revelations of what coffee and rolls and kidneys and -bacon could be in the way of strength and heat and crispness; even the -pink silk quilt beneath which she crept at night, and the little maid -who brought her early tea, looking, in her fluted caps and aprons, as -though she belonged to a theatrical troupe--all seemed emanations of -that magic centre where Florrie lay of a morning in hot, scented water -and read the paper and smoked a cigarette before emerging armed and -panoplied for the avocations and gaieties of the day. - -Yet it was not so much Florrie's bathroom and breakfasts, or even -Florrie's kindness, that overbore her protests as Florrie's -determination, her way of knowing so much better than you yourself could -know what was not only good, but happy for you. There was never an -answer to be found to her; and though Florrie's flat, with all its -sumptuousness, dazed and even tired Miss Glover a little, just as dear -Florrie herself sometimes dazed and tired her, she found herself -installed there always, feeling her own pursuits, her little -tea-parties, her concerts, her timid, bewildered shopping, to be very -humdrum and inappropriate as issuing from such a base of operations. The -only return she was able to make was to emboss Florrie's sheets and -towels and table-linen with beautifully embroidered monograms, and she -had always a slight and pleasant sense of being, at all events, a -country mouse who had contributed its little offering of grain or honey -when she recognized these trophies of her craft on her bed and on the -table and in the bathroom. - -But the last time she had gone up that summer, only, now, three weeks -ago, she had found herself suddenly of a significance almost as great as -that of any of Florrie's brilliant friends. To become significant to -Florrie one had either to be brilliant or piteous, and she was piteous. -Florrie had gone with her to the doctor's, and it was Florrie, kind -Florrie, an arm about her shoulders and a breast spread to her tired -head, who had broken to her the verdict. - -She was menaced, gravely menaced.--Yes; it did not surprise her--she had -thought it might be that. She had seen her father and two sisters die of -it--And unless she could go away and spend a year in a Swiss open-air -cure, the doctor didn't think she'd live through the winter. - -Seated on Florrie's frilled sofa, while Florrie, all encompassing tact -and urgency, passed on the verdict, it was not of it that she first -thought. Her mind, perhaps in an instinctive recoil, fixed itself upon -the oddly insistent impression of pinkness that she was aware, suddenly, -of receiving. Florrie's blouse, under her cheek, was a bright blur of -pink; and when she turned her eyes away from that they met, everywhere, -garlands of roses looped with knots of blue ribbon on a background of -white and pink stripes. Too much pink: this was the absurdly irrelevant -criticism that, dimly, but as if culminatingly, emerged. She must have -felt it as too pink for many years, but only now was she aware of it. -And then, with a sense of refuge, came the vision of her pansies: those -borders of white and purple pansies under the dull brick wall that she -had looked at so fondly that morning before starting for her journey. -But she would have to leave her pansies, then; not only for a season; -perhaps forever. - -It was in this form and in this roundabout way that the thought of death -became real to her; with pathos rather than poignancy and with yearning -regret rather than fear. She did not feel afraid of dying. Her quiet -little faith that, though so still, was deep enough for all her needs, -had sunken wells of wordless security in her. She was not afraid; but -the thought of leaving her flowers, her garden, the skyey view from her -bedroom window, symbolized for her all the sadness of death. There was, -indeed, nothing else to regret much. Every one she had loved most dearly -was gone; and when all was said and done, and in spite of the peace of -the last five years, she was a battered, tired little creature, with few -of the springs of desire left in her. Her life, as she looked back on -it, seemed to have been spent, for the most part, in crowded buses on -wet evenings, with not enough lunch behind and not enough dinner before -her; in those, and in going up and down steps of strangers' houses. -There had been, of course, more than that; she had never, except when -her dearest young sister died, been very unhappy, and there had been -interests and alleviations always--beautiful evening walks across the -Park and relaxations over tea with a book before the fire in her -lodging-house sitting-room; but the past, when she called it up in an -image, seemed always to crumple into that jolting, rattling, wet, and -crowded omnibus. So there was not much strength now left in her for -resistance or regret; but she would do her best to live, and that really -meant that she would do her best not yet to leave her garden. - -When she was older, too old to dig a little, divide the pansies in -autumn and sow the penny packets in spring, too old to care for the -Madame Alfred Carrire or the Pyrus japonica, would be time enough to -go. But in coming back to it that evening, she knew how deeply, how -tenaciously she loved her garden. It was the only thing she had ever -owned in her life, the only thing she had ever made: her work and -creation; its roots seemed to go down into her heart; and she could not -feel that in heaven there would be old white roses and white and purple -pansies and mignonette and sweet peas that one had sown one's self from -penny packets. - - -II - -At first, when Florrie told her, the verdict had seemed unescapable. She -had said, after the little silence in which she received it,--the -silence in which much had happened to her,--she had said, in a very -quiet voice that had surprised herself, "I'm afraid it's no good, then, -Florrie dear. I can't afford to go away." - -Aunt Kate had left her only the house and its contents. She had saved -only the tiniest sum herself--just enough to yield an income that paid -for her food and light and coal. To pay for Jane, her good old servant, -to pay for her clothes and washing, to pay for the trips to London and -the crumpets and cakes that she gave her friends at tea in Acacia Road, -she had still to depend upon the pupils that, fortunately, she had found -in the small Surrey town. On three afternoons a week she sallied forth, -peacefully indeed, with no sense of anxiety or pressure, and made her -way to the houses of the doctor, the rector, the big London -manufacturer, and instructed their young daughters in the excellent -Munich method that she had imbibed in youth. With these delightfully -convenient strings to her bow she could manage perfectly. But to give -them up and to pay for an open-air cure in Switzerland was outside the -bounds of her possibilities. - -So she explained, in the quiet voice, to Florrie; and it was then that -Florrie, revealing herself as a more wonderfully kind friend than even -in Miss Glover's grateful eyes she had always been, said, the tears -suddenly hopping down her cheeks and making dark spots on the pink silk -blouse,-- - -"Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Edie! What do a few pounds more or less -matter at a time like this? You _shall_ go! It's a question of life or -death. Now, not a word, my dear, and listen to me. _I'll_ send you. -It'll be the proudest day of my life that sees you off. What's all my -good luck worth to me if I can't give a friend a helping hand when she -needs it? I can sell out some investments. I've more than enough, and -I'll soon fill my stocking again. And you shall go as soon as we can get -you ready; and first class, my dear, all the way, boat _and_ train. -Don't I know the difference it makes--and getting off to sleep on the -way? Jane shall go with you to take care of you--oh, yes, she shall!--I -won't hear of your going alone; and you'll come back next spring a sound -woman. - -"I know all about those Swiss open-air cures," Florrie rushed on. -"They're magical. Poor Lady Forestalls was at death's door three years -ago--there she is--over there on the piano--that tall, regal-looking -woman with the Pekinese: worse than you she was, by far. And she went to -Switzerland and came back in six months' time, cured; absolutely cured. -Never a touch of it since. She does everything and goes everywhere. And -such scenery, my dear, such flowers! You'll revel in it. And Julia -Forestalls told me that the people were so interesting. She made a -number of friends--Italian, German, Russian. You shall take my -tea-basket, my dear. Jane can carry it easily. It's a gem; everything -complete and so convenient. It makes simply all the difference on a -journey if you can get a steaming hot cup of tea at any time you like, -day _or_ night. I saved Cora Clement's life with my tea-basket in -Venice; she says so herself. She got chilled to the bone on the lagoons. -Over there on the writing-bureau she is; American. Not a beauty, but -_jolie laide_, and dresses exquisitely--as you can see. She's always -taken for a French-woman." - -Miss Glover, even more than usual, felt to-day that dear Florrie dazed -and bewildered her a little; but the mere fact that Florrie's tears had -dried so soon, that she could, so soon, be telling her about Lady -Forestalls and Cora Clement, was encouraging. Miss Glover felt that her -case was evidently but one among many to which Florrie had seen the -happiest endings--a comparatively unalarming affair; entirely -unalarming, though exceedingly engrossing, Florrie's tone and demeanour -indicated, when taken in hand by such as she. - -And how she took it in hand! There was no use protesting against -anything. As always, Florrie made her feel that she knew better than she -herself could what was good for her. It was all arranged before they -parted that day, and Florrie had further smoothed her path by declaring -that nothing would suit her better, if Edie really felt fussed about the -money, than to take The Nook during her absence. "The very thing I -need," said Florrie. "I've been thinking for some time that I must have -a little place near London to run down to for week-ends. And you've that -duck of a spare-room, too, I remember, where I can put up a friend; and -it's so near town that people can motor down and have tea with me of an -afternoon. My dear, nothing could be more providential." - -During the three weeks that followed, Florrie, in London, shopped for -her, decided on the clothes she would need and the conveniences that she -must take; and interesting parcels arrived at The Nook every morning. It -was strange and exciting to be made much of, strange and exciting to be -on a journey; she had not been out of England since that stay, in -girlhood, in Munich; and in spite of the shadow hanging over her, the -sense of haste lest she be overtaken, she felt the days of preparation -as almost happy ones. Jane, it was true, was rather gloomy about -everything, but even beneath her sombre demeanour Miss Glover felt sure -that she, too, was touched by the sense of adventure, for Jane had never -been out of England at all. - -And now the boxes were all packed and Miss Glover's dressing-case stood -open, half filled, in her bedroom, waiting only for her sponge bag and -pin-tray and brush and comb to be added next morning, when she and Jane -and Florrie were to go up together to Victoria, and Florrie was to see -them off; and while Jane prepared her most festive tea, Miss Glover had -been showing Florrie all over her new domain on that August afternoon -when she had spoken of her garden as horrid. Florrie, in answer to her -shy request that she might, perhaps, if it wasn't too much bother, sow -some mignonette and sweet peas for her next spring, had answered with -reassuring decision, "To be sure I will, my dear. I'll take care of -everything and have it all waiting for you spick and span when you get -back." And then Jane's gong had summoned them in, and it had been -reassuring, too, to see how benignant were the glances that Florrie cast -about the little sitting-room while she stirred her tea and commended -Jane's cakes. "Beeswax and turpentine for all the furniture once a week. -_I_ know. And dusted every morning without fail." - -Yes, it was safe in Florrie's competent hands, dear little room. In her -heart of hearts, though she had no faintest flicker of criticism or -comparison except for that one strangely painful memory of the rush of -pinkness,--Miss Glover very much preferred her own room, shabby and -simple as it was, to Florrie's; just as, though so well aware of the -relative insignificance of her garden, she knew that she would prefer it -to the Isaacsons', with its arches of roses and its geraniums in white -stone vases. She liked quiet, soft, gentle things; the ever-so-faded -ancient chintzes on her aunt's chairs and sofa, showing here and there a -ghostly bird of paradise or a knot of nearly obliterated flowers, her -aunt's absurd, faded, old-fashioned carpet,--fortunately faded!--and her -grandmother's Lowestoft cups ranged above the mantelpiece. Everything -was in its place; her knitting-basket between her chair and the -fireplace; her beaded footstool before the best armchair, where Florrie -sat; the little table, with a bowl of white and purple pansies on it, -where lay the daily paper and the two books from the circulating -library. All were dear to her; all spoke of continuity with the past, of -long association, of quiet, small, peaceful activities; and as she -looked about she knew that her heart would have sunk a little at the -thought of leaving them, had it not been for Florrie's sustaining -presence. - -Florrie, while her second cup of tea was being made, drew forth and laid -beside the tea-tray, with an air of infinite sagacity, the coupons for -the reserved seats in the first-class carriage. "_I'll_ keep my eyes on -those," said Florrie. It was almost as if they had been tickets for some -brilliant entertainment--as if, Miss Glover felt, she and Jane were -going to be taken to the opera rather than to Switzerland. It was owing -to Florrie that she had almost come to feel that Switzerland _was_ the -opera. - -But that night, when they had gone upstairs and the house was still, the -sense of adventure deserted her. Sitting in her dressing-gown before her -mirror while, with hands that tired so easily, she brushed and braided -her hair, she felt, suddenly, very middle-aged, very lonely, ill, and -almost frightened. The look of her gaping dressing-case, as she glanced -round at it, was frightening, as was the emptiness of the mantelpiece, -from which the family photographs had all been taken to be packed, -together with the Bible and prayer-book from the table near her bed. It -was a room already deserted. It looked as it might look if she had died. -What, indeed, in spite of Florrie's good cheer, if she were to die out -there, alone, away from everything and every one she knew? And, with a -curious impulse, rising to go and close the gaping dressing-case, she -realized that she had not said good-bye to anything. The morning had all -been spent in packing--in that and in preparations for Florrie's -arrival; and all the afternoon Florrie had been with her, and she was to -be with her till her departure to-morrow. She would not again be alone -in her little house; she would not again be alone in her garden. The -thought of her pansies came with a pang of reproach; it was as if she -had forgotten them, like children sent to bed without a good-night kiss. - -She drew her curtain and looked out. Yes; there they were. The moon was -shining brightly and the white pansies lay below like pools of milk upon -the ground. She looked at them for some moments, while the soft -fragrance of the night mounted to her and seemed with gently -supplicating hands to draw her forth; and then, cautiously--for Florrie -slept across the way--but with decision, she put on her heavy cloak over -her dressing-gown, wrapped a shawl about her head and shoulders, and -stole downstairs. - -The drawing-room was very dark; she felt her way swiftly through it past -the familiar objects, and the conservatory door opened on a flood of -silvery light. She saw the high, shining disk of the moon, and the great -black poplar tree that grew in the neighbouring garden seemed vast -against the sky. As she stepped out, she made herself think of Diamond -in "At the Back of the North Wind." It was like stepping into a -fairy-tale; only something more sweet and solemn than a fairy-tale, as -that book was; something, for all its beauty, a little awful. But when -she looked down from the moon, the sky, the poplar, there was only -sweetness. The fragrance that had solicited her seemed now to welcome -her, to clasp and caress her. The pansies were all looking up at her. On -the wall Madame Alfred Carrire was more beautiful than she had ever -before seen her, her pale flowers and buds making a constellation -against the darkness. - -She walked round the path, looking at it all, so glad that she had -come, smiling--a child in fairyland, or a spirit arrived in Paradise and -finding it strange yet familiar--as Paradise should be. Perhaps, she -thought, dying would be like that: a stepping out from the darkness into -something vast and solemn that would slowly gather about one into -well-known and transfigured shapes, into white pansies growing thickly -at one's feet. She stooped in the moonlight and passed her hands over -their upturned faces. They were flowers entranced, neither sleeping nor -awake; and she felt, as her fingers touched their soft, dewy petals, as -if their dreams with their whiteness flowed into her. To leave them was -like leaving her very self, yet the parting now was all peace and -innocent acquiescence, like them, and she was still smiling as she -whispered to them, "Good-bye, darlings." - - -III - -SWITZERLAND was like the opera, and for her first months there Miss -Glover felt as if she watched it from a box--very much at the back and -looking past many heads at the vast display. Everything that Florrie had -said was true: the scenery was more magnificent than she could have -imagined, oppressively more, and the people, again oppressively, more -interesting. They were, these people, engaged all of them in trying to -keep alive, and, when they failed in that, in dying, dying under one's -eyes from day to day; and in the publicity of such occupations there was -something as abnormal as was the size of the mountains. Some of these -people she came to know a little--those, usually, who had given up: the -dear little Russian girl who, alas, died in December; the sulky, -affectionate French boy; and the large yet wasted German singer who made -Miss Glover think of a splendid fruit keeping still its shell of form -and colour while eaten away inside by wasps. Fralein Schmidt liked to -have her play Schubert and Schumann songs to her, and still tried to -sing attainable passages here and there in a queer, booming, hollow -voice that made Miss Glover, again, think of the wasps imprisoned and -buzzing. But most of the people remained parts of the spectacle to her. -They engaged, when they were well enough, in winter sports; they talked -together of books she had never heard of, and of things she had never -thought of; and often, moreover, she could not understand what they -said, as her languages did not extend beyond rather simple French and -German, and Dante with a dictionary. - -The only other English person there was a young man who made her think -of the Prince Charlie roses; he was sombre and delicate and beautiful -and did not talk to anybody, sitting apart and reading all day long. -Miss Glover wondered a good deal about him, and watched him sometimes -from her place on the snow-sifted balcony when they lay there encased in -fur bags and buttressed with hot-water bottles. His name was Lord Ninian -Carstairs; and that was like the roses, too. - -Once, when they were alone on the balcony, their recumbent chairs near -one another, he lifted his eyes suddenly and found hers fixed upon him, -and perhaps their wistful and ingenuous absorption touched him, for, -flushing faintly,--he was a shy young man,--he asked if she were feeling -better. - -She said she couldn't quite tell. It was difficult to tell what one -felt, didn't he find? Everything was so different; so exciting in a way; -and when one was excited one felt, perhaps, better than one was. - -Lord Ninian laughed shortly at that, and said that he didn't feel -excited; he wished he could. - -"I'm depressed, too, sometimes," said Miss Glover; and then he sighed. - -"One gets so abominably homesick in this hole," he said. - -She had never thought of such splendour as being, possibly, to anybody, -a hole; but she knew what it was to feel homesick. They smiled at each -other when they met after that, she and Lord Ninian, and he lent her -magazines and books. When she heard that he had died,--she had not seen -him for a week and had feared for him,--she felt very, very sad and her -thoughts turned in great longing to Acacia Road and to her garden. - -She wanted very much to live to see her garden again; but she could not -help being frightened lest she should not; for, as the winter wore on, -it became evident to her, and all the more because every one else was so -carefully unaware of it, that one of the things that Florrie had -predicted was not to come true. She was not to return cured. She was not -going to get better. At first the slow burning of fever had seemed only -part of the excitement, but she could not go on thinking it that when it -began to leave her breathless, trembling, faint. By the time that the -miracle of the Alpine flower-meadows was revealed to her and she had -watched the snow recede and the jonquils and anemones advance, she knew -that if she wished to die at home she must soon go. They would not -consent to that at once. They said that the spring months were full of -magic, and she was persuaded to stay on. They were magically beautiful -and she was glad to see them, but she longed more and more to see her -little garden. She dreamed sometimes of her pansies at night, and it -seemed to her once that as she stooped in the moonlight and touched them -she was cured; the fever fell from her; a cool white peace flowed into -her veins; and when she looked up from them, the night was gone and the -sun was rising over her Surrey hills. - -At the beginning of June they consented that she should go. They did not -tell her the truth, of course. They said that she might pass the summer -in England, since she wished so much to return there, and that she must -come back for next winter; but she knew that if her state had not been -recognized as hopeless they would not have let her go. It was hopeless, -and she summoned all her strength and resolution, that she might live -until she reached Acacia Road. - - -IV - -FLORRIE met her at Victoria. Florrie did not know that it was hopeless, -though she knew that it was not as yet, a cure; but from the way that -she controlled her features to a determined joviality Miss Glover could -infer her shock, her grief, her consternation. The glance, too, that -Jane and Florrie exchanged was revealing, had she been in need of -revelations. - -After a night in Florrie's flat, however, she knew that she looked so -much better that poor Florrie, when she came to see her in the morning, -was quite erroneously cheered. "_You're_ all right," Florrie declared. -"The journey's knocked you about a bit; but once we get you down to -Surrey, Jane and I, you'll pick up in no time. After all, there's no -place like home, is there?" - -Miss Glover, from her pillows, smiled. She felt very fond of kind -Florrie and sorry for her that she must, so soon, suffer sadness on her -account. - -It was difficult, in the train, to listen to Florrie's talk. After her -fright of the day before, Florrie had cheered up so tremendously that -she talked even more than usual, of her friends, her enterprises, of how -she was going yachting that autumn with the Forestalls, and of how Di -Haymouth had just had a baby. - -"A splendid boy, and Mr. and Mrs. Isaacson are fairly off their heads -with pride and pleasure. Such a layette, my dear, you never saw! Real -lace through and through--and the cradle of a regular little prince! I -gave him a silver porringer for his christening; a lovely thing, all -heavy _repouss_ work with his initials on a shield at one side. Di say -it's the prettiest porringer she ever saw." - -It was difficult to listen to Florrie and to nod and smile at the right -moment when she was thinking of her garden and wondering if Florrie had -really remembered to sow the sweet peas and mignonette. Even if she -hadn't, the Madame Alfred Carrire and the Prince Charlie roses would be -out, and the last tulips, and the pansies, of course. And it was such a -beautiful day, just such a day as that she had risen to look at when, in -her dream, the pansies had cured her. - -The drive from the station up to Acacia Road was a short one. The dear, -foolish little porch was there, the bow-window, the laurel-bushes. Her -own home. As she saw it she felt such a lift of the heart that it seemed -to her, too, that she might be going to get better after all. Florrie -and Jane helped her out and she and Florrie went into the sitting-room. -She looked round it, smiling, while she felt her happy, fluttering -breaths like those of some wandering bird put back into its own dear -cage again, safe, secure, bewildered a little in its contentment. She -was like such a trivial little cage-bird; she was meant for Acacia Road, -and not for Swiss mountains. - -Everything was the same: even her knitting-basket stood waiting for her, -and all that caught her eye with their unfamiliarity were the flowers, -the profusion of flowers, standing in bowls and vases everywhere; -perhaps almost too many flowers,--that was like dear, exuberant -Florrie,--and all pink. - -"Oh--how lovely they are!" she said, finding the fluttering breath fail -her a little. "How dear of you, Florrie, to have it all arranged like -this!" - -"They look welcoming, don't they?" said Florrie, who laughed with some -excitement. "Will you rest, dear, or come into the garden?" - -"Oh, the garden, please. I'm not at all tired. I can rest later." - -Florrie still led her by the arm. They went into the conservatory and -there came to her then the strangest, dizziest sense of pink--everywhere -pink!--shining in at her through the sea-green glass, bursting in at her -through the open door. - -For a moment she thought that her mind was disordered, and looked up -with large, startled eyes at Florrie; but, beaming as she had never yet -seen her beam, all complacency and triumphant benevolence, Florrie -nodded, saying, "Now for your surprise, my dear. Now for your garden. -Just see what I've made of it to welcome you!" - -They stepped out. Pink. Pink everywhere, above, below, around one. The -paths were arched with swinging iron chains on which, already, the long -festoons advanced. The border, heaping itself up splendidly against the -wall, was splashed with white, yellow, blue and purple, a blaze of -colour indeed, but pink dominated, like the sound of trumpets in an -orchestra. It also made Miss Glover think, strangely, sickly, of the -sound of a gramophone. There was no lawn. The centre of the garden was -flagged, with a highly ornamental sun-dial in the middle and a white -garden seat and a wonderful white stone basin for the birds. There were -no Prince Charlie roses, no mignonette and sweet peas, there were no -pansies. Her garden had disappeared. - -"There!" said Florrie. - -She led her to the garden seat. From here Miss Glover, as she sank down -upon it, could see that the back of the house was also dappled with the -incessant colour. - -"Isn't it a marvel!" said Florrie. "I hardly dared hope they'd grow as -they have, but Dorothy Perkins is a winner, and these latest climbers -run her close. I spared nothing, my dear, nothing--manure, bone-meal, -labour. The men were working here for a week last autumn. All the old -soil was carted away and a rich loam put in three feet deep. I put them -in big. I knew I could get them to take if I took enough pains over it. -Those chains will be covered in another month. I knew it would do you -more good than any open-air cure to find such a garden waiting for you. -I'd defy anybody to have the blues in this garden! In its little way -it's just an epitome of joy, isn't it? It's done _me_ good, to begin -with! I've been having tea out here every day in my week-ends and every -one who's seen it and heard about my plan says I'm a regular old fairy -with a wand. Mrs. Isaacson motored down only last Saturday and thought -it was a perfect poem. And so it is, though I say it as shouldn't." - -Florrie had paused on the deepest breath of purest satisfaction, and the -time had come when Miss Glover must speak. She must find words to -express gratitude and astonishment. She must not burst into tears. She -felt that if she began to cry she would at once be very ill. She did not -want to be taken ill before dear, good, kind Florrie. And it was, of -course, a beautiful garden; far more beautiful than hers had ever been, -no doubt; yet it hurt her so--to find her garden gone--that she heard -her voice come in gasps as she said, "Dear Florrie--you are a wonderful -friend--you are indeed.--I can never thank you enough. It's a miracle." - -Florrie patted her shoulder--she had her arm around her shoulders. "My -best thanks will be to see you happy in it, Edie dear, and getting well -and strong again in it. It's a regular surprise-packet, this garden, let -me tell you, my dear. It'll go on, that border, right up till November, -one thing after another: I thought it all out, pencil and paper and -catalogue in hand. I went over the whole colour-scheme with Mrs. -Isaacson--there's no one who knows more about it. And since most of the -herbaceous things came from her garden, it didn't cost as much as you'd -think. They've always heaps of plants left over when they divide in -autumn, and everything was at my disposal; and all the latest varieties, -as I needn't say. Wait till you see the lilies--yes, my dear, I've found -room for everything; where there's a will there's a way is my motto, you -know--and the phloxes and the chrysanthemums." - -She would never see them, though she was sure that they would all be -very beautiful; she would never see these latest varieties from Mrs. -Isaacson's garden. And she would never see her own little garden again. -How wonderfully fortunate it was--the thought went through her mind -confusedly as she sat there, feeling herself droop against Florrie's -shoulder--that she was not to live with Florrie's and to go on missing -her own garden. How fortunate--but her thoughts swam more and more and -tears dazed her eyes--that she had not to say good-bye twice to her -pansies. She had died, then, really,--that was it,--on the moonlight -night when she had last seen them. And she had left the house to -Florrie, dear kind Florrie, and Florrie would go on having tea happily -under the festoons of roses. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PINK FOXGLOVES - - -THEY were only beginning to revert. Last summer they had stood, spires -of fretted snow tapering at the points to jade-coloured buds, at the -edge of the little copse where the garden path lost itself among young -larches, birches, hazels, and poplars, black and white. The sun set -behind the copse, spreading in the summer evenings a pale gold -background, and often when he went to look at his foxgloves and to -listen to the lonely song of the willow-wren, rippling, like a tiny rill -of water, from the heart of the wood, Aubrey Westmacott had felt that -there was something almost dangerous in such bliss as this. To breathe -this limpid air, to hear the willow-wren, to look at white foxgloves, -and to know himself free forever from the long oppression of London--if -he could have sung his wistful gratitude, his melancholy joy, the song -might have been like the bird's. - -This year the change in the foxgloves had come as a complete surprise; -he was still a novice at gardening. He had left his beloved garden for a -week; regretfully, for he could not bear to lose a day of it--he was -like a lover with a bride, long pined for, who each day grows dearer and -lovelier; but he had gone, because it seemed churlish to refuse the old -don friend at Cambridge--and when he returned, at evening, and had -walked down to the copse and had seen them standing there, so delicately -yet so decisively altered, the shock of the surprise had seemed all -delight. He had intended white foxgloves to rise, always, against the -copse; but then he had not known how lovely pink foxgloves could be. He -had never seen them of such a shade, each bell of palest rose brimmed -with shadows of mauve, and finely freaked within. Regiments of the white -flowers had remained steadfast, so that there could be no sense of loss, -and he had picked an armful of the pink ones and carried them back to -the house, feeling, as he looked at them against his shoulder, that he -would have liked to kiss them. He spent the remaining hours of dusk in -arranging them. He never allowed the parlourmaid to arrange the flowers. -That she saw him, tolerantly, if with a flavour of irony, as a very -eccentric gentleman, he was aware, just as he was aware, quite -cheerfully, that many of his kind neighbours found him a rather absurd -one. But one of the deepest joys this new life afforded him, after the -paternal bliss of seeing the darlings grow, was in disposing them about -the rooms, with a loving discrimination that Ridley's skilled but cold -and conventional hands could never have accomplished. - -This evening he put the foxgloves in the drawing-room, a tall jar on the -bureau, a taller jar on the piano, and a group in the vast white Chinese -bowl, wedged cunningly into place with stones among the stems. Here he -could look at them next morning as he worked at his history. He always -worked in the drawing-room, for there he had the morning sun, and, if -he could not see his massed and tiered herbaceous border, could look out -at the cherry tree and at the tiny squares of terraced lawns, dropping -from level to level, with their stone steps and low stone walls and -narrow jewelled bordering of flowers. - -There was a very nice little study behind the dining-room--it was from -the dining-room that one saw the herbaceous border, and he could -meditate future rearrangements and harmonies while he ate his -breakfast--but the study looked out on the stable shrubberies. He liked, -too, to feel himself encompassed by his treasures, old and new, while he -wrote of medival customs; his mother's incompetent but loveable -water-colours, sketches of her old home, the grey, ancient, gabled house -among just such Cotswold slopes and uplands as his western windows -looked out upon, though his mother's old home, passed long since to -alien hands, lay on the other side of the county; and his father's -seafaring trophies, from China and Japan and far Pacific islands, and -all the lately acquired delightful solidities of Jacobean oak, and his -maturest choice in printed linen. Here, on their background of mullioned -window or dark wainscoting--such a gem of a little Jacobean house it -was--the pink foxgloves greeted him next morning, set among feathery -heads and sharp green spears of meadow grass, glimmering and poised on -tiptoe, like groups of softly blushing nymphs, and he stood for a long -time looking at them, his hands clasped behind his back. - -He was forty-six, a fragile little man, blanched and stooping from the -long years of imprisonment in the Government office, from which the -undreamed-of inheritance had released him only three years ago, with -faded gold hair hanging across his forehead and a gentle face of stifled -dreams, the mouth slightly puckering as if in intentness on some task. -The eyes, of a dim yet dense pastel blue that told darkly in his faded -face, were intent, too, but not acute; they dwelt; they did not -penetrate. He wore a small, short moustache, and a pair of gold -_pince-nez_ dangled at his coat button. - -Delicate as he had always been, and ineffectual, as he had always so -dejectedly been aware of being, he, too, with all his relatives, had -thought it very fortunate when, on leaving the university, he had -secured the tiny post in the Civil Service. There, he knew, he would -stay; he was not of the type that rises, and he had never during the -long years that followed rebelled consciously against his fate. He was, -he often told himself reproachfully, so very fortunate compared with men -far abler and more deserving than himself. He found that he could not -write, as he had hoped to do, after the conscientious hours at the -office. He read a great deal, and crept away to the country for every -week-end, sitting by meadow or river, like a dusty mouse let loose from -its trap and softly panting in the sunlight. He was often ill, and the -doctors always recommended a country life, but it was not on hygienic -grounds that he pined for limpid spaces and starry solitudes. There was -a soft passion in his blood, inherited from the mother whom he so much -resembled, for the sights and sounds and occupations of rurality. He -adored flowers. He often dreamed of them at night, and in waking hours -the thought of a garden of his own haunted him. Sometimes he went to -stay with friends in their gardens; but this was an ambiguous joy; it -was like seeing the pink and white babies playing about their nurses and -perambulators in the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens, and having no -claim to kiss any of them. He loved children, too. - -And now he found himself transplanted to this wonderful fairy tale by -Uncle Percy's legacy. He still, often, could hardly realize it. There -was a haze of dizzy delight over all the memory of the last three years; -the search for a house, the securing of Meadows, the furnishing and -ordering of his household--he who had lived in rooms in Kensington for -twenty-four years, ruled over by a flawlessly honest but relentless -landlady! To think that he could have other fish for breakfast than -finnan haddock, and other vegetables in winter than cabbage! This was a -minor but an emphatic pleasure. - -But above all, around all, the garden! He had planned and planted it -all, studying books, brooding over catalogues, making lists, writing -labels ever so neatly. The vegetables were given over to the gardener; -but his flowers, except for deep trenching--and oh, how deep, how rich, -he saw to it that it was! he tended single-handed. His seed-boxes, his -cold-frames, his tools and baskets, how he adored them all, and how -happy he was in any small personal economies, so that extravagance in -manure and bone-meal and leaf-mould should be well justified. The -history of medival customs was also a long-cherished ideal, but it -remained of secondary interest; his heart, always, was in the garden, -meditating mulchings, waterings, or hoeings. Every dream had come true, -had more than realized itself. Was it any wonder that he should feel -himself going softly in his amazed gratitude, should sometimes, as when -he listened to the willow-wren at evening, feel that such happiness was -dangerous. - -It had not seemed to flaw the happiness, it had seemed but to add a -sweeter undertone to it, melancholy yet blissful, that into the new -Paradise there should have stolen a new longing, and that, as of old, he -should find himself haunted by an unattainable loveliness. He thought of -this as he looked at the pink foxgloves, for they made him think of the -face of Leila Pickering. "Yes, yes, yes," he said to himself, as he -turned to the medival history, for he had the habit, caught from his -long loneliness, of speaking much to himself and with a quaint -repetition of words that stole into his social speech, "it is she they -are like; she they are like. Lovely, lovely, like her." - -Later in the morning, privileged as she was to interrupt even the -history, it was Mrs. Pomfrey who informed him that the strange, delicate -beauty was transitory, an unfixed type, and that, next year, or in a -very few years, the palely rosy nymphs would be purple. - -"They'll revert. You can get pink ones, you know, from the seedsmen; -rosy carmine they call it; but not at all this colour. I've never seen a -colour quite like this. Your soil must do it. I've always thought the -soil of Meadows had magic in it." - -Mrs. Pomfrey was the late rector's widow, and lived in a thicket of -roses half a mile away in the village. She was tall, black-robed, -majestic, and melancholy, with a deep voice and black eyes and a high, -hooked nose and large false teeth that shifted slightly and slightly -clashed together when she spoke. She had survived all emotions except -the grief of having to grow her roses on a clayless soil, and to this -grief she often returned. A girlhood friend of Aubrey Westmacott's -mother, she had been his link with Windbury. His week-ends with her -there had been the very comets of his dark London sky, and for years he -had seen Meadows inadequately tenanted, with an eye of brooding love. - -"Oh! they'll revert to purple, then," he said, somewhat distressed; and -he repeated "purple, purple," several times, as if to familiarize -himself with the sound and very sight of it, while Mrs. Pomfrey answered -him, "Give 'em time and they'll all revert. You must dig 'em up and sow -again from year to year if you want to keep 'em pure." - -"Not that I don't care very much for the purple ones," said Aubrey; -"they are most beautiful flowers, most beautiful; but it's wild in -woods, that I like best to see them. It will be a business to replant; -dear me! It took me a day of hard work to establish my white ones in -that haphazard-looking little colony down there." - -"Gardening is all hard work," said Mrs. Pomfrey, "and all -disappointment, for the most part, too. It's only the things you didn't -expect to succeed that ever do, and any effect you particularly count on -is pretty sure to fail you." She tempered her grimness by a slight, -bleak smile, however, for she and Aubrey Westmacott understood each -other and had the gardener's soul, for which no work is too hard and no -disappointments too many. - -"It will be very wonderful to have the intervals of pink to look forward -to, though," Aubrey found the atonement. "They are singularly lovely, -aren't they? Will you think me very silly, now, I wonder, or sillier -than you always think me?" - -"I don't think you silly, my dear Aubrey," Mrs. Pomfrey interposed, -"only guileless; you are very guileless; I've thought that ever since -you were taken in by that dreadful cook of yours, who had red hair, and -got drunk and rubbed the whitebait through a sieve." - -"Well," Aubrey continued, smiling his gentle, tentative smile, "my -foxgloves, at all events, can't take me in, and since they are so very -unusual and so lovely I thought I'd ask a few people in to-day to see -them. The Carews, you know, and Barton, and Mrs. and Miss Pickering. And -you--if you can come. I'll put it off till to-morrow, if that will -secure you, only the foxgloves may not be quite so lovely by then." - -"I will come with pleasure, my dear Aubrey," said Mrs. Pomfrey, "and -though nobody will appreciate your foxgloves as you do, we shall all -enjoy your tea." - -"Miss Pickering cares very much for flowers, you know, very much. We've -talked a great deal about flowers," said Aubrey, swinging his eyeglass -and nodding as he looked at his old friend. - -"Does she? She doesn't know much about 'em though." - -"No; all those years in India, and in towns. She has lived so much in -towns. Such an inappropriate life it seems for such an exquisite -creature." - -"Does it?" said Mrs. Pomfrey. She added after a moment, as if with -concession, "She is a very pretty girl." - -Aubrey Westmacott was not acute. "Isn't she?" he said eagerly. "A -beautiful and noble and lovely head, isn't it? like a flower; she is -altogether like a flower, with her slenderness and height. Do you know," -he went on, swinging his glasses more quickly, while he kept his -ingenuous eyes on his friend, "can you guess the flower she makes me -think of? In that pale pink dress, that pink dress she wore the other -day at the rectory garden party, and with that white hat lined with -pink. Can you guess?" His eyes overflowed with their suggestion. - -Mrs. Pomfrey moved hers from his face to the foxgloves. "Like those, I -suppose you mean." - -"_Isn't_ she?" he repeated. "Now, isn't it quite remarkable? You see it, -too." - -"Yes; I see it," said Mrs. Pomfrey. She studied the flowers and again, -after a deliberating pause, went on, "Do you think Mrs. Pickering is -like purple foxgloves?" - -Aubrey's eyeglass tumbled from his hand. He was astonished, almost -indignant. "Mrs. Pickering?" - -"She looks like her daughter," said Mrs. Pomfrey; "as much like her, -that is, as a purple foxglove looks like a pink one." - -"I can imagine nothing more unlike a flower than Mrs. Pickering," said -Aubrey, with gathered repudiation. - -"No; certainly; she's not at all like a flower. She's more like a -sparrow--something sharp and commonplace and civic. I only intended an -analogy, for she must have been a very pretty girl." - -"Nothing could be less sharp or commonplace or civic than Miss -Pickering." Aubrey was now deeply flushed. - -"Oh, of course not, my dear Aubrey; she is very unusual looking," Mrs. -Pomfrey again conceded. "And she is tall and her mother is short. Old -Colonel Pickering, too, was tall, I remember. I saw him once or twice -when they were living at Cheltenham the year before he died! a bleached, -dull, oppressed old man, a much better type than the wife; she ruled -him, I heard, with a rod of iron. One may be sure that she doesn't rule -Miss Leila. She is a young lady with a will of her own, unless I am much -mistaken in her." - -"A will of her own; yes, yes"--Aubrey eagerly, pathetically to Mrs. -Pomfrey's ear, gathered up the ambiguous fragments--"and great firmness -of will; great decision of character; and the serenity, you know, the -sweet dignity that go with it, that so often go with it. You have -noticed her serenity, her dignity. And she is very silent--a great -contrast to her mother. I often wonder what brought them here. It's very -fortunate for all of us; but Mrs. Pickering is, as you say, so civic, -yes, so commonplace, that I don't understand what she can find in this -quiet place to please her. She certainly doesn't care about her garden. -Those beds about The Cottage are very distressing; they distress Miss -Pickering." - -"It's quite clear to me why they came," said Mrs. Pomfrey. "They can't -afford London, and, I suppose, know nobody there if they could; and -there is more chance of a pretty girl like Miss Leila marrying well here -than there is in Cheltenham. She doesn't hunt, it's true; but the -hunting makes a difference, and there is a good deal going on in one -way and another. Mrs. Pickering hoped to capture Arthur Barton; she made -that very evident. But he has never looked at another woman since his -wife died, and never will, I imagine; at all events, he didn't look at -Miss Leila." - -Aubrey's eyes, dwelling on her, expressed reprobation and almost horror. -"She tried to marry her daughter to Barton! That lovely child and -Barton! What a terrible woman!" - -"Miss Pickering must be a good twenty-five, my dear Aubrey, and I was -married at eighteen. No; I don't like Mrs. Pickering, but I can see -nothing reprehensible in her determination to settle her daughter well -in life." - -"But Barton! He is fifty! He must be fifty! He must be older than I am; -yes, very considerably older than I am." - -"Well?" said Mrs. Pomfrey, and there was a mingled reluctance and -grimness in her smile, "and do you think of yourself as unmarriageable?" - -He ran his hand several times over his head and through his hair. He was -still flushed, but suddenly he became pale, swallowing quickly several -times. - -"Do you know--you have said something--you have made me think -something--put something before me. Yes; I must tell you, I must tell -you," he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and fixing his eyes -on the wall above Mrs. Pomfrey's head. "I love her; I love Miss -Pickering. You may think it absurd. I know I'm a dull old bachelor; -everything of that sort; but there it is. Ever since I saw her, a year -ago, when they first came. I never dreamed of anything else. A dull old -bachelor, nothing to offer, and twice her age. But I can't help -wondering--it's only a wonder--whether there might just be a chance for -me--if you don't think my age, and all that, makes it impossible. What I -mean," Aubrey finished, with a sort of quiet desperation, "is--could she -love me? It would have to be love with a girl like Miss Pickering. Am I -a man that a girl like that could love?" - -Tears now were in his eyes as he brought them back to Mrs. Pomfrey's, -and seated upon the sofa, the pink foxgloves in the Chinese bowl beside -her, she looked back at him very gravely. She was so grave that for some -moments she was silent. Then, before speaking, she took out her -spectacles and polished them and put them on. She saw him quite well -without them. It was as if in emphasis of the gravity of the moment. -And, in the first place, she did not answer his question. - -"How much have you seen, my dear Aubrey, of this young lady?" she -enquired. - -He said, faltering, that he had seen a good deal of Miss Pickering -during this spring and summer. Mrs. Pickering had been very kind, had -asked him there quite often for tennis; and Miss Pickering had been far -more kind, for she had played with him and he was a wretched player, -though he was so fond of the game. "And we've had one or two little -walks. She came with me to the woods this spring and helped me to dig -anemone roots. Oh! I don't pretend it's anything at all; it's only, I -know, her kindness; I never thought it anything else. But--if you really -don't think me absurd for dreaming of it--?" He faltered to a long -gazing question. - -Mrs. Pomfrey now rose. She stood looking away from him, then moved -towards the door. "My dear Aubrey," she said, "I think of you what -anybody who knows you must think--that the woman who wins your love is -one of the most fortunate of women. Whether you are the kind of man that -a girl like Miss Pickering could love, I cannot say. I've really seen -very little of her. All that I know of her is that she is very pretty -and has nice quiet manners. If she marries you, she is, as I say, the -most fortunate of women." - -Mrs. Pomfrey stepped out into the little square, flagged hall. He -accompanied her to the garden gate, following her speechless, while, -lifting up her skirts, displaying large, flat-heeled shoes, she stepped -down from terrace to terrace. She paused at the last. - -"Your Alpine phlox is doing very nicely. You'll find that by next year -it will have spread to a foot across," she said. He had put in the -Alpine phlox the autumn before under her supervision. She added at the -gate, "By that time there may be a Mrs. Westmacott at Meadows." - -Pale, almost tearful, he pressed her hand over the gate. "I can't say -how I thank you," he murmured. - -After a little while he was able to compose his thoughts and write his -notes. Thompson took them round, and before lunch he had his answers. -They could all come, except Mr. Barton, the dapper, fussy, kindly, -pepper-and-salt little squire, who lived in the beautiful big house just -over the nearest hill; he had gone up to London for the day. - -Aubrey very much enjoyed giving little tea-parties at Meadows. In London -he had not enjoyed them at all. He had given them when duty required -it, and he had sometimes been very extravagant and had taken a couple of -young girl cousins, up for the season, to a restaurant and a play. But -he had never enjoyed these occasions. He was shy and a poor talker, and -in London the demands upon one's personality were too heavy to make his -entertaining a success. The demands upon one's personality in the -country were so small and so easily satisfied; a garden talked for one -and entertained for one. All his neighbours, except Mrs. Pickering, -whose formal beds did not count, had gardens and were profoundly -interested in them. The mild, middle-aged Carews were authorities, and -to-day he remembered, with all the pressure of his new preoccupations, -that he must question them about that matter of mulching. - -At four-thirty he saw two parasols approaching along his box hedges--one -was black and one was rose-colour; his heart stood still when he saw it. -She would be wearing, then, the dress that made her look more than ever -like a pink foxglove. He went down the terraces to greet mother and -daughter at the gate. - -Mrs. Pickering was short and stout and blonde, her slightly rapacious -features--small aquiline nose, small smiling mouth, and small projecting -chin--embedded and muffled, as it were, in powdery expanses of cheek and -throat. She had an unsmiling, steel-blue eye, appraising, determined, -deliberate, under its level bar of dark eyebrow. She did not please -Aubrey. Her voice in especial, metallic yet glossy, as if with a careful -veneer, disturbed him. A gossiping lady of the neighbourhood had -informed him that Mrs. Pickering's origins were quite lacking in -distinction and that in her handsome girlhood she had stalked the -stupid Colonel--of a quite good family--and had brought him down, -resistless, at the first shot. These stories, for which he had not liked -his informant the more, seemed to hover in Mrs. Pickering's glance and -smile, and her voice to preserve the flavour of many strategies and -triumphs. But Aubrey did not look for long at Mrs. Pickering. She -rustled in, dressed in her fashionable black and white, a long chain of -steel and brilliants crossing her buttressed bosom, a crest of plumes, -black and white, waving upon her head. - -Miss Pickering followed her mother. Tall, very tall, and poised with a -lovely grace, she was, but for the arresting darkness of brows and -lashes, fair; with the infantile fairness, the wild-rose tints, that to -the ingenuous male will always seem to vouch for a spiritual -exquisiteness to match. And she, too, had small, aquiline features, and -her hair was as golden as the heart of a wild rose. She did not smile, -like her mother; she was a serene young lady, and silent, as loveliness -should be. - -"This sweet place!" said Mrs. Pickering. "How charmingly you are -improving it, Mr. Westmacott; it looks prettier every time I see it." - -"It will take years before it looks as I mean it to look," said Aubrey, -leading them up the terraces. "That's the joy of gardening, isn't it? It -gives one something to plan for one's whole future." He smiled with a -slight appealingness at Miss Pickering. "I am afraid I make myself -rather foolish sometimes; I talk so much about my garden." - -"I don't wonder that you do," said Mrs. Pickering; "it's quite a little -Paradise." - -In the drawing-room it was Mrs. Pickering who continued to talk. She -renewed her laments over the water-colours. "To think that these -beautiful old places should get into the hands of common middle-class -people!"--Aubrey had again to assure her that the people who had bought -his mother's old home were very nice indeed.--And Mrs. Pickering said -that she doted upon his room, "So old-world, so peaceful!" and -expatiated on the view of the terraced lawns and further meadows from -the window. She made no comment on his foxgloves, and it seemed like a -presage of happiness when Miss Pickering, from her chair, remarked, -looking up at them, "How lovely your pink foxgloves are!" - -"You think so? You like them? Yes, yes, are they not lovely?" He was -delighted with her commendation. - -"It's such a pretty idea, putting them with the grasses," said Miss -Pickering. "I do like lots of flowers in a room." - -He did not have an opportunity of speaking with her alone till after -tea. Then, when they had all gone into the garden--how it happened he -did not know, for he would not have dared arrange it--he found himself -walking down the path towards the copse with Miss Pickering, while -behind them, quite far already behind them, Mrs. Pickering paused and -exclaimed over the herbaceous border, Mr. Carew beside her. Mrs. Carew -and Mrs. Pomfrey had sat down under the trees near the house. - -"Would you like to see the pink foxgloves growing?" he asked her. "They -are very beautiful growing--more beautiful, I think you'll feel, than in -the house." - -"I'd love to see them," said Miss Pickering. - -They crossed the slip of meadow among the tall grasses and, "There," -said Aubrey, pointing, with a faint smile, "there they are!" - -"_How_ sweet!" said Miss Pickering, with her serene emphasis. They stood -to look. - -"Do you know," said Aubrey, wondering at himself, but he felt upborne, -"that I find they look like you--the pink ones." - -"Really?" She smiled now, turning her calm, blue eyes upon him. "That's -very flattering." - -"No, no; not flattering; not at all flattering," said Aubrey. "Not at -all, not at all," he repeated under his breath. He could say no more -just then. They walked on, his heart in a flutter. - -"Have you ever heard a willow-wren, Miss Pickering?" he asked suddenly. - -"A willow-wren? I don't think so. I don't know much about birds." - -"It is usually singing in the wood at this hour. Would you care to come -and see if we can hear it?" - -"I'd love to. I wish you'd teach me all about birds," said Miss -Pickering. - -His heart was thumping now. They entered the copse. It seemed to him, as -they passed them, that the foxgloves were tall angels set about Paradise -and welcoming him there. It was very still among the trees. Miss -Pickering walked lightly beside him. She, too, looked like an angel. -They reached a clearing, where an old fallen log lay, and here they sat -down. "We shall hear it, I think," said Aubrey, "if we sit here -quietly." - -Presently, in the stillness, the little bird began to sing its song, the -descending chromatic chain of liquid notes, melancholy and happy; the -song of his very soul, Aubrey felt, and that the bird said for him all -that he could not say as, with head bent, he sat listening, the beloved -presence beside him. She was part of the song; and in it, as they -listened together, their very hearts were mingling. They knew each -other, he felt sure, very well. - -"How sweet!" she murmured, and he nodded, not able to look at her. - -There was a silence, and then the bird sang again. He raises his eyes to -hers now, and they turned to him and smiled. Her hand lay on the rough -bark of the log, and his was near it. Was it her hand that responded to -the unconscious appeal of his, or had he dared? He held it. That was the -bewildering, the transcending fact. - -"Oh, Miss Pickering! Miss Leila--Leila," he stammered. "May I tell you? -May I ask you? Can you care for me?" - -Her eyes still smiled, if very gravely. "Do you really love me?" she -murmured. - -"Oh, Leila!" he repeated. The willow-wren still sang, but all the little -chains of sound seemed to be woven into a mist about him, trembling, -shining. He held her hand to his lips. He wished to kneel before her. -This was Paradise. - -"It's so very sudden," said Leila Pickering. "I never dreamed you cared -till just now." - -"Ever since I saw you first--ever since I saw your eyes. It has been -like the fragrance of my flowers at evening, like the moon rising on my -flowers. I did not dare to hope--you so young, so lovely;--life before -you." - -"I think we can be very happy together," said Leila Pickering. "I knew -you were a dear from the first moment I saw you, too." - -The willow-wren stopped singing now and flew away. In the distance, -then, he heard the liquid, dropping notes, and they sounded very sad. -His arm was around Leila Pickering, and she leaned her head on his -shoulder, so that in an ecstasy of wonder he felt the warm brightness of -her hair against his cheek. He had never heard her talk so much. She -told him that she had had such a dull, horrid life, so poor, knowing -such tiresome, second-rate people. And she did not get on at all well -with her mother. - -"Nobody has ever really understood me--till you came," she said, sitting -upright now beside him, the lovely colour in her cheeks delicately -heightened, her eyes shining while she talked. She confided in him. She -loved him. They were betrothed--this was the blissful, culminating -thought that seemed to go in waves of music through him as he gazed at -her. He had ceased to hear the willow-wren's melancholy little song. And -then he heard her say: - -"I don't want to live in the country, you know. You won't mind? Of -course I love it; but we can pay week-end visits, always;--you must know -such heaps of nice people; friends. And we'll travel too--I long to see -the world. India doesn't count. Only think, I've never been to Paris -except once--on a horrid, cheap trip, for a week. We never could afford -to do anything really amusing or buy any really nice things. My life has -been so frightfully dull, and I do want to stretch my wings and see lots -of people and entertain and go to plays, you know. I adore London. I'm -sure I shall be a good hostess." - -It was as if a sword had transfixed him. He seemed to hear a great bell -booming--a great London bell--Big Ben; he had always heard Big Ben from -his office in Whitehall, and there had been a jangle of bells in -Kensington, too, and a roar, a ceaseless roar. And he seemed to hear the -words "Dangerous, dangerous." He had been too happy. - -He kept his mild, kind eyes of a pastel blue upon her, and he told -himself, while he wrestled, transfixed, that she must not guess; but, as -if pressed from his anguish, he heard himself murmuring helplessly, -though the gentle, fixed smile held his lips, "You don't care for my -little place, then? You wouldn't care to go on living at Meadows? It's a -nice little place, Meadows--a nice little place; we could make it very -pretty, and we could have people here, as many as you wanted." - -Had a note of pleading, almost desperate, crept in unawares? He saw her -calm eyes harden slightly, fixed on him. And he saw, then, tears rise in -them. - -"Oh! it's so dull, so dull, down here!" she breathed. "It's a darling -little place, Meadows--of course, of course I love it. I wish we could -afford to keep it, just to run down to for a quiet week-end now and -then; but you couldn't, could you? And it's far too small for -entertaining, isn't it? And no one really smart cares to come and stay -with one if one has no shooting, nothing to offer. One can really _live_ -in London--I've always felt that. You do care more for me than you do -for Meadows?" she finished with a smile, half appealing and half -challenging. - -And looking into the blue eyes, blurred and enlarged, like a child's, -with their tears, he saw himself as mean and petty and selfish. He loved -her, and was it only as another flower to place among his flowers, -another treasure to place among his treasures, a possession of his own, -without end or purpose for itself? He loved her, and, unimaginably, she -loved him and would marry him. Love must know pain and sacrifice--"pain -and sacrifice"--he seemed to hear himself repeating. This was a young -life, with its rights to life, and it must stretch its wings. - -He smiled at her and raised her hand again to his lips, saying, "Of -course I care more for you than for Meadows, dear Leila. Of course we -will live where you choose." - -And very radiant now, rising and smiling down upon him, Leila Pickering -said, "You _are_ a dear. I'm sure it's best for us both; we'd get so -pokey here. I know we couldn't afford Mayfair--I wouldn't dream of that; -but I think a house in one of those little new streets near Cadogan -Square would be just right for us; don't you?" - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CARNATIONS - - -I - -RUPERT WILSON came into the studio where his wife, who had been out -sketching all the morning, was washing her paint-brushes, carefully -turning and rubbing them in a pot of turpentine. She wore her painting -apron, for Marian in the midst of her artistic avocations was always -neat and spotless; and, half turned from him as she was, she did not -look round as he entered. Rupert carried his stick, a rustic, ashen -stick of which he was very fond, and his Panama hat; he was going out -and Marian probably knew that he was going out, and where; this made it -more difficult to say in a sufficiently disengaged voice, "I'm just -going down to see Mrs. Dallas for a little while." - -"Oh! are you?" said Marian. She continued to stir her brushes, and -though her wish, also, very evidently was to appear disengaged and -indifferent, she was not able to carry it out, for she added, as if -irrepressibly, "You need hardly have taken the trouble to come and tell -me that." - -Rupert looked at her, and since she did not look at him, it was very -intently, as if to measure to the full the difference between this -Marian and the Marian he had known and believed in. It was hard to -realize that his wife should show a trivial and unworthy jealousy and -should strike him such a blow; for that it was a blow he knew from the -heat in his cheek and the quickening of his pulse; but, as he looked at -her, standing there turned from him, her blue apron girt about her, her -black hair bound so gracefully around her head, the realization -uppermost in his mind was that Marian, since the second baby had come, -had grown very stout and matronly. He seemed to see it to-day for the -first time, as if his awareness of it came to emphasize his sudden -consciousness of her spiritual deficiency. - -When he had met and fallen so very deeply in love with Marian, she had -been, if not slender, yet of a supple and shapely form, with just -roundness and softness enough to contrast delightfully with her rather -boyish head, her air, clear, fresh, frank, of efficiency and swiftness. -He had, of course, found her a great deal more than clear and fresh and -frank; but, entangled as he had been in that wretched love-affair with -Aime Pollard,--the pretty, untalented young actress who had so -shamefully misused him,--torn to pieces and sunken in quagmires as he -had been, these qualities in Marian had reached him first like a draught -of cold spring water, like dawn over valley hills. These were the -metaphors he had very soon used to her when she had applied her firm, -kind hands to the disentangling of his knots and her merry, steady mind -to tracing out for him the path of honourable retreat. He had found her -so wonderful and lovely and had fallen so much in love with her that his -ardour, aided by her quiet fidelity, had overborne all the opposition -of her people. Foolish, conventional people they were,--their opposition -based, it appeared, almost unimaginably to his generous young mind, on -the fact that Marian happened to have money and that he had none, except -what he might make by his books; and also, though it was nearly as -unimaginable, on the fact that a good many of these people were in the -peerage. Marian, a year before he had met her, had broken away from the -stereotyped routine of their country life and had come to London to -study painting; and it was that Marian of the past who had seemed to -share to the full all his idealisms. They had married within three -months of their meeting. - -From such a dawn, white, fresh, blissful, to this dull daylight! from -such a Marian to this narrow-minded matron! Marian still had beauty. Her -clear eyes were as blue, her wide, pale lips as sweet; but she was a -matron. Her neck had grown shorter, her chin heavier; the girlish grace -of glance and smile seemed muted, muffled by their setting; there was no -longer any poetry in her physique. And as Rupert stood looking at her -and seeing all this, his sense of grievance, though he was unaware of -this factor in it, grew deeper. - -A little while passed before he said,--and it was, he felt, with -dignity,--"I really don't know what you mean by that, Marian." - -She had now finished her brushes and had taken up her palette. She began -to scrape the edges as she answered,--and her voice was not schooled, it -was heavy with its irony and gloom,--"Don't you? I'm sorry." - -"I trust indeed that it doesn't mean that you are jealous of my -friendship for Mrs. Dallas?" - -"Friendship? Oh, no; I'm not jealous of any friendship." - -"Of my affection, then; of my love, if you like," said Rupert. "You know -perfectly well what I feel about all that--and I thought you felt it, -too. It's the very centre of my life, of my art; my books turn on it. -It's the thing I have most of all to say to the world. Love isn't a -measured, limited thing; its nature is to grow and give. My love for -Mrs. Dallas doesn't touch your and my relation; it enriches it rather." - -Marian scraped her palette and said nothing. He could see her cheek, the -cheek that ran too massively into her neck. Marian's skin was white and -fine; a faint colour now rose to it; a faint colour was, in Marian, a -deep blush. - -To see her blush like that gave him an odd sensation. It was as if the -blush were echoed in his heart; he felt it grow and melt softly, and -there drifted through his mind a thought of Mrs. Dallas and of her -magic. - -Through the studio window, draped with its summer creepers, he could see -the two perambulators moored in the shade of the lime tree on the lawn. -The babies were having their afternoon sleep. He was very fond of his -children; and to feel, now, mingling with the strange, yearning glow, -this pause of contemplative fondness, was to feel himself justified anew -and anew aggrieved. The glow of tenderness seemed to envelope the babies -as well as Mrs. Dallas. And it shut out Marian. - -What had she to complain of? Was he not a tender husband and a loving -father? Could she suspect his love for Mrs. Dallas--it was she herself -who had forced him to use that word--of grossness or vulgarity? It was -as high and as pure as his love for her. - -His love for Marian had evolved into the perambulators, and this -recognition, flitting unseasonably, vexed him with a sense of slight -confusion that made him feel more injured than before. It was true that, -theoretically, he held views so advanced as to justify, in true, -self-dedicating passion, all manifestations. Practice and theory in his -young life had been far apart; but the thought of passion, in connection -with Mrs. Dallas, had, as it were, been made visible by Marian's blush; -and, slightly swinging his hat, slightly knotting his brows as he looked -at the matronly Marian, he groped for some new formulation of his creed, -since it was evident that however much he might love Marian it was no -longer passion he felt for her. One must perhaps allow that passions -could not be contemporaneous; but he had always combated this shackling -view. - -He stood there, gazing, trying to think it out,--a tall young man, well -made yet slightly uncouth, with ruffled, heavy locks and large intent -eyes. Something of the look of a not quite purely bred Saint Bernard -puppy he had; confiding, young and foolish, with his knotted brow and -nose a little overlong. And as he found himself unable to think it out -and as Marian still stood silent, scraping, scraping away at the palette -in an exasperating fashion, he said,--and now in an openly aggrieved -voice,--"I thought you liked her yourself; I thought you quite loved -her. You seemed to." - -Now that he was losing his temper, Marian was regaining hers. Her voice -had all the advantage of quiet intentions as she answered, "I did like -her; I thought her very charming. I don't dislike her now. But I'm -sorry to see a woman of her age behaving with so little dignity." - -"A woman of her age! Dignity!" - -"She is at least forty-five." - -"I don't follow your meaning. Is a woman of forty-five cut off from -human relationships?" - -"From some, certainly; if she has any regard, as I say, for her dignity. -And a woman in Mrs. Dallas's position ought to be particularly careful." - -"Mrs. Dallas's position!" She really reduced him to disgusted -exclamations. - -"You know, Rupert, that there are all sorts of stories about her. You -know that Mrs. Trotter told us that her first husband divorced her on -account of Colonel Dallas.--Other stories, too." - -"Upon my word! You astonish me, Marian! You heard all these vile tales -when we first came here,--from people, too, who you'll observe, run to -Mrs. Dallas's dinner-parties whenever they have the chance,--and you -didn't seem to mind them much when you were going there almost every -day--and taking every one you knew to see her. What about your Aunt -Sophy--if you believed these stories?--An old dragon of conventionality -like your Aunt Sophy! You took her again and again, and arranged that -luncheon in London with her when you and Mrs. Dallas went up--so that -they should have another chance really to make friends. I remember you -used the expression, 'really make friends.' It's odd to hear you talking -of stories at this late hour." - -"I only talk of them because Mrs. Dallas has made me remember them. I am -quite as open-minded as you are about such things. I was just as ready -to think well of her--even if they were true. Why do you call them vile? -You wouldn't think it wrong for a woman to leave her husband if she -didn't love him, and to go with a man she did love. If Mrs. Dallas did -that, why is it vile to say so?--Aunt Sophy, as a matter of fact, said -it was a different story. And she was charmed with Mrs. Dallas, just as -I'd determined she should be, stories or no stories. I did all I could -for her, because I counted myself her friend and thought it a shame that -any one so charming should be handicapped in any way. But I didn't -imagine that a friend would try to take my husband from me." Marian -spoke with severe and deliberate calm. - -"I like that! I really do like that!" said Rupert, laughing bitterly. -"It's really funny to hear you talk as if Mrs. Dallas could owe you -anything! I wish she could hear you! I wish we could have her -dispassionate opinion of that hideous old bore of an Aunt Sophy. It was -obvious enough that she put up with her simply and solely through -friendship for you. Do all you could for her! A woman who has hordes of -friends--charming, finished, cosmopolitan people of the world! Why, my -dear girl, it's she, let me tell you, who has given you more chances -than you ever had in your life for meeting really interesting people! -They're not the sort you'd be likely to meet at your Aunt Sophy's, -certainly. They'd perish in her _milieu_!" - -"Mrs. Dallas doesn't perish in it," Marian coldly commented. "On the -contrary, I never saw her more alert. She didn't seem to find Aunt Sophy -in the least a bore. She was very much pleased indeed to lunch there and -she has looked her up every time she's gone to London since; moreover, -she's going to stay with her at Crofts this autumn. It doesn't look -like boredom." - -"I wish her joy of Crofts! She's a complete woman of the world, of -course, and she knows how to put up with all sorts and conditions of -bores. She's taken on Lady Sophy because she's your friend. It's -pitiful--it's unbelievable to see her so misjudged!--Take me from you! -I've never gone there but she's asked me why you didn't come. She still -sends you flowers pretty well every day. Those are hers, I see. I'm glad -that you've deigned to put them in water." - -The tall sheaf of carnations, white and rose and yellow, that stood in a -jug on a shelf in the studio must, evidently, have come from Mrs. -Dallas's garden. No other person grew such carnations. The garden at -Ashleigh Lodge, this pleasant country house that they had taken for the -six summer months, was not its strong point, and Mrs. Dallas had kept -them reinforced from her abundance. Rupert associated the carnations, -their soft and glowing colours, their formal grace and spicy sweetness, -with the whole growth of his devotion to Mrs. Dallas. He fixed his -indignant eyes on them now. - -"Of course I put them into water. I am going to arrange them and take -them into the drawing-room presently," said Marian with her hateful -calm. "But they give me no more pleasure. Nor does she. She is like -them. They are heartless flowers and she is a heartless woman. I see -quite plainly now what I didn't see before. She's that type,--the -smiling, calculating siren. She lives for admiration; she's herself only -when she has someone at her feet, and she's seen to it that you should -be,--though I'm bound to say that you haven't made it difficult for her. -It fits in with all the stories." - -Rupert, at this, turned away and went out. He thrust his hat firmly down -on his fair locks and swung his stick as he strode by the little -footpath through the woods. Bitter disappointment with Marian surged in -him, and hot anger, but above all an atoning tenderness that seemed -almost to break his heart in its longing to protect and justify the -woman so traduced by her. His head throbbed and drummed as he went. To -have it come to this! To have such hands laid on it--their love! their -silent, hidden love! That Mrs. Dallas returned his love he seemed to -see, with many other things, clearly, rapturously, if with trembling, -for the first time to-day. He saw it with Marian's unworthiness; -Marian's unworthiness had shown it to him; and now, exulting, he claimed -it. She loved him, veiling the depth in her vagueness, her aloofness, -her indulgent irony. His mind retraced, with yearning gratitude, the -steps of their relationship. No one had ever been to him what she was. -How she helped and lifted him! How juvenile and undiscriminating in -their happy acceptances were Marian's appreciations of his work beside -Mrs. Dallas's half-idle comments. He had read through to her, in -manuscript, all his last novel; and Marian had not seen it yet. He had -not wanted to read it to Marian; and she, besides, had been very busy -with her painting. - -Mrs. Dallas had listened to the novel almost every day, sitting in the -shade of her veranda, in her white dress, with the hands that, unless -she were gardening, seemed always exquisitely idle, yet that in their -idleness seemed to dream and smile;--he could see the white skin, the -delicate finger-tips, the pearls and rubies slipping down, and his heart -contracted with a pang and ecstasy as he saw himself holding her hand, -kissing it. He must kiss it, to-day, and he must tell her. For she -needed him; he was sure of it. She needed him terribly. If she lifted -him, yet how much, too, he could lift her, out of the lethargic shallows -and sullen quagmires of her life. - -She could not be happy with her husband. He felt himself shut his eyes -before the retrospect of what the disenchantments and disasters must be -that lay behind her. If she had taken great risks, with that heart of -highest courage he divined in her, if she had faced great sacrifices for -her present husband, what wonder that her loveliness was now clouded by -that irony and languor? She was not kind to Colonel Dallas; he could not -hide from himself that she was not kind to him; but, as he owned it, he -yearned over her with a deeper comprehension of tenderness, feeling his -rights the greater. How could she be kind to the selfish, complaining, -elegant old man?--for, to Rupert, Colonel Dallas's fifty-five years -seemed old. She never said anything actually sharp or disagreeable to -him--even when he was at his most fretful and tiresome; but when he was -least so she was not any the kinder, and by her glances, by the -inflections of her cool and indolent voice in answering him, she -displayed to the full, to others and to himself, did he take the pains -to see it, how dull and how tiresome she found him. No; she was like a -weary, naughty child in this; and seeing her as a child, with a child's -faults--and did it not prove how unblinded his love must be that he -should see it?--he felt himself fold her to his heart in a tenderness -more than a lover's; a paternal passion was in it; he had known that it -must be in true love; he had said so in one of his books. How his books -would grow from his knowledge of her! - - -II - -He had now passed through the woods and crossed the road and entered the -footpath that ran down to Woodlands, the small house encircled by birch -and fir woods where, for now some four or five years, the Dallases had -pitched their errant tent. One could reach it, also, by the road; but -Rupert always took this short cut that brought him out at a little gate -opening on the upper lawn. There was an upper and a lower lawn at -Woodlands; on the upper Colonel Dallas had a putting-green; the lower -was a tiny square surrounded by Mrs. Dallas's beds of carnations. -Rupert, when he emerged upon the putting-green, could look down past the -red-tiled roofs and the white rough-cast walls of the house at the -carnations, massed in their appointed colours--from deep to palest rose, -from fawn and citron to snowy white--among flagged paths. - -Mrs. Dallas had told him, in one of her infrequent moments of -communicativeness, that during years of wandering as a soldier's -wife--her first husband, also, had been a soldier--she had come to be -known as the woman who could make things grow anywhere. She had grown -flowers in sands and marshes. She had snatched it might be but the one -season of fulfilment from the most temporary of sojournings--in China, -in India, in Africa. Sometimes only bulbs would grow; sometimes only -roses; but what she tried for, always, and had never attained in more -perfection than at Woodlands, was carnations. They were her favourite -flower and they atoned to her here, she said, for living in a house that -made her always think of an ornamental bottle of some popular -dentifrice, so red and white, so fresh and spick and span, and with such -a well-advertised air, was Woodlands. Her carnations were the only -things of which he had ever heard her speak with feeling. Rupert, as he -looked down at them from the upper lawn and descended the stone steps, -felt his heart beating violently. - -A veranda ran along the front of Woodlands, and Mrs. Dallas was sitting -on it, just outside her drawing-room windows. The shaded depths of the -room behind her glimmered here and there with the half-drowned -brightness of crystal, porcelain, lacquer,--the things, none very good -but all rather charming, that she had picked up for a song in the course -of her wanderings; and she sat there, rather like a siren indeed, at the -mouth of her cavern, its treasures seeming to shine in the translucent -darkness behind her as if through water. Rupert, remembering and -accepting the simile, saw her as a siren, a creature of poetry and -romance, though he recognized that her poetry, like her romance, was -hidden from the ordinary observer. Even to his eyes she always appeared -first and foremost as a woman of extreme fashion, and his other -perceptions of her were tinged with the half-tormenting, half-delicious -pungency of this one, for Rupert had known till now no women of -fashion. He had passed his youth, until going to Oxford, in a -provincial town, where his father, an admirable and sagacious man, was a -hard-worked doctor; and his only glimpses of society had been in his -encounters, always displeasing to him, with Marian's tiresome and -conventional kinsfolk and the few haphazard contacts in London that came -in the way of a young writer. Mrs. Dallas might embody poetry and -romance, but she also embodied luxury and the exercised and competent -economy that made it possible. She might have to live in small, gimcrack -Woodlands and do without a motor; but she had her maid. The slices of -bacon at breakfast were carefully computed; but the coffee was of the -best and blackest. - -To-day, as always when he had seen her, she seemed ready for any -possible social emergency. She could have stepped from her veranda, with -those wonderfully cut little white shoes, into the smartest of -garden-parties, or have received in her shimmering cavern the unexpected -visit of a royal personage; and her soft white linen with its heavy -Italian embroideries clotted, like thick cream, about the hem and wrists -and breast, would have been as exquisitely appropriate as it was to this -empty afternoon of reverie. - -She was a small, very shapely woman, soft and curved and compact. Her -coiffure would have looked old-fashioned in its artifice and elegance, -and with its "royal fringe," were it not for its air of a rightness as -unquestionable as that of some foreign princess's, who kept and did not -follow fashions. Mrs. Dallas's face, too, was small and colourless and -slightly faded; her hair was of a lighter brown than her arched eyebrows -and her melancholy and dissatisfied eyes; her eyelids, tinged with a -dusky mauve, drooped heavily and made her always look a little sleepy; -the smiling line of her full-lipped yet minute mouth was ironic rather -than mirthful. To have called it a bewitching or an alluring face would -have been to imply a mobility it did not possess; but it was potent -through its very passivity; it was provocative through its profound and -slumbrous indifference. - -There was certainly no hint of allurement in the glance she turned on -Rupert Wilson as he came round the corner of the veranda; it was, -indeed, even to his rapt preoccupation, a little harder in its quiet -attentiveness than usual; yet she smiled at him, and her smile was -always sweet, holding out a languid hand in silence and leaving it to -him to say, "You expected me." - -It was hardly a question, and Mrs. Dallas gave it no answer. He had, -indeed, come to see her every day for many weeks now. But yesterday had -finished the novel, and to-day was almost the first they had had without -some definite programme of reading. - -Rupert sat down on the steps of the veranda at her feet and took off his -hat and looked out across the carnations; and since she said nothing, -he, too, was silent, and to his trembling young heart the silence was -full of new avowals. - -Colonel Dallas's smoking-room also opened on the veranda, and as they -sat there he came out. He was a tall, heavy man, with large pale cheeks -drooping on either side of a white moustache, and a gloomy eye that -could become fretful. He cast now a glance that was only gloomy at his -wife and her companion. - -"Beastly hot day," he said, to her rather than to Rupert. "It's worse in -the house than out, I think." - -"Are you going over to the Trotters' for tea and croquet?" his wife -inquired. - -"To the Trotters'? Why should I go to the Trotters'?" - -"They asked you, and you accepted." - -"Well, I certainly don't feel inclined to endure that broiling walk for -the sake of _les beaux yeux_ of Madame Trotter _et filles_. It's a dull -neighbourhood, this, but the Trotters are, perhaps, when all's done and -told, the dullest people in it." - -"You've always seemed to get on particularly well with them, I've -thought," said Mrs. Dallas, in the voice that when it seemed considerate -could contrive to be most disparaging. "It's a pity not to go. You need -a walk. You can't afford Carlsbad this year, you know." - -"I need hardly be reminded of that," said Colonel Dallas, and now it was -fretfully. "To run the risk of apoplexy on the road and to drink the -Trotters' foul Indian tea is hardly an equivalent. No; I shall practise -some putting shots, and perhaps, if it gets cooler towards evening, I'll -go over to the links. The Trotters can manage without me.--What time do -the Varleys arrive?" - -"At seven-thirty. There's no other train they could arrive by, as far as -I'm aware." - -The colonel looked at his watch, drew his hat down over his eyes, and -went slowly away round the corner of the house. - -His wife's eyes did not follow him, nor, it was evident, her thoughts. - -"It has been rather oppressive, hasn't it?" said Rupert, glancing up at -her. "You haven't been feeling it too much, I hope." - -"Not at all. I like it. I think it's only people who don't know how to -be quiet who mind the heat," said Mrs. Dallas. "This is the one time of -the year that one can sit out of doors in a thin dress, and I am very -grateful for it." Even about small things Mrs. Dallas always seemed to -have her mind quite made up. Her likes and dislikes, for all the -inertness of her demeanour, were clear and unshifting. She sometimes -made Rupert feel himself amorphous, vague, uncertain; and this feeling, -though blissful, had yet its sting of sadness and anxiety. - -"Well, some people aren't able to be quiet, are they?" he observed. "On -a day like this I always think of people in factories,--great, roaring, -clanking places with the sun gnawing at their iron roofs,--and the pale, -moist faces, the monotonously rapid hands." - -"Do you?" said Mrs. Dallas. She often said that, in that tone, when he -gave expression to some enthusiasm or sympathy. She did not make him -feel snubbed, but always, when she said, "Do you?" she made him feel -young again, a little bewildered and a little sad. He imagined, to -explain it in her, that people's thoughts did not interest her, her -woman's intuition probing below their thoughts to their personalities. -It was he, himself, with his heart full of devotion, that interested -Mrs. Dallas. Yet it was not of him that she next spoke. "How is Marian?" -she asked. "Is she painting to-day?" - -He was aware that his face altered and that his colour rose. He had to -steady something, in his glance and in his voice, the pressure of his -new consciousness was so great, as he answered, "Yes, she's been -painting all the morning." - -"I haven't seen her for some days now," Mrs. Dallas remarked. - -"No." The longing in him to confide in her, to pour out his grief and -his devotion, was so strong that for the moment he could find only the -simple negative. - -"I quite miss Marian," Mrs. Dallas added. - -He looked down at the little foot placed on a cushion beside him, and he -said, "You've always been so kind, so charming to Marian." He remembered -Marian's words with a deepened wrath and tenderness. - -"Have I? I'm glad you think so. It's been very easy," said Mrs. Dallas. - -A silence fell. - -"May I talk to you?" Rupert jerked out suddenly. "May I tell you things -I've been feeling? I have been feeling so much--about you--about -myself.--I long to tell you." - -"By all means tell me," said Mrs. Dallas with great placidity; and one -could see that she had often made the same sort of reply to the same -sort of appeal. - -"You know what you have been to me," said Rupert, turning on the step so -that he could look up at her. "You know how it's all grown--beautifully, -inevitably. No one has ever been to me what you are." - -Mrs. Dallas's sleepy eyes rested on him, and her delicate nostrils, -slightly dilating, might have been, though without excitement, inhaling -a familiar incense. - -"I do love you so much," said Rupert in a trembling voice, gazing at -her; "I do love you. You understand what I mean. You know me now and you -couldn't misunderstand. I want to serve you. I want to help you. I want -you to lean on me and trust me--to let me be everything to you that I -can." And as he spoke he stretched out his hand and laid it on her hands -folded in her lap. - -Mrs. Dallas let it lie there, and she looked back at him, not moved, -apparently, but a little grave. "No, I don't think I misunderstand your -feeling," she said after a moment. "Of course I've seen it plainly." - -"Yes, yes, I knew you did.--And that you accepted -it,--dearest--loveliest--best." He had drawn her hand to him now and he -pressed his lips upon it. And as he kissed Mrs. Dallas's hand, as that -imagined happiness was consummated, he felt his mind cloud suddenly, as -if in a cloud of fragrance, and, thought sinking away from him, he knew -only an aching sweetness, the white, warm hand against his lips, the -darkness of the glimmering room near by, and the scent of the -carnations, exhaling their spices in the hot sunshine. Closing his eyes, -he breathed quickly. And above him, a little paler, Mrs. Dallas, for a -moment, as if with the conscious acceptance of a familiar ritual, also -closed her eyes and breathed in, with the scent of her carnations, the -immortal fragrance of the youth and passion that, to her, could soon no -longer come. "Dear boy!" she murmured. - -They heard the step of Colonel Dallas descending from the upper lawn. -Rupert drew back sharply; Mrs. Dallas softly replaced her hand upon the -other in her lap. Her husband appeared, and he looked very fretful. - -"The sun is quite tropical. It's impossible to play in it. We don't get -a breath of air down in this hole." He took out his watch--Colonel -Dallas was always taking out his watch. "What time is tea?" he asked. - -"At five o'clock, as usual, I suppose," said his wife. - -"It's only just past four," said the colonel, with the bitterly resigned -air of one who loses a wager he had hardly hoped to win. "I shall go to -the Trotters'. It's better than being baked in this oven. Their lawn is -shaded at all events." He spoke as if there had been some attempt to -dissuade him from the alleviations of the Trotters' lawn. - -"I don't know why you didn't go half an hour ago," said his wife. -"You've so often discovered that the sun is tropical on the upper lawn -at this hour." And as the colonel moved off she added, "Just tell them -that I'll have lemon-squash instead of tea, will you?" - -It was a rather absurd little interlude; yet it had its point, its -appropriateness; it fitted in with those thoughts of succour, and Rupert -tried, now, to recover them, saying, after the gate had closed upon the -colonel and keeping still at his little distance, "Are you very -unhappy?" - -How he was to help Mrs. Dallas except by loving her and coming to see -her every day and being allowed to kiss her and hold her hand he did not -clearly know, but it seemed the moment for returning to those offers of -service. He did not attempt to regain her hand. Mingling with the -rapture, when the kiss and the scent of the carnations had blurred his -mind, there was also a sense of fear. He was different; and there was -more in his love than he had known. - -"Very unhappy? Not more than most people, I suppose. Why?" Mrs. Dallas -asked. Her tone was changed. Her moment of diffusion, of languor and -acceptance, was gone by. - -"Why?" Rupert felt the change and the question hurt him. "When that's -your life?--This?" - -"By that, do you mean my husband?" Mrs. Dallas inquired kindly. "He's -not my life. As for this--if you mean my situation and occupation--having -love made to me by a pleasant young man while I smell carnations, I can -assure you that there's nothing I enjoy much more." - -She did more than hurt him now; she astonished him. "Don't!" he -breathed. It was as if something beautiful were being taken from him. -Instinctively he stretched out his hand for hers and again she gave it; -but now she looked clearly at him, a touch of malice in her smile, -though her smile was always sweet. - -"Don't what?" - -"Don't pretend to be hard--flippant. Don't hide from me. Give yourself -to the real beauty that we have found." - -"I have just said that I enjoy it." - -"Enjoy is not the word," said Rupert, in a low voice, looking down at -the hand in his. "It's an initiation. A dedication." - -"A dedication? To what?" Mrs. Dallas asked, and even more kindly; yet -her kindness made her more removed. - -Her words seemed to strike with soft yet bruising blows upon his heart. -"To life. To love," he answered. - -"And what about Marian?" Mrs. Dallas inquired. And now, still gently, -she withdrew her hand and leaned her cheek on it as, her elbow on the -cushions of her chair, she bent her indolent but attentive gaze upon -him. "I should have thought that dedication lay in that direction." - -His forehead was hot and his eyes, hurt, bewildered, indignant, -challenged hers yet supplicated, too. "Please don't let me think that -I'm to hear mean conventionalities from you--as I have from Marian. You -know," he said, and his voice slightly shook, "that dedication isn't a -limiting, limited thing. You've read my books and cared for them, and -understood them,--better, you made me feel, that I did myself,--so that -you mustn't pretend to forget. Love doesn't shut out. It widens." - -"Does it?" said Mrs. Dallas. "And what," she added, "were the mean -conventionalities you heard from Marian? I've been wondering about -Marian." - -"She is jealous," said Rupert shortly, looking away. "I could hardly -believe it, but she made it too plain. It seemed to take the -foundation-stones of our life away to hear her. It made all our past, -all the things I believed we shared, seem illusory. It made me feel that -the Marian I'd loved and trusted was a stranger." - -Mrs. Dallas contemplated his averted face, and as she heard him her -glance altered. It withdrew itself; it veiled itself; it became at once -less kind and more indolent. "And you really don't think Marian has -anything to complain of?" she inquired presently. - -"No, I do not," said Rupert. "Nothing is taken from her." - -"Isn't it? And if I became your mistress, would you still think she had -nothing to complain of?" Mrs. Dallas asked the question in a tone of -detached and impartial inquiry. - -How far apart in the young man's experience were theory and practice was -manifested by the hot blush that sprang to his brow, the quick stare in -which an acute eye might have read an ingenuous and provincial dismay. -"My mistress?" he stammered. "You know that such a thought never entered -my head." - -"Hasn't it? Why not?" - -"You know I only asked to serve--to help--to care for you." - -"You would think it wrong, then, to be unfaithful, technically, to your -wife?" - -"Wrong?" His brow showed the Saint-Bernard-puppy knot of perplexity. -"It's not a question of wrong. Wrongness lies only in the sort of love. -Real love is sacred in all its expressions of itself; my ideal of love, -just because it includes that one, can do without it." - -"But, on your theory, why should it do without it?" Mrs. Dallas, all -mildness, inquired. - -His mind was driven back to those questionings in the studio, when he -had thought of the incongruous yet allied themes of passion and -perambulators, and groped again, angrily, in the same obscurity. -"It's--it's--a matter of convenience," he found, frowning; "it--it -wouldn't work in with other beautiful things. It wouldn't be -convenient." - -"I'm glad to hear you find such a reasonable objection," said Mrs. -Dallas. "There could hardly be a better one. It wouldn't be at all -convenient. Though, I gather, if it could be made convenient, you still -think that Marian would have nothing to complain of." - -"I don't know why you are trying to pin me down like this." Rupert, -stooping, gathered some flakes of stone from the path and scattered them -with a sharp gesture that expressed his exasperation. "You know what I -believe. Love is free, free as air and sunshine. How can one stop one's -self from loving? Why should one? And if our love, yours and mine, could -mean that complete relation, then, yes, the ideal thing, the really -ideal thing, would be for Marian to feel it right and beautiful and to -be glad that there should be two perfected and complete relations -instead of one. As it is, that inclusive vision isn't asked of her." - -"She's not, in fact, to be asked to be a Mormon," Mrs. Dallas remarked. -"All that she has to put up with is that her husband should be in love, -platonically, with another woman, and should have ceased to be in love -with her. It's hard, you know, when some one has been in love with you, -to give it up." - -"But I have not ceased to love Marian!" Rupert cried. "Why should you -suppose it? My love for you doesn't shut out my love for her. It's a -vulgar old remnant of sexual savagery to think it does. A mother doesn't -love one child the less for loving another. Why can't people purify and -widen their minds by looking at the truth?--That jeer about Mormons is -unworthy of you. Marriage is a prison unless husband and wife are both -free to go on giving and growing. What does love mean but growth?" - -Mrs. Dallas's eyes had drifted away to her beds of carnations and they -now rested on them for a little while. Rupert took up his hat and fanned -himself. He was hot, and very miserable. - -"It always strikes me, when I hear talk like yours," said Mrs. Dallas -presently, "that it is so much less generous and noble than it imagines -itself to be. It's the man, only, who frames the new code and the man, -only, who is to enlarge himself and run two or three loves abreast." - -"Not at all. Marian is precisely as free as I am to love somebody else -as well as me." - -"As free? Oh no," said Mrs. Dallas, laughing softly. "Theoretically, -perhaps, but not actually. Nature has seen to that. When women have -babies and lose their figures it's most unlikely that they'll ever be -given an opportunity to exercise their freedom. That fact in itself -should make you reconsider your ideas about love. Own frankly that they -apply only to men and don't pretend to generosity. The only free women -are the _femmes galantes_; and you'll observe that they are seldom -burdened with a nursery, and that they never grow fat." - -She touched, with an accuracy malignant in its clairvoyance, his -subconscious awareness of Marian's physical alteration. Something in him -shrank away from her in fear and indignation. She was trying to make him -see things from a false and petty standpoint, the standpoint of a woman -of the world, a mere woman of the world--that world of shameful -tolerances and cruel stupidities. "I don't know anything about _femmes -galantes_," he said, "nor do I wish to. You misunderstand me if you -think that by love I mean sensuality." - -With slightly lifted brows she looked out at the carnations; and had she -been angry with him he could have felt less angry with her. He was, -indeed, very angry with her when she remarked, tranquilly, "I don't -think you know what you mean by love." - -"I mean by love what Shelley meant by it," Rupert declared. - - "True love in this differs from gold and clay, - That to divide is not to take away. - Love is like understanding that grows bright - Gazing on many truths. - -"I mean what all the true, great hearts of the world have meant by -it,--poetry, rapture, religion; and they can only be sustained, renewed, -created, by emotion, by passion, by sexual passion--if you like to call -it by a name you imagine to be derogatory." He felt himself warmed and -sustained against the menace that emanated from her by the sound of his -own familiar eloquence. - -But Mrs. Dallas still tranquilly contemplated the carnations. - -"That's the man's point of view. The view of the artist, the creator. -Perhaps there's truth in it. Perhaps he can't write his poems and paint -his pictures without taking intoxicants. But it will never be the view -of the woman. Mary Shelley will never really like it when Shelley makes -love to Jane Clairmont; Marian will never like it when you make love to -me. They'll try to believe it's the ideal, to please him, when they are -the ones he is in love with; but when he is in love with other women -they won't go on believing." - -"That is their fault, their littleness, then. The wide, glorious outlook -is theirs, too, if they choose to open their eyes. I don't accept your -antithesis for women,--humdrum respectability, roast mutton, milk -pudding, or dissipation. I don't believe that when a woman marries and -becomes a mother she must turn her back on love." - -Mrs. Dallas at this began to laugh, unkindly. "Turn her back on love? No -indeed. Why should she? Hasn't she her husband and children, to say -nothing of her friends, her father and mother, her sisters and brothers? -You idealists seem always to forget these means of expansion. By love -you mean simply and solely the intoxicant. Call it poetry and religion, -if you like, but don't expect other people, who merely see that you are -intoxicated, to call it that." - -He sat, trying to think. Idly, half absently, with languid fingers, she -seemed to be breaking his idols as though they had been silly little -earthenware figures, not good enough--here was the stab, the -bewilderment--for her drawing-room. And who was she to do it, this -remote, mysterious creature, steeped in the perfume of her passionate -past? He felt as he gazed at her that it was not only himself he must -defend against her. - -"It's curious to me to hear you talk in this way." He armed himself, as -he spoke, with all that he could muster of wisdom and of weight. "You -are the last woman I'd have expected to hear it from. You've made me -your friend, so that I'd have a right to be frank, even if you hadn't -let me love you. What right have you to turn your back on all the -beauty and romance of life--to smile at them and mock them? You haven't -allowed yourself to be bandaged and crippled by convention, I'm sure of -it. You have followed your heart--bravely, truly--out into life. You -have loved--and loved--and loved--I know it. It breathes from you. It's -all you've lived for." - -"And you think the result so satisfactory?" said Mrs. Dallas. She looked -at him now, and if it was with irony it was with sadness. She turned -from her question. "Well, if you like, I am one of the _femmes -galantes_; they are of many types, you know; I wasn't thinking, when I -shocked you so, of the obvious, gross type. I was thinking of the woman -who corresponds to you--the idealist, the spiritual _femme galante_. -And, I'm convinced of it, for a woman, it doesn't work. A man, if he is -a big man, or has a big life,--it isn't always the same thing by the -way,--may have his succession of passions, or, as you'd claim,--and I -don't believe it,--his contemporaneities; he has a context to frame them -in; they may fall into place. But a woman's life can't be calculated in -those terms of dimension. It is big enough for the emotion that leads to -marriage and to the loves that grow from that, the loves you think so -little of. It is an emotion that can't be repeated over and over again, -simply because, in a normal life, it has grown into something else, -something even better, I should say: a form of poetry and rapture and -religion quite compatible with roast mutton and respectability. But the -women who miss the normal life and who try to live on the emotions, -they--well, I can only say that to my mind they always come to look -silly. Silly is the only word for them." - -He stared at her. "You don't look silly." - -"Why should I?" Mrs. Dallas asked. "I'm not of the idealist type. I -don't confuse intoxication with religion and think I have the one when -I've only the other. I may have missed the real thing, but I've not -repeated the emotion that ought to lead to it. You are quite mistaken in -imagining that I've loved and loved and loved. I haven't. I have allowed -other people to love me. That, as you'll own, is a very different -matter. I am hard and cold and disillusioned. I am not soft and yearning -and frustrated. Why should I look silly?" - -He stared at her, and his heart was flooded with pain. What was she, -then? What was her feeling for him? What had she meant? As she spoke and -as he looked at her, the veil of romance dissolved from about her and he -saw her for the first time with her own eyes,--devoid of poetry, a hard, -cold, faded, worldly woman. Yet she was still a Sphinx, strange and -alluring, and still he struggled against her, for her, saying hotly, -though his heart was chilled, "If it's true, you've hurt -yourself--you've hurt yourself horribly, through fear of looking silly." - -"No, I've not hurt myself," said Mrs. Dallas. "I've been hurt, perhaps; -but I've not allowed my hurts to repeat themselves too often. Some -things in life should be unique and final. The people who don't keep -them so become shoddy. Marian, for instance, is neither hard nor cold, -nor shoddy either. You have made one of the mistakes that idealists are -always making in imagining that she was humdrum respectability and that -I was poetry and rapture and religion.--Oh, it's no good protesting. If -I had a double chin and thin hair you'd never have wanted to help my -soul, however unhappy I was. And if Marian had sat about in carefully -chosen clothes and looked mysterious and not let you feel sure that she -cared about you, you would probably have remained in love with her. So -please own that you have been mistaken and that on the one side is love, -the love that Marian feels for you, although she knows you; because she -knows you; and on the other is illusion, intoxication, sensuality; yes, -my dear Rupert, such as you felt when I let you kiss my hand a little -while ago." - -He sat, sullen, even sulky, half turned from her, and again he stooped -and gathered up the flakes of stone and tossed them away down the path. - -The clink and chink of ice and glass was heard approaching through the -drawing-room, and the maid stepped out bearing the tray, which she set -down on a wicker table before her mistress. The tall crystal jug, veiled -in frosty rime, showed tones of jade and chalcedony, and fillets of -lemon peel threaded it like pale, bright enamel. This gem-like beaker, -the plate of golden cakes, with the scent of the carnations, with Mrs. -Dallas's little foot on its cushion, with her rings of pearl and ruby, -had all been part of the magic she had meant to him. The very sound of -the ice, dully yet resonantly chinking, brought a suffocating sense of -nostalgia. It was over, all over. He was disenchanted. She was cruel to -him, to him who had loved her. She had cut into him and killed bright, -ingenuous, trustful things. And, in a placid voice, she asked him if he -would have some cake, and filled his glass. - -He took it from her and drank it off in silence. The icy, aromatic -liquid seemed an antidote to that other intoxicant she had mocked. Irony -flowed through his veins; a bitter-sweet sense of vengeful maturity. -When he set down the glass, he looked up at her, and he felt himself -measuring his sword against the stiletto of an adversary. - -"Well, I've had my lesson," he said. "I've been a generous but deluded -idealist, it seems, in imagining that men and women are equals in their -claims on life. Since I'm an artist, I have a right to my raptures, I -take it. And poor Marian must be jealous with reason. Well, well; it's -an odd morality to hear preached." - -Mrs. Dallas still sipped her lemonade and she quietly considered him. -She said nothing, and even after she had finished and set down her glass -she sat for still a little while in silence. - -"I'm sorry I've seemed to preach," she then remarked, "and I certainly -think that Marian has every reason to be jealous. What more did I say? -That a man isn't as ridiculous and undignified as a woman when he falls -in and out of love-affairs on the condition that he has a big life? That -was it, wasn't it?" - -"That was it, and I'm glad to have your assurance that I am in no danger -of being ridiculous or undignified." - -"Do you mean," said Mrs. Dallas, looking at him, "that you think yours -such a big life?" - -It had been, before, his heart, its tenderness, its devotion and -dedication, that she had cut into; it was into something deeper now, -something more substantially and vitally at the centre of his life, -something of which his heart and all its ardours were but tributaries. -He was to learn that self-love could bleed with a fiercer, darker gush. -The blood, as if foretelling his ordeal, sprang to his forehead as he -looked back at her. - -"I have my art," he said, and he disdained any pretended humility; he -spoke with pride and even with solemnity. "I live for my art. I don't -think that I am an insignificant man." - -"Don't you?" said Mrs. Dallas. It was with an unaffected curiosity that -her eyes rested on him, and it sank into him, drop by drop, like poison. -"Not insignificant, perhaps," she took up after a moment. "That's not -quite the word, perhaps. You are very intelligent and appreciative and -good-hearted. I don't suppose one can be quite insignificant if one is -that. But--do you call it art, your writing? I wonder. Oh, you are quite -right to live for it, of course, just as other men do for stock-broking -or fox-hunting or print-collecting, or anything else that employs their -energies or satisfies their tastes or brings in money; but, to count as -art, a man's activities must mean more than just his own satisfaction in -them, mustn't they? You write careful, intelligent, sentimental little -books; but I can't feel that the world would be any the poorer if you -were to take to stock-broking or fox-hunting instead. No, it doesn't -seem to me, my dear Rupert, that your life is nearly large enough for a -succession of love-affairs. It's all right when one is young and looking -for a mate; experiments are in order then; but you've found your mate, -and you'll soon be not so very young, and if on the strength of your art -you imagine yourself entitled to unseasonable intoxications, you'll -become, in time, an emotional dram-drinker, one of those foolish old -inebriates we are all familiar with, and you'll spoil yourself for what -you were meant to be and can be,--a devoted husband and an excellent -_pre de famille_." - -Stretched on his rack, broken, bleeding, Rupert stared at her. Who was -this woman, this cruel, ambiguous woman who watched his agony with -deliberating, drowsy eyes? There came into his mind the memory of a -picture seen in childhood, some sentimental print that had strongly -impressed his boyish sensibilities. A corner of a Roman amphitheatre, a -rising tier of seats; sham architecture, sham Romans, no doubt, and a -poor piece of claptrap, looked back on from his maturity; but the face -of the Roman woman, leaning so quietly forward under its gold tiara, to -watch, unmoved, the tormented combatants below, was it not like this -face? Yes, she was of that stony-hearted breed, unaltered by the -centuries. - -The torment of his humiliation snatched at anger for a veil. He said, -smiling, "You have been very successful till now in concealing your real -opinion of me." - -"Have I concealed it?" - -"My work certainly seemed to be of absorbing interest to you." - -"I listened to it; yes." - -"I didn't imagine you'd stoop to feign interest. I didn't imagine you'd -take such pains to allure and flatter a commonplace young _pre de -famille_." - -"Did I take pains to allure and flatter him?" - -"From the first!--From the very first!--That day we met!--My God!" Even -now he could not help feeling himself, seeing himself, as one of his own -heroes; and, for a moment, he bent his head upon his hands--as they -would have done had a calamity as unimaginable as this befallen them. -"That first day!--The apple-blossoms framing you! You stood under your -white parasol in our orchard--and you smiled at me!" - -"I generally do at agreeable-looking young men when I see that they -admire me," Mrs. Dallas commented. - -"Oh, don't pretend!--Don't hide and shift!" He lifted fierce eyes; "It -wasn't only that. You seemed to care. You seemed to need me. You made it -easy--inevitable. You came--and came; and you asked me here again and -again." - -"Not 'me,'--'us,'" Mrs. Dallas amended suavely. She was looking at him, -all this time, with that thoughtful, poisonous curiosity; and as he now -sat, finding for the moment no words, his fury baffled by her quiet -checkmating, she went on, "And afterwards I let you come alone because I -saw that you admired me, and that is always pleasant to me. When, at -first, as you say, I showed myself so affable, it was because I liked -Marian. I do still like her; more than I ever liked you, my dear Rupert; -if you are good-hearted and intelligent, she is more so, and she has -more sense of humour than you have, and doesn't take herself so -seriously. And, to be quite frank, since we are talking it all out like -this, I not only liked Marian, but saw that she could be of use to me. -I've had, in some ways, a tiresome, tangled life, and things haven't -always gone as I wanted them to go, so that I don't let opportunities -for strengthening and straightening here and there pass me by. Through -Marian I met several people I wanted to meet and make sure of. People -useful to me. I think Marian quite understood and quite wanted to help. -She would. She is of my world in a sense you aren't, you know, my dear -Rupert. And, in my idle way, I did take a good deal of trouble to be -agreeable to her. It all turned out exceedingly well and I was very -grateful to Marian. That's one reason, you see, why I felt to-day that -our little flirtation was going too far and must be put a stop to. I -don't want Marian to be jealous of me; it would be distinctly -inconvenient. But there is more in it than that. I wouldn't have put -myself to this bother and talked things out like this if it hadn't been -because of my liking for Marian. It makes me angry to see that you don't -know how lucky you are to have such a wife. I want you to see how very -lucky you are. I want you to see yourself as others see you,--a very -unimportant young man, without position and without money, married to a -quite unusually delightful girl who has both. This isn't the young man's -fault, of course; one wouldn't like him the less for it; but one does -expect him to be aware of his own felicity. One does expect him to feel -that, at present, his wife is too good for him. I don't mean in the -conventional sense; one wouldn't ask him to recognize that; but in the -sense of worth and charm and distinction, for those are the things he -supposes himself to care for." - -She had, while she spoke of the "young man" thus impartially, turned her -eyes from him, and they rested again on the beds of carnations. The sun -had sunk behind the hill, and though the bright soft colours were -unshadowed, they all lay in a different light and seemed to glow coolly -in their own radiance, like jewels. - -Rupert rose. His anger had passed from him. He no longer felt Mrs. -Dallas to be an antagonist; but he felt her to be a stranger; and he -felt himself to be a stranger. A sense of fear and loneliness and -disembodiment had fallen upon him while he listened to her. He held out -his hand to her. "Good-bye," he said. "I think I must be going." - -She took his hand and looked up at him with the gaze so remote, so -irrevocable. "Good-bye," she said; "I hope to see you and Marian some -day soon, perhaps." - -The words, with their quiet relapse on convention, made him feel himself -in a new world. He had been thinking of final, fatal things, things dark -and trenchant; she showed him compromise, continuity, commonplace good -sense; and, dispossessed, bereft as he was, something in him struggled -to place itself beside her in this alien atmosphere, to make itself a -denizen of the new since he had forever lost the old world. - -"Oh yes, I'll tell her," he said. And as he released her hand he found, -"Thank you. I'm sure you meant it all most kindly." - -"It's very nice of you to say so," said Mrs. Dallas, smiling. - -It was the world of convention; yet with all his bewildered groping for -clues and footholds, he felt, dimly, as a glimmer before his eyes or a -frail thread in his hands, that the smile was perhaps the most sincerely -sweet that he had ever had from Mrs. Dallas. It was as if she saw his -struggle and commended it. - - -III - -He walked away, up the steps, across the putting-green and out into the -woods. He went slowly as he began the gradual ascent. He felt very -tired, as though he had been beaten with rods, and there was in him a -curious mingling of confusion and lucidity, of pain and contemplation. -The present and the future were curtained with shame, uncertainty, and -dismay; but the past was vivid, and, like a singular, outgrown husk, he -seemed to look back at that Rupert on the veranda, so blind, so bland, -so fatuous, and to see him as Mrs. Dallas had seen him. - -Beyond the curtain was Marian. He knew that he went towards Marian as if -towards safety and succour; yet all was opaque before his eyes, for who -was it that Marian was to succour but that fatuous Rupert? and was it -for such as he that he could seek support? How could he go to Marian and -say, "I have been given eyes to see you as you are; help me, now, to be -blind again to what I am." No; he could not, if he were to follow his -glimmer and hold his thread, seek succour from Marian. - -When he reached the house he went into the drawing-room and found her -sitting there in a cool dress, a book upon her knee. She did not see him -as he entered quietly and he stood for some moments in the doorway -looking at her. - -She had been crying; her cheeks were white and her eyelids heavy; but -though this perception came to him with a blow of feeling, it did not, -for the moment, move him from his contemplation of her, with all that it -brought of new and strange to the familiar. - -She was strange, though she was not a stranger, as he had become to -himself. He noted the black curves of her hair, the ample line of her -bosom, the gentle, white maternal hand laid along the book. On a -cabinet, above her head, he saw that she had very beautifully arranged -the white, rose and yellow carnations. It was like her to do this -justice to her rival's gift; like her to place them there not only -faithfully but beautifully. And as she sat, unaware of him, in the -luminous evening air, he felt her to be full of enchantment and this -enchantment to centre in the hand laid along the book. His eyes fixed -themselves on the hand. It seemed a symbol of the Marian of grace and -girlhood whom he had loved with such ardent presage of eternal faith, -and of this Marian sitting quietly in her saddened and accepted life, -not changed except in so far as she was yet more worthy of fidelity. He -saw that she had passed through her ordeal and transcended it; he saw -that she would never again show him jealousy; and he saw that as the old -Marian he had, perhaps, forever lost her. A lover must always show -jealousy. This was a wife, maternal and aloof. - -He came into the room and she looked round at him. Her eyes, altered by -weeping, were mild and alien. They were without hostility, without -accusation; deliberating, gentle; the eyes of a wife. "Did you have a -nice afternoon?" she asked laying down her book. "It's been delicious, -hasn't it?" - -Quite as irrevocably as Mrs. Dallas she made the world that he must -enter. She, too, in her different way, a way founded on acceptance -rather than rejection, showed him compromise and continuity. And nothing -that Mrs. Dallas had said to him cut into him so horribly as to see -Marian show him this new world. - -An impulse came to fall on his knees beside her, bury his head in her -lap, and pour out all his griefs. But already, and for Marian's sake, -now, he had learned a better wisdom. To fall and weep and confess would -be, again, to act like one of his own heroes; and Marian, in her heart, -knew all that there was to know of that old Rupert. He must make her now -know, and make himself know, a new Rupert. - -He sat down opposite her and, smiling a little, he said, "Mrs. Dallas -has done with me." - -"Done with you!" Marian repeated. Her faint colour rose. - -"Quite," said Rupert, nodding; "in any way I'd thought she had me." - -"Do you mean," said Marian, after a moment, "that she's been horrid to -you?" - -"Not in the least, though it felt horrid. She merely let me see that I'd -been mistaken." - -"Mistaken? In what way?" - -"In almost every way. In my ideas about myself, and about life, and -about her.--It wasn't, for one thing, me she liked in particular, at -all. It was you." - -Marian's flush had deepened. "She seemed to like you very much indeed." - -"Only frivolously; not seriously. She showed me to-day how silly I'd -been to think it anything but frivolous. She made me see that I'd been a -serious ass." - -Marian sat looking at him. She was startled, and on his -behalf--wonderful maternal instinct!--she was angry; yet--he saw it all -in the sweet, subtle alteration of her face--she was happy, half -incredulously yet marvelously happy. And as he saw her happiness, tears -came to Rupert's eyes and he felt himself, deeply and inarticulately, -blessing Mrs. Dallas. She had been right. This was something "even -better." - -"She's an exceedingly clever woman," he said, smiling at Marian, though -she must see the tears. "And an exceedingly first-rate woman, too. And -I'll always be grateful to her. The question is,"--he got up and came -and stood over his wife,--"I've been such an ass, darling. Can you -forgive me?" - -He had found her hand as he questioned her and he held it now up to his -cheek closing his eyes, how differently! - - -IV - -Mrs. Dallas, after her young friend had left her, sat on for quite a -long while on the veranda. The concentration of her recent enterprise -effaced itself from her eyes and lips. Her glance, steeping itself again -in indolent and melancholy retrospects, fell into a reverie. Once or -twice, putting up a languid hand, she yawned. - -When the whole garden lay in coolness, she went in and got her gardening -apron and gloves and basket of implements. It was an ideal moment for -layering her carnations. Tripping out again on her little high-heeled -shoes, she placed her kneeling-mat before a splendid plant and set to -work. She scorned complicated aids. A box of long hairpins were her -chief allies, and a sharp knife. Deftly she selected a blue-gray shoot -and stripped the narrow leaves, sharply cut a transverse slit into the -tender stalk, firmly bent and pinned the half-severed spray into the -heaped earth where it was to make new roots and establish itself in a -new life. And, as she did so, her mind reverting to thoughts of Rupert -and of her rough usage of him, a simile came to her that made her smile, -her hard and not unkindly smile. She did not regret it, though -unquestionably she had had her own moment of reluctance and of loss. It -had hurt him terribly, no doubt, as, if they had feeling, it must now -hurt her carnations to be cut and bent and pinned. But "It might be the -making of him," Mrs. Dallas thought. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -STAKING A LARKSPUR - - -AS a matter of fact (one has often to take one's stand on fact when -thinking about Vera), it's I who am the gardener; it's I, that is to -say, who draw the plans and compute the cost and give the orders and see -that the men carry them out. I often lend a hand at carrying them out, -too, for I love planting seedlings and staking plants and tweaking out -weeds here and there when I've the chance. That wonderful blue border -Vera had on the south terrace last summer,--it was just going over when -the war broke out,--I put in all the new blue larkspurs myself, three -hundred of them,--the larkspurs that Mrs. Thornton was to remind me -of,--and I designed and planted and with my own hands helped to lay out -the dream-garden, Vera's special garden. It was she, certainly, who had -had the idea, standing on the site of the little, old, abandoned sunken -garden in its circle of stone wall and cypresses, and saying, "I see a -dream-garden here, Judith; a place where one can come and sit alone and -dream dreams." She often has charming ideas, Vera, but she knows nothing -about gardening. I sound already as if I were crabbing her, I know; and -perhaps I am. Certainly I never think of her relation to her garden -without a touch of irony, and this story, which begins in the -dream-garden, isn't to her advantage. It was there that I felt my first -definite irascibility in regard to Vera and little Mrs. Thornton, and -felt the impulse, as far as I was able, to take Mrs. Thornton under my -wing. - -It's a rather clipped and confined wing, and yet I can do pretty much as -I choose at Compton Dally; I don't quite know why, for Vera doesn't -exactly like me. Still, she doesn't dislike me, and I think she's a -little bit afraid of me; for I am as definite and determined as a pair -of garden shears, and my silence is often only the good manners of the -dependant, and Vera knows it. - -I am her cousin, an impecunious cousin, my mother a sister of her -father's, old Lord Charleyford, who died last year. Vera herself was -very impecunious until she married Percival Dixon; impecunious, but -always very lovely and very clever, and she was on the crest of every -wave, always, and never missed anything, except ready money and a really -good offer, even before Percival Dixon came along--he came _via_ South -Africa--and gave her all the money that even she could spend, and bought -back Compton Dally for her. Compton Dally had been in the family for -hundreds of years, and it was our grandfather, Vera's and mine, who had -ruined us all and finally sold it. It was everything for Vera to get it -back, even if she had to take Percival Dixon with it; and I confess that -for Compton Dally I could almost have taken Percival Dixon myself; but -not quite, even for Compton Dally. - -Well, she has always been fairly decent to me; not as decent as she -might have been, certainly, but more decent than I, at all events, -expected, whatever may have been poor mother's hopes and indignations. I -always thought mother unfair; there was no reason why Vera should go out -of her way to give me a good time, and it showed some real consideration -in her to have suggested, when mother died and while Jack was reading -for the bar, that, until he and I could set up housekeeping in London -together, I should come and be her companion and secretary and general -odd-job woman; and for people like Vera to show any consideration is -creditable to them. I am five years older than Jack, and our plan has -always been to live together. I intend, of course,--though Jack at -present doesn't, dear lamb!--that he shall marry; but until then I'm to -live with him and take care of him and help him with his work. All this -if he ever comes back again. He is fighting at the front as I write, so -that it remains to be seen whether I'm to go on always with Vera. If -Jack doesn't come back I shan't find it more difficult than anything -else. We have always been all in all to each other, he and I; but that -is quite another story and one that will never be written. This one is -neither about Jack nor me, but about Vera and her garden and little Mrs. -Thornton and her husband and her clothes. - -Vera had thrown open Compton Dally to wounded Tommies and wounded -officers, and the Thorntons came in that way. He'd only been back from -the Boulogne hospital for a week, was badly crippled, and had a very -gallant record. Most of Vera's officers before this had been colonials -who had no homes to go to. The Thorntons weren't colonials, but they had -no home and were very poor, so that the arrangement for them to spend -six weeks or two months at Compton Dally while Captain Thornton got back -his strength--as far as he was able to get it back, poor man!--seemed an -admirable one. - -They came on a hot June afternoon both very tired, while we were all -having tea on the west terrace. The Tommies--there were over a dozen of -them, with two Red Cross nurses to take care of them--had their tea in -the billiard-room, which is made over to them for their games and meals -and almost constant gramophone, and the accurate laughter of Harry -Lauder is wafted out to us on various music-hall strains at most hours -of the day. He was laughing loudly and richly as the Thorntons arrived. -After tea Vera led them about the garden. Vera's garden is merely a part -of her toilette, and plays almost as important a part as her clothes in -her general introduction of herself; and that she intended to introduce -herself gracefully to Captain Thornton was evident; and that I was to -pilot Mrs. Thornton, I had known after Vera's glance at her imitation -Panama hat, her blue linen skirt, of an obsolete cut and a bad one at -that, and her white blouse, shrunken in washing. Vera placed her swiftly -as dull and dowdy, and it was my part, always, to pilot the dowdy and -the dull. - -I don't mind that, however; even now, after three years of it, I always -enjoy going over Compton Dally and the gardens with newcomers. It's such -a beautiful old place, so grave and so serene, its splendid Tudor front -lifted high on stone terraces, and its courts and corners behind -breaking out into all sorts of unexpected and enchanting antiquities. It -symbolizes, if you begin with the Saxon arches in the cellars, the -whole history of England, and means so much more than any person who has -ever lived there, or who ever will live there, can ever mean. It's worth -the sacrifice of generations of younger sons and myriads of marriageable -daughters. What could they all do better than to keep it going? I always -recalled this when I wondered how Vera could have married Percival -Dixon, and felt almost as much satisfaction as she could feel in the -fact that two robust little boys, still at their preparatory school, -stood reassuringly behind her and Percival; the elder, too, a thorough -Compton, with hardly a trail of Dixon apparent on his ingenuous young -countenance. I have the whole history of Compton Dally at the tips of my -fingers, and if people give me an opening and show that they care about -it, I can talk to them for hours as I take them round, feeling, for my -little part and share in it, that, even if Vera weren't as decent as she -is, I should put up with a great deal to stay in it and take care of it. - -We didn't go about the house to-day. The Thorntons saw the big -herbaceous border and the rose-garden, the rock-garden, tinkling with -its little rivulet, the moat, and the lime-tree alley; and then Vera, -trailing her gossamer draperies along the flagged path between the -cypresses,--for Vera, even at this epoch of shortened petticoats, -manages always to trail,--murmured, as I've heard her murmur, when she's -at Compton Dally, at least once a week, "And this is my dream-garden, -where I come and sit alone and dream dreams." - -She led Captain Thornton down among the cypress boughs. He had a -splinted leg and an unaccustomed crutch, and found the steps a -difficulty; but Vera put a hand under his elbow and let him lean -heavily on her shoulder, and he reached the dream-garden without, I -hope, too many twinges. - -It is really very lovely. I don't like hearing it called a dream-garden, -naturally; but I do feel always, when I come into it, that it is like -sinking into the stillness and magic of a happy dream. The gypsophila -wasn't out yet, but it made a mist, like drowsiness; white peonies, grey -santolina, white roses and silver sea-thistle, the dreamy spires of -white foxgloves, low, purple pansies, and tall irises, white and grey -and purple--these, in their twilight colours, were massed against the -grey stone walls, and there were four bay-trees in stone urns at the -corners. The beautiful old stone seat (I found it in Brompton Road, but -it might have been made for Compton Dally three hundred years ago in -Italy) was heaped with grey and purple cushions. In the centre rose the -fluent shaft of the fountain, falling, with a musical rustle and murmur -into the stone basin where pale goldfish move among the water-lilies. - -We sat down, and Vera went on to say, as always: - -"The other gardens are for friends. I plan them for them. I see them -there. This is for loneliness, for my very self; and to me it is the -heart of the whole, as solitude should be the heart of life." - -Vera, as a matter of fact (you see, the phrase recurs constantly), is -never alone. If she is wan and strange and wistful, it isn't from -dreaming dreams, but from not having enough sleep and doing five times -too many things and seeing five times too many people in the day. Vera, -too, I may say it here, isn't in the least an ass, though she may, on -occasions she finds suitable, talk like one. Occasions are often -suitable, so that, as I once told her, she's in danger of making a habit -of it. She looked at me, when I told her this, with the pausing, -penetrating, ironic gaze she is so capable of, and finally, with a -slight grimace, said, "I'll be careful, Judith." - -I have moments of feeling fond of her and this was one of them. She is -careful; I've very rarely heard her talk like an ass when the occasion -was unsuitable; but so many people are stupid that these are rare, and I -foresee that, as she gets on and sinks by degrees into the automatism -that overtakes so many artificial people, it may become a habit, just as -the touch of rouge on her pale lips is already becoming more emphasized. - -Captain Thornton, I saw at once, as she did,--for she saw most -things,--was not stupid; but he was very simple. There was a certain -bewilderment on his handsome, sturdy face, wistfulness rather than -delight, such as a soul newly arrived in Paradise might feel, unable to -forget the passes of death and the companions left behind in suffering. -He wasn't forgetting; I felt that as I looked at him. So many of them -forget. Vera, I am sure, hardly ever remembers what it all really -means--all these wounded heroes. Perhaps it is natural that she -shouldn't; she has no one near in it. - -Captain Thornton gazed about him quietly, and from the garden looked -back at the angel who had led him there. Of course Vera must have looked -like an angel to him. I haven't described Vera, and she is difficult to -describe. To say that she is pale and dark, with attenuated features and -dwelling, melancholy eyes, is only the beginning of it. Of course she -is getting on now,--she is nearing forty-five,--but she's still lovely; -her smile makes me think of a pearl dropped in wine, and behind the -melancholy of her eyes is that well of waiting irony. She looks as soft, -as tenderly encompassing, as a summer night; but she is really sharp, -sharp, sharp. Thwart or vex her, and out leaps the stiletto; or, rather, -it would be more exact to say, out come the claws. But women of the Vera -type will always, to young men like Captain Thornton, be angels pure and -simple. I don't suppose, for one thing, that he'd ever talked intimately -with any one quite like her. He came, I was to learn, from a remote -country rectory where the great ladies of the neighbourhood had been -unfashionable, matter of fact, and clothed for the most part in tweed -and leather, and none of them would have been likely to make much, -before the war, of a young soldier. Vera was making much of him, and a -fashionable angel is an angel doubly equipped. He would not know what it -was that made her so strange in her sweetness; but fashion of that -achieved and recondite kind is like a soft incense wafted around a -woman. She is first, everywhere, always, without an effort; and people -who are first, if they also look like angels, win hearts as easily as -they run and twist their fingers among their ropes of pearls, as Vera -was doing now. She always wore her pearls; they fell together in a milky -heap in her lap, and long earrings glimmered in the shadows of her hair. - -Vera's way of talking, too, is like a spell. Her voice is rather like -the fountain, so low, so inarticulate, yet so expressive. She murmurs -rather than speaks, with now and then a pause that is almost a soft -gurgle. Sometimes it exasperates me to hear her, but sometimes even -cross-grained I am charmed. - -The voice purled and rippled and gurgled over Captain Thornton now. He -sat on Vera's farther hand, and Mrs. Thornton sat between Vera and me. -Already, at tea-time, Mrs. Thornton had interested me. She had remained -silent without seeming shy. Superficially, no doubt, she was dowdy, and -superficially she looked dull, or, as I saw it, dulled; and dull and -dowdy is what at tea they all put her down for. It's curious, how in a -group of highly civilized people, a newcomer, without a word or glance -exchanged between them, is in a moment assessed and placed and -relegated. Everybody was going to be very kind to Mrs. Thornton, that I -saw, and everybody was going to relegate her; only the highly civilized -can manage the combination. - -Mrs. Thornton, from one point of view, had a pallid, podgy little face, -with wide lips and short nose and a broad, infantile brow above eyes -singularly far apart. All the same, and the more I looked at her the -more I saw it, it was a delicious face; squared here, stubborn there, -sweet by turns and glances. And she was of the loveliest colour, with a -skin silver-white, and thick, shining, pale-gold hair, and eyes of a -deep, dense, meditative blue. All her attributes, however, were -invisible to Vera, and I was fully prepared for the glance with which, -over Mrs. Thornton's imitation Panama, she presently said to me: - -"Darling, do take Mrs. Thornton round the water-garden. It's so lovely -at this hour. Captain Thornton must wait for it till to-morrow. He's too -tired to go farther now." - -Mrs. Thornton got up at once, with her air of vague acquiescence in -anything proposed, and I led her up and out and down the lime-tree alley -and through the copse, where Vera, in spring, has her wild garden, to -the banks of the river, the clear, wandering little stream, bridged and -islanded, golden in the afternoon light under its willows and reflecting -irises and meadow-sweet. - -"Now we can sit down," I said, and on a bench under a willow we did sit, -Mrs. Thornton with an involuntary sigh of weariness. "I expect your -husband will soon get all right here," I said presently. "It's such good -air. Is his leg badly damaged?" - -"Well, you see, he can already get about quite well with it," said Mrs. -Thornton; "but I'm afraid he'll never be able to do any of the things he -most cares for again--riding and cricket, and his soldiering, of course. -He will have to give up the army. I am afraid it's afterwards one will -begin to feel all the things that one must give up. Just now all that I -can think about is that he has come back alive. Have you any one out -there?" she asked. - -I told her about Jack and how he had got a commission at the beginning -of the war and gone out in January. - -"It must be even more of a wrench to have them go when they aren't -already in the army," said Mrs. Thornton. "A soldier's wife ought not to -feel it so much of a wrench. I'm afraid I did, though." - -I saw already that Mrs. Thornton had taken to me. It was natural that -she should. I had taken to her quite tremendously, and she must have -felt it; and, besides, a great many women do feel confidence in me at -once. I, to be sure, look like anything but an angel, though I, like -Vera, have small, pale features and dark hair. But mine's not a -melancholy or mysterious face. My eyebrows dip together over my nose, -and my mouth is at once placid and irascible. I look, in my straight, -austere clothes,--the silver buckles on my shoes and the fob of old -trinkets at my waist for all adornment,--like a cross between a young -priest in his soutane and a Blue-Coat boy; and I think it is the boyish -woman, curt and kind and impersonal, who gains the confidence of others -of her sex. - -"I don't know that it was more of a wrench," I said. "I expect that you -and I felt pretty much the same sort of thing on that Victoria platform -when we said good-bye to them. What do you and your husband intend -doing, now that he has to give up his profession?" - -"Well, we had thought of having a chicken-farm somewhere. We are both so -fond of the country, and I've a cousin who has a chicken-farm, and I've -helped her with it, and she has made it pay. Even if Clive's leg stays -so bad, I am very strong. But we've had, really, no time yet to talk -things over." - -"You don't look very strong," I observed, "but that may be because you -are over-tired. You look very tired. I should say that you got up at six -this morning, and raced around London shopping in the heat, and packed, -and had no lunch, and a journey on top of it all. So no wonder you are -tired." - -"How clever of you!" Mrs. Thornton cried, laughing. "That is exactly -what I have been doing. And I've been in a Belgian refugee hostel ever -since Clive went, and that is tiring, though it keeps one going, too. -Don't you find it difficult just to go on from day to day?" She was -leaning forward on her knee now to look up into my face while I knitted. -"I mean, when one wakes in the morning, for instance, to think that one -has to get up and brush one's teeth and do one's hair and all the rest -of it. It seems impossible when what one is feeling is that one wants to -be chloroformed till it is all over. It was then that the hostel was so -sustaining; one had to get up whether one felt like it or not." - -"I know; yes," I said, nodding. "I've work, too, though it's not so -sustaining as a hostel. I'm my cousin's secretary, and we have all these -Tommies now; they take up a good deal of time. It must be curious, -having it all over, all that weight of anxiety." - -"It is, it is," said little Mrs. Thornton, eagerly, with her look of -gratitude for finding some one with whom to talk about it. "It's almost -like losing a limb. I feel crippled, as well as Clive. Isn't it absurd? -But it's almost like loss. And one is dazed with the relief of it." - -"How long have you been married?" I asked. - -"Only a year and a half," she told me, and that Clive's mother and hers -had been great friends, and that she had often gone to stay with his -people in the country, so that she had always known him. Her mother had -died when she was a child and her father only two years ago. She had -lived in London with her father, who had been an artist. She was just -twenty. And after she had told me about herself, she asked me about -Jack, and I found myself telling her all about him and about those plans -of ours for living together in London if he ever comes back. - -The party at Compton Dally was small, and they were all there (except -Sir Francis who was an old family friend and who was paying a long -visit), to help Vera with her Tommies. The only other officer besides -Captain Thornton was poor Colonel Appleby, a pale, frightened, -middle-aged man invalided home with nervous shock. At dinner that night -Lady Dighton, who is the embodiment of lassitude and acquiescence, had -him, and Mrs. Travers-Cray had Sir Francis, and Vera had Captain -Thornton, so that Percival fell to the share of Mollie Thornton, and I -wondered how she liked him. If she was already feeling herself out of -it, to have Percival at dinner wouldn't make her feel herself in; quite -the reverse. Percival's appearance is always summed up to me by the back -of his head: the wedge of fat, red neck above his high collar, the -sleek, glittering black hair, and the rims of his red ears curving -forward on each side. The back of his head seems really as -characteristic as the front, though that is jovial and not unkindly. -Percival looks sly over his food, and looks over his wine like the sort -of man who is going to tell a story that no one else will find at all -amusing. He told Mollie several such stories that night, I inferred, -though she was evidently neither shy nor shocked; it was in the quality -of her smile that I read her kindly endurance. - -Milly, Vera's girl, just seventeen and just promoted to late dinner, sat -on Mollie's other hand and did not, as far as I observed, address her -once during the meal. But, then, Milly never makes efforts unless they -are plainly useful. All Vera's beauty had been spoiled in her by the -Dixon admixture, and yet she is a most engaging-looking little minx, -with broad, bold, black, idle eyes and a blunted nose, auburn hair and a -skin of roses and carnations. Vera had seen to that. Poor Vera is quite -fond of the child, a half-vexed, half-ironic constantly rebuffed -tenderness. But Milly says to me, "Mother is such a bore, you know," and -likes me far better, who make no claim upon her and who, she must feel, -like her very little. She will soon take flight, however, when a -sufficiently advantageous occasion presents itself. The war has been a -sad blow to her projects, and what I like in Milly is the fact that she -has never uttered a word of complaint as to the shattering of her -girlish gaieties. However, to get back to Mollie Thornton, I don't think -she could have enjoyed her companions at dinner. - -After dinner I go and amuse the Tommies and talk to the nurses until -bedtime, but, before I went, I observed that Vera, after her wont with -the detrimental belongings of a guest, had placed Mollie in a corner -with a book and the urgent, smiling murmur: "By a friend of mine. Quite, -quite beautiful. I know you'll love it." It is a book called "Spiritual -Control," with a portrait of its author, who is a stock-broker, a sleek, -stalwart, satisfied person whom Vera characterizes, why I can't think, -except that she had him once to stay after hearing his lecture, as her -"friend." A great many people find the book inspiring; Vera, as a matter -of fact, doesn't, and she found Mr. Cuthbert Dawson a terrible bore. It -was plain from her giving poor Mrs. Thornton "Spiritual Control" to -read, where she placed her. - -When I came back an hour later she was still in her corner with -"Spiritual Control," but she wasn't reading it. She had drawn the -curtain at the window where she sat, and was looking out at the -splendid, dramatic moonlight. Sir Francis and Colonel Appleby were -reading the evening papers, Lady Dighton and Leila Travers-Cray talked -together while they knitted, Milly had disappeared, and at the farthest -end of the great room, on its farthest sofa, Vera, pale and pearly, was -talking to Captain Thornton. - -"Well," I said, "how is your spirit? Is it more controlled?" - -Mrs. Thornton looked up at me, and after a moment her smile of -understanding merged into one of friendly enjoyment. - -"How do you manage," she said, "to be so austere in the daytime and so -splendid at night? You make me think of a Venetian princess in that -brocade." - -"It is nice, isn't it?" I said. "And made by the littlest of -dressmakers. I'm clever at clothes. But tell me how you like Mr. -Cuthbert Dawson." - -"Well, he is very cheerful and sincere," said Mrs. Thornton, kindly; -"but I don't seem to get much out of it. I'm really too tired and stupid -to read to-night." - -"And it's time your husband was in bed," I said. "One of the nurses is -coming for him." - -Mrs. Thornton looked down the long room at her husband. - -"If only I'd had the Red Cross training," she said, "I could have taken -care of his leg then. I suppose I mustn't ask to be allowed to. Isn't it -quite early?" she added. "He's enjoying the talk with Lady Vera." - -"It's half-past ten, and we are strict with our invalids. Here is nurse -now. I'll come up with you and see that you are comfortable." - -No one could have said that there was any creature comfort lacking in -Mrs. Thornton's reception at Compton Dally. Captain Thornton, as the -invalid, had a larger room, but Mrs. Thornton's room, next it, was quite -as charming a one, pink and grey, with old French prints and hangings of -_toile de Jouy_. She went up to the prints for a moment of silent -appreciation before turning to me with a sigh, half pleasure and half -wistfulness. - -"How lovely everything is here! Papa would have been in rapture over -those Cochins. I shall enjoy my sleep to-night." And then,--it was her -only sign of awareness,--"I suppose I'm to be allowed to go and say -good-night to Clive when nurse has done with him." - - * * * * * - -My study at Compton Dally, where I type and write and do accounts, opens -on the west terrace, and from my bureau I seemed, at most hours of the -days that followed, to have a view of Mollie Thornton's little figure -wandering, as it were, on the outskirts, not plaintive,--there was never -a touch of plaintiveness,--but passive. With her sewing or knitting or a -book she sat a good deal under the shade of the cedar that stands at the -corner of the terrace, and she spent a good deal of time drifting up and -down the vistas of the lawns and park watching birds, a binocular in her -hand. She was certainly a most comfortable person to relegate, since she -never looked melancholy and usually contrived to seem occupied, and -Vera, when she passed behind her on the terrace on her way to the -dream-garden, Captain Thornton beside her, would pause and put her hand -on her shoulder and say, "Happy, dear?" in the most dulcet tone. And -when Mrs. Thornton, lifting those meditative eyes, answered, "Yes, thank -you," Vera, all bland benevolence, would say, "That's right," and pass -on. Leila Travers-Cray and Lady Dighton sometimes exchanged a few -friendly remarks with her, and she read the morning papers to Colonel -Appleby when his eyes hurt him; but she was relegated far, far away, as -completely as any human being could be who could in any way count as a -guest. - -I was very busy and had not much time to be with her, though all the -time I had was hers; but I knew accurately what she was feeling. I -related it always with that dreadful Victoria platform, with those -moments of pain and yet of rapture which we had both known, when we had -felt ourselves, in our suffering, stand for England, lifted up in -accepting sacrifice to the august and beautiful spirit that claimed our -dearest. One would expect, after that transcendent suffering, to find as -transcending a joy; but how was joy possible to a young wife caught into -what might be to her husband a fairyland or a paradise, but to her was a -cruel and complicated machine where her only part was to turn round with -the other wheels and pretend to like it? I knew that it must not be -taken too seriously. It was only to last for six weeks, and then she -would have her Clive back again; yet while it lasted it must make the -months of suffering passed through seem happy by comparison. There had -then been nothing between them but distance and the fear of death; and -now everything was between them--everything Vera stood for; her house, -her friends, her smile, her pearls, her dream-garden. - -On morning after morning I saw Vera leading him away to it, with her -armful of books, and Chang, her Pekinese, trotting at her heels. I -perfectly understood Vera's state of mind in regard to Captain Thornton. -There was no occasion for commonplace jealousy. He merely made her feel -cheerful and rejuvenated. Everything she had to show and tell him was -new to him. She became new to herself, poor old Vera! and gained from -the quiet regard of his sane and simple eyes--handsome eyes under -straight, dark brows--a sense of freshness and worth in everything. She -liked him better than any of the wounded heroes she had yet had. Some of -them had been merely stupid, and one or two had been gloomy, sardonic -men--men of her own world, to whom nothing she had to say would seem -new. Clive Thornton was neither stupid nor sardonic, and he was simple -enough to accept Vera's fancy tricks--her talk of dreaming dreams and -solitude--as part of an angel's manner, and he was just clever enough to -be able to appreciate anything she had to say. I could quite see how -endearing Vera must find his steady gaze and his considering silences. -Even with my vigorous espousal of his wife's side I never felt angry -with him. His not seeing that she was unhappy was part of the same -innocence that made him not see that Vera was a cat. Mollie, besides, -took quite as much care to conceal her unhappiness as Vera to behave -like an angel. It never crossed his mind that his wife was relegated; it -never crossed his mind that they were separated. He did not feel -separated; they were both, as far as he knew, in fairyland together. And -yet I knew it might not all be so trivial and transient as it seemed. A -new standard was being formed for him; a new idea of what it was to be -an angel. It was possible that all unconsciously he would no longer -think of Mollie as one when he left Compton Dally; and when I took this -in I began to gather up my weapons. - -I found Mollie one afternoon sitting on the bench under the willow-tree -where we had had our first talk. She had her knitting, but her hands -were still, and she was gazing before her at the water. If she were not -a tragic figure, it was only because there are some things sadder than -tragedy. She had faced everything, been through everything, she had gone -down into the Hades where so many of us were still living, and now she -found herself baulked and menaced by commonplace daylight. Tragedy is, -in some ways, an easy thing to bear. - -"Well, what are you doing here by yourself?" I asked her, advancing. -There was a look on her face, startled and steadied, that showed me what -she had been thinking about in the fancied security of her solitude. But -she managed at once the vague smile that concealed so much, and said -that she had been, as usual, resting. "I seem to find out every day more -and more how tired I was," she added. - -"You didn't care to go with the others, motoring?" I took my place -beside her. "You'd have liked Marjorams. It's a lovely old place. Some -people think it beats Compton Dally, though, naturally, I'm not one of -them." - -"I'm sure you're not," said Mollie, laughing a little. "That was one of -the things that first struck me about you--how you loved it. I felt that -you were a fiercely loyal person." - -"I think I am--narrow loyalties, but fierce ones," I said. "But you -haven't answered my question." - -"About motoring? I don't care much about it, you know. And there really -wasn't room enough for me." - -I knew there hadn't been; but I was deliberately eschewing tact. - -"Has Captain Thornton gone?" I inquired, knowing, also, that he hadn't. - -"No; Lady Vera is reading to him in the flagged garden," said Mollie in -the voice that showed me how little she had to learn about spiritual -control. "Lady Vera is going to take him out for a run in her two-seater -before dinner. He enjoys that a great deal more than the big car." - -"It's far pleasanter, certainly," I agreed. And I went on: "They are -reading, you mean, in the dream-garden. You mustn't forget that it's a -dream-garden--where one goes to be alone." - -She looked round at me quickly, and after a moment I saw that she -faintly coloured. She said nothing, leaving it to me to follow up my -graceless gibe. I was quite ready to follow it up. - -"As a matter of fact," I said, knitting the loops along the side of my -heel, "Vera hardly ever is alone there. It's always, with Vera, a -_solitude deux_. She's not at all the sort of woman for real solitude. -She is the sort of woman who likes to feel, or, rather, to look lonely -and not to be alone." - -To this, after a pause, Mollie said: - -"She is very charming; Clive finds her very charming." And, forced to -it, apparently, by my crudity, she added, "Aren't you fond of her, -then?" - -"No, I'm not; not particularly," I said. "Especially not just now. Vera -is not at her best, to my mind, when she is being angelic to young -married men." - -Mollie Thornton now blushed deeply. - -"I am perfectly contented that she should be angelic to Clive," she -said. - -"You are very loyal," I returned. "But you'll own that he is getting -more out of it than you are. It's a place, Compton Dally, for wounded -heroes rather than for a wounded hero's wife." - -"Do you mean," she asked after a moment, "that I oughtn't to have come?" -She had indeed owned to everything in the bewilderment of the question. -I laughed at it. - -"Oughtn't to have been with your husband at a time like this! Even Vera -could hardly ask that, could she? And that's my quarrel with her; that -it's the time of all times that you should be together and that she -never lets you see him, practically." - -She looked away, and after a moment I saw that her eyes had filled with -tears. - -"He hasn't an idea of it," she said at last. - -"That fact doesn't make you happier, does it?" - -"He thinks I'm as happy as he is. He thinks that we are together in it -all, and that she is an angel to me, too," said Mollie. "She always is -an angel to me when she sees me." - -"All men are rather stupid when it comes to knowing whether their wives -are happy," I remarked. "I think your Clive is a great dear; but I like -you best because you see things he doesn't. You, for instance, see that -Vera isn't an angel, though she may look like one." - -"He has no reason to think anything else, has he?" said Mollie, and I -saw that I had brought her to the point to which I had intended to bring -her. "I don't let him guess that I'm not happy; it would be horrid of me -if I did, for it would only mean that he'd feel at once that we must go -away, and all this loveliness would be over for him. A stuffy little -flat in Bayswater isn't a very alluring alternative; and that's where -we'd have to go--to my aunt's--till Clive was better." - -"How you'd love the stuffy flat! How glad you'd be to be there with him! -And, to do him justice, how happy he'd be there with you! He will be in -a month's time. The only question is, the month. No, Vera isn't an -angel. If she were an angel, she'd have seen to it that you were happy -here, too. But when it comes to being nice to other women,--really nice, -I mean,--she can be a cat. And what I'd like very much to see now is -what she'd make of it if you could show her that you could look like an -angel, too. It's so much a matter of looks." - -"Make of it? But I couldn't look like an angel." - -"You could look like a rival; that's another way of doing it. You could -look like another woman of her own sort. You could make her see you. She -simply doesn't see you now. I suspect that if Vera saw you and saw that -you were charming, she'd show her claws. I'd like Captain Thornton to -see her showing her claws." - -In silent astonishment, her blue eyes fixed upon me, Mollie gazed. - -"No, I don't hate Vera, if that's what you're wondering," I said. "I -like you, that's all, and I don't intend that she shall go on making you -unhappy." - -"But I don't want Clive made unhappy," Mollie said. "I can't imagine -what you mean; but, whatever it is, I don't want it. I couldn't bear all -this to be spoiled for him. I couldn't bear it not to be always, for -him, a paradise." - -It was my turn to gaze at her, and I gazed penetratingly. - -"And what if it all came to mean that you yourself, because of it, were -never to be more to him than a second-rate paradise? What if she were to -spoil you for him?" - -I brought out the cruel questions deliberately, and for a moment Mollie -faced them and me. - -"Why do you say that? How cruel to say that!" she murmured, and then -suddenly she bowed her head upon her hands. "It's been my terror. I'm -ashamed of myself for thinking it. And now--you see it!" - -I put my arm around her shoulders. - -"I'm not cruel. I only want us to see things together. I don't really -think they'd ever come to that; and, at all events, he would never know -that they had." - -"But I should," Mollie said. - -"Yes, you would. And it's horribly true that real things can be spoiled -and blighted by false things. I've often seen it happen. You do see the -danger, and you must take up the burden, my dear, of being cleverer than -your husband, and save him along with yourself. If Vera were what she -looks and seems to him, he might be right in feeling that he found in -her something he couldn't find in you. You must show him that she isn't -what she looks and seems and you must show him that you can be a -first-rate paradise, too." - -"In a little flat in Bayswater! On a chicken-farm! No, it can't be done. -Paradises of this sort don't grow in such places," poor Mollie moaned. - -"You can keep up the real paradise in them--the one he has already--when -you get there. The point is that you must show him now that you can look -like this one here. And the way to look it is to dress it. I'm sure -you've realized the absolutely supreme importance of dress for women of -the paradise type--the women you see here, all these sweet ministering -angels to the Tommies and the young husbands. I don't mean to say that, -with the exception of Vera, they're not as nice as you are in spite of -being well dressed; but I do mean that if they dressed as you do they'd -not be women of the paradise." - -Mollie's hands had fallen, and she was gazing again with eyes childlike, -astonished, and trusting. - -"But, Judith, what do you mean?" she asked. "Dress? Of course you all -dress beautifully. Haven't I loved simply looking at you all, as if -you'd been the most exquisite birds? But how could I do it? I haven't -the money; I never have had. If one has no money, one must be either -sthetic or dowdy, and I've always prefered to be dowdy." - -"Yes, I saw that; I liked you for that. There's hope for the dowdy, but -none for the sthetic; the one is humble, and the other is complacent. -Your clothes express renunciation simply--and the summer sales. But -though it is a question of money, some women who have masses of money -never learn how to dress. They remain mere dressmakers' formulas; and -others, with very little, can't be passed by. They count anywhere. -You've noticed my clothes. I've hardly any money, yet I'm perfect. All -my clothes mean just what I intend them to; just as Vera's mean what she -intends, and Mrs. Travers-Cray's and Lady Dighton's, and Milly's, for -Milly already is as clever as possible at knowing her thing. But you've -abandoned the attempt to intend. You've sunk down, and you let the winds -rake over you. You've always made me think of a larkspur, that blue and -silver kind, all pensive grace and delicacy; but you're a larkspur that -hasn't been staked. Your sprays don't count; they tumble anyhow, and no -one sees your shape or colour. Last night, for instance--that -turquoise-blue chiffon: not turquoise, and not that sort of chiffon." - -"I know it. I hated it," she said. - -"Of course you did, and so does any one who looks at you in it." - -"But I couldn't afford the better qualities," she appealed. "And in the -cheaper ones I couldn't get the blue I wanted, the soft Japanese blue." - -"No, you couldn't. And you thought it wouldn't show if you had it made -up on sateen. It always does show. No, it needs thought and time and -computing, too much time, too much thought, to say nothing of too much -money for many women, of course; for them it wouldn't be worth it. There -are other things to do than to live in paradise. But for you it is worth -it; to show him that you can look like an angel, and to show him that -Vera can look like a cat. No, _I'll_ show him; mine is the -responsibility. It's worth it, at all events, to me. I'll put in the -stakes, and tie you and loop you and display you. You'll see. I told you -I'd a clever little dressmaker. That's an essential. And we'll scrape up -the money. You shall be dressed for once as you intend." - -She was bewildered, aghast, tempted, and, on the top of everything, -intensely amused. Her face was lighted as I'd never seen it before with -pure mirth, and it looked like still, silver water that becomes suddenly -glimmering, quivering, eddying, and sunlit. She was charming thus -lighted. It was a sort of illumination of which Vera's face is -incapable; her gaiety is always clouded with irony. - -"It is all too kind, too astonishing, too funny for words," Mollie said. -"Of course I should love to be well dressed for once, and I can't see -why I shouldn't avail myself of your little dressmaker now,--especially -now, since, as you tell me, I offend through my dowdiness. And I do -really need some new clothes. I'm wearing out my trousseau ones, you -know. Yes; wasn't it a horrid little trousseau? But, don't you see," and -the sunlight faded, "I can't be a real, not a real angel, not a real -paradise. It's much deeper. It's a question of roots. It's the way they -smile, the way they walk, the way they know what they want to say and -what they don't want to say." - -I nodded. "You know, too, and you'd say it, if people saw you and cared -to hear what you said." - -"That would help, of course. I've never felt so stupid in my life as -here. But, oh, it's deeper!" said Mollie. "I don't belong to it. How -they all make me feel it! I'm an outsider; and why should I pretend not -to be?" - -"It wouldn't be pretending anything to dress as you'd like to dress. No -one who _sees_ is an outsider now a days, if they can contrive to make -themselves seen. That's the whole point. And there's nothing you don't -see. You see far more than Vera does. Don't bother about the roots. Take -care of the flowers, and the roots will take care of themselves; that's -another modern maxim for you. Your flowers are there, and all that we -need think of now is how to show them. Wait. You'll see. We'll go to -London to-morrow," I said; "and this very evening we'll have a talk -about your hair." - - * * * * * - -You may be sure that I was on the spot to see a week or so later my -larkspur's dbut as an angel. We were all assembled in the drawing-room -before dinner, and she was a little late, as I, not she, had intended -that she should be. It was precisely the moment for a mild sensation. -The day had been hot and long. Everybody, apart from being anxious,--for -everybody was anxious, Sir Francis and Mrs. Travers-Cray with sons at -the front and Lady Dighton's husband in the Dardanelles--apart from that -ever-present strain, everybody to-day was a little jaded, blank, and -tired of one another. There reigned, as a symptom, that silence that in -the moments before dinner falls sometimes upon people who know each -other too well for surmise or ceremony. They stood about looking at the -evening newspapers; they picked up a book; they sat side by side, -knitting without speaking. Vera, sunken in a deep chair near my sofa, -yawned wearily. No one, in fact, had anything to look to before bedtime -except the stimulant of the consomm or a possible surprise in the way -of sweets. - -I had known that I could count upon Mollie not to be self-conscious when -she appeared in her new array, but I hadn't counted upon such complete -and pensive simplicity. Her eyes were on me as she entered, her husband -limping behind her, and they seemed to ask me, with a half-wistful -amusement, if she came up to my expectations. She far surpassed them. I -never saw a woman to whom it made more difference. "It," on this -occasion, was blue--the blue of a night sky and the blue of a sky at -dawn, the blue, too, of my larkspurs, lapping at the edges here and -there, as delicately as filaments of cloud crossing the sky, into white. -It made one think, soft, suave triumph that it was, of breezes over the -sea at daybreak and of a crescent moon low on a horizon and of white -shores and blue Grecian hills; at least it made me think of these -things, it and Mollie together; and with it went the alteration of her -hair--bands of folded gold swathed round and round her little head. No -one but myself had ever seen before that Mollie had the poise and -lightness of a Tanagra figure nor that the shape of her face was curious -and her eyes strange and her skin like silver; but I knew, as she -advanced down the long room, that Vera, sunken in her chair, saw it all -at last, drank in every drop of it, with an astonishment that, though it -expressed itself in no gesture, I was able to gauge from her very -stillness, her concentration of stillness, as she watched the relegated -becoming visible at last. It's not pleasant for anybody to have to own -that they've been blind and made a mistake, and Vera was specially fond -of discovering oddity and charm and of claiming and displaying and -discussing a discovery. And here was oddity and charm which she had not -only failed to discover, but had helped to obscure. Mollie was indeed -visible, and every eye was on her as she drifted quietly forward in the -evening light and sat down beside me. She was mine, and no one else's; -that was quite evident, too. - -That Captain Thornton had received something of a revelation was also -evident, though it had not probably amounted to more than seeing, and -saying, that Mollie was looking awfully well; but it expressed itself in -the fact that, instead of joining Vera, as was his wont, he came and sat -down next to Mollie on my sofa. We began to talk, and, though the -watching pause was prolonged for yet another moment, the others then -began to talk, too. It was as if, not quite knowing what had happened to -them, they were all a little cheered and exhilarated; as if they'd had -their consomm and as if the sweet had been altogether a surprise. A -spectacle of any sort has this effect upon a group of jaded people. Only -Vera kept her ominous silence. - -Dinner was announced, and we all got up. Percival, with a new alacrity, -approached Mollie,--he almost always had Mollie,--the others paired off -as usual, and Vera rose to Captain Thornton's arm. It was then that she -said, smiling thoughtfully upon Mollie: - -"Aren't you doing your hair in a new way, dear?" - -I saw from Mollie's answering smile that she was still ingenuous enough -to hope that she might win Vera's approval with that of the others, the -hope, too, that while Clive might think of herself as a first-rate -angel, he should never see Vera as a cat. - -"It is new," she said. "I've just learned how to; Judith showed me. Do -you like it?" - -Leaning on Captain Thornton's arm, Vera, with gently lifted brows, -rather sadly shook her head. - -"I suppose I don't care about fashions. It's very fashionable, isn't it? -But I loved so that great, girlish knot. People's way of doing their -hair is part of their personality to me. Judith cares so much about -fashion, I know. Do you care about fashion, Captain Thornton? Do you -like this fashionable way? You know, I can't help always thinking that -it makes women's heads look like cheeses; in napkins, you -know--Stiltons." - -It was the first scratch. Mollie, though with a little startled glance, -took it with all mildness, making no comment as Percival led her away, -Percival remarking that it was, he thought, a ripping way of doing her -hair; and I, as I went out manless, heard Captain Thornton, behind me, -saying, in answer to Vera's murmurs: - -"Yes; I see; I see what you mean. But, do you know, all the same I think -it's most awfully becoming to Mollie. It brings out the shape of her -face so." - -"What a _dear_ little face it is!" said Vera, rapidly leaving the -cheese. - -It all worked like a stealing spell. There was nothing marked or sudden -in it. No one, I think, except Vera, was aware that his or her attitude -to little Mrs. Thornton had changed. She had become visible, that was -all, and they became aware that she was not only worth looking at, but -worth talking to. At dinner that night old Sir Francis fixed his -eye-glass to observe her more than once and after dinner he joined her -in the drawing-room and talked with her till bedtime. It turned out -then that he had known her father and actually possessed one of his -pictures; had been a great admirer. Next morning he was walking with her -on the terrace before breakfast. Mollie in a blue lawn, as sprightly as -it was demure, her casque of golden hair shining in the sunlight. Lady -Dighton asked her that afternoon to come motoring with her and the -Tommies, and in the evening I heard Mrs. Travers-Cray, while she and -Mollie wound wool together, telling her about her two boys at the front. -The only person who didn't see more of Mollie was Captain Thornton; but -that, I felt sure, was because Vera was determined that he shouldn't. - -It was not for a day or two that I was able to compare notes with -Mollie. - -"Well," I said, joining her on the terrace before dinner, "_a y est_." - -"It's extraordinary," said Mollie. "Everything is different. I myself am -different. I feel, for one thing, as if I'd become clever to match my -clothes. It would be almost humiliating to have the mere clothes make so -much difference and every one change so to me unless I could really feel -that I'd changed, too." - -"You're staked. I told you how it would be." - -"And I owe it all to you. It's a wonderfully sustaining feeling to be -staked; secure, peaceful. Such a funny change, Judith, is little Milly! -Have you noticed? She came up to me when I was walking this afternoon -and linked her arm in mine, and in ten minutes was confiding in me all -about her perplexed love-affairs, as if we'd been old friends." - -"Yes, she would. She loves to tell people about her love-affairs." - -"But I couldn't have imagined that she was really so ingenuous; for, in -a sense, she is ingenuous." - -"Exceedingly ingenuous when she isn't exceedingly sophisticated; I think -one often sees the mixture. The only thing you must be prepared for with -the Milly type is that in a week's time she may forget that she ever -confided in you and, almost, that she ever knew you. Her ingenuousness -is a form of presumptuousness." - -"Yes, I think I saw that. I'm beginning to see so many things--far more -things than I'll ever have use for on a chicken-farm, Judith." And -Mollie laughed a little. - -"And what does your husband say?" I asked. - -"Well, I've not seen much of him, you know. But I'm sure he likes it -awfully, the way I look." - -"Only Vera won't let him get at you to tell you so." - -"Oh, he sees enough of me to tell me so," said Mollie, smiling: "only it -takes him time to come to the point of saying things, and it's true that -we haven't much time." - -"And she hasn't given you any more scratches before him?" - -"Not before him." Mollie flushed a little. "It _was_ a scratch, wasn't -it? I don't think he saw that it was." - -"He will see in time. And it's worth it, isn't it, since it's to make -him see?" - -"Yes, I can bear it. She's rather rude to me now when he isn't there, -you know; but it's really less blighting to have some one see you enough -to be rude to you than to see you so little that they are affectionate. -Yet I hope she won't be too rude." - -"She can hardly bear it," I said. - -It was the next morning that Vera showed me how little she was able to -bear it. She had kept me singularly busy, as if afraid that I might wave -a magic wand even more transformingly, and she came into the study where -I was writing invitations for a garden-fte in aid of the Red Cross -fund, and after giving me very dulcetly a long list of instructions, she -went to the window and looked out for some silent moments at Mollie -sauntering up and down with Sir Francis under the blue bubble of her -parasol. - -"I suppose you dressed her when you took her up to town that day," she -then remarked. - -I had wondered how long Vera could keep under cover and I was pleased to -see her emerge. - -"Well, hardly that," I said, marking off with my pen the names of the -people on my list who were away and not to be counted on for help with -the bazaar. "She badly needed some clothes and couldn't afford expensive -places; so I took her to my little woman. She was able to carry out -Mollie's ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, hasn't she? She knows -so exactly what suits her." - -"Carry out her ideas? She hasn't an idea in her head. Carry out yours, -you mean, you funny creature. I can't conceive why you took the pains to -dress up the deadly little dowd." Vera drummed with her fingers on the -window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and -they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray, -sweet, impassive, honey-coloured woman, was one of the few people for -whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard. - -"Oh, you're mistaken there, Vera, just as you've been mistaken about her -looks," I said, all dispassionate limpidity. "She has heaps of ideas, I -can assure you, and I saw it from the beginning; just as I saw that she -was enchanting looking." - -"Enchanting! Help! Help! That little skim-milk face, with those great -calf's eyes! Who is the poor dear martyr thing who carries her eyes on a -plate? St. Lucia, isn't it? She makes me think of that--as much -expression. You may have succeeded in making her less of a dowd, but -you'll never succeed in making her less of a bore." - -"Well, Mrs. Travers-Cray doesn't find her a bore," I remarked, casting a -glance of quiet, satisfied possessorship at the group outside. - -"Oh, Leila always was an angel," said Vera, "and your little protge -has made a very determined set at her." - -"Sir Francis is an angel, too, then. He delights in her; that's -evident." It was perhaps rather indiscreet of me to goad Vera like this, -but I could not resist taking it out of her and rubbing it into her, and -I knew that Sir Francis would vex her almost as much as Mrs. -Travers-Cray. "And look at Milly," I added. "You can't say that Milly is -an angel. The fact is that Mrs. Thornton is a very charming young woman, -and that if you don't see it you are the only person who doesn't." - -"Another person who doesn't see it is her husband," said Vera. She was -determined not to show that she was angry, but I could see how angry she -was. "Sir Francis, of course, old goose, thinks any one charming if they -are young and dress well and look at him with appealing eyes. It is her -husband I'm really sorry for. It's evident that he never spoke to a -civilized woman in his life till he came here. He doesn't show much -signs of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It's -pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first -curate's daughter they find round the corner. And now that she's pushing -herself forward like this, he is done for." Vera, I saw, was very angry -to be goaded so far. - -"Surely she is the more interesting of the two," I blandly urged. -"Neither of them has a spark of ambition if it comes to pushing; they'll -be quite happy on their chicken-farm. But if it were a question of -getting on and getting in with the right people, it would, I imagine, be -she rather than he who would count. This last day or two has made that -evident to my mind. In her soft, strange way little Mollie is unique, -whereas he is only an honest young soldier, and there are thousands more -just like him, thank goodness!" - -Vera at this turned her head and looked at me for a moment. After all, -even if I wasn't angry, I, too, had given myself away. And it evidently -pleased her to recognize this--to recognize that she wasn't being -worsted merely by Mollie's newly revealed charm, but by my diplomacy as -well. And it is rather a good mark to Vera, I think, that I don't -believe it ever crossed her mind for a moment that she had the simplest -method of speedy vengeance in her hands--had simply to send me packing. -Of course we should both have known that to use such a method would have -been to reveal one's self as crude and vulgar; yet a cattish woman who -is very angry may easily become both. Vera didn't. There are things I -always like about her. - -She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling -with cousinly good-humour: - -"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that, -Judith darling--how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he doesn't. -You are so essentially a woman's woman, aren't you? I suppose it's just -because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don't feel -drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you, -of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their -hair and the colour of their ties. You're a first-rate woman's woman, I -grant you, and you're very clever and you've succeeded in foisting your -little friend on silly Sir Francis and on Leila Travers-Cray, and it's -all rather dear and funny of you, and I've quite loved watching it all -and seeing you at work; but you won't succeed in foisting Mrs. Thornton -on her husband, and he'll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out -whether he's anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found -him,"--and Vera now spoke with a simple candour,--"quite, quite a dear; -with a great deal in him--sensitiveness, tact, flavour. So much could -have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and -started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who doesn't -know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? No; -I'm afraid Mrs. Mollie, after she's left your hands, Judith dear, will -tumble quite, quite flat again. _Would_ you mind, darling, getting all -the invitations off to-day? We mustn't be slipshod about it. And don't -forget to write to the merry-go-round man, and to Mark Hammond to see if -he'll sing." So, having delivered what she hoped might be a somewhat -stinging shaft at my complacency, Vera trailed away. - -If I hadn't so goaded her I don't believe, really, that she'd have taken -the trouble that she did take to prove herself right and me wrong. There -had been, before this, little conscious malice or intended unkindness. -But now the claws were out. During the next day or two it at once -justified and infuriated me to watch the manifold little slights and -snubs of which poor Mollie was the victim, the dexterity with which, -while seeming all sweetness, Vera essayed to belittle and discompose -her, to display her as ignorant or awkward or second-rate. Only a woman -can be aware of what another woman is accomplishing on these lines, and -though Captain Thornton once or twice showed a puzzled brow, her skill -equalled her malice, and he never really saw. I was prepared for it when -Mollie came to my study one morning and shut the door and said: - -"I'm afraid I can't stand it any longer, Judith." - -"It has been pretty bad," I said. "She's been so infernally clever, -too." - -"Our time is really nearly up," said Mollie, "and I'm trying to think of -some excuse for getting Clive to feel we'd better go before it comes. -Only now she's telling him that I am jealous of her." - -Pen in hand, I leaned back and looked up at my poor little accomplice. -This, I recognized, was indeed Vera's trump-card, but I certainly hadn't -foreseen that she would use it. - -"Has he told you so?" I asked. - -"Oh, no, he wouldn't. He couldn't, could he? But I know it. Men are very -transparent, aren't they, Judith? He is always urging me to see more of -her, and telling me that she is so kind, so clever, such a dear, and -that I'd really think so, too, if I'd try to see more of her. And when -I say that I'm sure she is, and that I hope I shall see more of her, he -thinks--I can see it--that I'm only playing up, and between us, her and -me, he is rather wretched and uncomfortable. What shall I do, Judith? -You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures, -she was really sneering at father's, and when I tried to -answer,--because I felt I had to answer about that,--making me seem so -rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he didn't -understand. And it's all the time like that. I have to pretend not to -see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns -everything against me." - -"Be patient. Give her a little more time," I said. "She'll run to earth -if you give her a little more time." - -"But it is so horrid, between Clive and me, Judith: if I say what I -think to him, he will only see it as jealousy, so even with him I have -to pretend, and it makes me feel as if I were growing to be like her, -and I can't bear it." - -I meditated while poor Mollie dried her eyes, to which the irrepressible -tears had risen. "Ask him if he can't arrange for you to see more of -her," I said presently. - -She looked at me with a general trust, yet a particular scepticism. - -"But she will make that seem as if I were trying to force myself on -them; because she's always with him, isn't she?" - -"Only now because she keeps him, not because he wants to stay. I'm quite -sure that he wants to be more with you. I think you can manage it, -Mollie. Just say, when he next urges: 'Oh, but I'd love to, Clive. Only -you must tell me when. Perhaps sometime you'd take me to the -dream-garden when you think she'll be there and that she'd care to have -me, and then, when you get us started, you could leave us. You could go -and take Judith for a stroll.' Something of that sort." - -She eyed me sadly and doubtfully. - -"I'll try whatever you tell me to try, but I feel afraid of her. I feel -as if she cared, really cared, to do me harm." - -"She's been proved wrong," I said, "and I've rather rubbed it in; but at -the worst, Mollie, she can never harm you now as there was danger of her -doing. It's better, far better, you'll own, for your husband to think -you're jealous and a naughty angel than for him to think you're a -second-rate one." With this aphorism, for the time being, she had to be -contented. I myself felt sure that the hour of reckoning was to come. - -It was next afternoon, after lunch, Vera being engaged in the -drawing-room with visitors, that I met Captain Thornton on the lawn with -his wife. Mollie was very large-eyed and rather pale, and I inferred -from her demeanour that she had taken a step or made a move of some -kind. - -"Do come with us, Miss Elliot," said Captain Thornton. "I'm just taking -Mollie along to the dream-garden. She wants to have a little talk, all -to herself, with Lady Vera, and Lady Vera told me to wait for her there -till these people were gone; so it's just the thing. And you and I can -leave them together, do you see? People never get really to know each -other unless they are alone together, do they?" - -"No, they don't," I replied. "Though sometimes they never get to know -each other when they are alone together," I couldn't resist adding; but -as I saw a slight bewilderment on his honest face I indulged in no -further subtleties, and made haste to add, "Does Vera know that you were -going to arrange a meeting?" - -"Oh, not a bit of it. That's just the point," said the guileless young -man. "I want her to think that it's all Mollie's doing, you know; -because she's got it into her head that Mollie doesn't really care about -her. Funny idea, isn't it? As if Mollie could be like that to any one -who's been as kind to us as Lady Vera has! But I'm sure that if they -have a few quiet talks it will all come right. Mollie is so -undemonstrative; I told her that. It needs time for her to get used to -anybody." - -Mollie, her arm within her husband's, cast across his unconscious breast -a grave, deep glance upon me as he thus quoted his defence of her. What -was she to do with Vera, the glance perhaps asked me, too, now that she -was to have her? What account of the interview would Vera serve up to -Clive? Was not her last state to be worse than her first? I tried, in my -answering glance, to reassure and sustain, yet I myself felt uncertainty -about this fulfilment of my counsel. - -We reached the dream-garden. Vera and Captain Thornton had been there -for most of the morning, and books and papers were piled on the seat -where the grey and purple cushions denoted attitudes of confident -tte--tte. - -Captain Thornton and I talked about the war, and I saw, with a mild, -reminiscent irony, remembering Vera's sting, that he was perfectly -prepared to give me every opportunity for judging him. I felt, indeed, -though Vera had so absorbed him, that he had never cared to talk about -the war with her. She and the other angels were there to help one to -forget, but with me he was glad to remember. It was I who heard Vera's -swift footfall approaching. Captain Thornton, stooping to mark out with -books and pencils the plan of a battle, had, I think, almost forgotten -the coming interview, and until Vera appeared among the cypresses, -flushed above her pearls, he remained unaware. She stood there at the -top of the steps for a moment, looking down at us, at Captain Thornton -and me, our heads so close together, and at Mollie in her blue and with -her unrevealing little face, and I saw from her expression, as she took -us all in, that she had not been succeeding so well with Captain -Thornton as Mollie and even I had feared. It was a smouldering -irritation against him that flared up with her anger against Mollie and -me. - -"Oh!" she said, a dreadfully significant monosyllable on Vera's -competent lips. It expressed surprise and weariness and the slight -embarrassment of the civilized confronted with the barbarian. "Oh!" she -repeated, and she descended the steps, Chang trotting after her with his -countenance of quizzical superciliousness. "I'm so very, very sorry." -She did not look at any of us now; her voice was exceedingly -inarticulate and exceedingly sweet. "I'm afraid there's been a mistake. -It's the other gardens that are for my friends. I'm charmed always to -see them there. And there are so many other gardens, aren't there? But -this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to -be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired." - -We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those -weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook -them into place. - -"It's my fault," Clive stammered. "I mean--I didn't understand. I -thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know -you better, and I suggested this." - -Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang -sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. "I'm very, very -sorry," she gurgled, with oh, such vagueness! "It's my one corner. My -one place to be alone. I don't see people here unless I've asked them to -come." She took up a review and opened it, and her eyes scanned its -pages. - -We were dismissed,--"thrown out," as the Americans say,--and we -retreated up the steps, Mollie helping Clive, and down the flagged path -and out into the lime-tree alley. - -It was a display so complete that it left me, indeed, a little abashed -by the success of my manoeuvres, while at the same time I felt that I -mustn't let Captain Thornton discern the irrepressible smile that -quivered at the corners of my mouth. When we were out on the lawn he -turned his startled eyes on me. - -"Really, you know, I'd no idea, Miss Elliot--what?" He appealed to me. - -"That Vera could lose her temper?" I asked. - -Clive continued to stare. - -"It comes to that, doesn't it? What else can it mean?" He looked now at -his wife. "To speak like that to you, Mollie! And when she's been saying -she wanted so awfully to make real friends with you." - -Mollie, I saw, was dismayed. The triumph had been too complete. She -could not keep up with it. - -"I am sure that Lady Vera is very badly overwrought about something," -she said. "She wanted particularly to be alone and she found us there, -and it put her on edge." Actually she was trying to patch up his fallen -angel for him. - -"But she told me to wait there for her.--Sent me off to wait for her -when those people came," said Clive. "It seems to me that it was you she -minded finding. And yet she's been going on about your never coming to -talk to her. She's been going on about it like anything." He caught -himself up, blushing, and I saw that Vera was all revealed to him. I -hardly needed to pluck another pinion from her, though I didn't resist -the temptation to do so, saying: - -"You see, Vera is rather jealous. She can't bear sharing things--her -friends of her dream-garden. She liked to have you there, but she didn't -like to have Mollie there. Did she tell you she wanted to make friends -with Mollie? She's never taken any pains to show it, has she?" - -"Oh, please, Judith!" Mollie implored. - -"But he sees it all now, Mollie, so why shouldn't I say it?" I inquired. -"Her point has been, Captain Thornton, to keep you in and to keep Mollie -out, and she very nearly succeeded in doing it." - -"Please, Judith! It's not only that. She's been such a real friend to -you, Clive! I'm sure she is overwrought about something, and it will be -all right when you next meet her." But Mollie pleaded in vain. - -"I'm hanged if it will be all right!" said Captain Thornton. - -Vera made no attempt to reinstate herself. It was part of her strength -never to try to recover what was lost. She kept up appearances, it is -true, but that was for her own sake rather than in any hope, or even -wish, to regain his good opinion. When we all met at tea, she came -trailing in, with Chang under her arm, and as she sank into her place, -diffusing the suavest unconsciousness, she said to Mrs. Travers-Cray: - -"Charlie Carlton's been killed, have you heard? This war is something -more than I can bear." - -Charlie Carlton, as I knew, was a cousin of the recent callers and a -most remote friend of Vera's; but it was the best that she could do for -the occasion, and all that she was inclined to do, though a melancholy -smile, as impersonal as it was impartial, was turned more than once on -Captain Thornton and Mollie as she inquired whether they liked sugar in -their tea or had enough cream. She had made their tea for six weeks now, -and after the first week she had never forgotten that they both liked -sugar and both disliked cream. But she thus washed her hands of intimacy -while keeping up the graces of hostess-ship. They might have arrived -that afternoon. - -Mollie and her husband rose beautifully to the situation, for their last -two days at Compton Dally; that is, Mollie rose, for the husband at such -times has only to follow and be silent. I don't think that she could -have shown a grace and a distance as achieved as Vera's had it not been -for those charming clothes of hers. You must have something to rise from -if you are to float serenely above people's heads; otherwise you merely -stand on tiptoe, very uncomfortably. Mollie and Vera might have been -two silken balloons, passing and repassing suavely in the dulcet summer -air. And on the last day Vera's sense of dramatic fitness prompted her, -evidently, to the most imperturbable _volte-face_: she showed to Mollie -a marked tenderness. To Captain Thornton she was kind, perfectly kind, -but that she found him rather dull was evident. It might have been -Mollie with whom she had spent all those hours in the dream-garden. - -"Must you really go, dear?" she asked. - -Mollie said that she was afraid they must. She had heard from her aunt, -who was waiting to take them in, and, owing to all Vera's kindness, -Clive was now quite strong again. Vera did not insist. - -"I've _so_ loved getting to know you!" she said, holding Mollie's hand -at the door of the motor on the morning of their departure. "It's been -_such_ a pleasure. You must often, often come to Compton Dally again. -_Good_-bye, dear!" - -But Mollie knew, and Vera knew that she knew, that never again would -they be asked to Compton Dally. Meanwhile, if the war isn't over and -Jack hasn't come back, I'm to go and stay with them next spring on the -chicken-farm. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -EVENING PRIMROSES - - -IT had been a hot day and there seemed to be thunder in the air, but she -was afraid there would be no rain that night. The abandoned garden -needed it sadly; though, as she reflected, rain would encourage weeds -rather than the few remaining flowers. Poppies had sown themselves -everywhere, degenerates of the Shirleys which, three years ago, had -spread their silken cups in the large bed at the foot of the lawn. Their -withered stalks cracked beneath her steps in the paths and glimmered -under the unpruned branches of the cordon apple trees. There were -thistles, too, sorrel, and tall nettles, a matted carpet of bindweed and -groundsel in the little kitchen-garden, once so neat, and, of course, as -poor Charlie had predicted, the Michaelmas daisies had eaten up nearly -everything in the herbaceous border. That was one of the last questions -he had written to her: "How are my pink phloxes? Have the Michaelmas -daisies smothered them?" They had. It was the season at which the -phloxes should be in fullest flower, but not one was to be seen; the -dense, fine foliage of the daisies had advanced in a wall of green -nearly to the border's edge. - -It was still oppressively warm. A toad hopped indolently away and -paused at the box edging, lying up against it, his front feet extended, -as if so wearied by the heat that he took his chances of discovery. She -stopped to look at the clumsy creature, in which so little of nature's -accurate grace was expressed; and as she stood there, a sudden rustle in -the box betrayed another inhabitant--this time a baby hedgehog which, -too young for fear, moved busily about among the flat dandelion plants -that rosetted the path, and even, encountering the tips of her shoes, -stopped to examine them carefully before moving on again. The baby -hedgehog would have amused Charlie. He had always been delightful about -animals; he and the boys had always had that great interest in common. - -Yes, the bird-boxes were still there. She could see one in the big apple -tree and one fixed to the porch of the house, under the rose. How well -she remembered the frantic delight that hailed the hatching of the first -brood of tits. And the day when Charlie had deemed it prudent to -withdraw the door for a peep at the beautifully fitted mosaic of bright -little heads and bodies within, lifting up Giles in his holland pinafore -for a long, blissful gaze. Six years ago that must have been. - -The light was altering now, and when she turned at the end of the path, -a great moon had risen across the lane and seemed to hang in the -branches of the walnut tree that grew in the field beyond. A great, -shining, heavy moon, and mournful, it seemed to her; her desolate -thoughts, she was aware, lending their colour to everything. Heavy, -mournful, desolate; that was the rhythm of her own steps passing along -in the twilight, pursued by the unformulated consciousness that lay -behind all these pictures of the past; pausing at last, as if to let the -dogging sorrow overtake her, as she came to where, near the -summer-house, against the wall, the evening primroses grew. - -It was years since Charlie had first planted them there, and she had -said to herself at the time that they would never be rid of them, -tenacious, recurrent things, sowing themselves patiently, and coming up -loyally even when there was no one to wish them well. She felt touched -by their presence; for though she had always found them untidy and -uninteresting, she saw, really now for the first time, that they could -be beautiful. Homely, loyal flowers; yet--was it the invading sense of -sorrow colouring them, too?--a little uncanny, showing at this neutral -hour of mingled dusk and moonlight their pale, evident gold; becoming -conscious, as it were, becoming personal at the time when other flowers -became invisible. Not that it was a sinister uncanniness; not that of -ghosts; of fairies, rather; the very strangeness, sadness, sweetness of -the moon, to which, from them, she lifted her eyes. And they reminded -her of something, but what, she could not say. Not of Charlie. There had -never been anything strange or sad about Charlie, except the fact, -pursuing her now in his deserted garden, that he was dead and would -never see it again. - -It was a year to-day since he had been killed, and she had come down to -the country with the sense of commemoration. She wanted, alone in the -little place so full of thoughts of him, to find him, to recall him; and -she had been doing that at every turn. Yet the evening primroses shining -there brought a pang deeper than any vision of him. They, though so -homely, seemed to personify loneliness; they seemed to be missing -something; and although she was desolate because Charlie was dead, -because he would never again delight in his garden, it was, in a sense, -for him rather than for herself that she sorrowed, and, in a sense, she -did not miss him at all. - -She stood still in the path, her hands clasped behind her, her head -bent, a personification of widowhood in her thin black draperies, her -intent, memorial poise. And she could have said of herself with truth -that, during all this year, she had known only a widow's sad -preoccupations. There had been the settling of business matters; lawyers -and bankers to interview; planning for the boys, with school-masters to -visit; and the tending of bereaved relations--Charlie's dear old parents -clung to her. But now, on the day of his death, it was as if for the -first time she had had leisure, at last, to realize that, with it all, -she had never had the widow's heart. She had grieved over him; she had -longed to do all for him that could be done--there was nothing new in -that; but it was far worse than not being heartbroken: it was the sorry -fact that she did not even miss him. He had left, as it were, no -emptiness behind him. - -She had lifted her head and looked round the garden, trying, in the -physical fact of absence, to summon the spiritual void. How he had -planned, dug, planted it; pruned his fruit trees; placed his anemones in -leaf-mould, his bulbs on sand. She saw his kindly, handsome figure -everywhere; his brown cheek, good grey eye, and close-cropped, tawny -hair. A manly, simple creature; the salt of the earth, as honest as the -day--oh, she saw it all; she had said it to herself a hundred times; and -there had, indeed, been nothing one could say against Charlie. But then, -as a wife, there had been nothing to say against her, either; he had -been perfectly happy with her--the happiest creature, even in the manner -of his death. He had been killed instantaneously, while walking, on a -sunny day, beside his men along a road in France. Every letter she had -had from his brother officers over there spoke of his gaiety and good -spirits. The war itself had, on the whole, meant happiness to him, for -all his gravity over certain of its tragedies. But he had been almost as -grave over mischances with his Boy Scouts, and it had all remained for -him an immense, magnificent form of boy-scouting. - -Dear, good Charlie! Yet--was it possible that something of the old -long-conquered exasperation could still, at this hour, thrust itself -into her memories? He had not been quite boyish enough to justify his -lightness and make it loveable. That had been the final fundamental -trouble in their mistaken marriage; she had not been able to mother him. -He had not been appealing, beguiling, endearing, like a child. Not like -a child; not boyish, fatherly, rather; even, playfully didactic, and -assuming always that theirs was a completely reciprocal marital -intimacy. It had not been his fault, of course. She had been too clever -ever to let him guess how stupid she found him. She felt the possessive -arm laid about her shoulders for an evening stroll; saw the wag of his -premonitory finger as he raised himself from a border to call out a -jocose reprimand; heard the chaff with which, before friends, he counted -her mistaken opinions. - -And it had been when they were alone, especially at dinner,--Charlie -across the table from her in his faultless black and white,--that the -pressure of their distance had been most difficult to protect him from. -He talked then, and she had to answer adequately. He was fond of talk, -and, while the most uncritical of Conservatives, was full of solutions -for old ills. He took Trade-Unionists, Home-Rulers, and Dissenters -playfully and held them up to kindly ridicule. "You can laugh most -people out of their nonsense," was one of Charlie's maxims; and if they -didn't respond to the treatment,--he had tried it unsuccessfully on the -village cobbler who preached in the tin chapel on Sunday,--he suspected -them of being rather wicked. - -In the first year of their marriage she had paid him the compliment of -disagreement, or, at least, discrimination. She had, until her marriage, -thought of herself as a Conservative; to be counted one by Charlie -disturbed her sense of rectitude. But Charlie opposed, became puzzled, -and finally aggrieved. He bothered and bothered and argued and argued, -with the air of trying to bring an erring child to reason. "Now look at -it in this light," he would say. Or, "Try to see the thing squarely, -Rosamund"; and would turn upon her irrelevant batteries from the -_Spectator_. She had at last the sensation of flying, battered and -breathless, from his platitudes, and found, soon, her only refuge in -duplicity. After that, through all the years of their married life, -Charlie, she knew, thought of their evening hours alone together as -exceedingly pleasant and successful. He wasn't one of your fellows who -doze over the _Field_ with a cigar after dinner. He had a clever wife -and he appreciated her and was proud--in spite of feminine aberrations -affectionately recognized and checked--of what he called her -"intellects." He called his father and mother his "respected -progenitors" and his stomach was never other than "Little Mary." And -while he talked and expounded and made his unexacting jests, Rosamund -knew that her silences had no provocation, her smile no irony. - -So it had gone on--so it might have gone on for the normal span of life. -The only insecurity that had threatened her careful edifice was the -question of the boys. The boys were like herself, or, rather, like her -adored and brilliant father--proud, sensitive, ardent little creatures, -tender-hearted and frightfully intelligent. Physically, too, they were -of a different race from Charlie, with thick brown locks, passionate yet -gentle eyes, and full, small, closely closing mouths. As boys, Charlie -had fairly well understood them,--he got on well with the average -boy,--as persons, never; and though as boys, at least as little boys, -they got on beautifully with him, they had, as persons, almost at once -understood him, even when they were too young to evade or hide from him. -If they had not been so young, they would, already, then, have hurt him -often. - -And for her the boys at once complicated everything. It had been easy, -in one way, to yield in non-essentials, though she was woman enough to -cry her eyes out when Charlie had taken Philip and Giles, at the -earliest age, to have their dear Jeanne-d'Arc heads close-cropped in -pursuit of the ideal of manliness; easy, comparatively, to steel her -heart when timid little Philip, blanched with terror, was made to ride -at six. Charlie had been right about that,--how glad she had been to -own it!--for Philip had, in a week's time, forgotten his fears. But she -and Charlie had come near quarrelling over Giles's rag-doll Bessie. -Giles was only three and adored Bessie, and Charlie had tossed her in -the air, mocked her, and held her up by the toe while Giles sobbed -convulsively. - -"Do you really want our boys to be milksops, Rosamund?" he had asked, -as, refusing to argue, she took the doll from him, placed her in Giles's -arms, and kept them both on her lap, pressed within her arms, her head -bent down over them so that she need not look at her husband. He had -gone away vanquished, and Giles had kept his Bessie, until, in the -course of nature, she had dropped away from him. - -Worse than this came one day when Charlie had found Philip in a corner -writing poetry. He had not been altogether pleased by the children's -literary tastes. To grind dutifully at Latin and Greek was one thing, -and he was fond of a tag from Tennyson. But he had never cared to read -Keats and Shelley when he was a kid. He took the copy-book out of -Philip's reluctant hands and, turning from page to page, read out, in -mock-dramatic tones, the derivative, boyish efforts, which yet, to her -ear, had every now and then their innocent, bird-like note of reality. - -"And now this--'To a Skylark,'" said Charlie, laying a restraining, -affectionate hand on Philip's shoulder, wishing him to rise superior to -vanity and join in the fun, once it was pointed out to him. - - "'Glad creature from the dew upspringing - And through the sky your path upwinging!' - -Up, up, pretty creature!" - -Philip, twisting round under his father's arm, burst into tears of rage, -tore the book from his hand and struck him. - -It had been a terrible moment, and Rosamund, reduced as she almost was -to Philip's condition, had never more admired her husband, who, turning -only rather pale, had walked away, saying, "I think you'll be sorry for -that when you think it over, old fellow." That he had been astonished, -cut to the quick, she had seen, feeling it all for him at the moment of -her deepest feeling for Philip. - -"I'm not sorry! I'm not sorry!" Philip had sobbed, rushing to her arms -and burying his head on her breast. "I'm not sorry! He's stupid! stupid! -stupid!" - -"Hush, hush," she had said--what a horrid moment it had been! "That is -wrong and conceited of you, Philip. You must learn to take a little -chaffing. You know how your father loves you." - -"It's not conceited! It's not conceited to care about what one tries to -do. You know it's not. _You're_ not stupid!" the boy had sobbed. - -Alas, it had been only four years ago; only a year before the war! Even -then, at nine, Philip had been old enough, when he recovered from his -weeping, to know that he had hurt her most, had made things difficult -for her; and he had been sorry about his father, too, going to him -bravely with a tremulous, "Please forgive me, father." "That's all -right, old boy," Charlie had said. It _was_ all right, too, in a sense. -It left not a trace in the sweetness of Charlie's nature. It was Philip -who had been shaken, frightened to the very core, by what his own -outburst had revealed to himself and to her. The boy would always have -felt affection for his father; but he, too, would soon have protected -him; he, too, would hardly miss him. - -The moon had now risen far up out of the walnut branches, and flooded -the garden with sorrowful brightness. Poor, poor Charlie! was that all -it came to, then, for him? this deserted garden and a wife and children -who hardly missed him? Why, was it not the very heart of his tragedy for -her to see that they would be happier without him? "And he _was_ a -dear," she said to herself, remembering with an almost passionate -determination kind, trustful looks and the happy love of fifteen years -ago. - -She had been standing still all this while, near the evening primroses; -but now, with the great sigh that lifted her breast, she moved forward -again, and a bird, disturbed in its rest, flew out from the thick tangle -of honeysuckle at the entrance to the summer-house, startling her. As -she stopped, her eyes drawn to the spot, she saw, suddenly, that a pale -figure was sitting in the summer-house, closely shrunken to one side; -hoping in its stillness,--that was apparent,--to remain undiscovered. -Ever since she had entered the garden it must have been sitting there; -and ever since she had entered the garden it must have been watching -her. But why? How strange! - -Dispelling a momentary qualm, she stooped her head under the honeysuckle -and entered; and then, clearly visible, with her pale hair and face,--as -pale, as evident as an evening's primrose,--the girl sitting there, -wide-eyed, revealed, with her identity, that haunting analogy of a -little while ago. Of course, it came in a flash now, that was what they -reminded her of. Long ago she had thought--conceding them their most -lovable association--that Pamela Braithwaite looked like an evening -primrose. - -"My dear Pamela," she said, almost as gently as she would have said it -to a somnambulist; for, like the flowers, again, she was sad, even -uncanny; although Pamela's uncanniness too,--sweet, homely -creature,--could never be sinister. She put a hand upon her arm, for the -girl had started to her feet. - -"Oh--do forgive me, Mrs. Hayward!" Pamela gasped. Sad? It was more than -that. She was broken, spent with weeping. "I didn't know you were -coming. I sit here sometimes in the evenings. I thought you wouldn't -mind." - -"My dear child, why should I mind? I'm thankful to you for coming to the -sad little place. It's much less lonely to think about, for you have -always been so much of our life here." - -This, she knew, was an exaggeration; but she must be more than kind to -such grief as this: she must find some comfort, if that were possible. - -And to feel herself accepted, welcomed, did give comfort; for, sinking -again on the seat, bending her face on her hands, Pamela sobbed, "Oh, -how kind you are!" - -"Poor child, poor, poor child!" said Rosamund. She was only five years -older, but she felt as a mother might feel towards the stricken girl. -She put an arm around her, murmuring, "Can you tell me what it is? Don't -cry so, dear Pamela." - -Pamela Braithwaite had been a girl of eighteen when they had come, in -the first year of their marriage, to Crossfields. The Braithwaites lived -a mile away, near the river, a large, affectionate, desultory family, -in a large, dilapidated house. Already Pamela mothered the younger -brood, and mothered the widowed father as well--a retired tea-planter, -who had brought from Ceylon some undefined but convenient complaint that -enabled him to pass the rest of his days wrapped in a number of coats, -eating very heartily, and, as he expressed it, "sitting about." A -peaceful, idle man, legs outstretched in sun or firelight, hat-brim -turned down over his eyes (he had a curious way, even in the house, of -almost always wearing his hat), pipe between his teeth; good-looking, -too, tall and fair, like his daughters, and with a touch in his -appearance, though not in his character, of amicable distinction. - -Pamela, except for a brother already married and in Ceylon, was the -eldest, with a long gap between her and the group of younger brothers, -of whom Rosamund thought mainly as a reservoir of Boy Scouts until they -had had to be thought of as a reservoir of volunteers. There were three -or four younger sisters, too, some of whom had married and some of whom -had gone forth into the world--always with an extreme light-heartedness -and confidence--as companions or secretaries. These again were hardly -individualized in Rosamund's recollection, except for the fact that, -since Pamela was always making blouses or trimming hats for them, she -had become aware that it was Phyllis who wore pink and Marjory blue. - -But whoever went, Pamela always stayed; and even when the war broke upon -the world, with Frank, the Braithwaite baby, just old enough to enlist, -and Phyllis and Marjory at once enrolling themselves as V.A.D.'s, Pamela -remained rooted. Who, indeed, had she gone, would have taken care of -Mr. Braithwaite, and of the brothers and sisters home on leave, and of -the garden earnestly dedicated to potatoes, or the small family of -Ceylon nephews and nieces deposited continually in her charge by their -parents? - -Poor little Pamela! She had had a burdened life; the assiduities of -maternity and none of its initial romance. With her large, clear eyes, -very far apart, she had always a wistful look; but it was that of a -child watching a game and waiting for its turn to come in, and no -creature could have given less the impression of weariness or routine. -For she had remained, even at thirty-three, the merely bigger sister; an -atmosphere of schoolroom tea and the nurture of rabbits and guinea-pigs -still hanging about her; her resource and cheerfulness seeming concerned -always with the organizing of games, the care of pets, and the soothing -of unimportant distresses. Tall, in her scant tweed skirts, her -much-repaired white blouse, her slender feet laced into heavy boots, -gardening gloves on her hands, so Rosamund had last seen her, a year -ago, just before Charlie had been killed, when she had straightened -herself from moulding potatoes in the lawn borders and had come forward -with her pretty smile to greet her visitor and take her in to tea. Frank -had been killed since then, as well as Charlie, but at that time, for -both households, the war was splendid adventure rather than sorrow. - -Mr. Braithwaite, in the sunny, shabby drawing-room, had stumbled up -among his wrappings, to point out to her his accurate flags, advancing -or retreating on the many maps that were pinned upon the walls. Frank's -last letter had been read to her, and Dick's and Eustace's; and Pamela -had come in and out, helping the maid with the tea (the Braithwaite -maids were always as cheerful and desultory as the family, and Rosamund -never remembered seeing one of them who had not her cap askew or her -cuffs untied), standing to butter the bread herself, the side of the -loaf before cutting the slice, after her old schoolroom fashion; her -discreet yet generous use of the butter--the crust covered to a nicety -and no lumps on the crumb--seeming to express her, as did the pouring -out of the excellent tea, drawn to a point and never over, and the -pleasant, capacious cups with their gilt rims and the immersed rose -which, as one drank, discovered itself at the bottom. - -A sweet, old-fashioned, homely creature; like the evening primroses; -like them, obliterated, unnoticed in daylight; and like them now, -becoming visible, becoming personal, even becoming tragic at this -nocturnal hour; for was this really Pamela, sweet, prosaic Pamela, -sobbing so broken-heartedly beside her? How meagre, intellectual, and -unsubstantial her own grief seemed to Rosamund as she listened, almost -aghast, her arm about Pamela's shoulders; and her instinct told her: "It -is a man. It is some one she loves--not Frank, but some one she loves -far more--who is dead. It is something final and fatal that has broken -her down like this." And aloud she repeated: "Can you tell me, Pamela -dear? Please try to tell me. It may help you to tell." Her own heart was -shaken and tears were in her own eyes. - -Between her sobs Pamela answered, "I love him--I love him so much. He is -dead. And sometimes I can't bear it." - -Rosamund had never heard of a love-affair. But these years of war had -done many things, had found out even the hidden Pamelas. - -"I didn't know.--My poor child!--I never heard. Were you engaged?" - -She had Pamela's ringless hand in hers. - -"No! No! It wasn't that. No--I've never had any one like that. No one -ever knew. He never knew." Pamela lifted her head. Her face seemed now -only a message emerging from the darkness; shadowed light upon the -shadow, it was expression rather than form. "May I tell you?" she said. -"Can you forgive my telling you--here and now,--and to-night, when -you've come to be with him? It was Mr. Hayward I loved. I've always -loved him. He has been all my life. Ever since you first came here to -live." - -Rosamund gazed at her, and through all her astonishment there ran an -undertone of accomplished presage. Yes, that was it, of course. Had she -not been feeling it, seeking it all the evening?--or had it not been -seeking her? Here it was, then, the lacking emptiness. Desolate voids -seemed to open upon her in Pamela's shadowy eyes. She tightly held the -ringless hand and felt, presently, that she pressed it against her heart -where something pierced her. Was it pity for Pamela? or for Charlie? -This was his; had always been his. And Pamela, who had had nothing, had -lost everything. "My dear!" she murmured. - -"Oh, how kind you are!" said Pamela. She sat quiet, looking down at -their two hands held against Rosamund's heart. And with all the -austerity of her grief she had never been more childlike in Rosamund's -eyes. Like a child, once the barriers of shyness were down and trust -established, she would confide everything. - -Rosamund knew how it must help her to confide. "Tell me if you will," -she said. "I am glad you loved him, if it has not hurt you too much. You -understand, don't you, that I must be glad--for him?" - -"Yes, oh, yes; I understand. How beautiful of you to see it all!--Even -though it's so little, it is his; something he did; and so you must -care. But I don't think there's much to tell; nothing about him that you -don't know." - -"About you, then. About what he was to you." - -"That would simply be my whole life," said Pamela. "It's so wonderful of -you to understand and not to blame me. So many people would have thought -it wrong; but it came before I knew what it was going to be, and I never -can feel that it was wrong. He never knew. And even if he had, it -couldn't have made any difference. It must be because of that that I can -tell you. If you hadn't been so happy, if it hadn't been so perfect--for -you and him--I don't think that I could have told. I should just have -rushed away when you came in and hidden from you." - -"Why?" asked Rosamund after a moment. She heard something in her own -voice that Pamela would not hear. - -"I don't quite know why," said Pamela; "but don't you feel it too? -Perhaps if it hadn't been so perfect, even my little outside love might -have hurt you--or troubled you--to hear about. But I see now that you -are the only person in the world who could care to hear. It is a comfort -to tell you. I am so glad you came." Pamela turned her eyes upon her -and it was almost with her smile. "When I see you like this I can -believe that he is here, listening with you, and sorry for me, too." - -How like an evening primrose she was! Rosamund could see her clearly -now: the candid oval of the face, the eyes, the innocent, child forehead -with thick, fair hair falling across it. - -"Yes. Go on," she said, smiling back. - -She was not worthy of Pamela, and poor Charlie was not worthy of her; -but no human being is worthy of a flower. And though so innocent, she -was not stupid; subtlety like a fragrance was about her as she said, -"You can comfort me because you have so much to comfort with." - -"So much grief, or so much remembered happiness?" - -"They go together, don't they?" said Pamela. "Every sort of fulness. But -I needn't try to get it clear. You understand. I always thought that -perhaps people who had fulness couldn't; now I see that I was mistaken." - -"Have you been very unhappy, dear child?" - -"Until now? While he was here? Oh, no, I have been lonely. Even before -he came, even though my life was so crowded, it was rather lonely. I -never had any one of my own, for myself. But afterwards, even if I felt -lonely, I was happy. At least, after just at first. Because, just at -first, it was miserable, for I couldn't help longing to see him more and -to have him like me more, and that made me understand that I was in love -with him, and I was frightened. I can't explain clearly about it, even -to myself. But I was very, very unhappy. Perhaps you remember the time -when I was twenty, and got so run down, and they sent me to Germany to -my old governess--the only time I ever went away from home, out of -England. It was a miserable time. I tried not to think of him and not to -care. But I had to come back, and he was there, and I knew I couldn't -stop caring, and that all I could do about it was to try to be better -because of him,--you know,--and make people happier, and not think of -myself, but of him and them. And everything changed after that. I was -never frightened any more, and though perhaps it wasn't exactly -happiness, it was, sometimes, I believe, almost better. I can't explain -it, but what I mean is in some poetry. I never cared much about poetry -till he came. Then I seemed to understand things I'd never understood -before, and to feel everything that was beautiful. - -"You remember how dear he was to us all--to the boys and me. I always -shared in everything they did. Every bit of this country is full of him; -I could never bear to go away and leave it. I want always to stay here -till I die.--Flowers and birds--wasn't he wonderful about them? And our -walks in the woods! He saw everything, and made us see it. I never woke -in the morning without thinking, Will he come to-day? What will he say -and do? I was never tired of watching him and listening to him. All his -little ways--you know. When I pleased him,--sometimes I saw the bird we -were watching for first, or caught my trout well,--it was a red-letter -day. And in big things--to feel I should have pleased him if he'd known. -It was he who helped me in every way, without knowing it. And I took -more and more joy in you. At first I had felt dreadfully shy with -you--and afraid of you. You were so clever, with all your books and -music and friends, and you didn't seem to need anything. But afterwards -you were so kind, that, though I was always shy, I was not frightened -any longer. I used to think about you so much, and imagine what he felt -about you--and you about him.--You won't mind my saying it, I know. -Perhaps you remember the way I used so often, in the evenings, to walk -past with the children, and say good-night over the wall. That was to -see you and him walking together. You were so beautiful! You are far and -far away the most beautiful person I've ever known. I always noticed -everything you wore, and how your hair was done. I was glad when you -took it down from the knot and had it all at the back, as you do now. -And the lovely pale blue dress, with the little flounces--do you -remember?--a summer dress of lawn. I did love that. And the white linen -coats and skirts, and the big white hat with the lemon-coloured bow. -Your very shoes--those grey ones you always had, with the low heels and -little silver buckles. No one had such lovely clothes. And the way you -poured out tea and looked across the table at one. Always like a -beautiful muse--you don't mind my saying it?--a little above everything, -and apart, and quietly looking on.--How I understood what he felt for -you! I felt it, too, I think, with him." - -Yes, dear flower and child, she had: offering to Charlie that last -tribute of a woman's worship, the imaginative love of the woman he -loves; cherishing the cruelly sweet closeness of that piercing -community. How she had idealized them both. How she had idealized -Charlie's love. Charlie had never seen her like this. Charlie had never -dreamed of her as a muse, above, apart, and quietly watching. Why, with -Pamela's Charlie she herself could almost have been in love! - -"What did you talk about, you and he," she asked, "when you were -together?" Their sylvan life, Pamela's and Charlie's, was almost as -unknown to her as that of the birds they watched. She had almost a soft -small hope that perhaps Pamela could show her something she had missed. -"Did you ever talk about poetry, for instance?" - -"No; never about things like that," Pamela answered. "He talked more to -the boys than to me; he talked to us all together--about what we were -doing. But I used to love listening to him when he came and talked to -father. Politics, you know; and the way things ought to be done. He was -a great deal discouraged, you remember, by the way they _were_ being -done. All those unjust taxes, you know. He wanted, he used always to -say, to _give_ to the poor himself; he _loved_ taking care of them. But -he hated that his money should be taken from him like that, against his -will. And he always, always foresaw the war; always knew that Germany -was plotting, and how England swarmed with spies. He thought we ought to -have declared war upon her long ago and struck first.--I'm rather glad -we didn't, aren't you? because then, in a way, we should have been in -the wrong rather than they; but of course he felt it as a statesman, not -like an ignorant woman.--You think Germany plotted, too?" - -"Yes, oh, yes." How glad Rosamund was to be able to think it, to be -able, here, with a clear conscience, to remember that, on the theme of -Germany's craft and crime, she and Charlie had thought quite -sufficiently alike. "But I am with you about not striking first." - -"Are you really?" There was surprise in Pamela's voice. She did not -dwell on the slight perplexity. "Of course, he always worsted father if -he disagreed. It was rather wicked of me, but I couldn't help enjoying -seeing father worsted. He'd never thought things out, as Mr. Hayward -had. But that's what he talked about--things like that--and you." - -"Me?" Rosamund's voice was gentle, meditative--her old voice of the -encounters with Charlie. How she could hear him through all Pamela's -candid recitative! - -"He was always thinking about you. 'My wife says so and so. My wife -agrees with me about it. I brought my wife last night to see it as I -do.' Oh, you were with him in everything! It was so beautiful to see and -hear! I used to imagine that the Brownings were like that--after I read -their lives. He was a sort of poet, wasn't he? Any one so loving and so -happy is a sort of poet--even if they don't write poetry. Down in the -meadows one day, when we were watching lapwings, he and I and the -boys,--he wanted to show us a nest; you know how difficult they are to -find,--you passed up on the hillside, with Philip and Giles. We could -see you against the larchwood, they in their holland smocks and you in -white, with the white-and-yellow hat. I shall never forget the way he -stood up and smiled, his eyes following you. 'There's Rosamund and the -progeny,' he said.--You know the dear, funny way he had of saying -things." - -Yes--she knew it. Yet tears had risen to Rosamund's eyes. Dear old -Charlie; dear, old, tiresome Charlie! The tears had come as she saw him -standing to look after her and his boys; but there was nothing more, -nothing that she could give to Pamela, not one crumb of enrichment from -what Pamela believed to be her great store. Pamela had seen all--and -more than all--that there was to see. - -In her own silence now she was aware of a growing oppression. She was -too silent, even for one mute from the depth and sacredness of memory. -Might not such silence seem to reprove Pamela's flooding confidence? She -struggled with her thoughts. "The lapwings?" she heard herself -murmuring. "I remember his showing me a nest. How he loved birds and how -much he knew about them! Weren't you with us on the day we put up all -the nesting-boxes here? Do you remember how he planned for the placing -of each one, each bird to have its own appropriate domain? It was a -lovely day, in very early spring." - -"Oh--_do_ you remember that?" How Pamela craved the crumb was shown by -her lightened face; it was almost happy, as it turned to Rosamund, with -its sense of recovered treasures. "Very early spring--March. Snowdrops -were up over there,--and there,--and there were daffodils at the foot of -the wall. You were in blue: a frieze coat and skirt of Japanese blue, -with a grey silk scarf and a little soft grey hat with a blue wing in -it; and you said,--you were standing just over there, near the -pond,--'We can always count on tits.'--But you did get robins, too, and -thrushes in the big boxes; and then the splendid year when the -nut-hatches came to the box down in the orchard. And you were tying up -one box, but it was too high and he came and did it for you. I can see -you both so plainly, your hands stretching up against the sky. Tall as -you are he was taller; his head seemed to tower up into the branches. -Such a blue sky it was! And afterwards we had tea in the drawing-room, -and the tea wasn't strong enough for him, and you liked China and he -Indian tea. And you teased him and said that you had always to make him -the little brown pot all for himself. He said, 'Tea never tastes so -right as out of a brown pot.' There were white tulips growing in a bowl -on the tea-table. And then you played to us. And you sang--'I need no -star in heaven to guide me.'--He was so fond of that. Oh, do you remember -it all, too?" - -All--all. Rosamund, though her tears fell, felt her cheek flushing in -the darkness. How often he had asked for "I need no star in heaven to -guide me"! How often she had sung it to him, rejoicing so soon, while -she threw the proper tumultuous fervour that Charlie loved into the -foolish air, in the atoning thought that already Philip's favourite was -"Der Nussbaum" and that even little Giles asked for "the sheep song," -the bleak, beautiful old Scottish strain: "Ca' the yowes to the knowes," -with its sweetest drop to "my bonnie dearie." "Oh--give us something -cheerful!" Charlie would exclaim after it. - -"I remember it all, dear," she answered; and there was silence for a -while. - -"How do you bear it?" Pamela whispered suddenly. - -The hour, the stillness, the hands that held her, drew her past the last -barrier. Her broken heart yearned for the comfort that the greater loss -alone could give. What was the strength that enabled his wife to sit -there so quietly, so gently, so full of peace and pity? - -Rosamund felt herself faltering, stumbling, as she heard the inevitable -question, and knew, as it came, that even Pamela's heavenly blindness -might not protect her, unless she could be very careful, from horrid -loss or suspicion. To touch with a breath of her daylight reality that -silver world of recollection would be to desecrate. Could she hold her -breath and tread softly while she answered? Yes, surely. Surely she, who -had hidden through all the years from Charlie, could hide from Pamela, -although Pamela already was nearer than Charlie and knew her better than -he had ever done. All the old strength and resource welled up in her, -protecting this lovely thing, as, after the long moment, not looking at -Pamela, but into Charlie's garden, she found the right answer. - -"You see, dear, it is so different with me. You have only your memories. -I have the boys--his boys--to live for." - -It was right. It was the only answer. She heard Pamela's long, soft -breaths, full of a gentle awe, and felt her hand more tightly clasped. -Once the right step was taken, it was easier to go on: - -"I want to tell you why I am so glad to have found you here, Pamela -dear. You'll understand, I think, when I say that motherhood lives in -the present and future, and is almost cruel, cruel to everything not -itself, for it forgets the past in the present. Do you see,"--she found -the beautiful untruth,--"he is so much in them for me, that I might -almost forget him in them--forget to mourn him, as one would if they -were not there. So do you see why it comforts me to know that, while I -must go on into the future with them, you will be keeping him here and -remembering?" - -She could look at Pamela now, in safety, and she turned to her, finding -rapt eyes upon her. - -"Come here often, won't you, when I'm away as well as when I'm here. We -must make it all look again as it did when he was with us--flowers and -trees and bird-boxes. You will help me in it all and you will think of -him here and love him. I know what happiness you meant to him--more than -he was aware of. You were a beautiful part of his life. You say you were -always, for him, only together, with the boys. That is only partly true. -He used often to speak of you to me, the little passing things people -say of any one they are very fond of and take for granted. He -appreciated you and counted upon you. I came here so sad, Pamela, so -burdened. I've never been sadder in my life than I was to-night as I -walked here. And you have lifted it all. It makes all the difference to -know that you are here, in his garden, remembering him. More difference -than I can say." - -It was an unutterable gratitude that, with her tears, with love and pity -and reverence, welled up in her, seeing what Pamela had done. The garden -was no longer empty, and Charlie not forgotten. In the night of his -death and disappearance this flower had become visible. Always, when she -thought of him, she would think of evening primroses and of Pamela, so -that it would be with tenderness, with the understanding, homely, -unexacting, consecrating, that Pamela gave; Pamela herself becoming a -gift from Charlie; emerging from the darkness, evident and -beautiful,--almost another child whose future she must carry in her -heart; though the only gift she could give her now, in return for all -that she had given, was the full and free possession of the past, -where, outside the garden wall, she had been a wistful onlooker. She -felt that she opened the gate, drew Pamela in, and put into her keeping -all the keys that had weighed so heavily in her unfitted hands. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -AUTUMN CROCUSES - - -I - -"WHAT you need is a complete change, and quiet," said his cousin -Dorothy. - -Guy, indeed, in spite of his efforts to keep up appearances, was a -dismal figure. He had been passing the teacups and the bread and butter, -enduring all the jests about sugar-rations and margarine, and enduring, -which was so much worse, the complacencies over the approaching end of -the war. His haggard face, narrow-jawed and high-foreheaded, expressed -this endurance rather than any social amenity, and he was aware that -Aunt Emily could hardly feel that the presence of her poet and soldier -nephew added much to her tea-party. Indeed, the chattering, cheerful -women affected his nerves almost as painfully as did the sound of the -motor-buses when--every day it happened--he stopped on the curb, after -leaving his office in Whitehall, and wondered how long it would take him -to summon courage to cross the street. He felt, then, like breaking down -and crying; and he felt like it now when they said, "Isn't it all _too_ -splendid!" - -Cousin Dorothy was as chattering and as cheerful as the rest of them, -and she had every reason to be, he remembered, with Tom, her _fianc_, -ensconced in Paris, safe after all his perils. Dorothy, though like -everybody else she had worked hard during the war, had seen nothing and -lost nothing. And she had never had any imagination. All the same, he -was thankful when she rescued him from the woman who would talk to him -idiotically about his poetry (she evidently hadn't understood a word of -it), and took him into a quiet nook near the piano. - -It might, then, have been mere consanguinity, for he had never before -found intimacy possible where Dorothy was concerned; or it might have -been a symptom of his state (his being at Aunt Emily's tea-party at all -was that!); but, at all events after admitting that Mrs. Dickson had -been boring him, he found himself presently confessing his terrors about -the motor-buses, his terror of the dark, his sleeplessness and general -disintegration. His nervous laugh was a concession to Dorothy's possible -misunderstanding; but as he went on, he felt himself almost loving her -for the matter-of-factness she infused into her sympathy. After all, -even good old Dorothy wasn't stupid enough to suspect him of cowardice; -and although, from a military point of view, he had made such a mess of -it (invalided home again and again on account of digestive complaints, -and finally, last spring, transferred to his small official post in -London), to any one, really, who had at all followed his career, it -would be apparent that no one could have stuck harder to the loathly -job. He had felt it that, and only that, even while, prompted by pride, -he had made his effort to enlist, in the first months of the war. It had -been with a deep relief that he had found himself at once rejected and -free to stay behind, free to serve humanity with his gift rather than -with his inefficiency; for he took his poetic vocation with a youthful -seriousness. And when, later on, through one of the blunders of medical -examinations, he was drawn into the net of conscription, no one could -have denied that he marched off to the shambles with unflinching -readiness. - -Dorothy, he saw, took courage all along for granted: "It's simply a case -of shell-shock," she said, as if it were her daily fare; "you're queer -and jumpy, and you can't stand noise. It's quite like Tommy." - -He couldn't associate Tommy, short-nosed, round-headed, red-eared Tommy, -with anything of the sort, and said so in some resentment. But Dorothy -assured him that for some months--just a year ago--Tommy had been at -home on sick leave, and really bad enough for anything. "He suffered in -every way just as you do." - -Guy was quite sure he hadn't, but he did not want to argue about it. For -nothing in the world would he have defined to Dorothy what he really -suffered. - -"It's country air you need; country food and country quiet," Dorothy -went on. "You _can_ get away?" - -"Oh, yes; I can get away all right. Old Forsyth is most decent about it. -He was telling me this morning that I ought to take a month." - -"I wonder if Mrs. Baldwin could have you at Thatches," Dorothy mused. -"Tommy got well directly." - -"Mrs. Baldwin?" His voice, he knew, expressed an unflattering -scepticism, but he couldn't help it. "Is she at home--an institution?" -He saw Mrs. Baldwin, hatefully tactful, in a Red Cross uniform. "No, -thank you, my dear." - -"Of course not. What do you take me for?" Dorothy kept her competent -eyes upon him. "It's not even a P.G. place--at all events, not a regular -one, though of course you do pay for your keep. She has very narrow -means and takes friends sometimes, and, since the war, it's just -happened--by people telling each other, as I'm telling you--to be -shell-shock cases rather particularly. It's a lovely country, and a -dear, quaint little cottage, and she does you most awfully well, Tommy -said." - -"I don't like the idea of settling down like that on a stranger." - -"But she wouldn't be a stranger. You'd go through me, and I feel as if I -knew her already through Tommy. He said he was at home at once. 'Cosy,' - was how he expressed it. And you get honey on your bread at tea and -cream in your coffee at breakfast, and all sorts of delightful things -_en casserole_, that she cooks with her own hands, quite equal, Tommy -said, to the French. And, Tommy knows, _now_, you see." - -"It's Mrs. Baldwin herself who frightens me. She frightens me more than -the motor-buses in Whitehall." - -"That's just what she won't do. She's perfectly sweet. Cosy. -Middle-aged. A widow. Her nice old father lives with her, and Tommy -liked him so much, too. You help her to garden, and with the bees, you -know. And the old father plays chess with you in the evenings. There's a -stream near by where you can fish if you want to. It's late for that, -of course; but Tommy got some quite good sport; he was there at just -this time of year. And he said that it was most awfully jolly country, -and that the meadows all about were full of autumn crocuses." - -"Autumn crocuses? In the fields? I've never seen them wild." - -"They do grow wild, though, in some parts of England. They are wild -there. Tommy particularly wrote about them. He said one walked down to -the stream among the autumn crocuses." - -Dorothy was baiting her hook very prettily, and he gloomily smiled his -recognition of it. "They do sound attractive," he owned. He hadn't -imagined Tom a man to notice crocuses, and he was the more inclined to -trust his good impressions further. After all, apart from Mrs. Baldwin -and her father, the country, with honey, cream, and autumn crocuses, was -a happy combination, if he had been in condition for feeling anything -happy. - -What would Dorothy have thought of him, could she have known that, while -they talked, her rosy, bonnie face kept constantly, before his haunted -eyes, dissolving into a skull? Faces had a way of doing this with him -since his last encounter with the war in the spring. And all the people -talking in the room squeaked and gibbered. How could they go on talking? -How could they go on living--after what had happened? How could he? The -familiar nausea rose in him even as he forced himself to smile and say, -"Well, could she have me--Mrs. Baldwin?" - -He could not have made an effort to find a place for himself. Such -efforts, he felt sure, would have landed him at some God-forsaken -farmhouse miles from the station, where the beds were damp and the meat -tough; or, even worse, at a Bournemouth hotel, amid orchestras and -people who made a point of dressing for dinner. But, if some one found -it for him, he would let himself be pushed off. - -"I'm sure she could," said Dorothy with conviction. "I have her address -and I'll write to-night and tell her all about you: that you're a rising -poet, and that your friends and relations will be _so_ grateful if -she'll do for you what she did for Tommy." - -He had an ironic glance for her "rising." His relations--and Aunt Emily -and her brood were the nearest left to him--had never in the least taken -in his standing or realized that he was, among people who knew, looked -upon as completely risen. At the same time, sunken was what he felt -himself; drowned deep; too deep, he sometimes thought, for recovery. His -last little volume had been like a final fight for breath. He had -written most of it over there, after Ronnie's death and before his own -decisive breakdown, and he knew it a result as much of his malady as of -his war experience. - -He wondered now, anew, whether these people had really read the poems. -If they had, it only showed how impervious to reality they must remain. -And there had actually been one, written after one of his leaves, called -"Eating Bread-and-Butter," that should indeed have embarrassed them, had -they remembered it, inviting them to eat it with him in a trench with -unburied comrades lying in No-Man's Land before them. His head, as he -thought of that,--from unburied comrades passing to unburied -friends,--gave a nervous, backward jerk, for he had told himself before -that he _must_ stop thinking in certain directions; and indeed the poems -had helped to exorcise the obsession at the time when they had been -written. - -All the same, it was very strange--such a poet at such a tea-party. He -had plunged into Aunt Emily's tea-party as he plunged nowadays into -anything that presented itself as offering distraction. And now, as he -said, "Well, if you'll put it through, I'll go, and be very grateful to -you," he felt that he was making another plunge into Mrs. Baldwin's -cottage. - - -II - -It was a pretty cottage he found, as, on the September evening, his -station fly drew up at the wicket-gate. They had come a long way from -the station, and, after leaving a small village, the winding lane, too, -had seemed long. He saw, nevertheless, as he alighted, that the rustic -building, old stones below and modern thatch above, could not be far -from the central group of which it formed an adjunct; for it had been -contrived, by devices dear to the heart of the week-ender, from two or -three labourers' cottages thrown into one and covered all over with the -capacious and brooding thatch. "Quaint," Dorothy's really inevitable -word, altogether expressed it, from the box hedges that ran on either -side of the flagged path, to the pale yellow hollyhocks beside the door. - -A round-cheeked country girl, neatly capped and aproned, opened the door -on a square, rush-matted hall; and beyond that he saw a room full of the -sunset, where a table was being laid and from which Mrs. Baldwin came -out to greet him. - -She was not tall, and had thick, closely bound braids. He had dreaded -finding himself at once dealt with as a case; but Mrs. Baldwin's manner -was not even that of one accustomed to paying guests. Her murmur of -welcome, her questions about his journey, her mild directions as she led -him up to his room, "Be careful at this landing, the level of the floor -goes up and the beam comes down so low,"--were rather those of a shy and -entirely unprofessional hostess. - -He thought, as soon as he took in his room, with its _voile-de-Gnes_ -hangings and dear old furniture, that he pleased her by saying, "What a -delicious room!" and even more when, on going to the wide, low, -mullioned window, its panes open to the west, he added, "And what a -delicious view!" There were meadows and tall hedgerow elms, and, running -in a tranquil band of brightness, the stream that reflected the sky. - -She did not say that she was glad he liked it, but her very gentle smile -at the welcome it all made for him was part of the welcome. What she did -say was, with the little air of shy preoccupation, while she wrung her -finger-tips together, those of one hand in those of the other, "I think -the water's very hot. I have a rather young little maid. You'll tell me -if you want anything. Are three blankets and the down quilt enough? The -nights are rather cold already." - -He said that three would be perfect, secure, from his glance at the -deep, comely bed, that they would be beautifully thick and fleecy. - -"Then you'll come down to us when you are ready." She stood in the door -to look round again. "Matches here, you see; biscuits in the little -earthenware box; and the spirit-lamp is in case you should wake in the -night--you could make yourself a cup of cocoa? Everything is -there--cocoa, milk, and sugar. It usually sends one off again directly." - -It was all the slightly shy hostess rather than the businesslike soother -and sustainer; and, no, it wasn't a bit cosy. He repudiated that word -indignantly, while he washed--the water _was_ very hot, admirably hot; -there was a complacency about cosy, and Mrs. Baldwin had no complacency, -though she was, for all her shyness and the unconscious gestures of -physical nervousness, composed. Her hands, he remembered, recalling -their little trick,--he had noticed it in the hall,--were like a -child's; not the hands of a practical housewife. Yet, from the look of -that bed (yes, thank heaven, a box-spring mattress!), from the heat of -the water, and, above all, the deft and accessible grouping of the -spirit-lamp and its adjuncts, she proved that she knew how to make one -comfortable. - -There were the meadows and--going again to the window, he wondered -leaning out,--could he see the autumn crocuses? Yes, surely; even at -this evening hour his eyes distinguished the pale yet delicately -purpling tint that streaked the pastoral verdure. What a delicious -place, indeed! He stood, absorbed in looking out, until the maid came to -say that supper would be ready in five minutes. - -The long room, the living-room,--for it combined, he saw, all social -functions,--also faced the meadows at the back of the house, and the -primrose coloured sunset still filled it as he entered. Mrs. Baldwin was -busying herself with the table, and an old gentleman with a very long -white beard rose, with much dignity, from the grandfather's chair near -a window-seat. Mr. Haseltine, so his daughter named him, had more the -air of seeing the visitor as a P.G., perhaps even as a shell-shock -patient; but he was a nice old man, Guy felt, although his beard was too -long. He wore a brown velveteen jacket, and Guy surmised that he might -have been a writer or scholar of some not very significant sort. - -"Yes, we think ours a very favored nook indeed," he said, as Guy again -praised the prospect. "Yes; three cottages. Very happily contrived, is -it not? There is a clever builder in the next town. He kept the old -fireplace, you see; that end was a kitchen and the beams are all the old -ones. Three gardens, too, thrown into one; but that is entirely my -daughter's creation. Pig-styes used to be in that corner." - -Guy looked out at the squares of colour, the low beds of mignonette, the -phloxes, larkspurs, and the late sweet-peas a screen of stained-glass -tints against the sky. Where the pig-styes had been was a little -thatched summer-house with rustic seat and table. The bee-hives were -just outside the hedge, at an angle of the meadow. Mr. Haseltine -continued to talk while Mrs. Baldwin and the maid came in and out, -carrying tea and eggs and covered dishes. - -"I hope you don't mind high tea," she said. "It seems to go with our -life here." - -He felt that high tea was his favourite meal. There was a big white -earthenware bowl on the table, filled with sweet-peas. "Where do you get -the old-fashioned colours?" he asked her. "I thought the growers had -extirpated them; one sees only the long-stemmed ones nowadays, with the -tiresome artistic shades." - -He pleased her again, he felt sure, and she told him that she always -saved the seed, liking the old bright colours better, too. - -He was glad that he had come, although Mr. Haseltine's beard was too -long and he feared that he would prove talkative in the worst way, the -deliberate and retaining way. He liked the smell of everything,--a -mingling of sweet-peas, rush-matting, and China tea,--and the look of -everything; good, unpretentious old oak furniture, fresh, if faded, -chintzes, and book-lined walls; and he presently liked the taste of -everything too. - -"I feel already as if I should sleep to-night," he said to Mrs. Baldwin. - -She sat behind the tea-urn a little distracted, if anything so mild -could be called distraction, by the plunging movements of the little -maid as she moved about the table. "That will do nicely, Cathy," she -said. "We can manage now. You can bring in some more hot water if I -ring.--Oh, I do hope you'll sleep. People usually sleep here." - -She was hardly middle-aged, though, after Dorothy's bright browns and -pinks, Tommy might well have thought her so. Many years older than -Dorothy, of course, yet how many he could not in the least compute. -There was an agelessness, with something tough and solid, about her; she -was as little slender as she was stout; she might, with her neutral -tints,--hair, skin, dress,--have looked almost the same at sixty as she -did now. She wasn't pale, or sallow, or sunburned; yet her complexion -seemed so to go with her hair that the whole head might have been carved -in some pleasantly tinted stone. Only her eyes gave any depth of -difference; gentle eyes, like a grey-blue breadth of evening. She had a -broad, short face and broad, beautifully drawn lips, and looked almost -mysteriously innocent. - -Guy took her in to this extent, swift as he was at taking people in, and -sensitive as he was to what he found. He felt sure--and the depth of -comfort it gave him made him aware of all the reluctances Dorothy's -decision had overborne--that she hadn't the ghost of a method or of a -theory. Shell-shock people had merely happened to come and had happened -to get well quickly. He even gathered, as the peaceful evening wore -on,--Cathy clearing, placid lamps lighted, the windows still left open -to the twilight--that she didn't really think very much about her cases, -in so far as they were cases and not guests. Having done her best in the -way of blankets, hot water, and spirit-kettles, and seen them settled -down into the life she had made for herself,--and not at all for -them,--she went her own way, irresponsible and unpreoccupied. - -To-night she didn't attempt to entertain him. It was Mr. Haseltine, at -supper, who kept up the conversation, and with the air of always keeping -it up, with even the air, Guy imagined once or twice, of feeling it -specially his part to make amends, in that sort of resource, for his -dear daughter's deficiency. She was, Guy saw, very much his dear -daughter; but he felt sure that it had never entered the old gentleman's -head that any one would find her interesting when he himself was there. - -After supper she was occupied for a little while at her desk, adding up -figures, it appeared, in house-books; for she came to her father and -asked him if he would do a column for her. "It has come out differently -three times with me," she confessed, but without ruefulness. "I'm so -dull at my accounts!" - -Guy, as Mr. Haseltine fumbled for his large tortoise-shell eyeglasses, -offered to help her, and then came over and sat beside the desk and did -the rest of the sums for her. She was tidying up for the month, she told -him, and always found it rather confusing. "It's having to put the -pennies, which are twelves, into pounds, which are twenties, isn't it?" -she said, and thanked him so much. - -But this could hardly be called entertaining him, nor could it, when he -accompanied her across the lane in the now deepening dusk, to shut up -her fowls. After that, there was the game of chess, during which Mrs. -Baldwin absented herself a good deal, helping Cathy, Guy imagined, with -the beds and hot-water bottles; and at nine-thirty they all lighted -their candles and went upstairs. - -Bedtime had been, for many months, his most dreaded moment. The door -shut him in and shut away the last chance of alleviation. There was -nothing for it but to stretch himself haggardly on his couch and cling -to every detail in the day's events, or in the morrow's prospects, that -might preserve him from the past. To fight _not_ to remember was a -losing game, and filled one's brain with the white flame of insomnia. He -had found that it was when, exhausted by the fruitless effort, he -suffered the waiting vultures to settle upon him, abandoned himself to -the beaks and talons, that, through the sheer passivity of anguish, -oblivion most often came. - -To-night, from the habit of it, his mind braced itself as he came into -the room, and he was aware, as he had been for nearly a year now, that -Ronnie's face was waiting, as it were, on the outskirts of -consciousness, to seize upon him. But, after he had lighted the candles -on his dressing-table and the candles on the mantelpiece, taken off his -coat, and started undressing, he found that his thoughts, quite -effortlessly, were engaged with his new surroundings, old Mr. -Haseltine's beard and eyeglasses occupying them, and the clucking noise -he made in drinking the glass of hot ginger and water that had been -brought to them on a tray while they played; Mrs. Baldwin's accounts, -her fowls, and the colour of her eyes. He decided that the colour was -Wedgwood, or perhaps periwinkle blue--some very dense, quiet colour. - -As he moved about the room, this protective interest came to him from -the little objects he made acquaintance with: the round Venetian box, -dim gilt and blue and red, on the chest of drawers in which he found a -handful of tiny shells--shells, no doubt, that Mrs. Baldwin had picked -up during a seaside outing; the faded old blue leather blotter on the -writing-table, marked E. H., which had probably been hers since maiden -days (and did E stand for Ethel or Edith or Ellen?); the pretty -lettering in fine black script of the writing-paper so pleasantly -stacked; the dear old Dutch coffee-pot and jug on the mantelpiece, and -the bowl of mignonette that she, of course, had arranged. He sank his -face into its fragrance, and peace seemed breathed upon him from the -flowers. - -He was wondering, as he got into bed, with a glance, before he blew out -the candle, at the birds and branches, the whites and blacks and roses -of the _voile-de-Gnes_, whether he would find the autumn crocuses open -in the meadows next morning; it had looked like the evening of another -fine day. Then, the candle out, his thoughts, for a little while, were -tangled in the magical dreamland of the _voile-de-Gnes_, and the breath -of the mignonette seemed to lie upon his eyelids with a soft compulsion -to peace, until, all thought sliding suddenly away, he dropped into -delicious slumber. - - -III - -He found the crocuses open, before breakfast. Only Cathy was in the -living-room, sweeping, when he crossed it, though he thought he heard -Mrs. Baldwin in the kitchen. A robin was singing on a spray over the -summer-house. The sky arched pale and high; and though there was no mist -in the air, its softness made him think of milk. - -From the garden he passed into the meadows, and, almost at once, saw, -everywhere, the fragile, purple flowers about him, if purple were not -too rich a word for their clear, cold tint. Lower down, near the stream, -they made him think of the silver bobbins set playing by great rain -drops when they fall heavily upon wide, shallow pools of water; and they -seemed to grow even more thickly in the farther meadow beyond the wooden -bridge. A sense of bliss was upon him as he walked among the flowers. He -had never seen anything more lovely, and all but the darker buds were -open, showing pale golden hearts to the sun. - -Yet, by the time that he had crossed the bridge, leaning on the high -rail to look down into the limpid, sliding water, he knew that it could -never stay at that or mean that for him. He had seen fields of flowers -in France, and, while the horrors there had been enacted, these fields -of crocuses, year after year, had bloomed. What they meant for his mind -was the unbridged chasm between nature and the sufferings of man. Only -when one ceased to be a man, ceased to remember and to think, could such -a day, such sights, bring the unreasoning joy. - -Walking back, he saw, as he approached the house, that Mrs. Baldwin was -standing at the garden-gate, and, bare-headed, in the linen dress of -pale lavender, she made him at once think of the crocuses, or they of -her. Their gentleness was like her, their simplicity, and something, -too,--for he felt this in her,--of unearthliness. More perhaps, than any -other flower they seemed to belong to the air rather than to the ground, -and, with their faint, pale stalks, their fragile petals unconfined by -leaf or calyx, to be rising like emanations from the sod and ready to -dissolve in mist into the sunlight. - -"You've had a little walk?" Mrs. Baldwin asked him as they met. - -He said he had been looking at the crocuses. "Are they really crocuses?" -he questioned. "I've never seen them wild before." - -"They're not real crocuses," she said, "though those grow wild, too, in -a few places in England. These flowers are always called autumn crocuses -hereabouts; but they are really, botanically, meadow saffron; and they -grow wild in a great many places. You see they are not so dark a purple -as the wild crocus, and they are much taller, and the petals are more -pointed. Much more beautiful flowers, I think." - -"Meadow saffron. That's a pretty name, too. But I think I'll go on -calling them autumn crocuses. They were one of the reasons that made me -want to come here," he told her. - -They were leaning on the little garden-gate looking over the meadows. - -"Really? Did you hear about them?" - -He told her what Dorothy had said, passed on from the appreciative -Tommy, and she said again, "Really!" and with surprise, so that, -laughing a little, he said that he believed she would never have thought -of Mr. Barnet as an appreciator of crocuses. She laughed a little, too, -confessing to a community of perception where Tommy was concerned, and -remarked that it was very nice of him to have cared. "What he talked -about," she said, "was the food. He was never done praising my coffee. -It's time for coffee now," she added. - -Guy, as they went in, said that, after all, if that was what Tommy -talked about, he wondered that his caring for the crocuses should have -surprised her, for he was sure that the one was almost as poetical as -the others. It was poetical, indeed, as she made it, in a delightful and -complicated apparatus, glass and brass and premonitory scented steam; -and the milk was as hot as the water had been, and there was cream. "How -do you manage it, in these days?" he asked. But she said that it wasn't -wickedness and bribery, really: she and Cathy skimmed it from the milk -that was brought from the nearest farm. - -He realized that he was himself talking about the food just as Tommy had -done; just as the chattering women at Aunt Emily's tea-party had done; -just as everybody, of course, had been doing in England ever since food -became such an important matter. But it was Mrs. Baldwin who made him do -it; for though unearthly, she was deliciously prosaic. He felt that anew -when he heard her going about the house in her low-heeled little shoes, -with Cathy. They did, evidently, all the work, and how fresh, composed, -and shining everything was. The living-room, with its happy southern -windows, its tempting writing-tables, its flowers and books, was an -embodiment of the poetry that only such prose can secure. - -Guy, while Mr. Haseltine sat behind his rustling _Times_, strolled -before the shelves, surprised, presently, at their range of subject. -Surely not Mrs. Baldwin's, such reading; hardly, he thought, Mr. -Haseltine's. He took down a volume of Plotinus and found, on the -fly-leaf, "Oliver Baldwin," written in a small, scholarly hand. That -explained it, then. Her husband's. The Charles d'Orleans, too, the -Fustel de Coulanges, the Croce, and the Dante, with marginal notes. He -had been a man of letters, perhaps. Of the dozen books he took down to -examine, only one was initialled "E. H.," and that, suitably, was -_Dominique_. But it had been given her by "O. B." - -As in the garden, presently, he and the old gentleman walked up and -down, smoking, Guy asked him, with the diffidence natural to the -question, whether his son-in-law, Mrs. Baldwin's husband, had been -killed in the war; though he couldn't imagine her a war-widow. One -didn't indeed think of her in connection with marrying and giving in -marriage--that was part of the unearthliness; yet widowhood, permanent -widowhood, seemed a suitable state. She was not girlish, nor was she -wifely. She was widowed, and it had happened, he felt sure, in spite of -his question, long ago. - -As he had expected, his companion replied, "Ah, no; he died eight, nine -years since." And Mr. Haseltine then went on to tell, taking the war as -the obvious interest, and not without the satisfaction that Guy had so -often met and so often loathed, that he had lost dear ones. "Children of -my eldest son. Fine lads. Brave boys. One in the first month--at the -Marne; the other only last year, flying. Yes; I've done my bit," said -Mr. Haseltine, with the fatuity that he was so plentifully companioned -in displaying. - -"Bit." Odious word. His "bit." Why his? Had any one written a poem on -the formula coming from the lips of those for whom others had died? A -scattered, flagellating line or two floated through Guy's mind. -Something about barbed wire came in. He wondered how old Mr. Haseltine -would have felt about his "bit," hung up on that and unable to die. He -wondered where the fine lads now lay. No more coffee for them, with -cream in it; no more robins singing; no more strolling smokes among -mignonette in the sunlight. How they were forgotten, already, except for -trophies, for self-glorification to display! How pleased, how smug this -rescued, comfortable world! Something of his distaste attached itself -even to Mrs. Baldwin when she next appeared. Something irritating him in -her peacefulness. She, too, had seen nothing and lost nothing. But, at -all events, she wouldn't, he knew that, take any stand on the two -nephews to claim her "bit." There was nothing fatuous about Mrs. -Baldwin. The slight distaste still lingered, however, and he found -himself wondering once or twice, during the day that passed, in spite of -it, so pleasantly, whether she wasn't, for all his idealizing similes, a -stupid as well as a sweet woman. It was not because of filial -self-effacement that she let her father do all the talking at meals: it -was simply because she had nothing to say, and the good old boy was -quite right in taking his responsibility for granted. The person who -could talk was the responsible person. Her mind, though so occupied, was -quite singularly inactive and, he was sure, completely uncritical. She -didn't find her father in the least a bore, or suspect that anybody else -might find him so. She did find, Guy felt sure, satisfaction in all her -occupations. He heard her laughing--a quiet little laugh--with Cathy in -the kitchen; and in the afternoon, when he helped her to prick out -seedlings, her attentive profile--as, after he had dug each hole, she -dropped in the little plant, pressed the earth about its roots, and -fixed it in its place--made him think of the profile of a child putting -its dolls to bed. They planted three beautiful long rows, and Guy was -quite tired by tea-time, for though they had high tea at half-past six, -they were not deprived of the precious afternoon pause, taking place as -it did at the unaccustomed but pleasing hour of four. - -After tea she went to see some people in the village, Mr. Haseltine -dozed in his chair, and Guy took a long walk. - -So the days went on, and at the end of a week he was able to write to -Dorothy and tell her that he was sleeping wonderfully and that Mrs. -Baldwin's cottage was all that she had pictured it. By the end of the -week he had even grown rather attached to Mr. Haseltine, and he enjoyed -playing chess with him every evening; and sometimes they had a game in -the afternoon when tea was over. The undercurrent of irritation still -flowed, but he had learned to put up with the old gentleman and to -circumvent his communicativeness, and in the case of Mrs. Baldwin he -more and more felt that she was the sort of person to whom one would, -probably, forgive anything. It had become evident to him that what might -be dulness might also be unawareness. That was a certain kind of -dulness, it was true, but it didn't preclude capacity for response if -the proper stimulus were applied. It amused him to note that if none of -the nearly inevitable jars of shared life seemed ever to occur between -her and her father, it was simply because, when a difference arose, she -remained unconscious of it unless it were put before her. Nothing could -have been less in the line of selfishness; it was she who thought of -him, of his comfort and happiness, and who ordered her life to further -them; he, in this respect, was passive; but Guy felt that the poor old -boy often brooded in some disconsolateness over small trials and -perplexities that a companion more alert to symptoms would have -discerned and dispelled at once. Mr. Haseltine even, sometimes, confided -such grievances to the P.G. - -"I don't want to bother Effie about it," he said;--E. had stood for -Effie--"she's a dreamy creature and very forgetful. But it's quite -evident to me that the rector and his wife have been expecting to be -asked to tea to meet you. I've just been talking to them in the lane, -and I saw it plainly. They had asked us to bring you before you arrived, -hearing we were to have another guest,--they've always been most kind -and neighbourly in helping us to entertain our new friends,--and I -really don't know why Effie should have got out of it. I usually have to -remind her, it's true. But I sometimes get tired of always having to. -She doesn't care for them herself; but that's no reason why you might -not. We have few enough interests to offer visitors." - -Guy was glad to have escaped the rectory tea, though he did not say this -in assuring Mr. Haseltine that the entertainment offered at Thatches was -absolutely to his taste. He was completely out of place at any rectory; -he could imagine no rector who would not find his poems pernicious; but -he felt that there was justice in Mr. Haseltine's contention. He _might_ -have cared for them. As it was, Mr. Haseltine was brought once again to -reminding her. It was evident then that she was ready to please anybody -or everybody. - -"Ask them? Ought I to ask them?" - -"My dear, it's ten days since they sent their invitation. They spoke -again--and it's the second time--of having been so sorry not to see us, -when I met them yesterday, in the lane. I don't know why you did not -go." - -"I thought it would bore Mr. Norris, father. He came here for quiet, you -know. But would it bore you?" she asked Guy. "They are very nice. I -don't mean that." - -"It's certainly very pleasant being quiet," said Guy; "but if Mr. -Haseltine likes having them, I assure you that people don't frighten me -in the least." - -"Oh, not on my account," Mr. Haseltine protested. "I see our good -friends continually. It is of them I am thinking, as well as of Mr. -Norris. He might find them more interesting than you do, Effie, and they -will, I fear, be hurt." - -Now that it was put before her, Mrs. Baldwin did it every justice, -rising from the breakfast-table, where she had just finished, to go to -her desk, and murmuring as she went, "I hadn't thought of that. They -might be hurt. So, if it _won't_ bore you, Mr. Norris." - -And the Laycocks were asked, and did indeed bore Guy sadly. - -It was on the night after their visit--Mr. Laycock had questioned him -earnestly about his personal impressions of the war and to evade him had -been wearying--that Guy, for the first time, really, since he had come, -found sleep difficult and even menaced. It was because of that, he felt -sure, looking back on it, that the curious occurrence of the next day -took place--curious, and, had it taken place in the presence of any one -else, embarrassing. But what made it most curious was just that; he had -not felt it embarrassing to break down and sob before Mrs. Baldwin. - -The morning had begun badly. The breakfast-table papers had been full of -the approaching victory. Mr. Haseltine read out passages from the -_Times_ as he broke his toast and drank his coffee. He had reiterated -the triumph of his long conviction, and Mrs. Baldwin had murmured -assent. "All's well with the world," was the suffocating assurance that -seemed to breathe from them both. "All's blue." Was hell forgotten like -that? What if the war were won? Of course, it had to be won--that was an -unquestioned premise that had underlain his rebellions as well as Mr. -Haseltine's complacencies since the beginning. But what of it? No -victory could redeem what had been done. - -He went out into the garden, to be away from Mr. Haseltine, as soon as -he could, and took a book into the summer-house; and it was here, a -little later, that Mrs. Baldwin, seeing him as she passed, her -garden-basket on her arm, paused to ask him, with her smile of the shy -hostess, if he were all right. She didn't often ask him that, and he saw -at once that his recent recalcitrancy to rejoicing had pierced even her -vagueness. He knew that he still looked recalcitrant, and he was -determined not to soften the overt opposition rising in him; so he -raised his eyes to her over his book and said that he was not, perhaps, -feeling very fit that morning. - -Mrs. Baldwin hesitated at the entrance to the summer-house. She looked -behind her at the garden and up at the roses clustering over the lintel -under the thatch; she even took out her scissors, in the uncertainty -that, evidently, beset her, and snipped off a dead rose, and she said -presently, "It was all that talk about the war, wasn't it--when what you -must ask is to forget it." - -"Oh, I don't ask that at all," said Guy. "I should scorn myself for -forgetting it." She glanced in again at him, mildly. "I want to forget -what's irrelevant, like victory," he said; "but not what is relevant, -like irremediable wrong." - -Her awareness had not, of course, gone nearly as far as this. She kept -her eyes on him, and he was glad to feel that he could probably shock -her. "You see," he found himself saying, "I saw the wrong. I saw the -war--at the closest quarters." - -"Yes--oh, yes," Mrs. Baldwin murmured. - -"For me, tragedy doesn't cease to exist when it's shovelled underground. -If one goes down into hell, one doesn't want to forget the fact--though -one may hope to forget the torments and horrors; one wants, rather, to -remember that hell exists--and to try and square life with that -actuality." - -There was silence after this for a moment, and he imagined that she was -very much at a loss. Her next words seemed indeed to express nothing so -much as her failure to follow--that and a silliness really rather -adorable, had he been in a mood to find it anything but exasperating. -"But, still--hell doesn't exist, does it?" she offered him for his -appeasement. - -Guy laughed. "Doesn't it? When things like this war can happen? How -could it ever have existed but in men's hearts? It's there that it -smoulders and, when its moment comes, leaps out to blast the world." - -He could talk to her like this because she was too simple to suspect in -him a poetical attitudinizing; any one else would of course suspect it. -Guy was even aware that to any one else that was what it would have -been. She looked kind and troubled and as much as ever at a loss. She -didn't know at all how to deal with the patient, and she was evidently -uncertain what to do, since it might seem heartless to go away and leave -him to his black thoughts, yet intrudingly intimate to come and sit down -beside him. Nothing could be less intimate than Mrs. Baldwin. It was he, -of course, who was tasteless in talking to her in a vein appropriate -only to intimacy. - -"Don't bother over me," he said, offering her the patent artifice of a -smile. "I'm simply a bad case. You mustn't let me trouble you. You must -just turn your back on me when I'm like this." - -It was not poetic attitudinizing now; there was in his voice a quaver of -grief and she responded to it at once. - -"Oh, but I don't like to do that. I do wish I could be of some help. I -see you haven't slept, for you look so tired, as you did when you first -came. And Mr. Laycock did bore you. It's wrong of people to talk to you -about the war." - -For the first time he saw in the eyes fixed upon him, pity, evident pity -and solicitude. And before it he felt himself crumble suddenly. He saw -all the reasons she had for pitying him, did she but know. He saw -Ronnie's face again; he saw his own haunted night and his own grief. He -wanted her to see it. "Oh--one can't be guarded like that," he murmured; -"I must try to get used to it. But--I didn't sleep; that's true. I'm so -horribly afraid of not sleeping. You can't imagine what it is. I've the -most awful visions." And leaning his elbows on the table, he put his -hands before his face and began to cry. - -She stood there; he did not hear her move at first; and then she entered -and sat down on the seat beside him. But she said nothing and did not -touch him. He had had in all the tumult of his disintegration, a swift -passage of surmise; would she not draw his head upon her shoulder, like -a mother, and comfort him? But that would have broken him down heaven -knew how much further. - -He cried frankly, articulating presently, "It's my nerves, you know; -they have all gone to pieces. I lost my friend; my dearest friend. For -months I didn't sleep." - -Mrs. Baldwin's silence was not oppressive, or repressive either. He -heard her hands move slightly on the basket she held on her knees and -the soft chafing in the folds of her linen bodice that her breathing -made. It was an accepting stillness and it presently quieted him; more -than that, it enabled him at last to lift his head and look at her -without feeling ashamed of himself. Oddly enough, he knew that he, -perhaps, ought to be. He _could_ have helped himself. There had been an -element of wilfulness in his breakdown; he had wanted her to see; but, -even had she known this about him, he would not have felt ashamed. She -was so curiously a person with whom one could not associate blames and -judgments. She was an accepting person. - -She wasn't looking at him, but out at the sweet, bright, autumnal little -garden; and as her eyes came to him, he felt them full of thought; felt, -for the first time, sure that, whatever she might be, she was not dull. - -He could not remember, looking back at the little scene, that she had -said a single further word. He did not think that he had said anything -further. He was helping her, a little while after, to prune the Aime -Vibert rose that had grown with great unruliness over the little -tool-house near the kitchen door. "It will really pull it down unless we -cut out some of these great branches," she had said, as, equipped with -stout gloves, they had worked away together, unfastening the tangled -trails and stretching them out on the ground. So displayed, the Aime -Vibert was drastically dealt with, and it was midday before they -finished fastening the thinned and shortened shoots into place. - -She had said nothing further; but he believed that, for the first time, -her thought really included him. He had been put before her. She was -different afterwards. He had become an individual to her, and had ceased -to be merely the paying guest. - - -IV - -The third week came. There was rain, rather sad September rain, for a -day or two. They sat in the evenings before the wide fireplace where -logs blazed. Mrs. Baldwin, at his suggestion, read aloud to them Fabre's -_Souvenirs Entomologiques_. She read French prettily, better than he did -himself, and he was a little chagrined once or twice to find that she -knew it better, priding himself on his French as he did. He had lived -for a year in Paris, with Ronnie, before the war. - -The horrors of the grim, complicated underworld revealed by the French -seer distressed him. Mrs. Baldwin did not feel them as he did, feeling -the marvels rather than the horrors, perhaps. She laughed a little, -rather callously, at the ladies who devoured their husbands, and seemed -pleased by the odious forethought of the egg-laying mothers. She shared -Fabre's humorous dispassionateness, if not the fond partiality which, -while it made him the more charming, didn't, Guy insisted, make his -horrid wasps and beetles a bit more so. As usual, she vexed him a -little, even while, more and more, he felt her intelligent; perhaps she -vexed him all the more for that. - -"She's so devilishly contented with the world," he said to himself -sometimes, even while he smiled, remembering her laughter. - -Old Mr. Haseltine fell asleep one night while she read, and to be -together there before the fire, the old man sleeping beside them, made -them nearer than they had ever been before. Guy was aware of this -nearness while he listened and while he watched her hand, short, like a -child's (and her face was so short) support the book, and her eyelashes -dropping down the page or raised to a fresh one. - -When he went to his room that night, he stood still for a long time, his -candle in his hand, listening to the soft beat of the rain against the -window. He was hardly ever now afraid of being alone, or of the dark, -and he stood there musing and listening, while he still seemed to see -Mrs. Baldwin's hand as it held the book, and her reading profile. Her -life seemed to breathe upon him and he rested in it. He slept -deliciously. - -"Did you know that I write?" he asked her next day. He had wondered -about this once or twice before. - -"Oh, yes; your cousin, in her letter, you know, told me that you wrote," -said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They were in the living-room after midday dinner, and alone. She looked -up at him very kindly from the papers and letters she was sorting at her -desk. - -"You've never heard of my effusions otherwise, though?" He put on a -rueful air. "Such is fame!" - -"Are you famous?" Her smile was a little troubled. "I don't follow -things, you know, living here as I do." - -"You read the papers. I _have_ had reviews: good ones." - -"I don't read them very regularly," she admitted. "And I so often don't -remember the names of people in reviews, even when I've liked what is -said of them. Have you any of your poems here? Perhaps you'll let me -read them." - -He felt, with the familiar chagrin, that she would never, of herself, -have thought of asking him. - -"Yes, my last volume. It's just out." - -He was going for a walk in the rain with Mr. Haseltine that afternoon. -There was an old church in the neighbouring village that his friend -wanted him to see. Mrs. Baldwin had letters to write. "Will you have -time to look at it while we are out?" he asked. - -Although she had shown so little interest in him, he was eager, -pathetically so, he felt, that she should read and care about his poems. -She said that it was just the time: her letters would not take long. And -so he ran up to his room and got the little book for her: _Burnt -Offerings_. - -All the time that he was walking with Mr. Haseltine and seeing the -church, and the old manor house that took them a half mile further, he -wondered what she was thinking about his poems. - -By the time they had returned the rain had ceased. A warm September -sunlight diffused itself. Veils lifted from the stream and trailed upon -the lower meadows. The sky grew clear and the leaves all sparkled. They -found that Mrs. Baldwin had had her cup of tea, for it was past four; -but all had been left in readiness for them, the kettle boiling; and -after Guy had swallowed his, he went out and saw her walking down among -the crocuses. - -"Oh, you are back?" she said when he joined her. "I wanted to be there -to give you your tea. Was it all right?" - -"Perfectly," he said. "We put in just your number of spoonfuls." - -Mrs. Baldwin wore her little knitted jacket and had put on her white, -rubber-soled canvas shoes against the wet; but her head, with its thick, -close braids, was bare to the sunlight. - -"I had to come out as soon as it stopped raining," she said; "and I'm -afraid I simply forgot to look out for you and father." - -Her gentleness had always seemed contentment; this afternoon it seemed -happiness, and he had never seen her look so young. He wondered if she -were going to take him so dreadfully aback as not even to mention his -poems; if she had simply forgotten them, too. Already her demeanour, -unclouded, almost radiant, inflicted a wound; she had either forgotten, -or she had cared little indeed, since she could look like that. But, -after he had commented, consentingly, on the lovely hour, she went on -with a change of tone, a voice a little shy, "I've read the poems. Thank -you so much for letting me see them." - -"You read all of them?" - -"Yes. I didn't write my letters." - -"I hope you read them, then, because you cared for them." - -She didn't answer for a moment, walking along and placing the small -white feet carefully among the crocuses. "They are very sad," she then -said. - -He was aware, after an instant of adjustment to the blow, that she made -him very angry. Terrible, his poems, searing, scorching; wicked, if one -would; but not sad. - -"Oh!" he murmured; and he wondered if the divided feeling she had from -the first roused in him had been this hatred, not perhaps of her, but of -her unvarying acquiescence, her untroubled inadequacy. - -"They interested me very much," she said, feeling, no doubt, that, -whatever he was, he was not pleased. "They made me see, I mean, all the -things you have been through." - -"Sad things, you call them. You know, I rather feel as if I'd heard you -call hell sad." - -She looked up at him quickly, and it was now she who was taken aback -and, as she had been the other day, at a loss. And, as on the other day, -she found the same answer, though she offered it deprecatingly, feeling -his displeasure. "But hell doesn't exist." - -"Don't you think anything horrible exists?" - -They turned at the end of the meadow. It seemed to him, although he felt -as if he hated her, that they were suddenly intimate in their -antagonism. He would force that antagonism, and its intimacy, upon -her--to its last implication. - -"Horrible? Oh, yes, yes!" she said, startled, and that was, he reflected -grimly, to the good. "But it would have to be irretrievable, wouldn't -it, to be hell?" she urged. - -"Do you suggest that it's not irretrievable? You own it's horrible. -Irretrievably horrible, I call it. And that's what I call hell. Yet all -that you can find to say of my poems is that they are sad." - -She hesitated, feeling her way, hearing in the recurrent word how it had -rankled. "I meant sad, I think, because of you; because you had suffered -so much." - -"You seem always to imply that one might _not_ have suffered!" And -thrusting aside her quickly murmured, "Oh, no, no!" he went on: "I can't -understand your attitude of mind. Do you realize at all, I sometimes -wonder, what it has all meant, this nightmare we are living in--we, that -is, to whom it came? Can you imagine what it was to me to see boys, dead -boys, buried stealthily, at night, under fire? Boys so mangled, so -disfigured--you read that poem, 'Half a Corpse'?--that their mothers -wouldn't have known them; featureless, dismembered boys, heaped one upon -the other in the mud. Has your mind ever dwelt upon the community of -corruption in which they lie, as their mothers' minds must dwell? I do -not understand you. I do not understand how you can dare to call such -things sad." - -His own wrath shook and yet sustained him, though he knew a fear lest he -had gone too far; but in her silence--they had reached the other end of -the meadow and turned again in their walk--he felt that there was no -resentment. It was as if she realized that those who have returned from -hell cannot be asked to stop and pick their words with courtesy, and -accepted his vehemence, if not his blame; and again, when she spoke at -last, he felt that her bewilderment had settled into thought. - -"Yes, I can imagine," she said. "But no, I don't think that my mind has -dwelt on those things. If I were their mothers, I don't think that my -mind would dwell, as you say. Something would burn through. There are -other kinds of suffering--better kinds; they help, I believe. And, for -that kind, it is worse, but is it so much worse than in ordinary life? -That is what happens all the time when there is no war; dreadful changes -in the dead; and burials. They are not quite so near each other in a -churchyard, and their graves are named; but do you think that makes it -easier to bear?" - -He felt now as if it were insult she was offering him. - -"You deny all tragedy to war, then? It's all to you on a level with an -Elegy in a Country Churchyard, with curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths? You read 'His Eyes,'"--Guy's voice had a hoarser -note, but, mingled with the sincerity of what, at last, he knew he was -to tell her, the very centre of his sick heart, went a surface -appreciation of what he had just said and of how curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths would go into a bitter poem one day,--"you read that -poem of mine at the end of the book. 'His Eyes' is about myself and my -friend Ronnie Barlow, the artist; you never heard of him, I know. He -hung, with shattered legs, dying, just in front of us, on the barbed -wire, for three days and nights. When he could speak, it was to beg to -be shot. We tried to get to him, four, five times; it was no good. There -was barbed wire between, and the Germans spotted us every time. He died -during the third night, and next morning I found him looking at me--as -he had looked during these three days--his torment and his reproach. And -so he went on looking until the rats came and he had no more eyes to -look with. Will you tell me that that is no worse than the deaths died -in the parishes of England? Will you tell me that it's the sort of death -died by the cheery, mature gentlemen who ate their dinners and slept -warm and dropped a tear--while they did their 'bit' in their Government -offices--over the brave lads saving England?" - -He had taken refuge from Ronnie in hatred of those whom, in the poem, he -called his murderers, and his voice was weighted with its fierce -indictment. In the pause that followed he had time to wonder if she -found him, at last, intolerable. She walked beside him, still looking -down, and it might well have been in a chill withdrawal. He almost -expected to hear her, in another moment, find the conventional phrase -with which to leave him. But no,--and in his own long sigh he recognized -the depth of his relief,--she was not going to punish him with -convention; she was not going to leave him. And what she said at last -was, "I'm so sorry! Please believe that I'm so very, very sorry! -Only--why do you speak, and write, as though it were some one's fault?" - -Ah, here then, at last, they had come to it, the barrier, on one side of -which he stood with his hell and she on the other in her artificial -paradise. - -"I write it and speak it because it is the truth," he said. "Millions of -innocent creatures, of gifted, beautiful creatures, like my friend, have -been slaughtered, tortured, driven mad, because of greasy, greedy -wire-pullers in their leather chairs at home." - -"In this war, too?" - -"In this war preminently." - -"You don't feel that the crime was Germany's?" - -"Oh, of course!" his laugh sneered the facile acquiescence. "Let us put -it on Germany, by all means. We'll sleep the sounder! Certainly, I grant -it to you freely--Germany struck the match and lighted the fuse." - -"And weren't we all responsible for the fuse--you and I, I mean, as much -as the people in the leather chairs?" There was no irony in her -repetition. "The people who fought, as much as the people who didn't -fight? Wasn't the fuse simply our conception of our national safety? of -our national honour? That is what I feel so sad about your -poems,--though I should never have wanted to explain it,--that you are -so wrong, so ungenerous, so vindictive." - -In all his life it had rarely been his lot to know such astonishment. -Astonishment came first; and then the deep, deep hurt that rose, wave -after wave, within him. Was this, then, what she felt for him--only -this? Hadn't he told her about Ronnie--her alone of all the world? -Should not that have made her reverent of him, and pitiful? Should a man -who had endured such griefs receive such blows? Waves of colour, too, -flooded his face and tears rushed to his eyes. He thought, when he was -able at last to gather thoughts together, that it should now be for him -to find the conventional phrase and leave her. But, glancing again at -her profile, finding it, though singularly pale, so much more gentle -than severe, the impulse dropped. He was not strong enough for -convention. He was shaken, shattered; too weak even for -self-preservation. - -He walked, miserable, and his mind full of a whirling darkness, beside -her, determining only that she should be the first to speak again. She -was. She had quite come out of her shyness,--if it had ever been -that,--and though it was with something faltering, something that was, -he made out, sorry for them both in the predicament to which, after all, -he, and not she, had brought them, it was more than all with resolution -that she said,-- - -"I am so sorry if I seem presumptuous. But you asked me. And your poems -aren't the first I've read. So many young men, who have been so brave, -like you, and who have been through it all so that they have the right -to speak, seem to feel more than anything that hatred, not against -war,--we all hate war,--but against people, some groups of people, they -make responsible. There are bad and selfish people everywhere,--among -poets, I feel sure, just as much as among statesmen; but hasn't this war -proved--since everybody has gone--that no one group is bad and selfish; -that there are men in every group who have been glad to die for their -country? I know I have no weight with young men like you; I am not a -person of any importance for opinion; but how I wish that I could make -you believe that you ought not to write like that--with hatred in your -heart. Can great poetry be written out of hatred? And it's not only -yourself it hurts: it hurts other people; harms them, I mean. It spreads -a mood of darkness and fever just when they are so in need of light and -calm. And for the mothers, for people who have lost, cruelly, those whom -they loved as much, perhaps even more, than you loved your friend--do -you not see how your poems must sicken them? Do you not see that it all -becomes just that--a community of corruption? You imprison them, force -them back into their helpless suffering; when what they pray for is -strength to rise above it and to feel all the goodness and love that has -been given for them; to feel what is beautiful, not what is horrible; so -as to be worthy of their dead." - -As he listened to her,--and with a slow revulsion of all his nature, as -if, against his very will and mind, she moved his heart to breaking with -something passionate that spoke in her words,--an overwhelming -experience befell him. - -The crocuses beneath their feet, her sunlit shape beside him, her voice, -as she spoke to him thus, with her very soul, blended together in a -rising wave of light, or music, piercing, sweeping him, lifting him up -to some new capacity, leaving the old inert and dangling, lifting and -still lifting him, until at last, as if with a great, emerging breath, -he came into a region bright and fair, whence, looking down on the dark -and tattered past, he saw all life differently, even Ronnie's death, -even Ronnie's eyes. Ronnie was with him, with Mrs. Baldwin, in the -bright stillness. - -Upborne, sustained, like a swimmer in some strange, new element, he -seemed to gaze down through its golden spaces at the inert, alien -darkness that had been himself. "Rubbish! Rubbish!" he seemed to hear -himself say. Yet all was not left behind; all was not rubbish; else how -could he be here, with her, with Ronnie? It was bliss to see himself as -he had been, since something else was so immeasurably secure. Oh--could -one stay always like this! This was to taste of everlasting life. His -longing, as if with a cry, a grasp from the swimmer, marked the soft -turning of the tide. He sank, but it was sweetly, if with a strange, an -infinite sadness, a sadness recorded, accepted, while he sank, as making -forever the portion of the temporal consciousness. And the bliss still -stayed in the acceptance, and purple ripples seemed to glide back -rhythmically as the crocuses swam before his eyes. It had all been only -an instant then, for her last words came to him as if she had but spoken -them and he heard his own voice murmuring, as if from very far away, -"Perhaps you are right." - -The ripples stayed themselves. He looked down at the crocuses and saw -Mrs. Baldwin's white shoes standing still among them. Lifting his eyes, -which felt heavy, he found her looking at him with attention, with -anxiety. - -"It's nothing," he tried to smile. "Nothing at all. I mean--you've done -me good." He saw that she hadn't an idea of how she had done it. - -"Do take my arm," she said. "I ought to have remembered that you are not -strong yet." - -He took her arm. Perhaps he needed it. His normal consciousness was -gathering about him once again, but no longer with the old close -texture. It was all more permeable to light--that was how he tried to -put it. And he heard his voice go on, "You see--what it all amounts -to--oh, I'm not thinking about the poems, I know that you must be -right--it's not what you say, is it? It's something far more right than -what you say. But I love you. That's why you can do it to me. I wonder I -didn't see it before. You made me angry with your peacefulness. I didn't -understand. I needed your peace. You, you were what I needed. You will -forgive my speaking? Surely you'll understand. Perhaps you feel you -hardly know me, while you are like my life. Is it possible that some day -you might love me back and marry me?" - -He had used the words that came. They were the words of the normal -consciousness. How else could he ask her to keep him always near her so -that he might never lose that sense of paradise? - -But she had stopped still and had drawn her arm from his. Was it -possible that after what she had done to him, for him, she could see him -only thus? "Oh, no," she said. "No. No." Never had he seen a human face -express with such ineffable gentleness such repudiation. And she -repeated it, as if he had given her too much to bear; as if for her own -reassurance; as if to efface even the memory of his words: "No; no; -no!" She began again to walk towards the house. - -Had it not been for the initiation that had passed he knew so clearly -now, in all unawareness from her spirit to his, he would have felt to -the full the shame of his rejection, the deserved shame. For he was a -stranger and she had given him no right to believe that she even liked -him. But he could feel no shame. Had he really thought that she could -love him? Had it not been only that he wanted to tell her that he loved -her, and had wanted her, as it were, to keep him safe? He found himself -trying to explain this to her,--not pleading,--only so that she should -not be angry. "I had to tell you. You'd done me so much good. Everything -came different. Really, I'm not so presumptuous. I never meant to ask -anything." - -But she was not angry. "Forgive me," she said. "I hardly know what I am -saying. You so astonished me. Forgive me. But I don't feel as if I knew -you at all. Please don't think me reproaching you. I begin to -understand. You are not at all strong. It was like the other day when -you cried, I mean--I feel sure you think you care for me; but you -couldn't have said it, when we know each other so little, if you had -been well." - -She was putting it aside, for his sake, as an aberration, and he really -smiled a little as he shook his head. "No; really, really, it's not -that; not because I've been on edge and ill. It was something that came -to me from what you are; something that's been coming ever since I saw -you. I know that I am nothing to you; but for a moment, just now, it -seemed, when I had received so much, that you must know what you had -given; it seemed that a person to whom so much could be given, could -not be so far away. But even then I saw quite clearly what you saw in -me; a vain, pretentious, emotional creature; insincere, too, and proud -of my suffering. I am that. But I had never seen it before. And when it -came to me from you and, instead of crushing me, lifted me up, I knew -that I loved you.--No; I won't try to explain. Only you do forgive me? -You will let me go on as if it hadn't happened? I promise you that I'll -never trouble you again." - -Oh, the gentleness, the heavenly gentleness! It breathed through him -like the colour of the crocuses, although she was as impersonal, as -untouched, and as mysterious as they. He was nothing to her--nothing; -but she stood before him, looking at him, and though she gave nothing -but the gentleness, he knew that he received all that he needed. It was -enough that she was there. - -"But it's _I_ to be forgiven--_I_," she repeated. "Of course we will go -on. Oh, you look very tired. Please take my arm again. I spoke so -strangely to you. But--but--" She had flushed: for the first time he saw -the colour darken her face as if with a veil of pain, and in her voice -was the passion, deeper, stiller, that he had heard a little while ago -and that had enfranchised him. "I am married--I mean, my husband is -dead, but I am married. Perhaps you don't understand. Perhaps you will -some day, if you should lose some one you love and feel them still your -very life. We were like that. He is always with me." - -They had said nothing more as they walked up the meadow to the house, -his arm in hers. He had no sense of loss; rather, from her last words -to him, came a sense of further gain. She would be like that. He saw now -that her peace, against which he had pressed and protested, was -something won, was depth, not emptiness. She, too, had lost and -suffered. She was made dearer to him, more sacred. As for his love, it -did not belong--he had seen this even before she told him why--to this -everyday world to which he had returned. But it was everything to have -found it, with that other world, and to know that there it had its -being, its reality, forever. What was it that had enlarged, transformed -his life, but that very certitude of an eternity where all good was -secure? He could not explain it to himself in any words. Words were the -keys of temporality. But he had seen, if only for the few shining -moments, that Ronnie was not lost; that nothing had been in vain. - -If he found no difficulty, it was evident to him that Mrs. Baldwin felt -none, and he was glad to believe that this might be because he showed -her so completely, in his candid contentment, that he would never -trouble her again. She was not more kind to him; but she took, perhaps, -even more care, as if feeling that she had miscalculated something in -his recovery. She inaugurated a glass of hot milk, instead of spiced hot -water, at bedtime, and a rest on the sofa, with a rug, before the midday -dinner. "You will look so much better when you go back than when you -came," she said. - -For the time of going back drew near, and he did not dread it, though -loving Thatches and all it meant more and more with every day. But of -course, even in the temporal world, he was not to lose Thatches. That -was quite understood between them. The P.G. would be welcome whenever -he cared to come. - - -V - -He was playing chess on the afternoon before his departure. Tea was over -and Mrs. Baldwin had gone out. Guy had noticed that she had been perhaps -a little stiller than usual that day, when he had seen her, and that he -had seen her little. The game did not go very well; they were neither of -them keen on it; and when the old gentleman had won an easy victory, he -leaned back in his chair, the board still on its little table between -them, and said, "Poor Effie! She's still in the church, or in the -churchyard, I expect." - -Guy felt the shock of a great surprise. Strangely enough, though Mrs. -Baldwin had spoken of her husband and of his death, and though his books -were there, he did not associate him with Thatches, nor with the -churchyard. And with the word, "churchyard," a painful anxiety rose in -him. - -"Is it an anniversary?" he asked. - -"Yes," Mr. Haseltine nodded, sighing and rubbing his hand over his head. -"September twenty-ninth. I'd forgotten myself till just a little while -ago. Oliver died on this day. Her husband. Poor Effie!" - -"They lived here?" Guy asked. He had imagined that it had been after her -bereavement that she and her father had found and made a home of -Thatches. - -"Oh, yes. They lived here. All their married life," said Mr. Haseltine. -"Ten years or so. It was a great love-match. They were very happy. I -never saw a happier couple--until the end." - -"Did anything part them?" - -Mr. Haseltine had put his hands into his pockets and was gazing at the -board as if with a painful concentration, and though he shook his head -he answered, "It was the malady. Cancer, you know. Cancer of the face. -Such a handsome fellow, too: beautiful, bright, smiling eyes; beautiful -mouth. All gone. All disfigured, cruelly disfigured, and with horrible -suffering." - -Guy felt his breath coming thickly. "Was it long?" he asked. - -"Yes. Long. Eighteen months, I think. Morphia did little good at last. -He couldn't swallow; could hardly speak; begged to be killed and put out -of his torment. She was with him in it all. She never left him, day or -night; nor could he have borne it if she had. Nothing quieted him except -her hand in his. But at the end," said Mr. Haseltine, pushing away the -table and rising, "at the end, it attacked his brain and then he raved -at her. She couldn't go into the room at the last." - -The old man, with step lagging, as if weighted, walked away to the -window and stood looking out, while Guy, at the table, felt his heart -turn to stone. - -"Poor Effie!" Mr. Haseltine repeated after a little while. He came back -into the room and moved up and down, pausing to look at the books and -pictures. "She has never been the same since. For a long while we were -afraid she couldn't live. She hardly slept for months; and when she did -sleep, she used to wake crying, crying, always for him. When she became -stronger, she used to walk up and down those meadows, sometimes for -hours at a time. Very gentle; no complaint; always ready to talk to -people, to go on with things as best she could; but changed; completely -changed. We speak very little of him; but when we do, it's quite -naturally. She goes to the church sometimes, and there are always -flowers on his grave; but I don't think she has any orthodox beliefs; I -don't know that she has any beliefs at all. Still, she seems helped. She -is a very dear, unselfish woman; a dreamer, she was always a dreamer; -but always meaning well; and she does good in her quiet way. And I think -she likes this plan of having people come and stay and seeing after -them; especially now that they are so often people who have had a bad -time. Dear me, dear me!" Mr. Haseltine again shook his head, stationed -again at the window and looking out. "You would hardly have recognized -her had you seen her ten years ago. She had bright hair and a charming -colour; and full of gaiety and mischief. You'd hardly believe it now." - -"I'm so sorry," Guy heard himself saying. He remembered that those were -the words Mrs. Baldwin had used to him about Ronnie. - -"Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Haseltine. "Life is certainly very -difficult for some of us, and Effie has had her share. Somehow one -doesn't remember it when one is with her. I only recalled the day by -chance." - -Guy was walking in the meadows when Mrs. Baldwin returned. He saw her in -the garden, reading the letters that the evening post had brought, and -his first impulse was to remove himself as speedily as might be from her -sight, to cross the bridge and the farther meadow, and turn into the -lane that led away from it. But then he saw, as he stood irresolute, -that she was coming down to him, and he stood there, helpless, watching -her approach in the soft radiance of the late afternoon. She wore one -of the lavender-coloured dresses and the little knitted jacket. In her -hand were the opened letters. Her face was tranquil. She was, of course, -unaware of what had happened to him. - -She joined him. "You are having your last look at the crocuses?" - -It was their last look together. That, of course, was why she had come, -full of care and of kindness. - -"Yes. Yes. My last look for the year." He heard that his voice was -strange. And his heart seemed to lie like a cold hard block in his side. - -"Aren't you feeling well?" she asked. - -He walked beside her in silence. What could he say? But how was it -possible not to tell her? - -They had turned towards the sunset and came now to the bridge. She was -looking at him, with solicitude. He stopped before they crossed. - -"I must say something to you," broke from him. "I must. I can't go away -without your knowing--my shame--my unutterable remorse." - -She looked at him with the look he knew so well. Kindly, firmly, if with -anxiety, she prepared to hear him thrust some new torment upon her. - -"Shame? Remorse?" she murmured. - -"About my poems. About my griefs. What I've said to you. What I've given -you to bear. I thought I'd borne so much. I thought you unfeeling, -without experience. I thought I'd been set apart--that all of us had -been set apart, who suffered in the war. Stop me at once if you won't -hear it from me. But your father told me, just now, about your husband's -death." - -She became very pale. She looked away from him, but she said nothing. - -"That's all," said Guy after a long silence. He saw that there was -nothing more to tell her. She had understood. - -"Let us walk up and down," said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They crossed the bridge. He saw the stream sliding brightly below them -between the old, black planks. In the farther meadows the crocuses grew -more thickly and opened widely their pale purple chalices. - -"We have all suffered," said Mrs. Baldwin. "You mustn't have remorse or -shame. Nothing is harmed between us." - -The horrible stricture around his heart relaxed, and as they went very -slowly up and down he felt his throat tighten and tears rising, rising -to his eyes. He could not keep them back. He wasn't really quite strong -enough for this. They fell and fell, and from time to time he put up his -hand to brush them away. - -"We have all suffered," Mrs. Baldwin repeated gently. - -"Some, more! some, more!" he said brokenly. "Some, most of all!" - -They came back to the bridge, but though they crossed over, they did not -pass out through the high gate that barred the other end. The gate was -closed, and Guy stopped at it and leaned on it and put his face on his -hands. Mrs. Baldwin stood at the gatepost beside him, her hand holding -it and her head leaned against her hand. - -"He would have liked you," she said. "He was so interested in young men, -young poets. He was not old himself; and he wrote, too, did you know? -All those books in the living-room are his. He used to work there. I -will give you his two books if you care to have them. They were thought -very good; I think you will like them.--It was because of the crocuses -we came here," she went on. "We found them one September, just like -this, and the three little ruined cottages, and we knew at once that we -must live here. He so loved them. When he was very ill--but before the -very end when nothing could come to him any longer, when he was quite -shut away--he used to lie at the window and look out at them--that big -window above the living-room." - -Divinely she was helping him. It was as if, taking him by the hand, she -led him again away from his darkness and into her own light. - -Yes, brokenly it came to him, it was there, secure; how won, he knew -not. Through her he had found it; but that was because her feet had -passed before him up the calvary. She had gone through everything; and -she knew everything. - -And, to his new hearing, something of the infinite weariness of that -ascent was in her voice when she next spoke, although it was a voice as -peaceful as the evening air around them. "Are they not beautiful?" she -said. - -He raised his head and looked at the flowers through his tears. They had -never been so beautiful. "They make me think of you," he told her. - -"Do they?" Mrs. Baldwin still leaned her head against her hand, still -looked out over the meadows. "But there are so many of them," she said. -"So many. That is what I feel first of all about them. I could not think -of them as like one person. Multitudes. Multitudes.--And so silent! They -make me think always of the souls of the happy dead." - -_The Riverside Press_ - -CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS - -U. S. A. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -embody the spendour=> embody the splendour {pg 105} - -in spite of Florre's good cheer=> in spite of Florrie's good cheer {pg -136} - - * * * * * - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - -***** This file should be named 40650-8.txt or 40650-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/6/5/40650/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/40650-8.zip b/40650-8.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 2ffd000..0000000 --- a/40650-8.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/40650-h.zip b/40650-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 9fe19f6..0000000 --- a/40650-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/40650.txt b/40650.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fc3d036..0000000 --- a/40650.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9858 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -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/license - - -Title: Christmas Roses and Other Stories - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: September 2, 2012 [EBook #40650] -[Last updated: December 20, 2012] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -CHRISTMAS ROSES -AND OTHER STORIES - -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Selincourt) -_Author of "Tante," "The Third Window," etc._ - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge -1920 - -COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SELINCOURT - -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - - - -CONTENTS - -CHRISTMAS ROSES 1 - -HEPATICAS 63 - -DAFFODILS 92 - -PANSIES 121 - -PINK FOXGLOVES 147 - -CARNATIONS 168 - -STAKING A LARKSPUR 208 - -EVENING PRIMROSES 253 - -AUTUMN CROCUSES 279 - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -Christmas Roses - - -I - -THEY were coming up everywhere in their sheltered corner on the -wall-border, between the laurustinus and the yew hedge. She had always -loved to watch their manner of emerging from the wintry ground: neck -first, arched and stubborn; heads bent down as if with held breath and -thrusting effort; the pale, bowed, folded flower, when finally it rose, -still earthy, still part, as it were, of the cold and dark from which it -came; so that to find them, as on this morning, clear, white, -triumphant, all open to the wind and snow, was to renew the sense of the -miraculous that, more than any other flower, they always gave her. More -than any other flower, they seemed to _mean_ to come, to will and -compass it by the force of their own mysterious life. More than any -other flower, winter piled upon their heads, unallured by spring and the -promise of sunlight, they seemed to come from the pressure of a gift to -bring rather than a life to seek. She thought always, when she saw them, -of Christmas bells over snowy fields, in bygone centuries; of the Star -in the East, and of the manger at Bethlehem. They were as ancient as -that tradition, austere and immaculate witnesses in an unresponsive -world; yet they were young and new, always; always a surprise, and even -to her, old as she was, bereft and sorrowful, a reminder that life was -forever a thing of births, of gifts, of miracles. - -They did not fail her this morning when she came out to them, and she -thought, as she stopped to look at them, that one was not really old -when, in the shock of sheer happiness, one knew childhood again and its -wonder. Yet, as she worked among them, cutting away dead leaves and -adjusting sprays of evergreen so that the rains should not splash them -with mud, it was a new analogy they brought; and, for the first time, -measuring her resource after the appeal Tim's letter had made upon it, -she reflected that the Christmas roses were rather like herself. She, -too, in this wintry season of her life, was still determined and -indomitable. Widowed and childless, with many mournings in her heart, -griefs and devastations in her memory, she, too, was a force, silent and -patient; and it was this that people still found in her. For the appeal -always brought the answer. She had felt herself, so often, benumbed into -lethargy, and, yielding to the mere mute instinct of self-preservation, -had so often folded herself up and lapsed into the blank darkness of her -grief (her husband's death, so many years ago; and Miles's, and little -Hugh's, and her dear, dear Peggy's). But it had always been to hear -herself, as if in a dream, called to from the outside world, and to feel -herself, in answer, coming up again, rising, if only to snows and -tempests, in a renewal of life which brought with it, always, a renewal -of joy in life. - -For months now, since August, she had been sunken in the last grief--it -must be--that could come to her; for Miles was the last, of her own, who -had remained--Peggy's youngest boy. The oldest, already a soldier, had -been killed in the first months of the war, and, after all his years of -peril, it had seemed as if Miles was to escape. But, cruelly, just at -the turning of the tide, when victory had become assured, he had been -shot down, and in his crashing fall through the air she had felt the end -of everything, Peggy dying again with him; for Peggy, too, had died like -that, crashing and falling and dragged, in a horrible hunting accident. -There seemed, now, nothing more left to suffer, and nothing more to live -for, either, unless it were her poor Tim; and it had, exactly, been -Tim's letter that had driven her out to wrestle with the elements, after -her wont in any disturbance or perplexity, so that she could think over -what he told her while she wielded her trowel and fork on the convenient -wall-border. - -She had, on rising from the breakfast-table, sent Tim a wire: "I shall -expect her. Writing later," and had then called to Parton to bring her -old warm coat, her hood with its satin lining, and her buckled galoshes. - -Parton was accustomed to her mistress's vagaries in regard to gardening, -and made no comment on the enterprise except to express the hope that it -would not snow again. Parton, in spite of her youth a most efficient -combination of parlourmaid and lady's-maid, was devoted to her mistress; -the little pat and tweak she gave to the bow of the hood, and the -gentleness with which she adjusted the galoshes, expressed a close yet -almost reverential relationship. - -It was not freezing, and under the light fall of snow the ground was -soft. Mrs. Delafield found herself enjoying the morning freshness as she -tidied and weeded, and had her usual affectionate eye for the -bullfinches nipping away at her plum-buds and the tits and robins at the -little table spread with scraps for them near the house; while all the -time Tim's letter weighed on her, and the problem it presented; and as -she pondered on it, and on Rhoda, her niece, Tim's only child, her firm, -square, handsome, old, white face was not devoid of a certain grimness. - -Mrs. Delafield was very handsome, perhaps more handsome now than she had -been in youth. Her brow, with the peak of thick white hair descending -upon it, her thick black eyebrows and her rather thick, projecting nose, -were commanding--almost alarmingly so to those who in her presence had -cause for alarm. The merely shy were swiftly reassured by something -merry in her gaze and by the benevolent grace still lingering on her -firm, small lips. She had square eyes clearly drawn, and with an oddity -in their mountain-brook colouring, for one was brown and one was freaked -with grey. Her form was ample and upright, and in all her gestures there -was swiftness and decision. - -It was of Tim she thought at first, rather than of Rhoda, the cause of -all their distresses. But she was not seeing Tim as he now existed, -bleached, after his years of India, invalided, fretted by family cares, -plaintive and pitiful. She saw him as a very little boy in their distant -Northern nursery of sixty years ago, with bright curls, ruddy cheeks, -and the blue eyes, candid and trusting, that he still kept; standing -there, bare-armed and bare-legged, in his stiff, funny little dress of -plaid, before the fire-guard, while nurse, irate, benevolent figure, cut -bread and butter for breakfast. Dear little Tim! still her younger -brother; still turning to her, as he had always done, for counsel or -succour in any stress or anxiety. It was nothing new that the anxiety -should be about Rhoda; there was nothing, even, that had surprised her -in Tim's letter; yet she knew from the sense of urgency and even -breathlessness within her that the blow which had been dealt him could -not leave her unaffected. She could, after all, still suffer in Tim's -suffering. And even before she had let her thoughts dwell decisively on -Rhoda, she had found herself thinking, while the grimness settled on her -face, "I shall know how to talk to her." - -She had always known how to talk to the moody young beauty; that was why -Tim had sent off this letter of desperate appeal. She never quite saw -why Rhoda had not, from the first, felt in her merely an echo of her -father's commonplace conventionality and discounted her as that. Rhoda -had never, she felt sure, guessed how far from conventional she was; how -much at heart, in spite of a life that had never left appointed paths, -she knew herself to be a rebel and a sceptic; no one had ever guessed -it. But there had always been between her and Rhoda an intuitive -understanding; and that Rhoda from the first had listened and, from the -first, had sometimes yielded, proved that she was intelligent. - -Mrs. Delafield saw herself so accurately as Rhoda must see her. The -terse, old-fashioned aunt in the country residence--yes, dear Fernleigh, -square and mid-Victorian, with its name, and its creepers, its -conservatory, and its shrubberies, was so eminently a residence; and she -had never wanted to alter it into anything else, for it was so that she -had found it when, on her mother-in-law's death, she and the young -husband of so many years ago had first gone there to live. Rhoda must -see her, her hair so smooth under its cap of snowy net, her black -gowns--stuff for morning wear, silk for evening--so invariable, with the -frills at neck and wrists, thick gold chains and the dim old brooches -that went with them, as belonging almost to an epoch of albums on -centre-tables, of Mendelssohn's sacred songs, and archery tournaments; -an epoch of morning family-prayers and moral categories, where some -people still believed in hell and everybody believed in sin. She didn't -think that Rhoda had ever seen through all these alienating appearances -to the reality she herself knew to be so different; but it had always -been evident that she felt it through them; that she was at ease with -her aunt, candid, even if angry, and willing, even when most silent and -recalcitrant, to come down to Fernleigh, when her distracted parents -could deal with her no longer, and to "think things over," as they put -it to her, imploringly. - -Mrs. Delafield could see Rhoda thinking things over from a very early -age, from the earliest age at which recalcitrancy could count as -practically alarming. She could see her walking slowly past this very -border at the time that she had determined to go on the stage,--she had -only just left the hands of her devastated governesses,--pausing now and -then to examine unseeingly a plant, her hands clasped behind her, her -dark, gloomy, lovely, young head brooding on the sense of wrong, and, -even more, no doubt, on plots and stratagems. Her aunt had always -watched her, while seeming, in the most comfortable manner possible, to -give her no attention; noting everything about her,--and everything -counted against poor Tim's and Frances's peace of mind,--from the -slender, silken ankles to the tall column of the proud young throat; all -of it, every bit of Rhoda, so determined by an insatiable vanity, which -was the worst of her, and by a sardonic pride, which was the best. - -Rhoda, to do her further justice, was even more wonderful in the eyes of -her admirers than in her own. Her consciousness was not occupied so much -with her own significance as with all the things due to it; and it was -upon these things, and the methods of obtaining them, that she brooded -as she walked. "Naughty girl," had been her aunt's unexpressed comment; -and perhaps one reason why Rhoda had found it comfortable, or, at least, -composing, to be with her, was that it was a relief to be seen as a -naughty girl rather than as a terrifying portent. - -Mrs. Delafield had determined at once that Rhoda should not go on the -stage, though not, really, because Tim and Frances had begged her to -dissuade the child. She could perfectly imagine having wished to go on -the stage herself in her young days; and it was this consciousness, -perhaps, that made her so fair to Rhoda's desire. She had taken her -stand on no conventional objection; she had not even argued with Rhoda; -she had simply been able to make her feel, bit by bit, that she hadn't -one little atom of talent. - -It had been the same thing, really, when Rhoda had announced her -intention of marrying a dreadful young man, a bad young man,--Mrs. -Delafield knew where to apply her categories,--who had a large studio -where he gave teas and painted small, disagreeable pictures. They were -clever pictures; Mrs. Delafield was aware of this, though Tim and -Frances saw them only as disagreeable; and the young man, if bad, was -clever. Mrs. Delafield had travelled up to town several times in this -emergency, and had even accompanied Rhoda to the studio, where a young -lady with bare legs and feet was dancing, with more concentration than -spontaneity, before a cigaretted audience. Oddly enough, after this -visit, it had been much easier to make Rhoda give up Mr. Austin Dell -than it had been to make her give up the stage. Mrs. Delafield had -merely talked him over, very mildly, him and his friends, asking here -and there a kindly question about one or a slightly perplexed question -about another. It had been Rhoda herself who had expressed awareness of -the second-rate flavour that had brooded so heavily over dancer and -audience, not leaving Mr. Dell himself untouched. On the point of Mr. -Dell's income Mrs. Delafield soon felt that Rhoda knew -misgivings--misgivings as to her own fitness to be a needy artist's -wife. She made no overt recantation, but over her tea, presently, agreed -with her aunt that it was a pity to dance with bare feet unless the feet -were flawlessly well-shaped. "She is such a little fool, that Miss -Matthews!" Rhoda had remarked. And after this there was no more talk of -Mr. Dell. - - -II - -When, in the second year of the war, poor Tim and Frances, dusty, jaded, -nearly shattered, but appeased at last, were able to announce the -engagement of their daughter Rhoda to the unexceptionable Niel Quentyn, -Mrs. Delafield's special function seemed ended; but, looking back over -her long intercourse with her niece, she knew that Rhoda had felt her a -relief rather than an influence; that she had made things easier rather -than more difficult to her; that, in short, she had always successfully -appealed to the girl's intelligence rather than to what poor Tim and -Frances called her better self; and it was of Rhoda's intelligence, and -of what possible pressure she might be able to bring to bear upon it, -that she thought finally, as she worked at her border and waited for the -fly that was to bring Rhoda's baby and its nurse from the station. - -She had not been able to rejoice with her brother and his wife over -Rhoda's match. She who had measured, during her years of -acquaintanceship with her, her niece's force, had measured accurately, -in her first glance at him, Niel's insignificance. He was good-looking, -good-tempered, and very much in love; but caste, clothes, code, and the -emotion of his age and situation summed him up. He had money, too, and -could give Rhoda, together with a little handle to her name, the dim, -rich, startling drawing-room in which her taste at once expressed -itself, and a pleasant country house, where, as he confided to Mrs. -Delafield, he hoped to inspire her, when the war was over, with his own -ardour for hunting. - -Rhoda was far too clever to quarrel with such excellent bread and -butter; but what could he give her more? for Rhoda would want more than -bread and butter; what food for excitement and adventure could he offer -her indolent yet eager mind and her nature, at once so greedy and so -fastidious? Mrs. Delafield asked herself the question, even while she -watched Rhoda's wonderful white form move up the nave at her splendid, -martial wedding; even while poor Frances wept for joy and "The Voice -that breathed o'er Eden" surged from the organ; and she feared that Niel -was getting far more than he had bargained for and Rhoda far less. - -The first year, it was true, passed successfully. Poor Frances, who had, -fortunately, died at the end of it, had known no reason for abated -rejoicing. She lived long enough to see the baby, little Jane Amoret, as -Rhoda persisted in calling the child; and she had welcomed Niel home -once on leave--Niel as much infatuated as ever and trying to take an -intelligent interest in Picasso. It was since then, during the past -year, that Tim's letters had expressed a growing presage and appeal. -Moved by the latter, and only a short time before her own grief had -overtaken her, she had gone up to London and stayed with him for a few -days, and had taken tea with Rhoda. - -At Rhoda's it had been exactly as she expected. The drawing-room was -worthy of its fame; so worthy that Mrs. Delafield wondered how Niel -afforded it--and in war-time, too. Rhoda, as she often announced, was -clever at picking up things, and many of the objects with which she had -surrounded herself were undoubted trophies of her resource and -knowledge. But all the taste and skill in the world didn't give one that -air of pervading splendour, as of the setting for a Russian ballet, in -which the red lacquer and the Chinese screens, the blacks and golds and -rich, dim whites were, like Rhoda herself, sunken with her customary air -of gloomy mirth in the deepest cushions and surpassingly dressed, merged -in the soft, unstressed, yet magnificent atmosphere. It was the -practical side of matters--the depth of good, dull Niel's purse measured -against the depth of Rhoda's atmosphere--that alarmed Mrs. Delafield, -rather than Rhoda herself and Rhoda's friends, of whom poor Tim had so -distressingly written. - -There were many suave and merry young men, mainly in khaki, and various -ladies, acute or languorous, who had the air of being as carefully -selected as the chairs and china. There were tea and cigarettes, and an -abundance of wonderful talk that showed no sign of mitigation on account -of her mid-Victorian presence; though, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, -musing on the young people about her, no one could say, except their -clever selves, how much mitigation there might not be. Like Rhoda, no -doubt, they felt her reality through her mid-Victorianism. Her small -black bonnet with its velvet strings, and her long, loose jacket trimmed -with fringe, would not restrain them beyond a certain point. Yet she -suspected that they had a point, and she wondered, though the question -did not alarm her, where it could be placed. - -They talked, at all events, and she listened; at times she even smiled; -and since by no possibility could her smiles be taken as complicities, -she was willing that they should be taken as comprehensions. Rhoda's -friends, though so young, were chill and arid, and the enthusiasms they -allowed themselves had the ring of provocation rather than of ardour. -Yet she did not dislike them; they were none of them like Mr. Dell; -and, though so withered by sophistication, they had at moments flashes -of an uncanny, almost an ingenuous wisdom. - -The occasion had not alarmed her, and she had found but one moment -oppressive, that of the appearance--the displayal, as of a Chinese idol, -indeed, or a Pekinese spaniel (Rhoda had three of these)--of poor little -Jane Amoret. She rarely disliked her niece, even when feeling her most -naughty; but she found herself disliking her calculated maternity, with -its kisses, embraces and reiterated "darlings." Jane Amoret had eyed her -gravely and, as gravely, had held out her arms to her nurse to be taken -back when the spectacle was over. Jane Amoret's attire was quite as -strange as her mother's drawing-room, and Rhoda had contrived to make -her look like a cross between an Aubrey Beardsley and a gorgeous, -dressed-up doll Madonna in a Spanish cathedral. - -On returning to Tim, Mrs. Delafield found that she could not completely -reassure him, but she laid stress, knowing it would be, comparatively, a -comfort, on Rhoda's extravagance, eliciting from him a groan of "I -know!--I know!--Poor Niel's been writing to me about it!--Dances; -dinners; gowns. One would say she had no conscience at all--and at a -time like this!" But he went on, "That's nothing, though. That can be -managed when Niel gets back--if he ever does, poor fellow!--and can put -his foot down on the spot. You didn't see him, then? He wasn't -there--the young man?" - -Tim had never before spoken definitely of a young man. - -"The young man?" she questioned. "There were a dozen of them. Of -course, she'll have a special one: that's part of the convention. Rhoda -may cultivate--like all the rest of them--every appearance of lawless -attachment; but you may be sure, dear Tim, that it's only a pose, a -formula, like the painted lips and dyed hair, which doesn't in the least -mean they are demi-mondaines." - -"Painted lips? Dyed hair? Demi-mondaines?" Tim had wanly echoed. "Do you -really mean, Isabel, that Rhoda paints and dyes?" - -"Not her hair. It's too lovely to be dyed. But her lips,--why, haven't -you seen it?--ever since she was eighteen. It is all, as I say, a pose; -a formula. They are all afraid of nothing so much as of seeming -respectable. I imagine that there's just as much marital virtue at large -in the world nowadays as when we were young.--Who is the young man?" she -had, nevertheless, ended. - -"My dear, don't ask me!" Tim had moaned, blanched and battered in his -invalid's chair. (Why wouldn't he come down and live with her? Why, -indeed, except that, since Frances's death, he had felt that he must -stand by, in London, and watch over Rhoda.) "I only know what I've -heard. Amy has talked and talked. And everybody else is talking, -according to her." Amy was Frances's sister, a well-meaning, but -disturbing woman, with a large family of well-conducted, well-married, -unpainted, and unfashionable daughters. "She is here every day about it. -They are always together. He is always there. The poet--the new young -poet. He has a heart or a chest or a stomach--something that has sent -him home and that keeps him safe at Whitehall, while poor Niel fights in -France. Surely, Isabel, you've heard of Christopher Darley? Wasn't he -there? Young. Younger than Rhoda. Black hair. Big eyes. Silent." - -Silent.--Yes, there had been, beside Jane Amoret, one silent person in -Rhoda's drawing-room. And she had been aware of him constantly, though, -till now, unconsciously. Very young; very pale; aloof, near a window, -with an uncalculated aloofness. She reconstructed an impression that -became deeper the further she went into it. Thick backward locks that -had given his forehead a wind-blown look, and a gaze now and then -directed on herself, a gaze grave, withdrawing, yet scrutinizing, too. - -"Yes; I think, now that you describe him, I must have seen him," she -murmured; while a curious alarm mounted in her, an alarm that none of -Rhoda's more characteristic circle had aroused. "He wasn't living by a -formula of freedom," she reflected. "And he wasn't arid." Aloud she -said, "He looked a nice young creature, I remember." - -"He writes horrible poems, Amy says; blasphemous. There they are. I -can't understand them. He casts down everything; has no beliefs of any -kind. Nice? I should think that's the last adjective that would describe -him." - -She had picked up the unobtrusive volume and found herself arrested; not -as she had been by the memory of the young man's gaze, nor yet in the -manner that Tim's account indicated; but still arrested. Very young--but -austere, dignified, and strange, genuinely and effortlessly strange. So -a young priest might have written, seeking in close-pressed metaphysical -analogies to find expression for spiritual passion. She stood, puzzled -and absorbed. - -"No, it isn't blasphemous," she said presently. "And he has beliefs. -But surely, Tim dear, surely this young man can't care for Rhoda." - -How could a young man who wrote like that about the mystic vision care -for Rhoda? - -"Not care for Rhoda!" Tim's voice had now the quaintest ring of paternal -resentment. "The most beautiful young woman in London! Why, he's head -over heels in love with her. And the worst of it is that, from what Amy -sees and hears, she cares for him." - -"It's curious," Mrs. Delafield said, laying down the book. "I shouldn't -have thought he'd care about beautiful young women." - -And now Tim's letter, on this December morning, announced that Rhoda had -gone off with Christopher Darley; and Mrs. Delafield could find it in -her heart, as she worked and pondered, to wish that her dear Tim had -followed Frances before this catastrophe overtook him. - -"Good heavens!" she heard herself muttering, "if only she'd been meaner, -more cowardly, and stayed and lied--as women of her kind are supposed to -do. If only she'd let him die in peace; he can't have many years." - -But no: it had been done with _le beau geste_. Tim had known nothing, -and poor Niel, home for his first peace leave, had come to him, -bewildered and aghast, with the news. He had found a letter waiting for -him, sent from the country. Tim copied the letter for her:-- - - DEAR NIEL: - - I'm sure you felt, too, that our life couldn't go on. It had become - too unsatisfactory for both of us. Luckily we are sensible people - nowadays, and such mistakes can be remedied. You must mend your - life as I am mending mine. I am leaving you, with Christopher - Darley. I am so sorry if it seems sudden; but I felt it better that - we should not meet again. - - Yours affectionately - - RHODA - -"If only the poet hadn't had money, too!" Mrs. Delafield had thought. -For this fact she had learned about Mr. Darley in London. Rhoda would -never have abandoned that drawing-room had she not been secure of -another as good. - -Tim wrote that nothing could have been manlier, more generous, than -Niel's behaviour. He was willing, for the sake of the child, to take -Rhoda back, reinstate her, and protect her from the consequences of her -act; and what Tim now begged of his sister was that she should see -Rhoda, see if, confronting her, she could not induce her to return to -her husband. Meanwhile Jane Amoret would be dispatched at once with her -nurse to Fernleigh. Tim had written to his child in her retreat, and had -implored her to go to her aunt. "I told her that you would receive her, -Isabel," so Tim's letter ended; "and I trust you now to save us--as far -as we can be saved. Tell her that her husband will forgive, and that I -forgive, if she will return. Let her see the child. Let that be your -appeal." - -Poor, darling Tim! Very mid-Victorian. "Forgive." Would "receive" her. -The words had an antediluvian ring. With what battledore and -shuttle-cock of mirth and repartee they would be sent sailing and -spinning in Rhoda's world. All the same, she, who was mid-Victorian in -seeming rather than in reality, would make other appeals, if Rhoda -came. Already she could almost count the steady heads of her intentions -thrusting up as if through the ground. Even in Rhoda's world repartee -and mirth might be displayed rather than acted upon, and Rhoda might -find herself, as a result of _le beau geste_, less favourably placed for -the creation of another drawing-room than she imagined. That, of course, -was the line to take with Rhoda; and as she reflected, carefully now, on -what she would say to her,--as she determined that Rhoda should not -leave her until she had turned her face firmly homeward,--the sound of -wheels came up the road, and outside the high walls she heard the -station fly drawing up at her gates. In another moment she was welcoming -Jane Amoret and her nurse. - - -III - -SHE had not seen the child for five months now, and her first glance at -her, for all its sweetness, brought something of a shock, revealing as -it did how deeply she cared for the little creature. She was not a -child-lover, not undiscriminatingly fond of all examples of the -undeveloped, though her kind solicitude might have given her that -appearance. Children had always affected her, from the cradle, as -personalities; and some, like the mature, were lovable and some the -reverse. Jane Amoret had already paid her more than one visit--she had -been more than willing that Rhoda should find her a convenience in this -respect; and she had, from the first, found her lovable. But the five -months had brought much more to the mere charm of babyhood. She was now -potent and arresting in her appeal and dignity. She sat in her nurse's -arms, her eyes fixed on her great-aunt, and, as Mrs. Delafield held out -her hands to her, she unhesitatingly, if unsmilingly, answered, leaning -forward to be taken. - -She was a pale, delicate baby, her narrow little face framed in -straightly cut dark hair, her mournful little lips only tinted with a -rosy mauve; and, under long, fine brows, her great eyes were full of -meditativeness. Rhoda, though now so richly a brunette, had, as a baby, -been ruddy-haired and rosy-cheeked, with eyes of a velvety, submerging -darkness. Jane Amoret's grey iris rayed out from the expanded pupil like -the corolla of a flower. There was no likeness between the child and her -mother. Nor was there anything of Niel's sleepy young countenance, with -its air of still waters running shallow. - -Mrs. Delafield, something of a student of heredity, saw in the little -face an almost uncanny modern replica of her own paternal grandmother, -whose pensive gaze, under high-dressed powdered hair, had followed her -down the drawing-room in the home of her childhood. In Jane Amoret she -recovered the sense of that forgotten romance of her youth--the -wonderful, beautiful great-grandmother with the following eyes. Had they -not, even then, been asking something of her? - -"It isn't everyone she'll go to, ma'am," said the nurse, as they went up -the path to the house, Mrs. Delafield carrying Jane Amoret. - -Nurse was a highly efficient example of her type--crisp, cheerful, a -little glib. Mrs. Delafield had never warmly liked her, and felt -convinced now, that in spite of her decorous veneer of reticence, the -servants' hall would be enlightened as to the whole story before many -hours were over. Well, it could not be helped. - -They went up to the big nursery overlooking the walled garden at the -back of the house, where, since the morning's post and its -announcements, a great fire of logs had been blazing. Nurse made but one -respectful, passing reference to Rhoda. The country air would do Lady -Quentyn good. She had, nurse thought, over-tired herself of late. What -else she thought, Parton and the others were soon to hear hinted. And as -Rhoda's calculated maternity had chilled her aunt on that day five -months ago, so she was chilled now to think that Rhoda should have had -more taste in the choice of her drawing-room than in that of her baby's -nurse. - -While, in the next room, the unpleasing woman was unpacking her own and -Jane Amoret's effects, Mrs. Delafield was left alone with the child. She -had found, on a shelf, a box of well-worn blocks, and seating herself in -the low, chintz-covered wicker chair beside the fire, she placed them, -one by one, before Jane Amoret, who, on her white wool rug, gave them a -gentle attention. She had been too young for blocks on her last visit. - -The old chair, as Mrs. Delafield moved in it, leaning down, creaked -softly, and she remembered, a curious excitement stirring under all -these recoveries of the past, that it had been condemned as really too -decrepit when Peggy had been a baby. Yet the threat had never been -carried out. It had gone on through Peggy's babyhood and through the -babyhood of Peggy's children, and, unused for all these years, here it -gave forth again just the plaintive yet comfortable sounds which, even -more, it seemed, than another baby's presence, evoked Peggy and her own -young maternity. - -The chair, the blocks, the firelight playing on the happy walls, with -their framed Caldecotts and Cherry Ripes and Bubbles, all evoked that -past, filling her with the mingled acquiescence and yearning of old age. -And Jane Amoret evoked a past far, far more distant. Peggy had not been -like the great-grandmother. None of them had ever reincarnated that -vanished loveliness. But here, mysterious and appealing, it was before -her; and it seemed to brush across her very heartstrings every time -that, from the blocks, the child lifted the meditative grey of her eyes -to her great-aunt's face. - -Far too mysterious, far too lovely, far too gentle, this frail -potentiality, for any uses ever to be made of it by Rhoda, by Niel, or -by nurse. And the yearning became a yearning over Jane Amoret. - -Yes, there the edifice rose, block by block--her deft, deliberate -fingers placed them one after the other, under Jane Amoret's eyes, -absorbed in this towering achievement. The miniature Alhambra finished, -she sat and gazed, and her little chest lifted in a great sigh of wonder -and appeasement. Then, her baby interest dropping, she looked round at -the flames, and, for a little time, gazed at them, while her -great-aunt's hand moved softly to rest upon her head. It seemed then, as -if in answer to the rapt and tender look bent above her, that Jane -Amoret's eyes were again raised and that she stretched up her arms to be -taken. - -"She really loves me," said Mrs. Delafield, as touched and trembling as -a young lover. She lifted her, pressing the little body against her -breast; and, as Jane Amoret gave herself to the enfolding, a thought -that was as sharp and as sudden as a pang flashed through her -great-aunt's mind. "I can never give her up." - -What came to her first, as she sat there, Jane Amoret's head leaning -against her, was the thought of Christmas roses. It was a gift, a -miracle. And to what depths of loneliness the gift had been given; with -what depths of life she answered it! But she was breathless while she -tried to think, knowing something terrible in her own swift acceptance; -seeing for the first time something lawless and perilous in her own -nature. Never in her life had she betrayed a trust; never broken a law. -Yet often, through the years, she had paused, contemplative and -questioning, to gaze at something her mirror showed her, an implication -that only she could see, a capacity never realized. And what she saw -sometimes, with discomfort and shrinking, in those freaked eyes, those -firm lips, was an untamed wildness that had come to her from much -further back than a great-grandmother; something predatory and reckless, -perhaps from the days of border robbers, and Highland chiefs whose only -law was their own will. - -She knew now what were the faces waiting to seize upon her accusingly. -Not Rhoda's. She swept Rhoda and her forfeited claim aside. Let her stay -with her poet, since that was what she had chosen. It was Niel and poor -Tim who looked at her aghast. But another face hovered softly and -effacingly before them; a pale young face with rosy-mauve lips and -following eyes that said, "They will never understand me. This is what I -was trying to tell you, always. I knew that I was coming back. This is -what I was asking you to do." - -It was superstition; it did not deceive her for a moment. Desire -dressing itself in a supernatural appeal. Absurd and discreditable. But, -in all truth and honour, wasn't there something in it? Wasn't there a -time, once in a blue moon, for lawlessness, when it came as a miracle? -Whom would she harm, really? What could his paternity mean, really, to -drowsy young Niel? And could she not salve Tim's wounds? - -The only thing that could count,--she came to that at last, feeling the -child, with sleeping, drooping head and little hands held within her -hand, already so profoundly her own,--the only thing was Jane Amoret -herself. Had she a right to keep her from what was, perhaps, her chance -of the normal, even if the defective, life? Wasn't even a bad and -foolish mother better than no mother at all, and an untarnished name -supremely desirable? She struggled, her eyes fixed on the fire, her hand -unconsciously closing fast on the little intertwined hands within it. -And with the face of the great-grandmother came again the thought of the -Christmas roses, of the gift, the miracle. - -She had not sought anything. She had not even chosen. It was rather as -if Jane Amoret had chosen her. She need not make an effort to keep the -gift. She need merely make no effort to give it back. If Rhoda came (oh, -she could but pray that Rhoda would not come!), she need not find the -right words for her. She had only to remain the passive spectator of -Rhoda's enterprise and not put out a hand to withdraw her from it. And, -thrusting, feverishly, final decisions from her, her mind sprang out -into far projects and promises. She could, with a will, live for twenty -more years yet and fill them full for Jane Amoret. Niel must not lose -his child, evidently. She would arrange with Niel. He had always liked -her and turned to her. Let this be his home, and welcome. But of course, -he would marry again. She could persuade him not to take Jane Amoret -from her to give to a step-mother. Niel would be easy. - -And Tim, now, must come, of course. Tim should, with her, enjoy Jane -Amoret to the full. What a happy childhood she could make it! It was, to -begin with, quite the happiest nursery she knew, this long-empty nursery -of hers. In a few years' time Jane Amoret would be old enough to have -her own little plot in the garden--Peggy's plot; and a pony like Peggy's -should come to the empty stables. She saw already the merry, instructed -girl she would choose as Jane Amoret's governess: some one young enough -to play out of lesson hours; some one who would teach her to know birds -and flowers as well as history and Latin. She would keep Jane Amoret's -hair cut like this,--it was the only point in the child's array in which -her taste was Rhoda's,--straight across the forehead and straight across -the neck, until she was fifteen, and she should wear smocked blue linen -for morning and white for afternoon, as her own children had done. With -good luck, she might even see Jane Amoret married. - -Actually, she was thinking about Jane Amoret's marriage, actually -wondering about the nice little eldest boy at the manor,--while her arms -tightened in instinctive maternal anxiety around the sleeping -baby,--when Parton, doing her best not to look round-eyed, announced -Lady Quentyn. - - -IV - -SHE knew, as she waited for Rhoda to come up, that something she had -forgotten during this last half-hour--perhaps it was her -conscience--steeled her suddenly to the endurance of a test. Tim had -worded it, "Let her see the child. Let that be your appeal." Would it -not appease her conscience to stand or fall by that? It should be her -appeal. But the only one. - -Jane Amoret had waked, and now, dazed but unfretful, suffered herself to -be placed again on the rug among the blocks, one of which Mrs. Delafield -put into her hands, bidding her build a beautiful big house, as -great-aunt had done. The anguish of her own suspense was made manifest -to her in the restless gesture with which, after that, and while she -waited, she bent to put another log on the fire. - -Rhoda's soft, deliberate rustle was outside. In another moment she had -entered, and the effect that Mrs. Delafield dreaded seemed produced on -the spot; for, arrested at the very threshold, almost before her eyes -had sought her aunt's, Rhoda stared down at the child with knotted, with -even incredulous brows. - -"Oh! He's sent her already, then!" she exclaimed. - -What did the stare, the exclamation, portend? - -"Yes. He sent her, of course, as soon as he came back." - -"But why?--until our interview is over?" - -"Why not? She'd been alone for a week." Mrs. Delafield spoke with the -mildness which, she determined, should not leave her. "Niel, of course, -wanted to have her cared for." - -Rhoda, during this little interchange, had remained near the door; but -now, perceiving, perhaps, that she had come near to giving herself away, -she cleared her brows of their perplexity and moved forward to the fire, -where, leaning her velvet elbow on the mantelpiece, she answered, drily -laughing; "Oh! Niel's care! He wouldn't know whether the child were fed -on suet-pudding or cold ham! She's not alone, with nurse. There's no one -who can take such care of her as nurse. I knew that." And she went on -immediately, putting the question of Jane Amoret's presence behind her -with decision, "Well, poor Aunt Isabel, what have you to say to me? -Father wrote that you would consent to be the go-between. He absolutely -implored me to come, and it's to satisfy him I'm here, for I really -can't imagine what good it can do." - -No; Mrs. Delafield had grasped her own security and her own danger. It -had not been in remorse or tenderness that Rhoda's eyes had fixed -themselves upon her child, it had been in anxiety, lest Jane Amoret's -presence should be the signal of some final verdict against her. She had -come because she hoped to be taken back; and if there was all the needed -justification in Rhoda's callousness, there was an undreamed-of danger -in her expectation. - -"Well, we must see," Mrs. Delafield remarked; and already she was -measuring the necessities of Rhoda's pride against the urgencies of -Rhoda's disenchantment. It was Rhoda's pride that she must hold to. -Rhoda, even if she had come, had only come to make her own terms. - -"Did you motor over?" she asked. "You are not very far from here, are -you?" - -No train could have brought her at that hour. - -"Twenty miles or so away," said Rhoda. "I was able to hire a motor, a -horrible, open affair with torn flaps that let in all the air, so that -I'm frozen." - -Her loveliness did, indeed, look a little pinched and sharpened, and -there was more than the cold drive to account for it. But she was still -surpassingly lovely, with the loveliness that, once you were confronted -with it, seemed to explain everything that might need explanation. That -was Rhoda's strongest card. She left her appearance to speak for her and -made no explanations, as now, when, indeed, she had all the air of -expecting other people to make them. But her aunt only said, while Jane -Amoret, from her rug, kept her grave gaze upon her mother, "Won't you -have some hot milk?" - -"Thanks, yes, I should be glad of it," said Rhoda. "How lucky you are to -have it. We are given only condensed for our coffee at the hotel. It's -quite revolting." And after Mrs. Delafield had rung, and since no -initiative came from her, she was, in a manner, forced to open the -conversation. "Niel has only himself to thank," she said. "He's been -making himself too impossible for a long time." - -"Really? In what way? Perhaps the hard life over there has affected his -temper." - -Mrs. Delafield allowed herself the irony. Rhoda, indeed, must expect -that special flavour from her. - -"Something has certainly affected it," said Rhoda, drawing a chair to -the fire and spreading her beautiful hands before it. "I'm quite tired, -I confess,--horrid as I'm perfectly aware it sounds to say it,--of -hearing about the hard life. Life's hard enough for all of us just now, -heaven knows; and I think they haven't had half a bad time over there, -numbers of them--men like Niel, I mean, who've travelled comfortably -about the world and never had the least little wound, nor been, ever, in -any real danger, as far as I can make out; at least, not since he's had -the staff work. It's very different from my poor Christopher, who rotted -in the cold and mud until it nearly killed him. There would be some -point in his talking of a hard life." - -This was all very illuminating, and the bold advance of Christopher won -Mrs. Delafield's admiration for its manner; but she passed it over to -inquire again, "In what way has Niel been making himself impossible?" -The more impossible Rhoda depicted him, the easier to leave her there, -shut out by his impossibility. - -"Why, his meanness," said Rhoda, her cold, dark eyes, as she turned them -upon her aunt, expressing, indeed, quite a righteous depth of -reprobation. "For months and months it's been the same wearisome cry. -He's written about nothing but economy, fussing, fuming, and preaching. -It's so ugly, at his time of life." - -"Have you been a little extravagant, perhaps? Everything is so much more -costly, isn't it? He may well have been anxious about your future, and -the child's." - -It was perfectly mild, and the irony Rhoda would expect from her. - -"Oh, no he wasn't," said Rhoda, now with her gloomy laugh. "He was -anxious about his hunting. I don't happen to care for that primitive -form of amusement, and Niel doesn't happen to care about anything else; -certainly he doesn't care about beauty, and that's all I do care about. -So in his view, since, precisely, life has become so costly, beauty had -to go to the wall and I mustn't dress decently or have a decently -ordered house. I haven't been in the least extravagant," said Rhoda. -"I've known what it is to be cold; I've known what it is to be hungry; -it's been, at times, literally impossible to get food and coal in -London. Oh, you don't know anything about it, Aunt Isabel, tucked away -comfortably down here with logs and milk. And if Niel had had any -appreciation of the position and had realized at all that I prefer being -hungry to being ill-dressed, he would have turned his mind to cutting -down his own extravagances and offered to allow me"--and now, for an -instant, if velvet can show sharpness, Mrs. Delafield caught in the -sliding velvet eye an evident edge of cogitation, even, of -calculation--"at least two thousand a year for myself. Money buys -absolutely nothing nowadays." - -So there it was, and it amounted to an offer. Or, rather, it amounted to -saying that it was the sum for which she would be willing to consider -any offer of Niel's. Mrs. Delafield, measuring still Rhoda's pride -against Rhoda's urgency, mused on her velvet garments, the fur that -broadly bordered her skirts, slipped from her shoulders, and framed her -hands. Poor Tim had been able to give his daughter only a few hundred a -year, and Niel's hunting must indeed have been in danger. Rhoda's pride, -she knew, stood, as yet, between herself and any pressure from the -urgency; she could safely leave the offer to lie and go on presently to -question, "And you'll be better off now?" - -Inevitably unsuspecting as she was, Rhoda, all the same, must feel an -unexpectedness in her attitude, and at this it was with a full, frank -sombreness that she turned her gaze upon her. Anything but a fool she -had always been, and she answered, after the moment of gloomy scrutiny, -"Don't imagine, please, Aunt Isabel, that because I speak openly of -practical matters I left Niel to get a better establishment. I left him -because I didn't love him. I was willing to sacrifice anything rather -than stay. Because it is a sacrifice. I took the step I've taken under -no illusion. We are too uncivilized yet for things to be anything but -difficult for a woman who takes the step, and the brave people have to -pay for the cowards and hypocrites." - -This, somehow, was not at all Rhoda's own note. Mrs. Delafield felt sure -she caught an echo of Mr. Darley's ministrations. She was glad that -Rhoda should receive them: they would sustain her; and since she was -determined--or almost--that Rhoda should stay with Mr. Darley, it was -well that she should receive all the sustainment possible. - -"It certainly must require great love and great courage," she assented. - -Rhoda's eyes still sombrely scrutinized her. "I didn't expect you to see -it, I confess, Aunt, Isabel." - -"Oh, but I do," said Mrs. Delafield. - -The milk was now brought and Rhoda began to sip it. - -"As for my being better off, since you are kind enough to take an -interest in that aspect of my situation," she went back, "Christopher -hasn't, it's true, as much money as Niel. But our tastes are the same, -so that I shall certainly be very much better off. We shall live in -London--after Niel sets me free." And here again she just glanced at her -aunt, who bowed assent, murmuring, "Yes; yes; he is quite willing to set -you free; at once."--"And until then," Rhoda went on, as if she hadn't -needed the assurance,--second-rate assurance as, Mrs. Delafield felt -sure, she found it,--"and until then I shall stay in the country. -Christopher has his post still at the Censor's office, and won't, I'm -afraid, get his demobilization for some time. He translates things, you -know. So we are going to find a little old house, for me,--we are -looking for one now,--and I shall see a few friends there, quite -quietly, and Christopher can come up and down, until everything is -settled. I think that's the best plan." - -Rhoda spoke with a dignity that had even a savour of conscious -sweetness, and, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, was running herself very -completely into her corner. - -There was silence now for a little while. Rhoda finished her milk, and -Jane Amoret, gently and unobtrusively moving among her blocks, -succeeded, at length, in balancing the last one on her edifice and -looked up at her great-aunt for approbation. - -"Very good, darling. A beautiful house," said Mrs. Delafield, leaning -over her, but with a guarded tenderness. What a serpent she had become! -There was Rhoda's jealousy to look out for. She might imagine herself -fond of Jane Amoret, if she saw that some one else adored her. - -"She's quite used to you already, isn't she?" said Rhoda, watching them. -"I wonder what you'll make of her. She strikes me as rather a dull -little thing, though she's certainly very pretty. She's rather like -Niel, isn't she? Though she certainly isn't as dull as Niel!" She -laughed slightly. "All the same,"--and Mrs. Delafield now, in Rhoda's -voice, scented the close approach of danger, and was aware, though she -did not look up to meet it, that Rhoda's eyes took on a new -watchfulness,--"All the same I must consider the poor little thing's -future. That is, of course, my one real difficulty." - -"Was it? In going away? In having left her, you mean?" Mrs Delafield -prayed that her mildness might gloss, to Rhoda's ear, the transition to -conscious combat that her instinctive change of tense revealed to her -own. "Oh, but you need not do that. Don't let that trouble you for a -moment, Rhoda. I will take charge of her--complete charge. I can do it -easily. My house is empty, and the child will be a companion to me. I -don't find her dull. She is a dear little thing, so good and gentle. You -need really have no anxiety." - -"Oh, I see." Rhoda was gazing at her earnestly. "Thanks. That's -certainly a relief. Though all the same I don't suppose you'd claim that -you could replace the child's mother." - -"Yes. I think so, Rhoda. A mother who had left her for a lover." - -Mrs. Delafield kept her eyes fixed on the fire. Rhoda stood up and -leaned her back against the mantelpiece. She could no longer control the -manifestations of her impatience and her perplexity. - -"That would be your view, of course; and father's; and Niel's. It's not -mine. I consider the responsibility to be Niel's." - -"Well, whosesoever the responsibility, the deed is done, isn't it?" -Mrs. Delafield observed. "I'm not arraigning you, you know. I'm merely -stating the fact. You have left her." - -Rhoda's impatience now visibly brushed past these definitions. "You say -that Niel is ready to set me free. I took that for granted, of course. -It's only common decency. But that's hardly what father could have meant -in imploring me to come to--you. He told me nothing--only implored, and -lamented. And, since I am here, I'd like some information, I confess." - -It was the first step away from pride, and it was a long one. And Mrs. -Delafield knew that with it came her own final turning-point. Here, at -this moment, she must be true to Tim and Niel, or betray their trust. -And here no less--for so it seemed to her--she might, in betraying them, -take the law into her own hands and promise herself, and them, that, in -breaking it, she would make something better. Yet she did not feel these -alternatives, now, at war within her mind. She knew that they were -there, implicit, but she knew them already answered. Rhoda had answered -for her; and Jane Amoret had answered. It took her, however, a moment to -find her own answer, the verbal one, and while she looked for it, she -kept her eyes on the fire. - -"Your father wants you to go back," she said at last. "Niel is willing -to take you back. That is the information I had for you. Not for a -moment because he would accept your interpretation of responsibility, -and not for a moment because of any personal feeling for you; which must -be a relief to you. Merely for your sake, and the child's. But I don't -know how to plead such a cause with you, Rhoda. I understand you, I -think, better than your father does. I've always seen your point of view -as he could never see it, and I see it even now. So that I should feel -that I asked you something outrageous in asking you to go back to your -husband when you love another man. If you should want to go back, that -would be a very different matter--if, by chance, you feel you've made a -mistake and are tired, already, of Mr. Darley." - -She had time, in the pause that followed, the scales pulsing almost -evenly--it was as if she saw them--between Rhoda's pride and Rhoda's -urgency, to wonder at herself. And most of all to wonder that she -regretted nothing. She kept her eyes on the fire, but she knew that -Rhoda, very still, scrutinized her intently. The sharply drawn tension -of the moment had resolved itself, to her imagination, into a series of -tiny ticks, as if of the scales settling down to the choice, before -Rhoda spoke. Then what she found to say was, "That's hardly likely, is -it?" - -"I felt it impossible, you will be glad to hear," said Mrs. Delafield. -"No one who understands you could suspect you, whatever your faults, of -two infidelities in the space of a fortnight." - -And now again there was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of -the flames up the chimney and the soft movements of Jane Amoret among -her blocks. - -Rhoda turned away at last, facing the fire and looking down at it, her -hands on the edge of the mantelpiece, her foot on the fender; and she -presently lifted the foot and dealt the logs a kick. - -It was all clear to Mrs. Delafield. She was tired of her poet, or, at -all events, did not, in the new life, find compensations enough. She -had come, hoping to have her way made clear for a reentry, dignified, if -not triumphant, into the old life. And here she was, in her corner, her -head fairly fixed to the wall. - -Meanwhile, what had become of the mid-Victorian conscience? What had, -indeed, become of any conscience at all, since she continued to regret -nothing? She even found excuses, perfidious, no doubt, yet satisfactory. -It had been the truth she had given Rhoda--the real truth, her own, if -not the truth she owed her, not the truth as Tim and Niel had placed it, -all confidently, in her hands. But since it was preeminently not the -truth that Rhoda had come to seize, she was willing, now that she had -fixed her so firmly, to give her something else, and she really rejoiced -to find it ready, going on presently and with a note of relief that -Rhoda's ear could not fail to catch:-- - -"Not only from the point of view of dignity one couldn't suspect it of -you, Rhoda, but--I want to say it to you, having had my glimpse of Mr. -Darley--from the point of view of taste. If you were going to do -anything of this sort,--and I don't need to tell you how deeply I -deplore it nor how wrong I think you,--but if you were going to do it, -you couldn't have chosen better. He is gifted; he is charming; he is -good. I saw it all at once." - -There was her further truth, and really it was due to Rhoda. Rhoda, at -this, faced her again and, highly civilized creature that she was, it -was with her genuine grim mirth. - -"Upon my word, Aunt Isabel!" she commented. "You are astonishing." - -"Am I? Why?" asked Mrs. Delafield, though she knew quite well. - -"Why, my dear? Because you are over sixty years old and you wear caps. I -expected to find dismay, reproach, and lamentations--all the strains of -poor old father's harmonium; to have you down on your knees begging me -to return to the paths of virtue. And here you are, cool and unperturbed -and, positively, patting us on the back; positively giving us your -blessing. Well, well, wonders will never cease! Yes, he is charming, no -one can deny that; and good and gifted, too. But to think of your having -spotted it so quickly! Why, you only saw him once, if I remember, and I -don't remember that you talked at all." - -"We didn't. I only saw him once." - -"And it was enough! To make you understand! To make you condone!--Come, -out with it, Aunt Isabel, you wicked old lady! I see now why I've always -got on so well with you. You _are_ wicked." - -"To make me understand. I won't say condone." - -"You needn't say it. You've said enough. And certainly it is a feather -in Christopher's cap. But he is the sort of person one falls in love -with at first sight." - -"So I see." - -"And so do I," said Rhoda, still laughing. But her slightly avenging -gaiety dropped from her after the last sally, and turning again to the -fire, and again kicking her log, she said, almost sombrely, "He -absolutely worships me." - -Was not this everybody's justification? Mrs. Delafield seized it, -rising, as on a satisfying close. - -"Will you stay to lunch?" she asked. - -"Dear me, no!" Rhoda laughed. "I must get back to Christopher. And the -motor is there waiting. So you'll write to father and tell him that I -came here and that you advised me to stick to Christopher." - -"Advised? Have I seemed to advise, Rhoda? Do you mean"--it was, Mrs. -Delafield knew, the final peril--"that you had considered not sticking -to him?" - -Rhoda continued to laugh a little, drawing up her furs. - -"Rather not! It couldn't have entered my head, could it, either from the -point of view of dignity or of taste--as you've been telling me? You -have been very wonderful, you know! Tell father, then, if you like, that -you gave us your blessing." - -"I'll tell him," said Mrs. Delafield, "that I'm convinced you ought not -to go back to Niel." - -"I see,"--Rhoda nodded, and their eyes sounded each other, -curiously,--"though father thinks I ought." - -"Of course. That's why you're here." - -"Father would have gone down on his knees to beg me." - -"Yes. Down on his knees. Poor Tim!" - -She was horribly frightened, but she faced Rhoda's grim mirth deliberate -with gravity. And Rhoda, whatever she might have seen or guessed, -accepted her defeat; accepted the dignity and taste thrust upon her. - -"Father, in other words, isn't a wicked old gentleman as you are a -wicked old lady. I see it all, and it's all a feather in Christopher's -cap. Well, Aunt Isabel, good-bye. Shall I see you again? Will you come -and call when I'm Mrs. Darley? I don't see how, with a clear conscience, -you can chuck us, you know." - -"Nor do I," Mrs. Delafield conceded, after only a pause. "I don't often -go to London, but, when I do, I shall look in upon you, if you want me -to." - -"Rather!" Rhoda, now gloved and muffled, had fallen back on her normal -rich economy of speech. "You'll be useful as well as pleasant. And -Christopher will adore you, I'm sure. I'll tell him that you think him -charming." - -"Do," said Mrs. Delafield, following her to the door. - -She had forgotten even to kiss Jane Amoret good-bye. - - -V - -Still Mrs. Delafield knew no remorse. Rather, a wine-like elation filled -her. She thought of her state of consciousness in terms of wine, and -ordered up from her modest cellar a special old port, hardly tasted -since her husband's death, and, all alone, drank at lunch a little glass -in honour of Jane Amoret's advent. Also, though elated, she was -conscious of needing a stimulant. The scene with Rhoda had cost her more -than could, at the moment, be quite computed. - -What it had won for her she was able to compute when, after lunch, she -went upstairs to look at Jane Amoret asleep in her white cot. She did -not feel like a robber brooding in guilty joy over ill-gotten booty. She -could not feel herself that, nor Jane Amoret booty. Jane Amoret was -treasure, pure heaven-sent treasure, her flower of miracle. Christmas -roses had been in her mind since morning, and the darkness, the -whiteness of the child, as well as her beautiful unexpectedness, made -her think of them anew; her gravity, too; something of melancholy that -the flowers embodied; for they were not smiling flowers--gazing rather -at the wintry sky in earnest meditation. - -Jane Amoret's black lashes lay upon her cheek, ever so slightly turned -up at the tips, and her great-aunt, leaning over her, felt herself -doting upon them and upon the little softly breathing profile embedded -in the pillow, a bud-like, folded hand beside it. - -"Little darling, we will make each other happy," she whispered. - -Rhoda had passed from their lives like a storm-cloud. - -Jane Amoret was still sleeping, and she had gone downstairs to the -little morning-room where, since the war, she had really lived, to -settle with herself what she must say to Tim, when there came a ringing -at the front-door bell. The morning-room, at the back of the house, like -the nursery, overlooked the southern lawn and the walls of the -kitchen-garden; but she could usually hear if a motor drove up, and, in -her still concentration upon the empty sheet lying before her on the -desk, she was aware that there had been no sound. It was too early for a -visitor, too early for the post, and she looked up with some curiosity -as Parton came in. - -"It's a gentleman, ma'am, to see you," said Parton; and her young, -trained visage showed signs of a discomfiture deeper than that Rhoda's -coming had evoked. "Mr. Darley, ma'am; and he hopes very much you are -disengaged." - -Mrs. Delafield had, as a first sensation, that of sympathy with Parton. -Parton evidently knew all about it and was evidently in distress lest -her face betrayed her knowledge. In her effort to maintain her own -standards of impassivity she suddenly blushed crimson, and Mrs. -Delafield then felt that she was very old and Parton very young, and -that in that fact alone was a bond, even if there had been no other. She -had many bonds with Parton, and now, seeing her so soft, uncertain, and -dismayed, she would have liked to pat her on the shoulder and say, -"There, my dear, it doesn't make any difference. I assure you I'm not -disturbed." And since she could not say it, she looked it, replying with -the utmost equability, "Mr. Darley? By all means. Show him in at once, -Parton." - -There was, after Parton had gone, a short interval, while Mr. Darley -doubtless was taking off his coat, and during which she felt herself -mainly engaged in maintaining her equability. But, after her encounter -with Rhoda, wasn't she equable enough for any situation? Besides, Mr. -Darley could in no fashion menace Jane Amoret, and under all her -conjectures and amazements there lay a certain satisfaction. She knew, -from her encounter with Parton, that she was interested in all young -creatures when they were nice, and she was not sorry to have another -look at Mr. Darley. - -When he entered and she saw him,--not in khaki as that first time, but -in a gray tweed suit,--when Parton had softly and securely closed the -door and left them together, she found herself borne along on a curious -deepening of the current of sympathy for mere youth. She had not -remembered how young he was; she had not had that as her dominant -impression at Rhoda's tea, as she had it now. He must be several years -younger than Rhoda; hardly more than twenty-two or three, she thought; -and it must have been as a mere child that the war had swept him out -into maturing initiations. Something of an experience, shattering yet -solidifying, was in his face, fragile, wasted, yet more final and -finished than one would have expected at his time of life; and also, in -curious contrast to his boyish, beardless look, a deep line was engraved -across his forehead; whether by suffering or by the trick she soon -discovered in him of raising his eyebrows in an effort of intense -concentration, she could not tell. - -She gave him her hand simply, and said, "Do sit down." - -But Mr. Darley, though he looked at the chair she indicated, did not -take it. He remained standing on the hearthrug, facing the windows, his -hands clasped behind him, and she then became aware that he was enduring -a veritable agony of shyness. It did not take the form of -blushes,--though his was a girlish skin that would display them -instantly,--or of awkward gestures or faltering speech. It was a shyness -wild, still, and bereft of all appeal, like that of a bird,--the simile -came sharply to her,--a bird that had followed some swift impulse and -that now, caught in a sudden hand, relapsed into utter immobility. His -large eyes were on hers--fixed. His expression was like a throbbing -heart. She knew that all she wanted, for the moment, was to show him -that the hand was gentle. - -"I'm afraid you came hoping to find Rhoda," she said, looking away from -him and giving her chair, as a pretext, sundry little adjustments before -drawing it to the fire. "But she left this morning, after seeing me, and -you must have crossed her on the road. At least--have you motored?" - -The large eyes, she found, were still fixed on her as, with the -question, she glanced up at him; but he answered immediately--rather as -if with a croaking cry from the blackbird when one pressed it,-- - -"No; I came by train. I left a little after Rhoda did." - -"By train?" she marvelled kindly. "But we are four miles from the -station here. Aren't you, at your end, as far? And such roads!" She saw -now that his boots and upturned trousers were, indeed, deeply mired. - -"Oh--I didn't mind the walk," said Mr. Darley. "It wasn't far." - -She was sure he hadn't found it far. His whole demeanour expressed the -overmastering impulse that had, till then, sustained him. - -"Have you had any lunch?" she went on. "I can't think where you can have -lunched. There's nothing at the station. Do let me send for something. -I've only just finished." - -It seemed strangely indicated that she should, to-day, feed Rhoda and -her lover. - -But the caught blackbird was in no state for feeding. More wildly, yet -more faintly than before he gave forth the croaking cry with, "Oh, no. -Thanks so much. Yes. At our station. I found something at our station. -Sandwiches; no, a bun. I had a cup of Bovril." - -And now, curiously, poignantly to her, he began to blush as though -suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of himself and of how idiotically he -must be behaving. Poor child! How young he was! And how ill he had been -in the trenches; and how beautiful it was to remember--as she did -suddenly, and not irrelevantly, she knew, though she could not trace the -relevance--that, in the little volume, written since his return, there -had not been a shadow of the ugly rancour, revengeful and provocative, -one met in some other soldier-poets whom one might have fancied to be of -his kind. For how he must have hated it! And, at the same time,--memory -brought back a line, a stanza here and there, from her snatched -reading--how holy he had found it; seeing so much more than error, -death, and suffering. - -Her eyes dwelt on him with something beyond the kindly wish to spare him -as she said, "Please sit down. You must be very tired and you are not -strong, Rhoda told me. Don't be afraid of me. I am an old lady who can -listen to anything and, I think, understand a great deal. I've already -heard a great deal from Rhoda. I'm anything but unfriendly to you, I -assure you." - -It was--she was aware of it when it had crossed her lips--a curious -thing to say to her niece's lover, to the man who had destroyed Tim's -happiness and wrecked Niel's home; but it was too true not to be said. -And she was perfectly sure now that it was not Mr. Darley who had -wrecked and destroyed. It was Rhoda who had taken him, of course; not he -Rhoda. He would never take anybody. He would stand and gaze at them as -he now gazed at her, and only when they threw out appealing arms would -he move towards them. Rhoda had thrown out appealing arms--after she -discovered that alluring arms had no effect. Mrs. Delafield's -impressions and intuitions tumbled forth in positive clusters as she -took in her companion. Allurements, Russian-ballet back-grounds, snowy -throats and velvet eyes, would have no effect upon him at all; he cared -as little about them at one end of the scale of sensations as about rats -and corpses at the other. He would not even see them. It was something -else he had seen in Rhoda; something she had found herself driven to -display. And if she were getting tired of him already, it was simply -because, having trapped him with the artifice, she now found herself -shut up with him in a cage, which, while it was of her own making, was -extremely uncongenial to her. - -Mr. Darley was far too absorbed in what she had just said to him to -think of taking the chair. It had helped him incalculably--that was -quite apparent; for though the blush stayed, and though he was still -wild and shy, they had already, indubitably, begun to understand each -other. - -"Do you mean," he asked, "not unfriendly to me or not unfriendly to -Rhoda?" - -This was an unexpected question, and for a moment, not knowing what it -portended, she hardly knew how to meet it. But the understanding that -seemed to deepen with every moment made truth the most essential thing, -and she replied after only a hesitation, "To you." - -Mr. Darley looked all his astonishment. "But why? Do you feel that you -like me, too? Because, of course, I've never forgotten you. That's why I -felt it possible to come to-day." - -And since truth was essential, it was she, now, who looked, with her -surprise, something that she felt to be a recognition, as she replied, -"I suppose it must be that. I suppose we liked each other at first -sight. I certainly didn't know the feeling was reciprocal." - -"Nor did I!" Mr. Darley exclaimed. He took the chair at the other end of -the hearthrug, facing her, his knees crossed, his arms clutched tightly -across his chest; and now he was able to reach his journey's goal. As -all, on Rhoda's side, had been made clear to her that morning, so on -his, all was clear, as he said, with a solemnity so young, so genuine -that it almost brought tears to her eyes, "Then since you do like me, -please don't let her leave me!" - -The situation was before her, definite and overpowering; but how it -could have come about remained veiled like the misty approaches to a -mountain. - -"Does Rhoda want to leave you?" she questioned. - -"Why--didn't you know?" Mr. Darley's face flashed with a sort of stupor. -"Didn't she come for that?" - -"You answer my questions first," Mrs. Delafield said after a moment. - -He was obedient and full of trust. "It's because of the child, you know, -that lovely little creature in London. From the first--you can't think -how long ago it already seems, though we have hardly been a week -together--I've seen it growing, that feeling in her that she couldn't -bear it. Other things, too; but that more than all. At least," he was -truthful to the last point of scruple, "I think so. And though she did -not tell me that she was saying good-bye this morning, I knew--I -knew--that she was coming to you because she wanted her child, and would -accept anything, endure anything, to be with it again." - -"What do you think Rhoda had to endure?" Mrs. Delafield inquired. - -"Oh--you can't ask me that! I saw you in it and you saw me!" Mr. Darley -exclaimed. "You _will_ be straight with me? You saw that soulless life -of hers, with that selfish figurehead of a husband for all guide. She -was suffocating in it. She didn't need to tell me. I saw it in her face -before she told me. How can a woman live with a man she doesn't love? -When you said not unfriendly to me, did you mean to make a difference? -Did you mean that you don't care for Rhoda? Yet she's always loved and -trusted you, she told me, more than any one. You were the one reality -she clung to. That's why _she_ could come to you to-day." - -"What I mean is that I'm on your side, not on Rhoda's," said Mrs. -Delafield, and at the moment her charming old white face expressed, -perhaps as never before in her life, the quality of decisiveness. "I am -on your side. But I have to see what that is." - -He was feeling her face even more than her words. He was gazing at her -with a rapt scrutiny which, she reflected, exonerating Rhoda to that -extent, would make it difficult for a woman receiving such a tribute not -to wish to retain it permanently. It enriched and sustained one -and--although it was strange that she should feel this--troubled and -moved one, too. A sense of pain stirred in her, and of wonder about -herself and her fitness to receive such gazes. One really couldn't, at -sixty-three, have growing pains; yet Mr. Darley's gaze filled her with -that troubled consciousness of expanding life. He wanted Rhoda. She -wanted Jane Amoret. So, wasn't it all right? Wasn't she all right? His -side was her side. They wanted the same thing. But the troubled sap of -the new consciousness was rising in her. - -"My side is really Rhoda's side," said Mr. Darley, as if answering her -thought. He held his knee in gripped hands and spoke with rapid -security. He was still shy, but he now knew exactly what he wished to -say, and how to say it. "It's Rhoda's side, if only she'd see it. That's -why I was not disloyal in asking my question when you said you weren't -unfriendly. Really--really--you _will_ believe me--it's for her, too. I -wouldn't have let her come with me if it hadn't been. I'm not so selfish -as I seem. I know it's dreadful about the child. But--this is my secret; -Rhoda does not guess it and I could never tell her--she doesn't love the -child as she thinks she does. Not really. In spite of her longing. She -longs to love it, of course; but she isn't a mother; not to that child. -That's another reason. It was all false. The whole thing. The whole of -her life. The real truth is," said Christopher Darley, gazing large-eyed -at her, "that Rhoda is frightened and wants to go back. She's not as -brave as she thought she was. Not quite as brave as I thought. But if -she yields to her fear and leaves me,--she hasn't yet, I know, I see -that in your face--but if she goes back to her old life, it will mean -dust, humiliation, imprisonment forever." - -"That's what I told her," Mrs. Delafield said, her eyes on his. - -"I knew! I knew!" cried the young man. "I knew you'd done something -beautiful for me--for us. Because you see the truth. And you were able -to succeed where I failed! You were able to convince her! You've saved -us both! Oh, how I thank you!" - -"It wasn't quite like that," said Mrs. Delafield. "It wasn't to save -either of you. I don't think it right for a woman to leave her husband -with another man because she has ceased to love her husband. But I made -her go back. I wouldn't even let her tell me that she wanted to leave -you. I didn't convince her. I merely made it impossible for her. She -left me reluctant and bewildered. You haven't found out yet,"--Mrs. -Delafield leaned forward and picked up the little poker; the fire needed -no poking and the movement expressed only her inner restlessness,--"you -haven't found out that Rhoda, at all events, _is_ very selfish?" - -Christopher Darley at that stopped short. "Oh, yes, I have," he answered -then; but the frightened croak was in his voice as he said it. - -"And have you found out, too," said Mrs. Delafield, eyeing her poker, -sparing him, giving him time, "that she's unscrupulous and cold-hearted? -Do you see the sort of life she'll make for you, if she is faithful to -you and stays with you, not because she's faithful, not because she -wants to stay, but gagged and baulked by me? Haven't you -already--yourself, been a little frightened sometimes?" she finished. - -She kept her eyes on her poker and gave Mr. Darley his time, and indeed -he needed it. - -"If you've been so wonderful," he said at last, with the slow care of -one who threads his way among swords; "if, though you think we're -lawbreakers, you think, too, that we've made ourselves another law and -are bound to stand by it; if you've sent her back to me--why do you ask -me that? But no," he went on, "I'm not frightened. You see--I love her." - -"She doesn't love you," said Mrs. Delafield. - -"She will! She will!"--It made Mrs. Delafield think of the shaking -heart-throbs of the blackbird.--"All that you see,--yes, yes, I won't -pretend to you, because I trust you as I've never before trusted any -human being, because you are truer than any one I've ever met,--it's all -true. She is all that. But don't you see further? Don't you see it's the -life? She's never known anything else. She's never had a chance." - -"She's known me. She's had me." - -Mrs. Delafield's eyes did not leave the poker. But under the quiet -statement the struggle in her reached its bitter close. She had lost -Jane Amoret. She must give her up. Not for her sake; nor for -Rhoda's,--oh, in no sense for Rhoda's,--but for his. She could not let -him pay the price. She must save him from Rhoda. - -"What do you mean?" he asked; and it was as if crumbling before her -secure strength, almost with tears. - -"I mean that you'll never make anything different of her. I never have, -and I've known her since she was born. You won't make her, and she'll -unmake you. She is disintegrating. She has always been like that. -Nothing has spoiled her. From the first she's been selfish and untender. -I don't mean to say that she hasn't good points. She has a sense of -humour; and she's honest with herself: she knows what she wants and why -she wants it--although she may take care that you don't. She isn't petty -or spiteful or revengeful. No,"--Mrs. Delafield moved her poker slowly -up and down as she carved it out for him, and it seemed to be into her -own heart she was cutting,--"there is a largeness and a dignity about -Rhoda. But she feels no beauty and no tragedy in life, only irony and -opportunity. You'll no more change her than you'll change a flower, a -fish, or a stone." - -Holding his knee in the strained grasp, Christopher Darley kept his eyes -on her, breathing quickly. - -"Why did she come with me, then?" he asked, after the silence between -them had grown long. (Strange, she thought, so near they were, that he -could not know her heart was breaking, too. All the time it was Jane -Amoret's sleeping eyelashes she saw.) "Why did she love me? I am not -irony or opportunity." - -"Do you think she ever loved you?" said Mrs. Delafield. "Was it not only -that she wanted you to love her? Wasn't it because you were different, -and difficult, and new? I think so. I think you found her at a bored, -antagonistic moment; money-quarrels with her husband,--he is a good -young fellow, Niel, and he used to worship her,--the war over and life -to take up again on terms already stale. She is calculating; but she is -adventurous and reckless, too. So she went. And of course she was in -love with you then. That goes without saying, and you'll know what I -mean by it. But Rhoda gets through things quickly. She has no soil in -her in which roots can grow; perhaps that's what I mean by saying she -can't change. One can't, if one can't grow roots. But now you are no -longer new or difficult. You are easy and old--already old; and she's -tired of you. You bore her. You constrain and baffle her--if she's to -keep up appearances with you at all; and she'd like to do that, because -she admires you exceedingly. So she wants to go back to Niel. I know," -said Mrs. Delafield, slightly shaking her poker, "that if I'd given her -a loophole this morning, she'd be on her way to London now." - -"And why didn't you?" asked Christopher Darley. - -Ah, why? Again she brooded over the softly breathing little profile, -again met the upward gaze of Jane Amoret's grey eyes. Well might he ask -why. But there was the one truth she could not give him. There was -another that she could, and she had it ready. "I hadn't seen you," she -said. - -"You thought it right for her to come back to me, until you saw me?" - -"I thought it beneath her dignity--as I said to her--to be unfaithful to -two men within a fortnight." - -"But why should you care for her dignity?" Mr. Darley strangely pressed. -"Why shouldn't you care more for your brother's dignity, and her -husband's, and her child's--all the things she said you'd care for?" - -He had brought her eyes to his now, and, for the first time since they -met, it was he who had the advantage. Frowning, yet clear, he bent his -great young eyes upon her and she knew, dismayingly, that her thoughts -were scattered. - -"I have always cared for Rhoda." She seized the first one. - -"Is it a future for Rhoda to disintegrate the life of the man who loves -her and to get no good of him? Isn't it better for a woman like Rhoda to -go back to the apparent dignity, since she has no feeling for the real? -Isn't that what you would have felt, if you'd been feeling for Rhoda? It -wasn't because you felt for her," said Christopher Darley. "You had some -other reason. You are keeping another reason from me. You know," he -urged upon her with a strange, still austerity, "you know you can't do -that. You know we must say the truth to each other. You know that we -simply belong to each other, you and I." - -"My dear Mr. Darley--my dear young man!" - -She was, indeed, bereft of all resource. She laid down her poker and, as -she did so, felt herself disarming before him. His eyes, following her -retreat, challenged her, almost with fierceness. - -"I know--I know that you are giving up something because of me," he -said. "You want her to go back to her husband now, so that I may be -free. It wasn't of me you thought this morning; nor of your brother, nor -of Rhoda. Everything changed for you after you saw me. What is it? What -is it that made you send Rhoda back to me and that makes you now want to -free me? You are beautiful--but you are terrible. You do beautiful and -terrible things. And you must let me share. You must let me decide, too, -if you do them for me!" - -He had started up, but not to come nearer in his appeal and his demand. -Cut to the heart as he was,--for she knew how she had pierced,--it was -rather the probing of some more intolerable pain that moved him. And -looking down at her with eyes intolerant of her mercy, he embodied to -her her sense of a new life and a new conscience. Absurd though his -words might seem, they were true. Though never, perhaps, again to meet, -she and Christopher Darley recognized in each other some final affinity -and owed each other final truth. - -She no longer felt old and wise, but young and helpless before the -compulsion of the kindred soul. She owed him the truth, and in giving it -she must risk his freedom and his happiness. Looking up at him, that -sense of compulsion upon her, she said, "It was because of Jane Amoret. -It was because I loved her and wanted to keep her." - -Christopher Darley grew paler than before. "She is here?" - -"Yes. She came this morning. She is upstairs, sleeping." - -"Rhoda saw her?" - -"Yes." - -"And left her? To you?" - -"Yes. Left her to me." - -He raised his head with a backward jerk and stared out of the window -before him. She kept her eyes on his face, measuring its strength -against hers. He was not measuring. He seemed to be seeing the beautiful -and terrible things of which, he had told her, she was capable. She -felt, when his eyes came back to her, that he had judged her. - -"You see you can't," he said gently. - -"Can't what? Can't keep her, you mean, of course." - -"Anything but that. You can't abandon her--even for my sake." - -So that had been the judgment. He saw only beauty. - -"I shan't abandon her. I shall always be able to see as much of her as I -did of Rhoda, and more. And she is different from Rhoda. I shan't have -the special joy of her, but I shall have the good." - -"Moreover," he went on, with perfect gentleness, putting her words -aside, "I can't abandon Rhoda. All that you have said is true. But it -doesn't go far enough. You yourself, you know, see life too much in -terms of irony, of fact rather than faith. You've owned that Rhoda is -adventurous and honest; you've owned that she doesn't lie to herself. -Then she has growth in her. No human being can be like a flower or a -fish or a stone. It was mere literature, your saying that. Every human -being has futures and futures within it. You know it really. Why you -yourself, though you are so old and fixed, are different now from what -you were an hour ago. I am different, of course. And Rhoda will be -different, too. She won't disintegrate me. She'll make me very -miserable, doubtless; she has already. And I shall make her angry. But I -shall hold her, and she'll change. You shall see. I promise you. And you -will keep Jane Amoret, and she will be eternally different because of -you." - -Mrs. Delafield, while he spoke, had risen. She stood before him, -grasping her gold chain on either side, her eyes very nearly level with -his, and she summoned all her will, her strength, her wisdom to meet -him. Yes, they had come to that, she and this boy. - -"I accept all your faith," she said. "Only you must help me to make my -world, and not yours, with it. Don't be afraid for Jane Amoret. I shall -be firmly in her life. Rhoda shan't keep me out. She won't want to keep -me out. Rhoda has far more chance of changing, of learning something -from this experience, as a disconcerted and forgiven wife than as a -sullen adventuress; and you--you will not be miserable; not with Rhoda, -at all events; and you will be free. I am going to send a wire to Rhoda, -at once, and tell her that I have reconsidered my advice to her. That, -in itself, will show her how I managed her this morning. I shall tell -her that she must go to London to-night, to her father. And to-morrow -I'll take Jane Amoret up and bring Rhoda and Niel together." - -He took it all in, wide-eyed, he too now measuring the threat. - -"You can't," he said; "I won't let you!" - -"You'll have to let me. I have the fact on my side as well as the faith. -She wants to leave you. She wants only the excuse of being asked. You -can't stop my giving her the excuse." Yes, after all, her fact against -his faith, she must have her way. What could his love for Rhoda and his -feeling for herself do against the ironic fact that Rhoda, simply, was -tired of him? "You must see that you can't force her to stay," she said. -"You couldn't even prevent her coming to me this morning." - -She looked at him with all the force of her advantage and saw that -before the cruel fact, and her determination, he knew his helplessness. -It was, again, the bird arrested in its impulse; and a veil seemed to -fall across his face, a shyness, almost a wildness to shut them out from -each other. He dropped his eyes before her. - -"Dear Mr. Darley, my dear young friend, see that it's best. See that -it's best all round. See it with me," she begged. "I was wrong this -morning; wrong from the very first. Let it come to that only. Count -yourself out. It was of myself, of my own delight in the child that I -was thinking. No, not even thinking; I tried to think it was for her; -but it was my own feeling that decided. If you had never come, it would -still have been right to give her up--though I should never have seen it -unless you'd come. It was almost a crime that I committed. They had -asked me to implore her to go back; they trusted me. And I prevented the -message coming to her. I did not believe the things I said to her--not -as she thought I believed them. I did not care a rap about her dignity; -you saw the falsity at once. I cared only about keeping Jane Amoret." - -He stood there before her, remote, unmoved, with downcast, unanswering -eyes. - -"Are you angry? Don't you see it, too?" she pleaded. - -"No." He shook his head. "You had a right to keep the child." - -"Against all those other reasons? Against my own conscience?" - -"Yes. Because you were strong enough. You were right, because you were -strong enough. I believe in law, too, you see--unless one is strong -enough to break it for something better. You were. It was a beautiful -thing to do." - -"But then, if you think me so strong, why not trust me now? This, now, -is the thing I want to do." - -"Because of me. It isn't against the law you are acting now; it's -against your own life. I am not angry. But it crushes me." - -They stood there then, she deeply meditating, he fixed in his unyielding -grief, for how long she could not have said. Parton's step outside broke -in upon their mute opposition. - - -VI - -She and Mr. Darley, Mrs. Delafield was aware, presented precisely the -abstracted, alienated air that Parton would expect. The young man moved -away to the window while she took from the salver the note Parton -presented. Then, her hand arrested in the very act by a recognition, - -"Is there an answer?" she asked. - -"No answer, ma'am." - -"Who brought it?" - -"A man from the station, ma'am." - -"Very well, Parton." - -Parton was gone. Mr. Darley kept his back turned. She held the note in -her hand and stared at it. The writing was Rhoda's; the envelope one of -the station-master's. She had been at the station, then, when she wrote, -four miles away. The London train, for which she had been waiting, had -gone long since; it had gone before the arrival of Mr. Darley's. - -An almost overpowering presage rose in her mind; she could hardly, for a -moment, summon the decision with which to open the envelope. Then, -reading as she stood, she felt the blood flow up to her face. - -For it was almost too much, although it was, through Rhoda's act, she -who had won finally. Even she, then, had not yet correctly measured -Rhoda's irony or Rhoda's sardonic assurance. Rhoda, after all, did not -care to keep up appearances with her, and, after all, why should she? -Here was fact, and it had been fact all through. She wanted most to go -back. She wanted it more than to be dignified in her aunt's eyes, or, -really, in anybody else's. Once back Rhoda would take care of her -dignity. In a flash Mrs. Delafield saw how little, when all was said and -done, Rhoda would pay. - - DEAR AUNT ISABEL [she wrote, in her ample, tranquil hand]: I've - been thinking over all you said and have come to the conclusion - that you are considering me too much. I feel that I must consider - my child. I have made a grave mistake and am not too proud to own - it. Christopher and I are not at all fitted to make each other - happy. So I have wired to father that I arrive this afternoon, and - to Niel that I will see him to-morrow. I have written too, of - course, to my poor Christopher. But he will understand me. Thank - you so much, dear Aunt Isabel, for your kindness and helpfulness. - -Your affectionate RHODA - - P.S. Will you send nurse up with Jane Amoret within the week? Not - at once, please; that would look rather foolish. - -With the accumulated weight of absurdity, relief, dismay, she had sunk -down into her chair, still gazing at the letter, and it was dismay that -grew. As if with a violent jolt back to earth, Rhoda seemed to show her -that life was not docile to nobilities. She hated to think that he must -feel with her that shattering fall. There was nothing for them to do now -for each other; no contest and no sacrifice. Rhoda had settled -everything. - -She spoke to him at last, and, as he came to her, not looking around at -him, she held out the note. He stood behind her to read it; and after -that he did not speak. - -She heard him move presently, vaguely, and then, vaguely, he drifted to -and fro. He walked here and there; he paused, no doubt to feel his bones -and to count how many had been broken, and then, with a start, he went -on again. - -"Please come where I can see you," she said at last. - -He came at once, obediently, standing as he had stood a little while ago -before the fire, his hands locked behind him, but now with face bent -down, fixed in its effort to see clearly what had happened to them. - -"You see, it was over. You see, you couldn't have made anything of it." -It was almost with tears that she besought him not to suffer too much. -"You have nothing to regret, except having believed in her. Tell me that -you are not too unhappy." - -"I don't know what I am," Christopher said. "But I know I've more to -regret than having believed in her. I've all the folly and mischief I've -made." He had thought it out and she could not deny what he had seen, -not even when he went on, "If it could have been in our way,--yours and -mine, or, at least, what was yours this morning, when you thought you -had kept her with me,--everything might have been atoned for. It might -have meant a certain kind of beauty, and a certain kind of happiness, -even, perhaps. But in this way, the way she's chosen, it only means just -that--folly, mischief,"--he turned to the fire and looked down into -it,--"sin," he finished. - -She could not deny it, even to give him comfort; but she could find -something else. "It was Rhoda who chose. You, whatever your mistakes, -chose very differently. I'm not trying to shift responsibility; to make -mistakes is to be foolish and mischievous. But can't even sin be atoned -for? Doesn't it all now depend on you? That you should make yourself -worth it. You are the only one of us who can do that." - -He turned to her and his eyes studied her with an unaccepting -gentleness. - -"You mean because I'm a poet? It isn't like you, really, to say that. -You don't believe in poets and their mission in that sense. It's too -facile." - -"Not only because you are a poet. I wasn't thinking so much of that, -although your gift helps. But simply because you are young and good." - -"I'm not good enough," said Christopher. "And I'm too young. You've -shown me that. I am afraid of myself. I see what one can do while -meaning the best." - -She watched him with grave tenderness, feeling again, in his -dispassionate capacity for accepted experience, his strange maturity. -And knowing all that might be difficult, yet knowing that it would be, -after all, to a decision like her own, the merest gossamers of -convention that she must brave, she said,--and as she looked up at him -his face seemed to blend with the face of her little, sleeping, lost -Jane Amoret,--"Don't you think I, perhaps, could be of help, while you -are so young?" - -He did not understand her at all. He, too, was absorbed in his inner -image of loss, yet he, too, was almost as aware of her as she of him, -and his eyes, with their austere gentleness, dwelt on her, as if -treasuring, of this last encounter, his completed vision of her. - -"Yes, you will be. I shall never forget you and what you've been to me. -I'll do my best," he promised her. "But I seem to have lost everything. -I could be strong for her; I don't know that I can be strong enough for -myself." - -"That's what I mean," said Mrs. Delafield. "It takes years to be strong -enough for one's self, and even when one's old one hasn't sometimes -learned how to be. I'm not sure, after this morning, that I've learned -yet. But I know that I could be strong for you. Will you let me try? -Will you let me take care of you a little and guard you from the Rhodas -until the right person comes?" - -"What do you mean?" he asked; and, answering the look in her face, tears -sprang to his eyes. - -"We belong to each other. Didn't you say it?" she smiled. "We are -friends. We ought not to lose each other now." - -"Oh! But--" He gazed at her. "How could you! After what I've done!" - -"You've done nothing that makes me like you less." - -"Oh--I can't! I can't!" said Christopher Darley. "How could I accept it -from you? Already you've been unbelievably beautiful to me. It's not as -if you were a Bohemian sort of creature, like me. Appearances must count -for you. And the appearance of being friends with your niece's discarded -lover--no--I can't see it for you. I can imagine you being above the -law, but I can't imagine you being above appearances. I don't think that -I should want you to be. I care about appearances, too, when they are -yours." - -It crossed her mind, with almost a mirthful sense of the sort of -appearances she would have to deal with, that Parton's face would be -worth watching. Poor Tim's hovered more grievously in the background. -But, after all, it would be a Tim with wounds well salved. - -"It's just because mine are so secure and recognized, don't you see, -that I can do what I like with them," she said. "It's not for me a -question of appearances, but of realities. After all, my dear young man, -what am I going to get out of it all? My roots have been torn up too, -you know." - -"Because of me! Because of me!" Christopher groaned. "Do you think you -need remind me of that? Shall I ever forgive myself for it? Get out of -it? You'll get nothing. You've been tormented between us all, and you -lose Jane Amoret." - -"Then don't let me lose you too," said Mrs. Delafield. - -Again, with the tears, his blush sprang to his face, and he stood there -incredulous, looking down at her, almost as helpless in the shyness the -unexpected gift brought upon him as he had been when he first came in to -her. - -"Really you mean it?" he murmured. "Really I can do something for you, -too? Because, unless I can, I couldn't accept it." - -"You can make me much less lonely, when she's gone," said Mrs. -Delafield. - -She knew that this was to give the gift in such a way as to ensure its -acceptance; but he murmured, stung again intolerably by the thought of -Jane Amoret, "Oh--I can't bear it for you!" - -"You can help me to bear it." - -Still he pressed upon her what he saw as her sacrifice. - -"You mean that I may see you when I like? I may always write and you'll -always answer? I can sometimes, even, come and stay, like any other -friend? Please realize that if you let me come down on you like that, I -may come hard. I'm frightfully lonely, too." - -"As hard as you like. I want you to come hard. Like any friend. Yes." - -She was smiling up at the young man, and, as she had promised herself -years for Jane Amoret, she promised herself now years--though not so -many would be needed--for Christopher Darley. It was in the thought of -what she could do for Christopher Darley that she saw Rhoda's -punishment. Not for having left him, but for having taken him; for not -having known what to do with him without taking him. And Rhoda would see -it with her, if no one else did. - -"Come, you must quite believe in me," she said. "Give me your hand, dear -Christopher, and tell me that you take this meddling, commanding old -woman to be your friend." - -He had no words as he took the hand she gave him, but from his look it -might have been as if he at last received into his keeping the great -gift, the precious casket of the future; and his eyes, like those of a -devout young knight, dedicated themselves to her service. - -It was again gift and miracle; and though in her mind was the thought of -all her mournings, and of the lost Jane Amoret, she felt, rooting itself -in the darkness and sorrow, yet another flower. - -"And now," she said, for they must not both begin to cry, "please ring -the bell for me. The time has not quite come for your first visit; but, -before you go, we will have our first tea together." - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -HEPATICAS - - -I - -OTHER people's sons were coming home for the three or four days' leave. -The first gigantic struggle--furious onslaught and grim resistance--was -over. Paris, pale, and slightly shuddering still, stood safe. Calais was -not taken, and, dug into their trenches, it was evident that the -opposing armies would lie face to face with no decisive encounter -possible until the spring. - -There was, with all their beauty and terror, an element of the facetious -in these unexpected holidays, of the matter-of-factness, the freedom -from strain or sentiment that was the English oddity and the English -strength. Men who had known the horrors of the retreat from Mons or the -carnage of Ypres, who had not taken off their clothes for ten days at a -stretch or slept for four nights, came home from trenches knee-deep in -mud, from battlefields heaped with unburied dead, and appeared -immaculate and cheerful at breakfast; a little sober and preoccupied, -perhaps; touched, perhaps, with strangeness; but ready for the valorous -family jest, and alluding to the war as if, while something too solemn -for adequate comment, it were yet something that lent itself to -laughter. One did such funny things, and saw them; of the other things -one did not speak; and there was the huge standing joke of an enemy who -actually hated one. These grave and cheerful young men hated nobody; but -they were very eager to go back again; and they were all ready, not only -to die but to die good-humouredly. From the demeanour of mothers and -wives and sisters it was evident that nothing would be said or done to -make this readiness difficult; but Mrs. Bradley, who showed serenity to -the world and did not even when alone allow herself to cry, suspected -that the others, beneath their smiles, carried hearts as heavy with -dread as her own. - -It had been heavy, with hope now as well as with dread, for the past -week. It was a week since she had last heard from Jack. Mrs. Crawley -over the hill, had had a wire, and her husband was now with her; and -Lady Wrexham expected her boy to-morrow. There was no certainty at all -as regarded herself; yet at any moment she might have her wire; and -feeling to-day the stress of waiting too great to be borne in passivity, -she left her books and letters and put on her gardening shoes and gloves -and went out to her borders. - -For weeks now the incessant rain had made the relief and solace of -gardening almost an impossibility; but to-day was mild and clear. There -was no radiance in the air; curtains of pearly mist shut out the sky; -yet here and there a soft opening in the white showed a pale, far blue, -gentle and remote as the gaze of a wandering goddess, and the hills -seemed to smile quietly up at the unseen sun. Mrs. Bradley, as she went -along the river-path, could look across at the hills; the river-path and -the hills were the great feature of Dorrington,--the placid, comely red -brick house to which she and Jack had come fifteen years ago, after the -death of her husband in India. Enclosed by woods, and almost catching -sight of the road,--from its upper windows and over its old brick -wall,--the house would have seemed to her too commonplace and almost -suburban, in spite of the indubitably old oak-panelling of the -drawing-room, had it not been for the river and the hills. Stepping out -on to the lawn from the windows of the drawing-room, she and Jack, on -that April day, had found themselves confronting both--the limpid, rapid -little stream, spanned near the house by its mossy bridge, and the -hills, beyond the meadows, streaked with purple woodlands and rising, -above the woods, to slopes russet, fawn, and azure. Jack, holding her by -the hand, had pointed at once with an eager "Isn't it pretty, -mummy!"--even at eight he had cared almost as much as she, and -extraordinarily in the same way, for the sights of the country; and if -the hills hadn't settled the question, it was settled, quite finally, -ten minutes later, by the white hepaticas. - -They had come upon them suddenly, after their tour of the walled kitchen -garden and their survey of the lawn with its ugly shrubberies,--now long -forgotten,--penetrating a thicket of hazels and finding themselves in an -opening under trees where neighbouring woods looked at them over an old -stone wall, and where, from an old stone bench, one could see the river. -The ground was soft with the fallen leaves of many an autumn; a narrow -path ran, half obliterated, down to the river; and among the faded -brown, everywhere, rose the thick clusters, the dark leaves, and the -snowy flowers,--poignant, amazing in their beauty. - -She and Jack had stopped short to gaze. She had never before seen such -white hepaticas, or so many, or so placed. And Jack, presently, lifting -his dear nut-brown head and nut-brown eyes, had said, gazing up at her -as he had gazed at the flowers, "They are just like you, mummy." - -She had felt at once that they were like her; more like than the little -boy's instinct could grasp. He had thought of the darkness and -whiteness; her widow's weeds and pale face had suggested that; but he -could not know the sorrow, the longing, the earthly sense of irreparable -loss, the heavenly sense of a possession unalterably hers, that the -dark, melancholy leaves and celestial whiteness of the flowers expressed -to her. Tears had risen to her eyes and she had stooped and kissed her -child,--how like her husband's that little face!--and had said, after a -moment, "We must never leave them, Jack." - -They had never left them. Dorrington had been their home for fifteen -years, and the hepaticas the heart of it. It had always seemed to them -both the loveliest ritual of the year, that early spring one when, in -the hazel copse, they would find the white hepaticas again in flower. -And of all the garden labours none were sweeter than those that -cherished and divided and protected the beloved flowers. - -Mrs. Bradley, to-day, worked in her long border, weeding, forking, -placing belated labels. She was dressed in black, her straw hat bound -beneath her chin by a ribbon and her soft gardening gloves rolling back -from her firm, white wrists. Her gestures expressed a calm energy, an -accurate grace. She was tall, and when she raised herself to look over -the meadows at the hills, she showed small, decisive features, all -marked, in the pallor of her face, as if with the delicate, neutral -emphasis of an etching: the grey, scrutinizing eyes, the charming yet -ugly nose, the tranquil mouth that had, at the corners, a little fall, -half sweet, half bitter, as if with tears repressed or a summoned smile. -Squared at brow and chin, it would, but for the mildness of the gaze, -have been an imperious face; and her head, its whitened hair drawn back -and looped in wide braids behind, had an air at once majestic and -unworldly. - -She had worked for over an hour and the last label was set beside a -precious clump of iris. The hazel copse lay near by; and gathering up -her tools, drawing off her wet gloves, she followed the path under the -leafless branches and among the hepatica leaves to the stone bench, -where, sinking down, she knew that she was very tired. She could see, -below the bank, the dark, quick stream; a pale, diffused light in the -sky showed where the sun was dropping toward the hills. - -Where was Jack at this moment, this quiet moment of a monotonous English -winter day?--so like the days of all the other years that it was -impossible to think of what was happening a few hours' journey away -across the Channel. Impossible to think of it; yet the thick throb of -her heart spoke to the full of its significance. She had told herself -from the beginning--passionate, rebellious creature as, at bottom, she -knew herself to be, always in need of discipline and only in these later -years schooled to a control and submission that, in her youth, she would -have believed impossible to her--she had told herself, when he had gone -from her, that, as a soldier's widow, she must see her soldier son go -to death. She must give him to that; be ready for it; and if he came -back to her it would be as if he were born again, a gift, a grace, -unexpected and unclaimed. She must feel, for herself as well as for her -country, that these days of dread were also days of a splendour and -beauty unmatched by any in England's history, and that a soldier's widow -must ask for no more glorious fate for her son than death in such a -cause. She had told herself all this many times; yet, as she sat there, -her hands folded on her lap, her eyes on the stream below, she felt that -she was now merely motherhood, tense, huddled, throbbing and longing, -longing for its child. - -Then, suddenly, she heard Jack's footsteps. They came, quick and light, -along the garden path; they entered the wood; they were near, but -softened by the fallen leaves. And, half rising, afraid of her own joy, -she hardly knew that she saw him before she was in his arms; and it was -better to meet thus, in the blindness and darkness of their embrace, her -cheek pressed against his hair, his head buried close between her neck -and shoulder. - -"Jack!--Jack!" she heard herself say. - -He said nothing, holding her tightly to him, with quick breaths; and -even after she had opened her eyes and could look down at him,--her own, -her dear, beautiful Jack,--could see the nut-brown head, the smooth -brown cheek, the firm brown hand which grasped her, he did not for a -long time raise his head and look at her. When, at last, he did look up, -she could not tell, through her tears, whether, like herself, he was -trying to smile. - -They sat down together on the bench. She did not ask him why he had not -wired. That question pressed too sharply on her heart; to ask might -seem to reproach. - -"Darling--you are so thin,--so much older,--but you look--strong and -well." - -"We're all of us extraordinarily fit, mummy. It's wholesome, living in -mud." - -"And wholesome living among bursting shells? I had your last letter -telling of that miraculous escape." - -"There have been a lot more since then. Every day seems a miracle--that -one's alive at the end of it." - -"But you get used to it?" - -"All except the noise. That always seems to daze me still. Some of our -fellows are deaf from it.--You heard of Toppie, mother?" Jack asked. - -Toppie was Alan Graham, Jack's nearest friend. He had been killed ten -days before. - -"I heard it, Jack. Were you with him?" - -"Yes. It was in a bayonet charge. He didn't suffer. A bullet went right -through him. He just gave a little cry and fell." Jack's voice had the -mildness of a sorrow that has passed beyond the capacity for emotion. -"We found him afterwards. He is buried out there." - -"You must tell Frances about it, Jack. I went to her at once." Frances -was Toppie's sister. "She is bearing it so bravely." - -"I must write to her. She would be sure to be plucky." - -He answered all her questions, sitting closely against her, his arm -around her; looking down, while he spoke, and twisting, as had always -been his boyish way, a button on her coat. He was at that enchanting -moment of young manhood when the child is still apparent in the man. -His glance was shy yet candid; his small, firm lips had a child's -gravity. With his splendid shoulders, long legs, and noble little head, -he was yet as endearing as he was impressive. His mother's heart ached -with love and pride and fear as she gazed at him. - -And a question came, near the sharp one, yet hoping to evade it:-- - -"Jack, dearest, how long will you be with me? How long is the leave?" - -He raised his eyes then and looked at her; a curious look. Something in -it blurred her mind with a sense of some other sort of fear. - -"Only till to-night," he said. - -It seemed confusion rather than pain that she felt. "Only till to-night, -Jack? But Richard Crawley has been back for three days already. I -thought they gave you longer?" - -"I know, mummy." His eyes were dropped again and his hand at the -button--did it tremble?--twisted and untwisted. "I've been back for -three days already.--I've been in London." - -"In London?" Her breath failed her. The sense of alien fear became a -fog, horrible, suffocating. "But--Jack--why?" - -"I didn't wire, mummy, because I knew I'd have to be there for most of -my time. I felt I couldn't wire and tell you. I felt I had to see you -when I told you. Mother--I'm married.--I came back to get married.--I -was married this morning.--Oh, mother, can you ever forgive me?" - -His shaking hands held her and his eyes could not meet hers. - -She felt the blood rush, as if her heart had been divided with a sword, -to her throat, to her eyes, choking her, burning her; and as if from -far away she heard her own voice saying, after a little time had passed, -"There's nothing I couldn't forgive you, Jack. Tell me. Don't be afraid -of hurting me." - -He held her tightly, still looking down as he said, "She is a dancer, -mother, a little dancer. It was in London, last summer. A lot of us came -up from Aldershot together. She was in the chorus of one of those -musical comedies. Mother, you can never understand. But it wasn't just -low and vulgar. She was so lovely,--so very young,--with the most -wonderful golden hair and the sweetest eyes.--I don't know.--I simply -went off my head when I saw her. We all had supper together afterwards. -Toppie knew one of the other girls, and Dollie was there. That's her -name--Dollie Vaughan--her stage name. Her real name was Watson. Her -people, I think, were little tradespeople, and she'd lost her father and -mother, and an aunt had been very unkind. She told me all about it that -night. Mother, please believe just this: it wasn't only the obvious -thing.--I know I can't explain. But you remember, when we read _War and -Peace_"--his broken voice groped for the analogy--"You remember Natacha, -when she falls in love with Anatole, and nothing that was real before -seems real, and she is ready for anything.--It was like that. It was all -fairyland, like that. No one thought it wrong. It didn't seem wrong. -Everything went together." - -She had gathered his hand closely in hers and she sat there, quiet, -looking at her hopes lying slain before her. Her Jack. The wife who was, -perhaps, to have been his. The children that she, perhaps, should have -seen. All dead. The future blotted out. Only this wraith-like present; -only this moment of decision; Jack and his desperate need the only real -things left. - -And after a moment, for his labouring breath had failed, she said, "Yes, -dear?" and smiled at him. - -He covered his face with his hands. "Mother, I've ruined your life." - -He had, of course, in ruining his own; yet even at that moment of -wreckage she was able to remember, if not to feel, that life could mend -from terrible wounds, could marvellously grow from compromises and -defeats. "No, dearest, no," she said. "While I have you, nothing is -ruined. We shall see what can be done. Go on. Tell me the rest." - -He put out his hand to hers again and sat now a little turned away from -her, speaking on in his deadened, bitter voice. - -"There wasn't any glamour after that first time. I only saw her once or -twice again. I was awfully sorry and ashamed over the whole thing. Her -company left London, on tour, and then the war came, and I simply forgot -all about her. And the other day, over there, I had a letter from her. -She was in terrible trouble. She was ill and had no money, and no work. -And she was going to have a child--my child; and she begged me to send -her a little money to help her through, or she didn't know what would -become of her." - -The fog, the horrible confusion, even the despair, had passed now. The -sense of ruin, of wreckage almost irreparable, was there; yet with it, -too, was the strangest sense of gladness. He was her own Jack, -completely hers, for she saw now why he had done it; she could be glad -that he had done it. "Go on, dear," she said. "I understand; I -understand perfectly." - -"O mother, bless you!" He put her hand to his lips, bowing his head upon -it for a moment. "I was afraid you couldn't. I was afraid you couldn't -forgive me. But I had to do it. I thought it all over--out there. -Everything had become so different after what one had been through. One -saw everything differently. Some things didn't matter at all, and other -things mattered tremendously. This was one of them. I knew I couldn't -just send her money. I knew I couldn't bear to have the poor child born -without a name and with only that foolish little mother to take care of -it. And when I found I could get this leave, I knew I must marry her. -That was why I didn't wire. I thought I might not have time to come to -you at all." - -"Where is she, Jack?" Her voice, her eyes, her smile at him, showed him -that, indeed, she understood perfectly. - -"In lodgings that I found for her; nice and quiet, with a kind landlady. -She was in such an awful place in Ealing. She is so changed, poor little -thing. I should hardly have known her. Mother, darling, I wonder, could -you just go and see her once or twice? She's frightfully lonely; and so -very young.--If you could.--If you would just help things along a little -till the baby comes, I should be so grateful. And, then, if I don't come -back, will you, for my sake, see that they are safe?" - -"But, Jack," she said, smiling at him, "she is coming here, of course. I -shall go and get her to-morrow." - -He stared at her and his colour rose. "Get her? Bring her here, to -stay?" - -"Of course, darling. And if you don't come back, I will take care of -them, always." - -"But, mother," said Jack, and there were tears in his eyes, "you don't -know, you don't realize. I mean--she's; a dear little thing--but you -couldn't be happy with her. She'd get most frightfully on your nerves. -She's just--just a silly little dancer who has got into trouble." - -Jack was clear-sighted. Every vestige of fairyland had vanished. And she -was deeply thankful that they should see alike, while she answered, -"It's not exactly a time for considering one's nerves, is it, Jack? I -hope I shan't get on hers. I must just try and make her as happy as I -can." - -She made it all seem natural and almost sweet. The tears were in his -eyes, yet he had to smile back at her when she said, "You know that I am -good at managing people. I'll manage her. And perhaps when you come -back, my darling, she won't be a silly little dancer." - -They sat now for a little while in silence. While they had talked, a -golden sunset, slowly, had illuminated the western sky. The river below -them was golden, and the wintry woodlands bathed in light. Jack held her -hands and gazed at her. Love could say no more than his eyes, in their -trust and sorrow, said to her; she could never more completely possess -her son. Sitting there with him, hand in hand, while the light slowly -ebbed and twilight fell about them, she felt it to be, in its accepted -sorrow, the culminating and transfiguring moment of her maternity. - -When they at last rose to go it was the hour for Jack's departure, and -it had become almost dark. Far away, through the trees, they could see -the lighted windows of the house that waited for them, but to which she -must return alone. With his arms around her shoulders, Jack paused a -moment, looking about him. "Do you remember that day--when we first came -here, mummy?" he asked. - -She felt in him suddenly a sadness deeper than any he had yet shown her. -The burden of the past she had lifted from him; but he must bear now the -burden of what he had done to her, to their life, to all the future. -And, protesting against his pain, her mother's heart strove still to -shelter him while she answered, as if she did not feel his sadness, -"Yes, dear, and do you remember the hepaticas on that day?" - -"Like you," said Jack in a gentle voice. "I can hardly see the plants. -Are they all right?" - -"They are doing beautifully." - -"I wish the flowers were out," said Jack. "I wish it were the time for -the flowers to be out, so that I could have seen you and them together, -like that first day." And then, putting his head down on her shoulder, -he murmured, "It will never be the same again. I've spoiled everything -for you." - -But he was not to go from her uncomforted. She found the firmest voice -in which to answer him, stroking his hair and pressing him to her with -the full reassurance of her resolution. "Nothing is spoiled, Jack, -nothing. You have never been so near me--so how can anything be spoiled? -And when you come back, darling, you'll find your son, perhaps; and the -hepaticas may be in flower, waiting for you." - - -II - -Mrs. Bradley and her daughter-in-law sat together in the drawing-room. -They sat opposite each other on the two chintz chesterfields placed at -right angles to the pleasantly blazing fire, the chintz curtains drawn -against a rainy evening. It was a long, low room, with panelled walls; -and, like Mrs. Bradley's head, it had an air at once majestic, -decorated, and old-fashioned. It was a rather crowded room, with many -deep chairs and large couches, many tables with lamps and books and -photographs upon them, many porcelains, prints, and pots of growing -flowers. Mrs. Bradley, her tea-table before her, was in her evening -black silk; lace ruffles rose about her throat; she wore her accustomed -necklace of old enamel, blue, black, and white, set with small diamonds, -and the enamel locket that had within it Jack's face on one side and his -father's on the other; her white hands, moving gently among the teacups, -showed an ancient cluster of diamonds above the slender wedding-ring. -From time to time she lifted her eyes and smiled quietly over at her -daughter-in-law. It was the first time that she had really seen Dollie, -that is, in any sense that meant contemplative observation. Dollie had -spent her first week at Dorrington in bed, sodden with fatigue rather -than ill. "What you need," Mrs. Bradley had said, "is to go to sleep for -a fortnight"; and Dollie had almost literally carried out the -prescription. - -Stealing carefully into the darkened room, with its flowers and open -windows and steadily glowing fire, Mrs. Bradley had stood and looked for -long moments at all that she could see of her daughter-in-law,--a -flushed, almost babyish face lying on the pillow between thick golden -braids, sleeping so deeply, so unconsciously,--her sleep making her -mother-in-law think of a little boat gliding slowly yet steadily on and -on, between new shores; so that, when she was to awake and look about -her, it would be as if, with no bewilderment or readjustment, she found -herself transformed, a denizen of an altered world. That was what Mrs. -Bradley wanted, that Dollie should become an inmate of Dorrington with -as little effort or consciousness for any of them as possible, and the -drowsy days and nights of infantine slumbers seemed indeed to have -brought her very near. - -She and Pickering, the admirable woman who filled so skilfully the -combined positions of lady's maid and parlourmaid in her little -establishment, had braided Dollie's thick tresses, one on either -side,--Mrs. Bradley laughing a little and both older women touched, -almost happy in their sense of something so young and helpless to take -care of. Pickering understood, nearly as well as Jack's mother, that -Master Jack, as he had remained to her, had married very much beneath -him; but at this time of tragic issues and primitive values, she, nearly -as much as Jack's mother, felt only the claim, the pathos of youth and -helplessness. It was as if they had a singularly appealing case of a -refugee to take care of; social and even moral appraisals were -inapplicable to such a case, and Mrs. Bradley felt that she had never so -admired Pickering as when seeing that for her, too, they were in -abeyance. It was a comfort to feel so fond of Pickering at a time when -one was in need of any comfort one could get; and to feel that, -creature of codes and discriminations as she was, to a degree that had -made her mistress sometimes think of her as a sort of Samurai of -service, a function rather than a person, she was even more -fundamentally a kind and Christian woman. Between them, cook -intelligently sustaining them from below and the housemaids helpful in -their degree, they fed and tended and nursed Dollie, and by that eighth -day she was more than ready to get up and go down and investigate her -new surroundings. - -She sat there now, in the pretty tea-gown her mother-in-law had bought -for her, leaning back against her cushions, one arm lying along the back -of the couch and one foot in its patent-leather shoe, with its sparkling -buckle and alarming heel, thrusting forward a carefully arched instep. -The attitude made one realize, however completely tenderer -preoccupations held the foreground of one's consciousness, how often and -successfully she must have sat to theatrical photographers. Her way of -smiling, too, very softly, yet with the effect of a calculated and -dazzling display of pearly teeth, was impersonal, and directed, as it -were, to the public _via_ the camera rather than to any individual -interlocutor. Mrs. Bradley even imagined, unversed as she was in the -methods of Dollie's world, that of allurement in its conscious and -determined sense she was almost innocent. She placed herself, she -adjusted her arm and her foot, and she smiled gently; intention hardly -went further than that wish to look her best. - -Pink and white and gold as she was, and draped there on the chesterfield -in a profusion of youth and a frivolity that was yet all passivity, she -made her mother-in-law think, and with a certain sinking of the heart, -of a Dorothy Perkins rose, a flower she had never cared for; and Dollie -carried on the analogy in the sense she gave that there were such -myriads more just like her. On almost every page of every illustrated -weekly paper, one saw the ingenuous, limpid eyes, the display of -eyelash, the lips, their outline emphasized by just that touch of rouge, -those copious waves of hair. Like the Dorothy Perkins roses on their -pergolas, so these pretty faces seemed--looped, draped, festooned--to -climb over all the available spaces of the modern press. - -But this, Mrs. Bradley told herself, was to see Dollie with a dry, hard -eye, was to see her superficially, from the social rather than from the -human point of view. Under the photographic creature must lie the young, -young girl,--so young, so harmless that it would be very possible to -mould her, with all discretion, all tenderness, into some suitability as -Jack's wife. Dollie, from the moment that she had found her, a sodden, -battered rose indeed, in the London lodging-house, had shown herself -grateful, even humble, and endlessly acquiescent. She had not shown -herself at all abashed or apologetic, and that had been a relief; had -counted for her, indeed, in her mother-in-law's eyes, as a sort of -innocence, a sort of dignity. But if Dollie were contented with her new -mother-in-law, and very grateful to her, she was also contented with -herself; Mrs. Bradley had been aware of this at once; and she knew now -that if she were being carefully and commendingly watched while she -poured out the tea, this concentration did not imply unqualified -approval. Dollie was the type of young woman to whom she herself stood -as the type of the "perfect lady"; but with the appreciation went the -proviso of the sharp little London mind,--versed in the whole ritual of -smartness as it displayed itself at theatre or restaurant,--that she was -a rather dowdy one. She was a lady, perfect but not smart, while, at the -same time, the quality of her defect was, she imagined, a little -bewildering and therefore a little impressive. Actually to awe Dollie -and to make her shy, it would be necessary to be smart; but it was far -more pleasant and perhaps as efficacious merely to impress her, and it -was as well that Dollie should be impressed; for anything in the nature -of an advantage that she could recognize would make it easier to direct, -protect, and mould her. - -She asked her a good many leisurely and unstressed questions on this -first evening, and drew Dollie to ask her others in return; and she saw -herself stooping thoughtfully over a flourishing young plant that yet -needed transplanting, softly moving the soil about its roots, softly -finding out if there were any very deep tap-root that would have to be -dealt with. But Dollie, so far as tastes and ideas went, hardly seemed -to have any roots at all; so few that it was a question if any change of -soil could affect a creature so shallow. She smiled, she was at ease; -she showed her complete assurance that a young lady so lavishly endowed -with all the most significant gifts, need not occupy herself with mental -adornments. - -"You're a great one for books, I see," she commented, looking about the -room; "I suppose you do a great deal of reading down here to keep from -feeling too dull"; and she added that she herself, if there was -"nothing doing," liked a good novel, especially if she had a box of -sweets to eat while she read it. - -"You shall have a box of sweets to-morrow," Mrs. Bradley told her, "with -or without the novel, as you like." - -And Dollie thanked her, watching her cut the cake, and, as the rain -lashed against the windows, remarking on the bad weather and cheerfully -hoping that "poor old Jack" wasn't in those horrid trenches. "I think -war's a wicked thing, don't you, Mrs. Bradley?" she added. - -When Dollie talked in this conventionally solicitous tone of Jack, her -mother-in-law could but wish her upstairs again, merely young, merely -the tired and battered refugee. She had not much tenderness for Jack, -that was evident, nor much imaginativeness in regard to the feelings of -Jack's mother. But she soon passed from the theme of Jack and his -danger. Her tea was finished and she got up and went to the piano, -remarking that there was one thing she _could_ do. "Poor mother used to -always say I was made of music. From the time I was a mere tot I could -pick out anything on the piano." And placing herself, pressing down the -patent-leather shoe on the loud pedal, she surged into a waltz as -foolish and as conventionally alluring as her own eyes. Her inaccuracy -was equalled only by her facility. Smiling, swaying over the keys with -alternate speed and languor, she addressed her audience with altogether -the easy mastery of a music-hall _artiste_: "It's a lovely thing--one of -my favourites. I'll often play, Mrs. Bradley, and cheer us up. There is -nothing like music for that, is there? it speaks so to the heart." And, -whole-heartedly, indeed, she accompanied the melody by a passionate -humming. - -The piano was Jack's and it was poor Jack who was made of music. How was -he to bear it, his mother asked herself, as she sat listening. Dollie, -after that initiation, spent many hours at the piano every day,--so many -and such noisy hours, that her mother-in-law, unnoticed, could shut -herself in the little morning-room that overlooked the brick wall at the -front of the house and had the morning sun. - -It was difficult to devise other occupations for Dollie. She earnestly -disclaimed any wish to have proper music lessons, and when her -mother-in-law, patiently persistent, arranged for a skilful mistress to -come down twice a week from London, Dollie showed such apathy and -dulness that any hope of developing such musical ability as she -possessed had to be abandoned. She did not like walking, and the sober -pageant of the winter days was a blank book to her. Sewing, she said, -had always given her frightful fidgets; and it was with the strangest -sense of a privilege, a joy, unhoped-for and now thrust upon her, that -Mrs. Bradley sat alone working at the little garments that meant all her -future and all Jack's. The baby seemed already more hers than Dollie's. - -Sometimes, on a warm afternoon, Dollie, wrapped in her fur cloak, would -emerge for a little while and watch her mother-in-law at work in her -borders. The sight amused and surprised but hardly interested her, and -she soon went tottering back to the house on the preposterous heels that -Mrs. Bradley had, as yet, found no means of tactfully banishing. And -sometimes, when the piano again resounded, Mrs. Bradley would leave her -borders and retreat to the hazel-copse, where, as she sat on the stone -bench, she could hear, through the soft sound of the running water, -hardly more than the distant beat and hum of Dollie's waltzes; and -where, with more and more the sense of escape and safety, she could find -a refuge from the sight and sound and scent of Dollie,--the thick, -sweet, penetrating scent that was always to be indelibly associated in -her mind with this winter of foreboding, of hope, and of growing -hopelessness. - -In her letters to Jack, she found herself, involuntarily at first, and -then deliberately, altering, suppressing, even falsifying. While Dollie -had been in bed, when so much hope had been possible of a creature so -unrevealed, she had written very tenderly, and she continued, now, to -write tenderly, and it was not false to do that; she could feel no -hardness or antagonism against poor Dollie. But she continued to write -hopefully, as every day hope grew less. - -Jack, himself, did not say much of Dollie, though there was always the -affectionate message and the affectionate inquiry. But what was -difficult to deal with were the hints of his anxiety and fear that stole -among the terse, cheerful descriptions of his precarious days. What was -she doing with herself? How were she and Dollie getting on? Did Dollie -care about any of the things she cared about? - -She told him that they got on excellently well, that Dollie spent a good -deal of time at the piano, and that when they went out to tea people -were perfectly nice and understanding. She knew, indeed, that she could -depend on her friends to be that. They accepted Dollie on the terms she -asked for her. From friends so near as Mrs. Crawley and Lady Wrexham -she had not concealed the fact that Dollie was a misfortune; but if -others thought so they were not to show it. She still hoped, by degrees, -to make Dollie a figure easier to deal with at such neighbourly -gatherings. She had abandoned any hope that Dollie would grow; anything -so feeble and so foolish could not grow; there was no other girl under -the little dancer; she was simply no more and no less than she showed -herself to be; but, at this later stage of their relationship, Mrs. -Bradley essayed, now and then, a deliberate if kindly severity,--as to -heels, as to scents, as to touches of rouge. - -"Oh, but I'm as careful, just as careful, Mrs. Bradley!" Dollie -protested. "I can't walk in lower heels. They hurt my instep. I've a -very high instep and it needs support." She was genuinely amazed that -any one could dislike her scent and that any one could think the rouge -unbecoming. She seemed to acquiesce, but the acquiescence was followed -by moods of mournfulness and even by tears. There was no capacity in her -for temper or rebellion, and she was all unconscious of giving a warning -as she sobbed, "It's nothing--really nothing, Mrs. Bradley. I'm sure you -mean to be kind. Only--it's rather quiet and lonely here. I've always -been used to so many people,--to having everything so bright and jolly." - -She was not rapacious; she was not dissolute; she could be kept -respectable and even contented if she were not made too aware of the -contrast between her past existence and her present lot. With an air -only of pensive pride she would sometimes point out to Mrs. Bradley, in -the pages of those same illustrated weeklies with which her -mother-in-law associated her, the face of some former companion. One of -these young ladies had recently married the son of a peer. "She _is_ in -luck, Floss," said Dollie. "We always thought it would come to that. -He's been gone on her for ages, but his people were horrid." - -Mrs. Bradley felt that, at all events, Dollie had no ground for thinking -her "horrid"; yet she imagined that there lay drowsing at the back of -her mind a plaintive little sense of being caught and imprisoned. Floss -had stepped, triumphant, from the footlights to the registrar's office, -and apparently had succeeded in uniting the radiance of her past and -present status. No, Dollie could be kept respectable and contented only -if the pressure were of the lightest. She could not change, she could -only shift; and although Mrs. Bradley felt that for herself, her life -behind her, her story told, she could manage to put up with a merely -shifted Dollie, she could not see how Jack was to manage it. What was -Jack to do with her? was the thought that pressed with a growing weight -on her heart. She could never be of Jack's life; yet here she was, in -it, planted there by his own generous yet inevitable act, and by -hers,--in its very centre, and not to be evaded or forgotten. - -And the contrast between what Jack's life might have been and what it -now must be was made more poignantly apparent to her when Frances Graham -came down to stay from a Saturday to Monday; Frances in her black, tired -and thin from Red-Cross work in London; bereaved in more, her old friend -knew, than dear Toppie's death; yet with her leisurely, unstressed -cheerfulness almost unaltered, the lightness that went with so much -tenderness, the drollery that went with so much depth. Dearest, most -charming of girls--but for Jack's wretched stumble into "fairyland" last -summer, destined obviously to be his wife,--could any presence have -shown more disastrously, in its contrast with poor Dollie, how Jack had -done for himself? She watched the two together that evening, Frances -with her thick crinkled hair and clearly curved brow and her merry, -steady eyes, leaning, elbow on knee, to talk and listen to Dollie; and -Dollie, poor Dollie, flushed, touched with an unbecoming sulkiness, -aware, swiftly and unerringly, of a rival type. Frances was of the type -that young men married when they did not "do for themselves." There was -now no gulf of age or habit to veil from Dollie her disadvantage. She -answered shortly, with now and then a dry, ironic little laugh; and, -getting up at last, she went to the piano and loudly played. - -"He couldn't have done differently. It was the only thing he could do," -Frances said that night before her bedroom fire. She did not hide her -recognition of Jack's plight, but she was staunch. - -"I wouldn't have had him do differently. But it will ruin his life," -said the mother. "If he comes back it will ruin his life." - -"No, no," said Frances, looking at the flames. "Why should it? A man -doesn't depend on his marriage like that. He has his career." - -"Yes. He has his career. A career isn't a life." - -"Isn't it?" The girl gazed down. "But it's what so many people have to -put up with. And so many haven't even a career." Something came into her -voice and she turned from it quickly. "He's crippled, in a sense, of -course. But you are here. He will have you to come back to always." - -"I shall soon be old, dear, and she will always be here. That's -inevitable. Some day I shall have to leave her to Jack to bear with -alone." - -"She may become more of a companion." - -"No; no, she won't." The bitterness of the mother's heart expressed -itself in the dry, light utterance. It was a comfort to express -bitterness, for once, to somebody. - -"She is a harmless little thing," Frances offered after a moment. - -"Harmless?" Mrs. Bradley turned it over drily and lightly. "I can't feel -her that. I feel her blameless if you like. And it will be easy to keep -her contented. That is really the best that one can say of poor Dollie. -And then there will be the child. I am pinning all my hopes to the -child, Frances." - -Frances understood that. - -Dollie, as the winter wore on, kept remarkably well. She had felt it the -proper thing to allude to Jack and his danger; and so, now, she more and -more frequently felt it the proper thing to allude, humorously if with a -touch of melancholy, to "baby." Her main interest in baby, Mrs. Bradley -felt, was an alarmed one. She was a good deal frightened, poor little -soul, and in need of constant reassurances; and it was when one need -only pet and pity Dollie that she was easier to deal with. Mrs. Bradley -tried to interest her in plans for the baby; what it should be named, -and how its hair should be done if it were a little girl,--for only on -this assumption could Dollie's interest be at all vividly roused; and -Mrs. Bradley more than ever hoped for a boy when she found Dollie's -idle yet stubborn thoughts fixed on the name of Gloria. - -She was able to evade discussion of this point, and when the baby came, -fortunately and robustly, into the world on a fine March morning, she -could feel it as a minor but very real cause for thanksgiving that -Dollie need now never know what she thought of Gloria as a name. The -baby was a boy, and now that he was here Dollie seemed as well pleased -that he should be a commonplace Jack, and that there should be no -question of tying his hair with cockades of ribbon over each ear. -Smiling and rosy and languid, she lay in her charming room, not at all -more maternal--though she showed a bland satisfaction in her child and -noted that his eyes were just like Jack's--yet subtly more wifely. Baby, -she no doubt felt, with the dim instinct that did duty for thought with -her, placed and rooted her and gave her final rights. She referred now -to Jack with the pensive but open affection of their shared complacency, -and made her mother-in-law think, as she lay there, of a soft and sleepy -and tenacious creeper, fixing tentacle after tentacle in the walls of -Jack's house of life. - -If only one could feel that she had furnished it with a treasure! -Gravely, with a sad fondness, the grandmother studied the little face, -so unfamiliar, for signs of Jack. She was a helplessly clear-sighted -woman, and remembrance was poignantly vivid in her of Jack's face at a -week old. Already she loved the baby since its eyes, indubitably, were -his; but she could find no other trace of him. It was not a Bradley -baby; and in the dreamy, foreboding flickers of individuality that pass -uncannily across an infant's features, her melancholy and steady -discernment could see only the Watson ancestry. - -She was to do all she could for the baby; to save him, so far as might -be, from his Watson ancestry and to keep him, so far as might be, Jack's -and hers. That was to be her task. But with all the moulding that could, -mercifully, be applied from the very beginning, she could not bring -herself to believe that this was ever to be a very significant human -being. - -She sent Jack his wire: "A son. Dollie doing splendidly." And she had -his answer: "Best thanks. Love to Dollie." It was curious, indeed, this -strange new fact they had now, always, to deal with; this light little -"Dollie" that must be passed between them. The baby might have made Jack -happy, but it had not solved the problem of his future. - - -III - -A week later the telegram was brought to her telling her that he had -been killed in action. - -It was a beautiful spring day, just such a day as that on which she and -Jack had first seen Dorrington, and she had been working in the garden. -When she had read, she turned and walked down the path that led to the -hazel-copse. She hardly knew what had happened to her; there was only an -instinct for flight, concealment, secrecy; but, as she walked, there -rose in her, without sound, as if in a nightmare, the terrible cry of -her loneliness. The dark wet earth that covered him seemed heaped upon -her heart. - -The hazel-copse was tasselled thickly with golden-green, and as she -entered it she saw that the hepaticas were in flower. They seemed to -shine with their own celestial whiteness, set in their melancholy green -among the fallen leaves. She had never seen them look so beautiful. - -She followed the path, looking down at them, and she seemed to feel -Jack's little hand in hers and to see, at her side, his nut-brown head. -It had been on just such a morning. She came to the stone bench; but the -impulse that had led her here was altered. She did not sink down and -cover her face, but stood looking around her at the flowers, the -telegram still open in her hand; and slowly, with stealing calm, the -sense of sanctuary fell about her. - -She had lost him, and with him went all her life. He was dead, his youth -and strength and beauty. Yet what was this strange up-welling of relief, -deep, deep relief, for Jack; this gladness, poignant and celestial, like -that of the hepaticas? He was dead and the dark earth covered him; yet -he was here, with her, safe in his youth and strength and beauty, -forever. He had died the glorious death, and no future, tangled, -perplexed, fretful with its foolish burden, lay before him. There was no -loss for Jack; no fading, no waste. The burden was for her and he was -free. - -Later when pain should have dissolved thought her agony would come to -her unalleviated; but this hour was hers and his. She heard the river -and the soft whisperings of spring. A bird dropped lightly unafraid from -branch to branch of a tree near by. From the woods came the rapid -insistent tapping of a woodpecker; and as in so many springs she seemed -to hear Jack say, "Hark, mummy," and his little hand was always held in -hers. And everywhere telling of irreparable loss, of a possession -unalterable, the tragic, the celestial hepaticas. - -She sat down on the stone bench now and closed her eyes for a little -while so holding them more closely--Jack and the hepaticas--together. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -DAFFODILS - - -I - -THOUGH he knew that he was going to die, Marmaduke Follett as he lay in -the hospital on the French coast had never in his life been so happy. -Until these last days he had not been able to feel it in its -completeness. Of the great engagement where he had fallen he remembered -only the overwhelming uproar, the blood and mud; and after that, -torments, apathies, dim awakenings to the smell of ether and relapses to -acquiescent sleep. Now the last operation had failed--or rather, he had -failed to recover from it--and there was no more hope for him; but he -hardly suffered and his thoughts were emerging into a world of -cleanliness, kindness, and repose. - -The hospital before the war had been a big hotel, and his was one of the -bedrooms on the second floor, its windows crossed by two broad blue -bands of sea and sky. As an officer he had a room to himself. The men -were in the wards downstairs. - -One of his nurses--both were pleasant girls but this was the one who -with a wing of black hair curving under her cap reminded him of his -cousin Victoria--had put a glass of daffodils beside his bed, not -garden daffodils, but the wild ones that grow in woods; and if she made -him think of Victoria how much more they made him think of the woods in -spring at Channerley! - -He was dying after a gallant deed. It was a fitting death for a Follett -and so little in his life had been at all fitted to that initial -privilege: it was only in the manner of his death that his life matched -at all those thoughts of Victoria and Channerley. - -He did not remember much of the manner; it still remained cloaked in the -overwhelming uproar; but as he lay there he seemed to read in the -columns of the London papers what all the Folletts were so soon to -read--because of him:-- - -"His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to award the Victoria -Cross to the under-mentioned officers, non-commissioned officers and -men:-- - -"Sec. Lt. Marmaduke Everard Follett. For most conspicuous bravery. - -"He was directed with 50 men to drive the enemy from their trench and -under intense shell-and machine-gun fire he personally led three -separate parties of bombers against a captured 325 yards of trench; -attacking the machine gun, shooting the firer with his revolver, and -destroying gun and _personnel_ with bombs. This very brave act saved -many lives and ensured the success of the attack. In carrying one of his -men back to safety Sec. Lt. Follett was mortally wounded." - -He felt himself smile, as he soberly spaced it out, to remember that the -youths at the office used to call him Marmalade. It was curious that he -most felt his present and his present transfigured self, when he thought -of Cauldwell's office, where so many years of his past had been spent. -When he thought of that, of the jocund youths, of the weary hours and -wasted years, it was to feel himself transfigured; when he thought of -the Folletts and of Channerley, to feel that he matched them; to feel at -last as if he had come home. What to the grimy, everyday world counted -as transfiguration, counted as the normal, the expected, to the world of -Channerley. - -He wondered, lying there and looking out past the daffodils, where -Victoria was; he had heard that she was nursing, too, somewhere in -France; and again, as he had smiled over the contrast of "Sec. Lt. -Marmaduke Everard Follett" and the "Marmalade" of Cauldwell's office, he -smiled in thinking of the difference between Victoria and the nice young -nurse who, for all her resembling curve of hair, was also second-rate. -It would have been very wonderful to have been nursed by Victoria, and -yet his thought turned from that. There had never been any sweetness, -never even any kindness for him, in Victoria's clear young gaze; when it -came to nursing, he could imagine her being kind to a Tommy, but not to -him, the dull, submerged cousin; and the nice though second-rate nurse -was very kind. He would rather die under her eyes than under Victoria's. - -And he would rather think of Victoria as he had last seen her at the big -London dance to which, most unexpectedly, he had found himself asked -last spring--the spring before the war. He had decided, as with nervous -fingers he tied his white cravat,--how rarely disturbed had been that -neat sheaf lying in his upper drawer!--that he must have been confused -with some other Follett, for he was so seldom asked anywhere, where he -would be likely to meet Victoria. However, it was a delight to see her -in her snowy dress, her beautiful hair bound with silver, and to feel, -as he watched her dancing, that she belonged, in a sense, to him; for -he, too, was a Follett. - -How much more did she belong to him now! And not only Victoria, but all -of them, these Folletts of his and the Folletts of past generations; and -Channerley, centre of all his aching, wistful memories. It had been for -him, always, part of the very structure of his nature, that beautiful -old house where he had spent his boyhood. Perhaps it was because he had -been turned out of the nest so early that he never ceased to miss it. -His thought, like a maimed fledgling, had fluttered round and round it, -longing, exiled, helpless. - -If, now, he could have survived, his eldest brother, he felt sure, must -have asked him oftener to stay at Channerley. It still gave him a pang, -or, rather, the memory of many pangs, to recall that Robert had not -asked him for two years, and had seemed to forget all about him after -that. They had all seemed to forget about him,--that was the trouble of -it,--and almost from the very beginning: Robert, who had Channerley; -Austin, who had gone into the army and was now in Mesopotamia; Griselda, -married so splendidly up in her northern estate; and Amy, the artistic -bachelor-girl of the family, whom he associated with irony and -cigarette-smoke and prolonged absences in Paris. Even cheerful Sylvia, -of South Kensington, with her many babies and K.C. husband, whom he -always thought of, for all her well-being, as very nearly as submerged -as himself,--even Sylvia saw little of him and asked him only to family -dinners,--Mr. Shillington's family, not hers,--at depressingly punctual -intervals. - -But Sylvia, the one nearest him in years, was the one who had forgotten -least, and she had, after her fashion, done her best for him. Confused -at study, clumsy at games, shy and tongue-tied, he had not in any way -distinguished himself at a rather second-rate public school; and to -distinguish himself had been the only hope for him. The Folletts had -never had any money to spare, and Eton and Oxford for Robert and -Sandhurst for Austin fulfilled a tradition that became detached and -terse where younger sons who could not distinguish themselves were -concerned. Still, he had always felt that, had his father lived, -something better would have been found for him than to be bundled, -through the instrumentality of Mr. Shillington, into a solicitor's -office. There he had been bundled, and there he had stuck for all these -years, as clumsy, as confused as ever; a pallid, insignificant little -fellow (oh, he had no illusions about himself!) with the yellow hair and -small yellow moustache which, together with his name, had earned for him -his sobriquet. - -They had not disliked him, those direfully facetious companions of his. -_Noblesse oblige_ was an integral part of his conception of himself, -however little they might be aware of his unvarying courtesy towards -them as its exercise. He suspected that they thought of him as merely -inoffensive and rather piteous; but shyness might give that impression; -they could not guess at the quiet aversion that it covered. He was aware -sometimes, suddenly, that in the aloofness and contemplative disdain of -his pale sidelong glance at them, he most felt himself a Follett. If -his mind, for most practical purposes, was slow and clumsy, it was sharp -and swift in its perceptions. He judged the young men in Cauldwell's -office as a Follett must judge them. In the accurate applying of that -standard he was as instinctively gifted as any of his race; and if he -knew, from his first look at her, that the nice young nurse was -second-rate, how coldly and calmly, all these years, he had known that -the young men who called him Marmalade were third-rate. And yet they -none of them disliked him, and he wondered whether it was because, when -he most felt disdain, he most looked merely timid, or because they -recognized in him, all dimly as it might be, the first-rateness that was -his inherently and inalienably. - -Just as the third-rate young men might recognize the first-rate but -dimly, he was aware that to the world the Folletts, too, were not -important. It was not one of the names, in spite of centuries of local -lustre, to conjure with; and he liked it all the better because of that. -They had never, it was true, distinguished themselves; but they were -people of distinction, and that was, to his quiet, reflective, -savouring, an even higher state. He sometimes wondered if, in any of -them, the centring of family consciousness was as intense as in himself. -If they were aloof about third-rate people, it was not because they were -really very conscious about themselves. They took themselves for -granted, as they took Channerley and the family history; and only Amy -was aware that some of the family portraits were good. - -The history--it was not of course accurate to call it that, yet it -seemed more spacious and significant than mere annals--pored over -during long evenings, in faded parchments, deeds, and letters, was known -in every least detail to him. How the Folletts had begun, very soberly -but very decorously, in the fifteenth century, and how they had gone on: -rooting more deeply into their pleasant woodlands and meadows; -flowering, down the centuries, now in a type of grace--that charming -Antonia who had married so well at James the First's court; and of -gallantry--a Follett had fallen at Naseby, and a Follett had fought at -Waterloo; or of good-humoured efficiency, as in the eighteenth-century -judge and the nineteenth-century bishop. And he, who was neither -graceful nor gallant nor good-humoured (sour and sad he felt himself), -never could resist the warming, revivifying influence of these -recognitions, stretching himself, sighing, smiling happily before his -Bloomsbury fire on a winter's evening, as he laid down the thick pile of -yellowed manuscripts to think it all over and feel himself, in spite of -everything, a link with it all. - -Robert had always been very decent about letting him have and keep the -documents for as long as he liked. - -It was strange to think that he was never to see his Bloomsbury lodgings -again, and stranger, really, that a certain tinge of regret was in the -thought; for how, for years, he had hated them, place of exile, of -relegation, as he had always felt them! Yet he had come to be fond of -his little sitting-room, just because, to his eye, with its mingled -comfort and austerity, it was so significant of exile. If a Follett -couldn't have what he wanted, that was all he would have--his rack of -pipes, his shelves of books, his little collection of mostly marginless -mezzotints ranged along the dark, green walls. The room was a refuge and -did not pretend to be an achievement, and in that very fact might, to an -eye as sharp as his for such significance, suggest the tastes that it -relinquished. He had indeed all the tastes and none of the satisfactions -of Channerley. - -There it was; he had come back to it again, as, indeed, he had, in -spirit, never left it--never for a moment. He felt himself, lying there -in the hospital on the French coast, with the soft spring sea lapping -upon the beach under his window--he felt himself drop, drop, softly, -sweetly, deeply, back to his childhood. From his high nursery-window he -saw the dewy tree-tops,--the old hawthorn that grew so near the house, -and the old mulberry,--and the rooks wheeling on a spring sky so many -years ago. The dogs, at that early hour, just released, might be racing -over the lawns: idle, jovial Peter, the spaniel, and Jack, the plucky, -hot-tempered little Dandy-Dinmont. - -Below the lawns were the high grey garden walls, and above, rising a -little from the flagged rose-garden, were the woods where the daffodils -grew, daffodils like those beside him now, tall and small, their pale, -bright pennons set among warrior spears of green. Little bands of them -ran out upon the lawn from under the great trees, and one saw their gold -glimmering far, far along the woodlands. Oh, the beauty of it, and the -stillness; the age and youth; the smile and the security! How he had -always loved it, shambling about the woods and gardens; creeping -rather--he always saw himself as creeping somehow--about the dear, gay, -faded house! Always such an awkward, insignificant little boy; even his -dear old Nanna had felt dissatisfied with his appearance, and he had -always known it, when she sent him down with the others to the -drawing-room; and his mother, she had made it very apparent, had found -him only that. - -He shrank from the thought of his mother; perhaps it was because of her, -of her vexed and averted eyes, her silken rustle of indifference as she -passed him by, that he saw himself as creeping anywhere where she might -come. He only remembered her in glimpses: languidly and ironically -smiling at her tea-table (Amy had her smile), the artificial tone of her -voice had even then struck his boyish ear; reading on a summer -afternoon, with bored brows and dissatisfied lips, as she lay on a -garden chair in the shade of the mulberry tree; querulously arguing with -his father, who, good-humoured and very indifferent, strolled about the -hall in his pink coat on a winter morning, waiting for the horses to be -brought round; his mother's yellow braids shining under her neatly -tilted riding-hat, her booted foot held to the blaze of the great -log-fire. A hard, selfish, sentimental woman; and--wasn't it really the -only word for what he felt in her?--just a little shoddy. He -distinguished it from the second-rate nicely: it was a more personal -matter; for his mother, though certainly not a Follett, was of good -stock; he knew, of course, all about her stock. It always grieved him to -think that it was from her he had his yellow hair and the pale grey of -his eyes; his stature, too, for she had been a small woman; all the -other Folletts were tall; but she had given him nothing more: not a -trace of her beauty was his, and he was glad of it. - -It was curious, since he had really had so little to do with him, as -little, almost, as with his mother, how blissfully his sense of his -father's presence pervaded his childish memories. He was so kind. The -kindest thing he remembered at Channerley, except his dear old Nanna and -Peter the spaniel. It used to give him a thrill of purest joy when, -meeting him, his father, his hands clasped behind his back after his -strolling wont, would stop and bend amused and affectionate eyes upon -him; rather the eyes, to be sure, that he bent upon his dogs; but -Marmaduke always felt of him that he looked upon his children, and upon -himself, too, as parts of the pack; and it was delightful to be one of -the pack, with him. - -"Well, old fellow, and how goes the world with you to-day?" his father -would say. - -And after that question the world would go in sunshine. - -He had always believed that, had his father lived, he would never have -been so forgotten; just as he had always believed that his father would -never have allowed one of his pack to be bundled into the solicitor's -office. For that he had to thank, he felt sure, not only Sylvia's -negative solicitude, but his mother's active indifference. Between them -both they had done it to him. - -And he never felt so to the full his dispossession as in thinking of -Robert. He had always intensely feared and admired Robert. He did not -know what he feared, for Robert was never unkind. But Robert was -everything that he was not: tall and gay and competent, and possessing -everything needful, from the very beginning, for the perfect fulfilment -of his type. The difference between them had been far more than the ten -years that had made of Robert a man when he was still only a little boy. -There had been, after all, a time when they had been a very big and a -very little boy together, with Austin in between; yet the link had -seemed always to break down after Austin. Robert, in this retrospect, -had always the air of strolling away from him--for Robert, too, was a -stroller. Not that he himself had had the air of pursuit; he had never, -he felt sure, from the earliest age, lacked tact; tact and reticence and -self-effacement had been bred into him. But his relationship with Robert -had seemed always to consist in standing there, hiding ruefulness, and -gazing at Robert's strolling back. - -The difference from Austin had perhaps been as great, but it had never -hurt so much, for Austin, though with his share of the Follett charm, -had never had the charm of Robert. A clear-voiced and clear-eyed, -masterful boy, Austin's main contact with others was in doing things -with them, and that sort of contact did not mean congeniality. Austin -had made use of him; had let him hold his ferrets and field for him at -cricket; and a person whom you found useful did not, for the time being, -bore you. - -But he had bored Robert always--that was apparent; and beautiful -Griselda, who was older than either of them, and Amy, who was younger. -Griselda had gazed rather sadly over his head; and Amy had smiled and -teased him so that he had seldom ventured on a remark in her presence. -Even fat little Sylvia, the baby, had always preferred any of the others -to him as she grew up; had only not been bored because, while she was -good-humoured, she was also rather dull. And at the bottom of his -heart, rueful always, sore, and still patiently surprised, he knew that, -while he found them all a little brutal, he could not admire them the -less because of it. It was part of the Follett inheritance to be able to -be brutal, unconsciously, and therefore with no loss of bloom. - -And now, at last, he was not to bore them any longer; at last, he was -not to be forgotten. How could he not be happy,--it brought back every -blissful thrill of boyhood, his father's smile, the daffodil woods in -spring, heightened to ecstasy,--when he had at last made of himself one -of the Folletts who were remembered? He would have his place in the -history beside the Follett who fell at Naseby. No family but is glad of -a V.C. in its annals. They could no longer stroll away. They would be -proud of him; he had done something for all the Folletts forever. - - -II - -The nice young nurse came in. She closed the door gently, and, with her -smile, calm before accustomed death, and always, as it were, a little -proud of him,--that was because they were both English,--she took his -wrist and felt his pulse, holding her watch in the other hand, and asked -him, presently, how he felt. Only after that did she say, contemplating -him for a moment,--Marmaduke wondered how many hours--or was it perhaps -days?--she was giving him to live,-- - -"A gentleman has come to see you. You may see him if you like. But I've -told him that he is only to stay for half an hour." - -The blood flowed up to Marmaduke's forehead. He felt it beating hard in -his neck and behind his ears, and his heart thumped down there under the -neatly drawn bed-clothes. - -"A gentleman? What's his name?" - -Was it Robert? - -"Here is his card," said the nurse. - -She drew it from her pocket and gave it to him. It couldn't have been -Robert, of course. Robert would only have had to come up. Yet he was -dizzy with the disappointment. It was as if he saw Robert strolling away -for the last time. He would never see Robert again. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe was the name. The address was a London club that -Marmaduke placed at once as second-rate, and "The Beeches, Arlington -Road," in a London suburb. On the card was written in a neat scholarly -hand: "May I see you? We are friends." - -It was difficult for a moment to feel anything but the receding tide of -his hope. The next thing that came was a sense of dislike for Mr. Guy -Thorpe and for the words that he had written. Friends? By what right -since he did not know his name? - -"Is he a soldier?" he asked. "How did he come? I don't know him." - -"You needn't see him unless you want to," said the nurse. "No; he's not -a soldier. An elderly man. He's driving a motor for the French Wounded -Emergency Fund, and came on from the Alliance because he heard that you -were here. Perhaps he's some old family friend. He spoke as if he were." - -Marmaduke smiled a little. "That's hardly likely. But I'll see him, yes; -since he came for that." - -When she had gone, he lay looking again at the blue bands across the -window. A flock of sea-gulls flew past--proud, swift, and leisurely, -glittering in the sun. They seemed to embody the splendour and -exultation of his thoughts, and, when they had disappeared, he was -sorry, almost desolate. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe. He took up the card again in his feeble hand and looked -at it. And now, dimly, it seemed to remind him of something. - -Steps approached along the passage, the nurse's light footfall and the -heavier, careful tread of a man. An oddly polite, almost a deprecating -tread. He had gone about a great many hospitals and was cautious not to -disturb wounded men. Yet Marmaduke felt again that he did not like Mr. -Guy Thorpe, and, as they came in, he was conscious of feeling a little -frightened. - -There was nothing to frighten one in Mr. Thorpe's appearance. He was a -tall, thin, ageing man, travel-worn, in civilian clothes, with a dingy -Red-Cross badge on the sleeve of his waterproof overcoat. Baldish and -apparently near-sighted, he seemed to blink towards the bed, and, as if -with motoring in the wind, his eyelids were moist and reddened. He sat -down, murmuring some words of thanks to the nurse. - -A very insignificant man, for all his height and his big forehead. -Altogether of The Beeches, Arlington Road. Had he turned grey, he might -have looked less shabby, but dark thin locks still clustered above his -high crown and behind his long-lobed ears. His eyes were dark, his -moustache drooped, and he had a small, straight nose. Marmaduke saw that -he was the sort of man who, in youth, might have been considered very -handsome. He looked like a seedy poet and some sort of minor civil -servant mingled, the civil servant having got the better of the poet. -Marmaduke also imagined that he would have a large family and a harassed -but ambitious wife, with a genteel accent--a wife a little below -himself. His tie was of a dull red silk. Marmaduke did not like him. - -Mr. Thorpe glanced round, as if cautiously, to see if the nurse had -closed the door, and then, it was really as if more cautiously still, -looked at Marmaduke, slightly moving back his chair. - -"I'm very grateful to you, very grateful indeed," he said in a low -voice, "for seeing me." - -"You've come a long way," said Marmaduke. - -"Yes. A long way. I had heard of your being here. I hoped to get here. I -felt that I must see you. We are all proud of you; more proud than I can -say." - -He looked down now at the motoring-cap he held, and Marmaduke became -aware that the reddened eyes were still more suffused and that the mouth -under the drooping moustache twitched and trembled. He could think of -nothing to say, except to murmur something about being very glad--though -he didn't want to say that; and he supposed, to account for Mr. Thorpe's -emotion, that he must be a moving sight, lying there, wasted, bandaged, -and dying. - -"You don't remember my name, I suppose," said Mr. Thorpe after a moment, -in which he frankly got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. - -"No, I'm afraid I don't," said Marmaduke very politely. He was glad to -say this. It was the sort of thing he did want to say. - -"Yet I know yours very, very well," said Mr. Thorpe, with a curious -watery smile. "I lived at Channerley once. I was tutor there for some -time--to Robert, your brother, and Griselda. Yes," Mr. Thorpe nodded, "I -know the Folletts well; and Channerley, the dear old place." - -Now the dim something in memory pressed forward, almost with a physical -advance, and revealed itself as sundry words scratched on the schoolroom -window-panes and sundry succinct drawings in battered old Greek and -Latin grammars. Robert had always been very clever at drawing, catching -with equal facility and accuracy the swiftness of a galloping horse and -the absurdities of a human profile. What returned to Marmaduke now, and -as clearly as if he had the fly-leaf before him, was a tiny thumb-nail -sketch of such a galloping horse unseating a lank, crouching figure, of -whom the main indications were the angles of acute uncertainty taken by -the knees and elbows; and a more elaborate portrait, dashed and dotted -as if with a ruthless boyish grin--such an erect and melancholy head it -was, so dark the tossed-back locks, so classical the nose and -unclassical the moustache, and a brooding eye indicated in a triangular -sweep of shadow. Beneath was written in Robert's clear, boyish hand, -"Mr. Guy Thorpe, Poet, Philosopher, and Friend. Vale." Even the date -flashed before him, 1880; and with it--strange, inappropriate -association--the daffodils running out upon the lawn, as no doubt he had -seen them as he leaned from the schoolroom window, with the Greek -grammar under his elbow on the sill. - -So that was it. Mr. Guy Thorpe, placed, explained, disposed of--poor -dear! He felt suddenly quite kindly towards him, quite touched by his -act of loyalty to the old allegiance in coming; and flattered, -too,--yes, even by Mr. Thorpe,--that he should be recognized as a -Follett who had done something for the name; and smiling very -benevolently upon him, he said:-- - -"Oh, of course; I remember perfectly now--your name, and drawings of you -in old schoolbooks, you know. All tutors and governesses get those -tributes from their pupils, don't they? But I myself couldn't remember, -could I? for it was before I was born that you were at Channerley." - -There was a moment of silence after this, and in it Marmaduke felt that -Mr. Thorpe did not like being so placed. He had no doubt imagined that -there would be less ambiguous tributes, and that his old pupils would -have talked of him to the younger generation. - -And something of this chagrin certainly came out in his next words as, -nodding and looking round at the daffodils, he said:-- - -"Yes, yes. Quite true. No, of course you couldn't yourself remember. I -was more though, I think I may fairly say, than the usual tutor or -governess. I came, rather, at Sir Robert's instance."--Sir Robert was -Marmaduke's father.--"We had met, made friends, at Oxford; his former -tutor there was an uncle of mine, and Sir Robert, in my undergraduate -days, used to visit him sometimes. He was very keen on getting me to -come. Young Robert wanted something of a firm hand. I was the friend -rather than the mere man of books in the family." - -"Poet, Philosopher and Friend"--Marmaduke had it almost on his lips, and -almost with a laugh, his benevolence deepened for poor Mr. Thorpe, so -self-revealed, so entirely Robert's portrait of him. Amusing to think -that even the quite immature first-rate can so relegate the third. But -perhaps it was a little unfair to call poor Mr. Thorpe third. The -Folletts would not be likely to choose a third-rate man for a tutor; -second was kinder, and truer. He had, obviously, come down in the world. - -"I see. It's natural I never heard, though: there's such a chasm between -the elders and the youngers in a big family, isn't there?" he said. -"Griselda is twelve years older than I am, and Robert ten, you remember. -She was married by the time I began my Greek. You never came back to -Channerley, did you? I hope things have gone well with you since those -days?" - -He questioned, wanting to be very kind; wanting to give something of the -genial impression of his father smiling, with his "And how goes the -world with you to-day?" But he saw that, while Mr. Thorpe's evident -emotion deepened, it was with a sense of present grief as well as of -retrospective pathos. - -"No; I never came,--that is--. No; I passed by: I never came to stay. I -went abroad; I travelled, with a pupil, for some years before my -marriage." Grief and confusion were oddly mingled in his drooping face. -"And after that--life had changed too much. My dear old friend Sir -Robert had died. I could not have faced it all. No, no; when some -chapters are read, it is better to close the book; better to close the -book. But I have never forgotten Channerley, nor the Folletts of -Channerley; that will always remain for me the golden page; the page," -said Mr. Thorpe, glancing round again at the daffodils, "of friendship, -of youth, of daffodils in springtime. I saw you there," he added -suddenly, "once, when you were a very little lad. I saw you. I was -passing by; bicycling; no time to stop. You remember the high road -skirts the woods to the north. I came and looked over the wall; and -there you were--in your holland pinafore and white socks--digging up the -daffodils and putting them into your little red-and-yellow cart. A -beautiful spring morning. The woods full of sunshine. You wouldn't -remember." - -But he did remember--perfectly. Not having been seen; but the day; the -woods; the daffodils. He had dug them up to plant in his own little -garden, down below. He had always been stupid with his garden; had -always failed where the other succeeded. And he had wanted to be sure of -daffodils. And they had all laughed at him for wanting the wild -daffodils like that for himself, and for going to get them in the wood. -And why had Mr. Thorpe looked over the wall and not come in? He hated to -think that he had been watched on that spring morning--hated it. And, -curiously, that sense of fear with which he had heard the approaching -footsteps returned to him. It frightened him that Mr. Thorpe had watched -him over the wall. - -His distaste and shrinking were perhaps apparent in his face, for it was -with a change of tone and hastiness of utterance, as though hurrying -away from something, that Mr. Thorpe went on:-- - -"You see,--it's been my romance, always, Channerley--and all of you. -I've always followed your lives--always--from a distance--known what you -were up to. I've made excuses to myself--in the days when I used to go a -good deal about the country--to pass by Channerley and just have a -glimpse of you. And when I heard that you had done this noble -deed,--when I heard what you had done for England, for Channerley, for -us all,--I felt I had to come and see you. You must forgive me if I seem -a mere intruder. I can't seem that to myself. I've cared too much. And -what I came for, really, was to thank you,--to thank you, my dear -boy,--and to tell you that because of you, life must be nobler, always, -for all of us." - -His words had effaced the silly, groping fear. It was indeed, since his -colonel's visit, the first congratulation he had had from the outer -world. The nurses, of course, had congratulated him, and the surgeons; -but no one who knew him outside; the kindly telegrams from Robert and -Sylvia did not count as congratulations. And in a way poor Mr. Thorpe -did know him, and though it was only from him, it had its sweetness. He -felt himself flush as he answered, "That's very kind of you." - -"Oh, no!" said Mr. Thorpe, shaking his head and swinging his -foot--Marmaduke knew that from the queer movement of his body as he sat -with very tightly folded arms. "Not kind! That's not the word--from us -to you! Not the word at all!" - -"I'm very happy, as you may imagine," said Marmaduke. And he was happy -again, and glad to share his happiness with poor Mr. Thorpe. "It makes -everything worth while, doesn't it, to have brought it off at all?" - -"Everything, everything--it would; it would, to you. So heroes feel," -said Mr. Thorpe. "To give your life for England. I know it all--in every -detail. Yes, you are happy in dying that England may live. Brave boy! -Splendid boy!" - -Now he was weeping. He had out his handkerchief and his shoulders -shook. It made Marmaduke want to cry, too, and he wondered confusedly if -the nurse would soon come back. Had not the half hour passed? - -"Really--it's too good of you. You mustn't, you know; you mustn't," he -murmured, while the word, "boy--boy," repeated, made tangled images in -his mind, and he saw himself in the white socks and with the little -red-and-yellow cart, and then as he had been the other day, leading his -men, his revolver in his hand and the bullets flying about him. "And I'm -not a boy," he said; "I'm thirty-four; absurdly old to be only a second -lieutenant. And there are so many of us. Why,"--the thought came -fantastically, but he seized it, because Mr. Thorpe was crying so and he -must seize something,--"we're as common as daffodils!" - -"Ah! not for me! not for me!" Mr. Thorpe gulped quickly. Something had -given way in him--as if the word "daffodils" had pressed a spring. He -was sobbing aloud, and he had fallen on his knees by the bed and put up -his hand for Marmaduke's. "I cannot keep it from you! Not at this last -hour! Not when you are leaving me forever!--My son! My brave son! I am -your father, Marmaduke! I am your father, my dear, dear boy!" - - -III - -It was the stillest room. The two calm bands of blue crossed the window. -In the sunlight the gulls came flying back. Marmaduke looked out at -them. Were they the same sea-gulls or another flock? Then quietly he -closed his eyes. Stillness--calm. But something else was rising to him -from them. Darkness; darkness; a darkness worse than death. Oh! death -was sweet compared to this. Compared to this all his life had been -sweet; and something far dearer than life was being taken from him. He -only knew the terrible confusion of his whole nature. - -He opened his eyes again with an instinct of escape. There were the -bands of blue, and, still passing in their multitudes, leaving him -forever, the proud, exultant sea-gulls. The man still knelt beside him. -He heard his own voice come:-- - -"What do you mean?" - -"I never meant to tell you! I never meant to tell you!" a moan answered -him. "But--seeing you lying there!--dying!--my son!--who has given his -life for England!--And how I have longed for you all these years!--My -romance, Marmaduke--How could I be silent? Forgive me! Forgive me, my -boy. Yes, mine. My known children are dear to me, but how far dearer the -unknown son, seen only by stealth, in snatched glimpses! It is true, -Marmaduke, true. We were lovers. She loved me. Do not ask. Do not -question. We were young. She was very beautiful. It was springtime; -daffodils were in the woods. She said that she had never known any one -like me. She said that her life was hollow, meaningless. I opened doors -to her, I read to her. Browning--I read Browning," he muttered on, "in -the woods; among the daffodils. It was a new life to her--and to me. And -we were swept away. Don't blame us, Marmaduke. If there was wrong, there -was great beauty--then. Only then; for after, she was cruel--very cruel. -She turned from me; she crushed and tore my heart. Oh!--I have -suffered! But no one knew. No one ever dreamed of it. Only she and I. -My God!--I see her in your hair and eyes!" - -It was true. It was absolutely true. Through his whole being he felt its -inevitability. Everything was clear, with a strange, black, infernal -clearness. His life lay open before him, open from beginning to end: -that beginning of tawdry sentiment and shame--with daffodils; and this -end, with daffodils again, and again with tawdry sentiment and shame. - -He was not a Follett. He had no part in the Folletts. He had no part in -Channerley. He was an interloper, a thief. He was the son of this -wretched man, in whose very grief he could detect the satisfaction--oh, -who more fitted to detect such satisfaction!--of his claim upon a status -above his own. He was all that he had always most despised, a -second-rate, a third-rate little creature; the anxious, civil, shrinking -Marmalade of Cauldwell's office. Why (as the hideous moments led him on, -point by point, his old lucidity, sharpened to a needle fineness, seemed -to etch the truth in lines of fire upon the blackness), hadn't he always -been a pitiful little snob? Wasn't it of the essence of a snob to -over-value the things one hadn't and to fear the things one was? It -hadn't been other people, it had been himself, what he really was, of -whom he had always been afraid. He saw himself reduced to the heretofore -unrecognized, yet always operative, element in his own nature--a timid, -watchful humility. - -Oh, Channerley! Channerley! The wail rose in his heart and it filled the -world. Oh, his woods, his daffodils, his father's smile--gone--lost -forever! Worse than that--smirched, withered, desecrated! - -A hideous gibbering of laughter seemed to rise around him, and pointing -fingers. Amy's eyes passed with another malice in their mockery; and -Robert would never turn to him now, and Griselda would never look at -him. He saw it all, as they would never see it. He was not one of them, -and they had always felt it; and oh,--above all,--he had always felt it. -And now, quite close it seemed, softly rustling, falsely smiling, moved -his loathsome mother: not only as he remembered her in youth, but in her -elegant middle years, as he had last seen her, with hard eyes and alien -lips and air of brittle, untouched exquisiteness. - -Suddenly fury so mounted in him that he saw himself rising in bed, -rending his dressings, to seize the kneeling man by the throat and -throttle him. He could see his fingers sinking in on either side among -the clustered hair, and hear himself say, "How dare you! How dare you! -You hound! You snivelling, sneaking hound! You look for pity from me, do -you!--and tenderness! Well, take this, this! Everything, everything I am -and have that's worth being and having, I owe to them. I've hated you -and all you mean, always--yes, your fear and your caution and your -admiration and your great high forehead. Oh, I see it! I see it!--it's -my own! And though I am only that in myself, then take it from me that I -hate myself along with you and curse myself with you!" - -It came to him that he was slowly panting, and that after the fever-fury -an icy chill crept over him. And a slow, cold smile came with it, and he -saw Jephson, the wit of the office, wagging his head and saying, "Little -Marmalade take a man by the throat! Ask me another!" - -No; little Marmalade might win the V.C.; but only when he thought he was -a Follett. Was that what it all came to, really? Something broke and -stopped in his mind. - -He heard his father's voice. How long ago it had all happened. He had -known for years, hadn't he, that this was his father? - -"Marmaduke! Mr. Follett! What have I done? Shall I call somebody? Oh, -forgive me!" - -His father was standing now beside him and bending over him. He looked -up at him and shook his head. He did not want any one to come. - -"Oh, what have I done?" the man repeated. - -"I was dying anyway, you know," he heard himself say. - -What a pitiful face it was, this weary, loosened, futureless old face -above him! What a frightened face! What long years of slow disgarnishing -lay behind it: youth, romance, high hopes, all dropped away. He had come -to-day with their last vestiges, still the sentimental, romancing fool, -self-centred and craving; but nothing of that was left. He was beaten, -at last, down into the very ground. It was a haggard, humiliated, -frightened face, and miserable. As he himself had been. But not even -death lay before this face. For how many years must it go on sinking -down until the earth covered it? Marmaduke seemed to understand all -about him, as well as if he had been himself. - -"Sit down," he said. He heard that his voice was gentle, though he was -not aware of feeling anything, only of understanding. "I was rather -upset. No; I don't want any one. Of course I forgive you. Don't bother -about it, I beg." - -His father sat down, keeping his swollen eyes on the motoring-cap -which, unseeingly, he turned and turned in his hands. - -"Tell me about yourself a little," said Marmaduke, with slow, spaced -breaths. "Where do you live? How? Are you fairly happy?" - -He knew that he was not happy; but he might, like most people with whom -life had not succeeded, often imagine himself so, and Marmaduke wanted -to help him, if possible, to imagine it. - -"I live near London. I used to do a good deal of University Extension -lecturing. I've a clerkship in the Education Office now." Mr. Thorpe -spoke in a dead obedient voice. "A small salary, not much hope of -advance; and I've a large family. It's rather up-hill, of course. But -I've good children; clever children. My eldest boy's at Oxford; he took -a scholarship at Westminster; and my eldest girl's at Girton. The second -girl, Winnie, has a very marked gift for painting; she is our artist; -we're going to send her to the Slade next year when she leaves the High -School. Good children. I've nothing to complain of." - -"So you're fairly happy?" Marmaduke repeated. Oddly, he felt himself -comforted in hearing about the good and happy children, in hearing about -Winnie, her father's favourite. - -"Happy? Well, just now, with this terrible war, one can't be that, can -one? It is a great adventure for me, however, this work of mine, -motoring about France. I don't think I've ever done anything I cared so -much about since--for years," said Mr. Thorpe. "It's a beautiful -country, isn't it? and the soldiers are such splendid fellows! One gets -a lot out of it. But happy? No, I don't suppose I am. I'm pretty much of -a failure, and I started life with great imaginings about myself. One -doesn't get over that sort of disappointment; one never really gets over -it in a way." Mr. Thorpe was looking at him now, and it was as if there -were a kindliness between them. "Things have been rather grey and -disagreeable on the whole," he said. - -"They can be very grey and disagreeable, can't they?" said Marmaduke, -closing his eyes. - -He was very tired, and as he lay there quietly, having nothing further -to know or to suffer, having reached the very limits of conscious -dissolution, something else began to come to him. It seemed born of the -abolition of self and of the acceptance of the fact that he was dead to -all that had given life worth or beauty. It would have been very good to -be a Follett; though, he saw it now, he had over-prized that special -sort of goodness--with so much else from which he had been, as really, -shut out; but he was not a Follett; nor was he merely this poor, -insignificant father. He did not quite make out in what the difference -lay and he did not rejoice in it, for there was no rejoicing left in -him. But, even if the difference were only an acquired instinct (dimly, -the terms of his complacent readings in biology and sociology returned -to him), even if it were only that, not anything inherent and -transmissible, it was, all the same, his own possession; something that -he and the Folletts had made together; so that it was as true to say -that he had won the V.C. as to say that they had. The lessened self that -was left to him had still its worth. To see the truth, even if it undid -you, was worthy; to see so unwaveringly that it was good to be a Follett -even when you weren't one, had the elements of magnanimity; and to -accept the fact of being second-rate proved, did it not?--if you still -cared to prove it; he felt himself smile as gently at the relinquished -self as he had smiled at his father,--that you were not merely -second-rate. - -There was now a sound of stumbling movement; doors opening and shutting; -nurses, surgeons in the room; and his father's face, far away, against -the blue bands, looking at him, still so frightened and so miserable -that he tried again to smile at him and to say, "It's all right. Quite -all right." - -At all events he had been decent to the poor old fellow. His thoughts -came brokenly, but he was still seeing something, finding something; it -was like a soft light growing. At all events, he had behaved as a -Follett would wish to behave even when brought to such a pass. No--but -it wasn't quite that, either; it was something new. He had behaved as -any one decent should wish to behave. And the daffodils glimmering to -his vision seemed to light him further still. "We are as common as -daffodils," came back to him. Daffodils were for everybody. Foolish -little boy who, on the distant spring morning in the woods of -Channerley, dug them up to take them to his own garden! - -He was there among them with his little red-and-yellow cart, and the -thrush was singing high above him, in the rosy topmost branches of an -elm. - -Beautiful woods. Beautiful flowers of light and chivalry. How the -sunshine streamed among them! - -"Dear Channerley," he thought. For again he seemed to belong there. - -Gentle hands were tending him and, as he turned his cheek on the -pillow, it was with the comfort--almost that of the little boy at -Channerley being tucked up in the warm nursery to go to sleep--of -knowing that he was dying, and that, in spite of everything, he had -given something to the name. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PANSIES - - -I - -"OF course it is a horrid little garden, but one gets so fond of one's -own things, even when they are horrid," said Miss Edith Glover, with her -gentle deprecatory laugh. - -She stood with her friend at the door of the conservatory that led from -the sitting-room to the oblong plot of garden--a small, middle-aged -woman, with soft brown eyes, and hair the colour of a faded leaf; her -wasted throat and transparent temples and faint yet feverish flush -marking her already with menacing symptoms. - -The conservatory was of the sort that crops out irrelevantly at the back -of the many suburban houses, like glaucous fungi; but in Miss Glover's -little establishment, its shelves filled with neatly ranged boxes of -seedlings, with bundles of raffia, tidy baskets, and carefully garnered -labels, it was completely utilitarian, with never a fern or begonia to -recall its usual state. Miss Glover's house was suburban, or nearly so, -for though it stood in secure detachment from other villas on the -southern slopes of a small Surrey town, the town, on its northern side, -spread into ugly patches of red brick that devoured the woods and fields -and ran long tentacles almost up to London. Acacia Road was removed -from this peril of vitality, and its upper windows looked over pleasant -stretches of untouched hill and meadow. - -The Nook had been left to Miss Glover by an aunt five years ago, and to -her it was, from its porch before to its garden behind, a paradise pure -and simple, though she described her garden now, in showing it to -Florrie Lennard, so disparagingly. If she called it horrid, however, it -was only because, with her strong sense of other people's claims and -opinions, she recognized that to Florrie, accustomed to grand week-ends -at big country-places, it must, _qua_ garden, look very dim and meagre. -That it must also look, in its humility, very lovely, she took for -granted. - -Mrs. Lennard, however, standing with her on the conservatory step, her -robust silken arm protectingly and benevolently laid within hers, did -not contradict her, though her cheerful eyes roamed kindly over the -borders of pansies, the beds of mignonette, and the clumps of sweet peas -in the corners; but her kindness was for her friend rather than for the -garden, and she said, "You haven't had strength, I expect, for doing -more with it." - -"I've never had much strength," said Miss Glover. "It doesn't want much -hard work, luckily. The pansies go on from year to year and only need -dividing in the autumn, and then there are the bulbs, of course, in -spring; I have crocuses and daffodils and narcissi and some beautiful -tulips. The rest I do with penny packets. All those sweet peas and all -that mignonette came from two penny packets." - -"You can't expect much for a penny, can you?" said Mrs. Lennard with -her rather jovial air; and now she stepped down onto the narrow strip of -lawn that had a bird-bath sunken in the middle and a rose-bush at each -corner, of the kind now seldom seen, known as Prince Charlie or Maiden's -Blush--dark and small of foliage, with flat flowers that would be snowy -were they not tinged with a cold pink. They always made Miss Glover -think of an old Scotch ballad. Their flowering season was over, now, -however. The old Pyrus japonica that grew against the wall was also, -long since, over, though its fresh, vigorous green embossed the dull -bricks; but on the wall opposite, a Madame Alfred Carriere was throwing -out a second blooming, dreamy, melancholy and romantic as only she could -be. Madame Alfred Carriere made Miss Glover think of a Chopin waltz, and -she hoped that Florrie might at all events remark favourably on her -abundance. But Florrie hardly glanced at her. Pausing, as they paced the -lawn, to look with tolerant interest at the bird-bath, she observed, - -"I've just been staying with the Isaacsons in Hertfordshire. Such a -lovely place. They've a broad sanded walk leading from the house to the -rose-garden, as long as--well, to the end of this road, and it's arched -with roses all the way, a regular roof of roses, the latest climbers; I -never saw such a sight. And their herbaceous border, even now, is a -blaze of colour. I wish you could see it. It would do you good. It did -_me_ good, I know. I told Mrs. Isaacson I always feel a better woman -after a week-end in her garden. Flowers mean so much to me. I can't get -on without them. I run down to the Isaacsons whenever, as I say to her, -I need an aesthetic cocktail. Of course they've half a dozen gardeners -working from dawn till dewy eve. You can do pretty much what you want in -the way of gardens when you're as rich as the Isaacsons. What it must -have cost them to make that sunken rose-garden!--all flagged between the -beds, with a sun-dial, and a fountain in the middle and bowers of roses -all about. They terraced the lawns, too, with flights of stone steps -leading down one from the other, and great white stone vases on the -pilasters simply foaming over, my dear, with pink geraniums. Against the -blue sky it's dazzling. - -"Such nice people they are, too, the Isaacsons. Di, the eldest girl, is -marrying Lord Haymouth next week, you know. People says it's a _mariage -de convenance_, of course, for she's to have L50,000 and he's without -the proverbial penny. But I happen to know it's a love match: love at -first sight; a regular _coup de foudre_. I was with the Isaacsons at -Ascot this spring when they met, and I saw in a moment that Di's fate -was sealed. Do you remember the big photo of Di in court dress on the -piano in the flat? No? Well, I should have thought it couldn't have -escaped notice. Such a splendid young creature; dark, proud, glowing -beauty. I think, when they're young, there's nothing to beat a beautiful -Jewess. She has a gorgeous voice, too, Di; could have made her fortune -in grand opera. I've given her a gold cigarette-case with her monogram -in diamonds and rubies. It nearly broke me; but they've always been -simply sweet to me. She's very fond of smoking. Smokes too much, her -mother and I tell her, though I'm afraid _I'm_ not a very good example -to set before the young!" - -Mrs. Lennard's face, while she thus spoke, expressed her contentment -with the Isaacsons, with herself, the cigarette-case, and life in -general. It was large and ruddy and masterful, with aquiline nose and -small, jocund mouth creasing to the chin in a deep line that spoke of -good nature and ingenuous sensuality; the full throat supported by a -high lace collar, well boned up behind the ears; the prominent blue eyes -at once bland and beaming. She was tall, of a fine presence, her -handsome bosom thickly decorated with turquoise ornaments, her shoes of -glittering patent leather; and from her wrist dangled a purse of fringed -and woven gold--an offering to her from the proprietor of the lady's -paper that, for many years, she had edited with so much _flair_ and -ability. - -She had made a very good thing of her life, had Mrs. Lennard; and, -nearing the fifties as she was, she had amassed a small but secure -income and a large number of affluent friends; friends always engaged in -vigorous and costly pursuits that involved many rich toilettes, meals to -the sound of orchestras in sumptuous restaurants and constant motoring -from place to place. Among such friends poor Edie Glover had not -counted. She and Mrs. Lennard had been schoolmates in early days when -their fortunes, one as the daughter of a poor parson and one of a poor -doctor, were equally unpromising. But Florrie had married an ambitious -young journalist, typified always, in Miss Glover's memory, from her one -rather dazed and shrinking impression of him, by extraordinarily smart -mustard-coloured spats and the weighty and imposing seal ring on his -finger; and, though early widowed, Florrie had followed along the paths -where he had set her feet with an energy and shrewdness that he could -not have bettered. - -Meanwhile, poor Edie--for so Mrs. Lennard always thought of -her--struggled through many years of waning youth to make her living, -and support her mother, as a music-teacher in London. Mrs. Lennard, even -when the tides of her own fortune ran low, never lost sight of her. She -had always been the kindest of friends, sowing the Glovers' dun-coloured -days with "complimentary" theatre or concert tickets and asking them -frequently to tea with her at her club. Even after Edie, now alone in -the world, had retired to Acacia Road and left youth and London behind -her, Mrs. Lennard, who had the air of fully possessing both, kept -constantly in touch. She had never before managed, it was true, but for -one half hour as she motored by on a winter's day, to visit Acacia Road; -but it was to her flat in Victoria Street that Miss Glover always came -when called to London by mild necessities or pleasures. Florrie insisted -on it; and though, in some ways, Miss Glover would have preferred the -house of her cousin in Bayswater,--overflowing with children as it was, -and offering only the tiniest of back bedrooms on the top floor,--or the -villa of a school-mistress friend at Golder's Green, it had always been -impossible to resist Florrie's determined benevolence. - -"Nonsense, my dear Edie," she would say. "Your cousin can't want you. -You'll only be in the way, with those dozens of children. And as for -Golder's Green, what can you see of London from Golder's Green?" -(Florrie overlooked the fact that for forty-odd years Miss Glover had -done nothing but "see" London.) "You'll be worn out with tubes and -motor-buses if you go to Golder's Green. Whereas with me you are ten -minutes from everywhere, be it dentist or dressmaker or concert, and -your bedroom's waiting for you--Muriel Lestrange left me only last -Monday; and you can't make me believe you'd not rather have your bath in -my lovely porcelain tub, with steaming hot water day and night, than in -one of those awful, antediluvian, blistered monsters, that fold you up -like a jack-knife--and the tin of tepid water hauled up four flights by -a slavey. I know my London, my dear, through _and_ through, and any -pleasure here depends upon how you start your day; upon your bath and -your breakfast. I can't offer much, but I can offer both of those, A -number one." - -So she could. Miss Glover could not deny it, though loyally and -unheededly murmuring that the villa at Golder's Green had also its -bathroom. It couldn't, however, compare with Florrie's, all snowy tiles -and glittering taps and ranged jars and bottles of salts and scents. -Florrie's bathroom seemed to her always to be the very centre and symbol -of Florrie's life--modern, invigorating, rejuvenating, at once -utilitarian and decorative. It was a sort of brilliant magician's cave -from which all the rest radiated: the compact yet so sumptuous little -drawing-room with its baby-grand and its palm, its silver-framed -photographs, frilled cretonnes, and rose-coloured carpet; the -dining-room, even more compact, yet, in its sobriety, as -sumptuous--where the breakfasts always, in spite of familiarity, broke -upon Miss Glover as revelations of what coffee and rolls and kidneys and -bacon could be in the way of strength and heat and crispness; even the -pink silk quilt beneath which she crept at night, and the little maid -who brought her early tea, looking, in her fluted caps and aprons, as -though she belonged to a theatrical troupe--all seemed emanations of -that magic centre where Florrie lay of a morning in hot, scented water -and read the paper and smoked a cigarette before emerging armed and -panoplied for the avocations and gaieties of the day. - -Yet it was not so much Florrie's bathroom and breakfasts, or even -Florrie's kindness, that overbore her protests as Florrie's -determination, her way of knowing so much better than you yourself could -know what was not only good, but happy for you. There was never an -answer to be found to her; and though Florrie's flat, with all its -sumptuousness, dazed and even tired Miss Glover a little, just as dear -Florrie herself sometimes dazed and tired her, she found herself -installed there always, feeling her own pursuits, her little -tea-parties, her concerts, her timid, bewildered shopping, to be very -humdrum and inappropriate as issuing from such a base of operations. The -only return she was able to make was to emboss Florrie's sheets and -towels and table-linen with beautifully embroidered monograms, and she -had always a slight and pleasant sense of being, at all events, a -country mouse who had contributed its little offering of grain or honey -when she recognized these trophies of her craft on her bed and on the -table and in the bathroom. - -But the last time she had gone up that summer, only, now, three weeks -ago, she had found herself suddenly of a significance almost as great as -that of any of Florrie's brilliant friends. To become significant to -Florrie one had either to be brilliant or piteous, and she was piteous. -Florrie had gone with her to the doctor's, and it was Florrie, kind -Florrie, an arm about her shoulders and a breast spread to her tired -head, who had broken to her the verdict. - -She was menaced, gravely menaced.--Yes; it did not surprise her--she had -thought it might be that. She had seen her father and two sisters die of -it--And unless she could go away and spend a year in a Swiss open-air -cure, the doctor didn't think she'd live through the winter. - -Seated on Florrie's frilled sofa, while Florrie, all encompassing tact -and urgency, passed on the verdict, it was not of it that she first -thought. Her mind, perhaps in an instinctive recoil, fixed itself upon -the oddly insistent impression of pinkness that she was aware, suddenly, -of receiving. Florrie's blouse, under her cheek, was a bright blur of -pink; and when she turned her eyes away from that they met, everywhere, -garlands of roses looped with knots of blue ribbon on a background of -white and pink stripes. Too much pink: this was the absurdly irrelevant -criticism that, dimly, but as if culminatingly, emerged. She must have -felt it as too pink for many years, but only now was she aware of it. -And then, with a sense of refuge, came the vision of her pansies: those -borders of white and purple pansies under the dull brick wall that she -had looked at so fondly that morning before starting for her journey. -But she would have to leave her pansies, then; not only for a season; -perhaps forever. - -It was in this form and in this roundabout way that the thought of death -became real to her; with pathos rather than poignancy and with yearning -regret rather than fear. She did not feel afraid of dying. Her quiet -little faith that, though so still, was deep enough for all her needs, -had sunken wells of wordless security in her. She was not afraid; but -the thought of leaving her flowers, her garden, the skyey view from her -bedroom window, symbolized for her all the sadness of death. There was, -indeed, nothing else to regret much. Every one she had loved most dearly -was gone; and when all was said and done, and in spite of the peace of -the last five years, she was a battered, tired little creature, with few -of the springs of desire left in her. Her life, as she looked back on -it, seemed to have been spent, for the most part, in crowded buses on -wet evenings, with not enough lunch behind and not enough dinner before -her; in those, and in going up and down steps of strangers' houses. -There had been, of course, more than that; she had never, except when -her dearest young sister died, been very unhappy, and there had been -interests and alleviations always--beautiful evening walks across the -Park and relaxations over tea with a book before the fire in her -lodging-house sitting-room; but the past, when she called it up in an -image, seemed always to crumple into that jolting, rattling, wet, and -crowded omnibus. So there was not much strength now left in her for -resistance or regret; but she would do her best to live, and that really -meant that she would do her best not yet to leave her garden. - -When she was older, too old to dig a little, divide the pansies in -autumn and sow the penny packets in spring, too old to care for the -Madame Alfred Carriere or the Pyrus japonica, would be time enough to -go. But in coming back to it that evening, she knew how deeply, how -tenaciously she loved her garden. It was the only thing she had ever -owned in her life, the only thing she had ever made: her work and -creation; its roots seemed to go down into her heart; and she could not -feel that in heaven there would be old white roses and white and purple -pansies and mignonette and sweet peas that one had sown one's self from -penny packets. - - -II - -At first, when Florrie told her, the verdict had seemed unescapable. She -had said, after the little silence in which she received it,--the -silence in which much had happened to her,--she had said, in a very -quiet voice that had surprised herself, "I'm afraid it's no good, then, -Florrie dear. I can't afford to go away." - -Aunt Kate had left her only the house and its contents. She had saved -only the tiniest sum herself--just enough to yield an income that paid -for her food and light and coal. To pay for Jane, her good old servant, -to pay for her clothes and washing, to pay for the trips to London and -the crumpets and cakes that she gave her friends at tea in Acacia Road, -she had still to depend upon the pupils that, fortunately, she had found -in the small Surrey town. On three afternoons a week she sallied forth, -peacefully indeed, with no sense of anxiety or pressure, and made her -way to the houses of the doctor, the rector, the big London -manufacturer, and instructed their young daughters in the excellent -Munich method that she had imbibed in youth. With these delightfully -convenient strings to her bow she could manage perfectly. But to give -them up and to pay for an open-air cure in Switzerland was outside the -bounds of her possibilities. - -So she explained, in the quiet voice, to Florrie; and it was then that -Florrie, revealing herself as a more wonderfully kind friend than even -in Miss Glover's grateful eyes she had always been, said, the tears -suddenly hopping down her cheeks and making dark spots on the pink silk -blouse,-- - -"Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Edie! What do a few pounds more or less -matter at a time like this? You _shall_ go! It's a question of life or -death. Now, not a word, my dear, and listen to me. _I'll_ send you. -It'll be the proudest day of my life that sees you off. What's all my -good luck worth to me if I can't give a friend a helping hand when she -needs it? I can sell out some investments. I've more than enough, and -I'll soon fill my stocking again. And you shall go as soon as we can get -you ready; and first class, my dear, all the way, boat _and_ train. -Don't I know the difference it makes--and getting off to sleep on the -way? Jane shall go with you to take care of you--oh, yes, she shall!--I -won't hear of your going alone; and you'll come back next spring a sound -woman. - -"I know all about those Swiss open-air cures," Florrie rushed on. -"They're magical. Poor Lady Forestalls was at death's door three years -ago--there she is--over there on the piano--that tall, regal-looking -woman with the Pekinese: worse than you she was, by far. And she went to -Switzerland and came back in six months' time, cured; absolutely cured. -Never a touch of it since. She does everything and goes everywhere. And -such scenery, my dear, such flowers! You'll revel in it. And Julia -Forestalls told me that the people were so interesting. She made a -number of friends--Italian, German, Russian. You shall take my -tea-basket, my dear. Jane can carry it easily. It's a gem; everything -complete and so convenient. It makes simply all the difference on a -journey if you can get a steaming hot cup of tea at any time you like, -day _or_ night. I saved Cora Clement's life with my tea-basket in -Venice; she says so herself. She got chilled to the bone on the lagoons. -Over there on the writing-bureau she is; American. Not a beauty, but -_jolie laide_, and dresses exquisitely--as you can see. She's always -taken for a French-woman." - -Miss Glover, even more than usual, felt to-day that dear Florrie dazed -and bewildered her a little; but the mere fact that Florrie's tears had -dried so soon, that she could, so soon, be telling her about Lady -Forestalls and Cora Clement, was encouraging. Miss Glover felt that her -case was evidently but one among many to which Florrie had seen the -happiest endings--a comparatively unalarming affair; entirely -unalarming, though exceedingly engrossing, Florrie's tone and demeanour -indicated, when taken in hand by such as she. - -And how she took it in hand! There was no use protesting against -anything. As always, Florrie made her feel that she knew better than she -herself could what was good for her. It was all arranged before they -parted that day, and Florrie had further smoothed her path by declaring -that nothing would suit her better, if Edie really felt fussed about the -money, than to take The Nook during her absence. "The very thing I -need," said Florrie. "I've been thinking for some time that I must have -a little place near London to run down to for week-ends. And you've that -duck of a spare-room, too, I remember, where I can put up a friend; and -it's so near town that people can motor down and have tea with me of an -afternoon. My dear, nothing could be more providential." - -During the three weeks that followed, Florrie, in London, shopped for -her, decided on the clothes she would need and the conveniences that she -must take; and interesting parcels arrived at The Nook every morning. It -was strange and exciting to be made much of, strange and exciting to be -on a journey; she had not been out of England since that stay, in -girlhood, in Munich; and in spite of the shadow hanging over her, the -sense of haste lest she be overtaken, she felt the days of preparation -as almost happy ones. Jane, it was true, was rather gloomy about -everything, but even beneath her sombre demeanour Miss Glover felt sure -that she, too, was touched by the sense of adventure, for Jane had never -been out of England at all. - -And now the boxes were all packed and Miss Glover's dressing-case stood -open, half filled, in her bedroom, waiting only for her sponge bag and -pin-tray and brush and comb to be added next morning, when she and Jane -and Florrie were to go up together to Victoria, and Florrie was to see -them off; and while Jane prepared her most festive tea, Miss Glover had -been showing Florrie all over her new domain on that August afternoon -when she had spoken of her garden as horrid. Florrie, in answer to her -shy request that she might, perhaps, if it wasn't too much bother, sow -some mignonette and sweet peas for her next spring, had answered with -reassuring decision, "To be sure I will, my dear. I'll take care of -everything and have it all waiting for you spick and span when you get -back." And then Jane's gong had summoned them in, and it had been -reassuring, too, to see how benignant were the glances that Florrie cast -about the little sitting-room while she stirred her tea and commended -Jane's cakes. "Beeswax and turpentine for all the furniture once a week. -_I_ know. And dusted every morning without fail." - -Yes, it was safe in Florrie's competent hands, dear little room. In her -heart of hearts, though she had no faintest flicker of criticism or -comparison except for that one strangely painful memory of the rush of -pinkness,--Miss Glover very much preferred her own room, shabby and -simple as it was, to Florrie's; just as, though so well aware of the -relative insignificance of her garden, she knew that she would prefer it -to the Isaacsons', with its arches of roses and its geraniums in white -stone vases. She liked quiet, soft, gentle things; the ever-so-faded -ancient chintzes on her aunt's chairs and sofa, showing here and there a -ghostly bird of paradise or a knot of nearly obliterated flowers, her -aunt's absurd, faded, old-fashioned carpet,--fortunately faded!--and her -grandmother's Lowestoft cups ranged above the mantelpiece. Everything -was in its place; her knitting-basket between her chair and the -fireplace; her beaded footstool before the best armchair, where Florrie -sat; the little table, with a bowl of white and purple pansies on it, -where lay the daily paper and the two books from the circulating -library. All were dear to her; all spoke of continuity with the past, of -long association, of quiet, small, peaceful activities; and as she -looked about she knew that her heart would have sunk a little at the -thought of leaving them, had it not been for Florrie's sustaining -presence. - -Florrie, while her second cup of tea was being made, drew forth and laid -beside the tea-tray, with an air of infinite sagacity, the coupons for -the reserved seats in the first-class carriage. "_I'll_ keep my eyes on -those," said Florrie. It was almost as if they had been tickets for some -brilliant entertainment--as if, Miss Glover felt, she and Jane were -going to be taken to the opera rather than to Switzerland. It was owing -to Florrie that she had almost come to feel that Switzerland _was_ the -opera. - -But that night, when they had gone upstairs and the house was still, the -sense of adventure deserted her. Sitting in her dressing-gown before her -mirror while, with hands that tired so easily, she brushed and braided -her hair, she felt, suddenly, very middle-aged, very lonely, ill, and -almost frightened. The look of her gaping dressing-case, as she glanced -round at it, was frightening, as was the emptiness of the mantelpiece, -from which the family photographs had all been taken to be packed, -together with the Bible and prayer-book from the table near her bed. It -was a room already deserted. It looked as it might look if she had died. -What, indeed, in spite of Florrie's good cheer, if she were to die out -there, alone, away from everything and every one she knew? And, with a -curious impulse, rising to go and close the gaping dressing-case, she -realized that she had not said good-bye to anything. The morning had all -been spent in packing--in that and in preparations for Florrie's -arrival; and all the afternoon Florrie had been with her, and she was to -be with her till her departure to-morrow. She would not again be alone -in her little house; she would not again be alone in her garden. The -thought of her pansies came with a pang of reproach; it was as if she -had forgotten them, like children sent to bed without a good-night kiss. - -She drew her curtain and looked out. Yes; there they were. The moon was -shining brightly and the white pansies lay below like pools of milk upon -the ground. She looked at them for some moments, while the soft -fragrance of the night mounted to her and seemed with gently -supplicating hands to draw her forth; and then, cautiously--for Florrie -slept across the way--but with decision, she put on her heavy cloak over -her dressing-gown, wrapped a shawl about her head and shoulders, and -stole downstairs. - -The drawing-room was very dark; she felt her way swiftly through it past -the familiar objects, and the conservatory door opened on a flood of -silvery light. She saw the high, shining disk of the moon, and the great -black poplar tree that grew in the neighbouring garden seemed vast -against the sky. As she stepped out, she made herself think of Diamond -in "At the Back of the North Wind." It was like stepping into a -fairy-tale; only something more sweet and solemn than a fairy-tale, as -that book was; something, for all its beauty, a little awful. But when -she looked down from the moon, the sky, the poplar, there was only -sweetness. The fragrance that had solicited her seemed now to welcome -her, to clasp and caress her. The pansies were all looking up at her. On -the wall Madame Alfred Carriere was more beautiful than she had ever -before seen her, her pale flowers and buds making a constellation -against the darkness. - -She walked round the path, looking at it all, so glad that she had -come, smiling--a child in fairyland, or a spirit arrived in Paradise and -finding it strange yet familiar--as Paradise should be. Perhaps, she -thought, dying would be like that: a stepping out from the darkness into -something vast and solemn that would slowly gather about one into -well-known and transfigured shapes, into white pansies growing thickly -at one's feet. She stooped in the moonlight and passed her hands over -their upturned faces. They were flowers entranced, neither sleeping nor -awake; and she felt, as her fingers touched their soft, dewy petals, as -if their dreams with their whiteness flowed into her. To leave them was -like leaving her very self, yet the parting now was all peace and -innocent acquiescence, like them, and she was still smiling as she -whispered to them, "Good-bye, darlings." - - -III - -SWITZERLAND was like the opera, and for her first months there Miss -Glover felt as if she watched it from a box--very much at the back and -looking past many heads at the vast display. Everything that Florrie had -said was true: the scenery was more magnificent than she could have -imagined, oppressively more, and the people, again oppressively, more -interesting. They were, these people, engaged all of them in trying to -keep alive, and, when they failed in that, in dying, dying under one's -eyes from day to day; and in the publicity of such occupations there was -something as abnormal as was the size of the mountains. Some of these -people she came to know a little--those, usually, who had given up: the -dear little Russian girl who, alas, died in December; the sulky, -affectionate French boy; and the large yet wasted German singer who made -Miss Glover think of a splendid fruit keeping still its shell of form -and colour while eaten away inside by wasps. Frauelein Schmidt liked to -have her play Schubert and Schumann songs to her, and still tried to -sing attainable passages here and there in a queer, booming, hollow -voice that made Miss Glover, again, think of the wasps imprisoned and -buzzing. But most of the people remained parts of the spectacle to her. -They engaged, when they were well enough, in winter sports; they talked -together of books she had never heard of, and of things she had never -thought of; and often, moreover, she could not understand what they -said, as her languages did not extend beyond rather simple French and -German, and Dante with a dictionary. - -The only other English person there was a young man who made her think -of the Prince Charlie roses; he was sombre and delicate and beautiful -and did not talk to anybody, sitting apart and reading all day long. -Miss Glover wondered a good deal about him, and watched him sometimes -from her place on the snow-sifted balcony when they lay there encased in -fur bags and buttressed with hot-water bottles. His name was Lord Ninian -Carstairs; and that was like the roses, too. - -Once, when they were alone on the balcony, their recumbent chairs near -one another, he lifted his eyes suddenly and found hers fixed upon him, -and perhaps their wistful and ingenuous absorption touched him, for, -flushing faintly,--he was a shy young man,--he asked if she were feeling -better. - -She said she couldn't quite tell. It was difficult to tell what one -felt, didn't he find? Everything was so different; so exciting in a way; -and when one was excited one felt, perhaps, better than one was. - -Lord Ninian laughed shortly at that, and said that he didn't feel -excited; he wished he could. - -"I'm depressed, too, sometimes," said Miss Glover; and then he sighed. - -"One gets so abominably homesick in this hole," he said. - -She had never thought of such splendour as being, possibly, to anybody, -a hole; but she knew what it was to feel homesick. They smiled at each -other when they met after that, she and Lord Ninian, and he lent her -magazines and books. When she heard that he had died,--she had not seen -him for a week and had feared for him,--she felt very, very sad and her -thoughts turned in great longing to Acacia Road and to her garden. - -She wanted very much to live to see her garden again; but she could not -help being frightened lest she should not; for, as the winter wore on, -it became evident to her, and all the more because every one else was so -carefully unaware of it, that one of the things that Florrie had -predicted was not to come true. She was not to return cured. She was not -going to get better. At first the slow burning of fever had seemed only -part of the excitement, but she could not go on thinking it that when it -began to leave her breathless, trembling, faint. By the time that the -miracle of the Alpine flower-meadows was revealed to her and she had -watched the snow recede and the jonquils and anemones advance, she knew -that if she wished to die at home she must soon go. They would not -consent to that at once. They said that the spring months were full of -magic, and she was persuaded to stay on. They were magically beautiful -and she was glad to see them, but she longed more and more to see her -little garden. She dreamed sometimes of her pansies at night, and it -seemed to her once that as she stooped in the moonlight and touched them -she was cured; the fever fell from her; a cool white peace flowed into -her veins; and when she looked up from them, the night was gone and the -sun was rising over her Surrey hills. - -At the beginning of June they consented that she should go. They did not -tell her the truth, of course. They said that she might pass the summer -in England, since she wished so much to return there, and that she must -come back for next winter; but she knew that if her state had not been -recognized as hopeless they would not have let her go. It was hopeless, -and she summoned all her strength and resolution, that she might live -until she reached Acacia Road. - - -IV - -FLORRIE met her at Victoria. Florrie did not know that it was hopeless, -though she knew that it was not as yet, a cure; but from the way that -she controlled her features to a determined joviality Miss Glover could -infer her shock, her grief, her consternation. The glance, too, that -Jane and Florrie exchanged was revealing, had she been in need of -revelations. - -After a night in Florrie's flat, however, she knew that she looked so -much better that poor Florrie, when she came to see her in the morning, -was quite erroneously cheered. "_You're_ all right," Florrie declared. -"The journey's knocked you about a bit; but once we get you down to -Surrey, Jane and I, you'll pick up in no time. After all, there's no -place like home, is there?" - -Miss Glover, from her pillows, smiled. She felt very fond of kind -Florrie and sorry for her that she must, so soon, suffer sadness on her -account. - -It was difficult, in the train, to listen to Florrie's talk. After her -fright of the day before, Florrie had cheered up so tremendously that -she talked even more than usual, of her friends, her enterprises, of how -she was going yachting that autumn with the Forestalls, and of how Di -Haymouth had just had a baby. - -"A splendid boy, and Mr. and Mrs. Isaacson are fairly off their heads -with pride and pleasure. Such a layette, my dear, you never saw! Real -lace through and through--and the cradle of a regular little prince! I -gave him a silver porringer for his christening; a lovely thing, all -heavy _repousse_ work with his initials on a shield at one side. Di say -it's the prettiest porringer she ever saw." - -It was difficult to listen to Florrie and to nod and smile at the right -moment when she was thinking of her garden and wondering if Florrie had -really remembered to sow the sweet peas and mignonette. Even if she -hadn't, the Madame Alfred Carriere and the Prince Charlie roses would be -out, and the last tulips, and the pansies, of course. And it was such a -beautiful day, just such a day as that she had risen to look at when, in -her dream, the pansies had cured her. - -The drive from the station up to Acacia Road was a short one. The dear, -foolish little porch was there, the bow-window, the laurel-bushes. Her -own home. As she saw it she felt such a lift of the heart that it seemed -to her, too, that she might be going to get better after all. Florrie -and Jane helped her out and she and Florrie went into the sitting-room. -She looked round it, smiling, while she felt her happy, fluttering -breaths like those of some wandering bird put back into its own dear -cage again, safe, secure, bewildered a little in its contentment. She -was like such a trivial little cage-bird; she was meant for Acacia Road, -and not for Swiss mountains. - -Everything was the same: even her knitting-basket stood waiting for her, -and all that caught her eye with their unfamiliarity were the flowers, -the profusion of flowers, standing in bowls and vases everywhere; -perhaps almost too many flowers,--that was like dear, exuberant -Florrie,--and all pink. - -"Oh--how lovely they are!" she said, finding the fluttering breath fail -her a little. "How dear of you, Florrie, to have it all arranged like -this!" - -"They look welcoming, don't they?" said Florrie, who laughed with some -excitement. "Will you rest, dear, or come into the garden?" - -"Oh, the garden, please. I'm not at all tired. I can rest later." - -Florrie still led her by the arm. They went into the conservatory and -there came to her then the strangest, dizziest sense of pink--everywhere -pink!--shining in at her through the sea-green glass, bursting in at her -through the open door. - -For a moment she thought that her mind was disordered, and looked up -with large, startled eyes at Florrie; but, beaming as she had never yet -seen her beam, all complacency and triumphant benevolence, Florrie -nodded, saying, "Now for your surprise, my dear. Now for your garden. -Just see what I've made of it to welcome you!" - -They stepped out. Pink. Pink everywhere, above, below, around one. The -paths were arched with swinging iron chains on which, already, the long -festoons advanced. The border, heaping itself up splendidly against the -wall, was splashed with white, yellow, blue and purple, a blaze of -colour indeed, but pink dominated, like the sound of trumpets in an -orchestra. It also made Miss Glover think, strangely, sickly, of the -sound of a gramophone. There was no lawn. The centre of the garden was -flagged, with a highly ornamental sun-dial in the middle and a white -garden seat and a wonderful white stone basin for the birds. There were -no Prince Charlie roses, no mignonette and sweet peas, there were no -pansies. Her garden had disappeared. - -"There!" said Florrie. - -She led her to the garden seat. From here Miss Glover, as she sank down -upon it, could see that the back of the house was also dappled with the -incessant colour. - -"Isn't it a marvel!" said Florrie. "I hardly dared hope they'd grow as -they have, but Dorothy Perkins is a winner, and these latest climbers -run her close. I spared nothing, my dear, nothing--manure, bone-meal, -labour. The men were working here for a week last autumn. All the old -soil was carted away and a rich loam put in three feet deep. I put them -in big. I knew I could get them to take if I took enough pains over it. -Those chains will be covered in another month. I knew it would do you -more good than any open-air cure to find such a garden waiting for you. -I'd defy anybody to have the blues in this garden! In its little way -it's just an epitome of joy, isn't it? It's done _me_ good, to begin -with! I've been having tea out here every day in my week-ends and every -one who's seen it and heard about my plan says I'm a regular old fairy -with a wand. Mrs. Isaacson motored down only last Saturday and thought -it was a perfect poem. And so it is, though I say it as shouldn't." - -Florrie had paused on the deepest breath of purest satisfaction, and the -time had come when Miss Glover must speak. She must find words to -express gratitude and astonishment. She must not burst into tears. She -felt that if she began to cry she would at once be very ill. She did not -want to be taken ill before dear, good, kind Florrie. And it was, of -course, a beautiful garden; far more beautiful than hers had ever been, -no doubt; yet it hurt her so--to find her garden gone--that she heard -her voice come in gasps as she said, "Dear Florrie--you are a wonderful -friend--you are indeed.--I can never thank you enough. It's a miracle." - -Florrie patted her shoulder--she had her arm around her shoulders. "My -best thanks will be to see you happy in it, Edie dear, and getting well -and strong again in it. It's a regular surprise-packet, this garden, let -me tell you, my dear. It'll go on, that border, right up till November, -one thing after another: I thought it all out, pencil and paper and -catalogue in hand. I went over the whole colour-scheme with Mrs. -Isaacson--there's no one who knows more about it. And since most of the -herbaceous things came from her garden, it didn't cost as much as you'd -think. They've always heaps of plants left over when they divide in -autumn, and everything was at my disposal; and all the latest varieties, -as I needn't say. Wait till you see the lilies--yes, my dear, I've found -room for everything; where there's a will there's a way is my motto, you -know--and the phloxes and the chrysanthemums." - -She would never see them, though she was sure that they would all be -very beautiful; she would never see these latest varieties from Mrs. -Isaacson's garden. And she would never see her own little garden again. -How wonderfully fortunate it was--the thought went through her mind -confusedly as she sat there, feeling herself droop against Florrie's -shoulder--that she was not to live with Florrie's and to go on missing -her own garden. How fortunate--but her thoughts swam more and more and -tears dazed her eyes--that she had not to say good-bye twice to her -pansies. She had died, then, really,--that was it,--on the moonlight -night when she had last seen them. And she had left the house to -Florrie, dear kind Florrie, and Florrie would go on having tea happily -under the festoons of roses. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PINK FOXGLOVES - - -THEY were only beginning to revert. Last summer they had stood, spires -of fretted snow tapering at the points to jade-coloured buds, at the -edge of the little copse where the garden path lost itself among young -larches, birches, hazels, and poplars, black and white. The sun set -behind the copse, spreading in the summer evenings a pale gold -background, and often when he went to look at his foxgloves and to -listen to the lonely song of the willow-wren, rippling, like a tiny rill -of water, from the heart of the wood, Aubrey Westmacott had felt that -there was something almost dangerous in such bliss as this. To breathe -this limpid air, to hear the willow-wren, to look at white foxgloves, -and to know himself free forever from the long oppression of London--if -he could have sung his wistful gratitude, his melancholy joy, the song -might have been like the bird's. - -This year the change in the foxgloves had come as a complete surprise; -he was still a novice at gardening. He had left his beloved garden for a -week; regretfully, for he could not bear to lose a day of it--he was -like a lover with a bride, long pined for, who each day grows dearer and -lovelier; but he had gone, because it seemed churlish to refuse the old -don friend at Cambridge--and when he returned, at evening, and had -walked down to the copse and had seen them standing there, so delicately -yet so decisively altered, the shock of the surprise had seemed all -delight. He had intended white foxgloves to rise, always, against the -copse; but then he had not known how lovely pink foxgloves could be. He -had never seen them of such a shade, each bell of palest rose brimmed -with shadows of mauve, and finely freaked within. Regiments of the white -flowers had remained steadfast, so that there could be no sense of loss, -and he had picked an armful of the pink ones and carried them back to -the house, feeling, as he looked at them against his shoulder, that he -would have liked to kiss them. He spent the remaining hours of dusk in -arranging them. He never allowed the parlourmaid to arrange the flowers. -That she saw him, tolerantly, if with a flavour of irony, as a very -eccentric gentleman, he was aware, just as he was aware, quite -cheerfully, that many of his kind neighbours found him a rather absurd -one. But one of the deepest joys this new life afforded him, after the -paternal bliss of seeing the darlings grow, was in disposing them about -the rooms, with a loving discrimination that Ridley's skilled but cold -and conventional hands could never have accomplished. - -This evening he put the foxgloves in the drawing-room, a tall jar on the -bureau, a taller jar on the piano, and a group in the vast white Chinese -bowl, wedged cunningly into place with stones among the stems. Here he -could look at them next morning as he worked at his history. He always -worked in the drawing-room, for there he had the morning sun, and, if -he could not see his massed and tiered herbaceous border, could look out -at the cherry tree and at the tiny squares of terraced lawns, dropping -from level to level, with their stone steps and low stone walls and -narrow jewelled bordering of flowers. - -There was a very nice little study behind the dining-room--it was from -the dining-room that one saw the herbaceous border, and he could -meditate future rearrangements and harmonies while he ate his -breakfast--but the study looked out on the stable shrubberies. He liked, -too, to feel himself encompassed by his treasures, old and new, while he -wrote of mediaeval customs; his mother's incompetent but loveable -water-colours, sketches of her old home, the grey, ancient, gabled house -among just such Cotswold slopes and uplands as his western windows -looked out upon, though his mother's old home, passed long since to -alien hands, lay on the other side of the county; and his father's -seafaring trophies, from China and Japan and far Pacific islands, and -all the lately acquired delightful solidities of Jacobean oak, and his -maturest choice in printed linen. Here, on their background of mullioned -window or dark wainscoting--such a gem of a little Jacobean house it -was--the pink foxgloves greeted him next morning, set among feathery -heads and sharp green spears of meadow grass, glimmering and poised on -tiptoe, like groups of softly blushing nymphs, and he stood for a long -time looking at them, his hands clasped behind his back. - -He was forty-six, a fragile little man, blanched and stooping from the -long years of imprisonment in the Government office, from which the -undreamed-of inheritance had released him only three years ago, with -faded gold hair hanging across his forehead and a gentle face of stifled -dreams, the mouth slightly puckering as if in intentness on some task. -The eyes, of a dim yet dense pastel blue that told darkly in his faded -face, were intent, too, but not acute; they dwelt; they did not -penetrate. He wore a small, short moustache, and a pair of gold -_pince-nez_ dangled at his coat button. - -Delicate as he had always been, and ineffectual, as he had always so -dejectedly been aware of being, he, too, with all his relatives, had -thought it very fortunate when, on leaving the university, he had -secured the tiny post in the Civil Service. There, he knew, he would -stay; he was not of the type that rises, and he had never during the -long years that followed rebelled consciously against his fate. He was, -he often told himself reproachfully, so very fortunate compared with men -far abler and more deserving than himself. He found that he could not -write, as he had hoped to do, after the conscientious hours at the -office. He read a great deal, and crept away to the country for every -week-end, sitting by meadow or river, like a dusty mouse let loose from -its trap and softly panting in the sunlight. He was often ill, and the -doctors always recommended a country life, but it was not on hygienic -grounds that he pined for limpid spaces and starry solitudes. There was -a soft passion in his blood, inherited from the mother whom he so much -resembled, for the sights and sounds and occupations of rurality. He -adored flowers. He often dreamed of them at night, and in waking hours -the thought of a garden of his own haunted him. Sometimes he went to -stay with friends in their gardens; but this was an ambiguous joy; it -was like seeing the pink and white babies playing about their nurses and -perambulators in the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens, and having no -claim to kiss any of them. He loved children, too. - -And now he found himself transplanted to this wonderful fairy tale by -Uncle Percy's legacy. He still, often, could hardly realize it. There -was a haze of dizzy delight over all the memory of the last three years; -the search for a house, the securing of Meadows, the furnishing and -ordering of his household--he who had lived in rooms in Kensington for -twenty-four years, ruled over by a flawlessly honest but relentless -landlady! To think that he could have other fish for breakfast than -finnan haddock, and other vegetables in winter than cabbage! This was a -minor but an emphatic pleasure. - -But above all, around all, the garden! He had planned and planted it -all, studying books, brooding over catalogues, making lists, writing -labels ever so neatly. The vegetables were given over to the gardener; -but his flowers, except for deep trenching--and oh, how deep, how rich, -he saw to it that it was! he tended single-handed. His seed-boxes, his -cold-frames, his tools and baskets, how he adored them all, and how -happy he was in any small personal economies, so that extravagance in -manure and bone-meal and leaf-mould should be well justified. The -history of mediaeval customs was also a long-cherished ideal, but it -remained of secondary interest; his heart, always, was in the garden, -meditating mulchings, waterings, or hoeings. Every dream had come true, -had more than realized itself. Was it any wonder that he should feel -himself going softly in his amazed gratitude, should sometimes, as when -he listened to the willow-wren at evening, feel that such happiness was -dangerous. - -It had not seemed to flaw the happiness, it had seemed but to add a -sweeter undertone to it, melancholy yet blissful, that into the new -Paradise there should have stolen a new longing, and that, as of old, he -should find himself haunted by an unattainable loveliness. He thought of -this as he looked at the pink foxgloves, for they made him think of the -face of Leila Pickering. "Yes, yes, yes," he said to himself, as he -turned to the mediaeval history, for he had the habit, caught from his -long loneliness, of speaking much to himself and with a quaint -repetition of words that stole into his social speech, "it is she they -are like; she they are like. Lovely, lovely, like her." - -Later in the morning, privileged as she was to interrupt even the -history, it was Mrs. Pomfrey who informed him that the strange, delicate -beauty was transitory, an unfixed type, and that, next year, or in a -very few years, the palely rosy nymphs would be purple. - -"They'll revert. You can get pink ones, you know, from the seedsmen; -rosy carmine they call it; but not at all this colour. I've never seen a -colour quite like this. Your soil must do it. I've always thought the -soil of Meadows had magic in it." - -Mrs. Pomfrey was the late rector's widow, and lived in a thicket of -roses half a mile away in the village. She was tall, black-robed, -majestic, and melancholy, with a deep voice and black eyes and a high, -hooked nose and large false teeth that shifted slightly and slightly -clashed together when she spoke. She had survived all emotions except -the grief of having to grow her roses on a clayless soil, and to this -grief she often returned. A girlhood friend of Aubrey Westmacott's -mother, she had been his link with Windbury. His week-ends with her -there had been the very comets of his dark London sky, and for years he -had seen Meadows inadequately tenanted, with an eye of brooding love. - -"Oh! they'll revert to purple, then," he said, somewhat distressed; and -he repeated "purple, purple," several times, as if to familiarize -himself with the sound and very sight of it, while Mrs. Pomfrey answered -him, "Give 'em time and they'll all revert. You must dig 'em up and sow -again from year to year if you want to keep 'em pure." - -"Not that I don't care very much for the purple ones," said Aubrey; -"they are most beautiful flowers, most beautiful; but it's wild in -woods, that I like best to see them. It will be a business to replant; -dear me! It took me a day of hard work to establish my white ones in -that haphazard-looking little colony down there." - -"Gardening is all hard work," said Mrs. Pomfrey, "and all -disappointment, for the most part, too. It's only the things you didn't -expect to succeed that ever do, and any effect you particularly count on -is pretty sure to fail you." She tempered her grimness by a slight, -bleak smile, however, for she and Aubrey Westmacott understood each -other and had the gardener's soul, for which no work is too hard and no -disappointments too many. - -"It will be very wonderful to have the intervals of pink to look forward -to, though," Aubrey found the atonement. "They are singularly lovely, -aren't they? Will you think me very silly, now, I wonder, or sillier -than you always think me?" - -"I don't think you silly, my dear Aubrey," Mrs. Pomfrey interposed, -"only guileless; you are very guileless; I've thought that ever since -you were taken in by that dreadful cook of yours, who had red hair, and -got drunk and rubbed the whitebait through a sieve." - -"Well," Aubrey continued, smiling his gentle, tentative smile, "my -foxgloves, at all events, can't take me in, and since they are so very -unusual and so lovely I thought I'd ask a few people in to-day to see -them. The Carews, you know, and Barton, and Mrs. and Miss Pickering. And -you--if you can come. I'll put it off till to-morrow, if that will -secure you, only the foxgloves may not be quite so lovely by then." - -"I will come with pleasure, my dear Aubrey," said Mrs. Pomfrey, "and -though nobody will appreciate your foxgloves as you do, we shall all -enjoy your tea." - -"Miss Pickering cares very much for flowers, you know, very much. We've -talked a great deal about flowers," said Aubrey, swinging his eyeglass -and nodding as he looked at his old friend. - -"Does she? She doesn't know much about 'em though." - -"No; all those years in India, and in towns. She has lived so much in -towns. Such an inappropriate life it seems for such an exquisite -creature." - -"Does it?" said Mrs. Pomfrey. She added after a moment, as if with -concession, "She is a very pretty girl." - -Aubrey Westmacott was not acute. "Isn't she?" he said eagerly. "A -beautiful and noble and lovely head, isn't it? like a flower; she is -altogether like a flower, with her slenderness and height. Do you know," -he went on, swinging his glasses more quickly, while he kept his -ingenuous eyes on his friend, "can you guess the flower she makes me -think of? In that pale pink dress, that pink dress she wore the other -day at the rectory garden party, and with that white hat lined with -pink. Can you guess?" His eyes overflowed with their suggestion. - -Mrs. Pomfrey moved hers from his face to the foxgloves. "Like those, I -suppose you mean." - -"_Isn't_ she?" he repeated. "Now, isn't it quite remarkable? You see it, -too." - -"Yes; I see it," said Mrs. Pomfrey. She studied the flowers and again, -after a deliberating pause, went on, "Do you think Mrs. Pickering is -like purple foxgloves?" - -Aubrey's eyeglass tumbled from his hand. He was astonished, almost -indignant. "Mrs. Pickering?" - -"She looks like her daughter," said Mrs. Pomfrey; "as much like her, -that is, as a purple foxglove looks like a pink one." - -"I can imagine nothing more unlike a flower than Mrs. Pickering," said -Aubrey, with gathered repudiation. - -"No; certainly; she's not at all like a flower. She's more like a -sparrow--something sharp and commonplace and civic. I only intended an -analogy, for she must have been a very pretty girl." - -"Nothing could be less sharp or commonplace or civic than Miss -Pickering." Aubrey was now deeply flushed. - -"Oh, of course not, my dear Aubrey; she is very unusual looking," Mrs. -Pomfrey again conceded. "And she is tall and her mother is short. Old -Colonel Pickering, too, was tall, I remember. I saw him once or twice -when they were living at Cheltenham the year before he died! a bleached, -dull, oppressed old man, a much better type than the wife; she ruled -him, I heard, with a rod of iron. One may be sure that she doesn't rule -Miss Leila. She is a young lady with a will of her own, unless I am much -mistaken in her." - -"A will of her own; yes, yes"--Aubrey eagerly, pathetically to Mrs. -Pomfrey's ear, gathered up the ambiguous fragments--"and great firmness -of will; great decision of character; and the serenity, you know, the -sweet dignity that go with it, that so often go with it. You have -noticed her serenity, her dignity. And she is very silent--a great -contrast to her mother. I often wonder what brought them here. It's very -fortunate for all of us; but Mrs. Pickering is, as you say, so civic, -yes, so commonplace, that I don't understand what she can find in this -quiet place to please her. She certainly doesn't care about her garden. -Those beds about The Cottage are very distressing; they distress Miss -Pickering." - -"It's quite clear to me why they came," said Mrs. Pomfrey. "They can't -afford London, and, I suppose, know nobody there if they could; and -there is more chance of a pretty girl like Miss Leila marrying well here -than there is in Cheltenham. She doesn't hunt, it's true; but the -hunting makes a difference, and there is a good deal going on in one -way and another. Mrs. Pickering hoped to capture Arthur Barton; she made -that very evident. But he has never looked at another woman since his -wife died, and never will, I imagine; at all events, he didn't look at -Miss Leila." - -Aubrey's eyes, dwelling on her, expressed reprobation and almost horror. -"She tried to marry her daughter to Barton! That lovely child and -Barton! What a terrible woman!" - -"Miss Pickering must be a good twenty-five, my dear Aubrey, and I was -married at eighteen. No; I don't like Mrs. Pickering, but I can see -nothing reprehensible in her determination to settle her daughter well -in life." - -"But Barton! He is fifty! He must be fifty! He must be older than I am; -yes, very considerably older than I am." - -"Well?" said Mrs. Pomfrey, and there was a mingled reluctance and -grimness in her smile, "and do you think of yourself as unmarriageable?" - -He ran his hand several times over his head and through his hair. He was -still flushed, but suddenly he became pale, swallowing quickly several -times. - -"Do you know--you have said something--you have made me think -something--put something before me. Yes; I must tell you, I must tell -you," he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and fixing his eyes -on the wall above Mrs. Pomfrey's head. "I love her; I love Miss -Pickering. You may think it absurd. I know I'm a dull old bachelor; -everything of that sort; but there it is. Ever since I saw her, a year -ago, when they first came. I never dreamed of anything else. A dull old -bachelor, nothing to offer, and twice her age. But I can't help -wondering--it's only a wonder--whether there might just be a chance for -me--if you don't think my age, and all that, makes it impossible. What I -mean," Aubrey finished, with a sort of quiet desperation, "is--could she -love me? It would have to be love with a girl like Miss Pickering. Am I -a man that a girl like that could love?" - -Tears now were in his eyes as he brought them back to Mrs. Pomfrey's, -and seated upon the sofa, the pink foxgloves in the Chinese bowl beside -her, she looked back at him very gravely. She was so grave that for some -moments she was silent. Then, before speaking, she took out her -spectacles and polished them and put them on. She saw him quite well -without them. It was as if in emphasis of the gravity of the moment. -And, in the first place, she did not answer his question. - -"How much have you seen, my dear Aubrey, of this young lady?" she -enquired. - -He said, faltering, that he had seen a good deal of Miss Pickering -during this spring and summer. Mrs. Pickering had been very kind, had -asked him there quite often for tennis; and Miss Pickering had been far -more kind, for she had played with him and he was a wretched player, -though he was so fond of the game. "And we've had one or two little -walks. She came with me to the woods this spring and helped me to dig -anemone roots. Oh! I don't pretend it's anything at all; it's only, I -know, her kindness; I never thought it anything else. But--if you really -don't think me absurd for dreaming of it--?" He faltered to a long -gazing question. - -Mrs. Pomfrey now rose. She stood looking away from him, then moved -towards the door. "My dear Aubrey," she said, "I think of you what -anybody who knows you must think--that the woman who wins your love is -one of the most fortunate of women. Whether you are the kind of man that -a girl like Miss Pickering could love, I cannot say. I've really seen -very little of her. All that I know of her is that she is very pretty -and has nice quiet manners. If she marries you, she is, as I say, the -most fortunate of women." - -Mrs. Pomfrey stepped out into the little square, flagged hall. He -accompanied her to the garden gate, following her speechless, while, -lifting up her skirts, displaying large, flat-heeled shoes, she stepped -down from terrace to terrace. She paused at the last. - -"Your Alpine phlox is doing very nicely. You'll find that by next year -it will have spread to a foot across," she said. He had put in the -Alpine phlox the autumn before under her supervision. She added at the -gate, "By that time there may be a Mrs. Westmacott at Meadows." - -Pale, almost tearful, he pressed her hand over the gate. "I can't say -how I thank you," he murmured. - -After a little while he was able to compose his thoughts and write his -notes. Thompson took them round, and before lunch he had his answers. -They could all come, except Mr. Barton, the dapper, fussy, kindly, -pepper-and-salt little squire, who lived in the beautiful big house just -over the nearest hill; he had gone up to London for the day. - -Aubrey very much enjoyed giving little tea-parties at Meadows. In London -he had not enjoyed them at all. He had given them when duty required -it, and he had sometimes been very extravagant and had taken a couple of -young girl cousins, up for the season, to a restaurant and a play. But -he had never enjoyed these occasions. He was shy and a poor talker, and -in London the demands upon one's personality were too heavy to make his -entertaining a success. The demands upon one's personality in the -country were so small and so easily satisfied; a garden talked for one -and entertained for one. All his neighbours, except Mrs. Pickering, -whose formal beds did not count, had gardens and were profoundly -interested in them. The mild, middle-aged Carews were authorities, and -to-day he remembered, with all the pressure of his new preoccupations, -that he must question them about that matter of mulching. - -At four-thirty he saw two parasols approaching along his box hedges--one -was black and one was rose-colour; his heart stood still when he saw it. -She would be wearing, then, the dress that made her look more than ever -like a pink foxglove. He went down the terraces to greet mother and -daughter at the gate. - -Mrs. Pickering was short and stout and blonde, her slightly rapacious -features--small aquiline nose, small smiling mouth, and small projecting -chin--embedded and muffled, as it were, in powdery expanses of cheek and -throat. She had an unsmiling, steel-blue eye, appraising, determined, -deliberate, under its level bar of dark eyebrow. She did not please -Aubrey. Her voice in especial, metallic yet glossy, as if with a careful -veneer, disturbed him. A gossiping lady of the neighbourhood had -informed him that Mrs. Pickering's origins were quite lacking in -distinction and that in her handsome girlhood she had stalked the -stupid Colonel--of a quite good family--and had brought him down, -resistless, at the first shot. These stories, for which he had not liked -his informant the more, seemed to hover in Mrs. Pickering's glance and -smile, and her voice to preserve the flavour of many strategies and -triumphs. But Aubrey did not look for long at Mrs. Pickering. She -rustled in, dressed in her fashionable black and white, a long chain of -steel and brilliants crossing her buttressed bosom, a crest of plumes, -black and white, waving upon her head. - -Miss Pickering followed her mother. Tall, very tall, and poised with a -lovely grace, she was, but for the arresting darkness of brows and -lashes, fair; with the infantile fairness, the wild-rose tints, that to -the ingenuous male will always seem to vouch for a spiritual -exquisiteness to match. And she, too, had small, aquiline features, and -her hair was as golden as the heart of a wild rose. She did not smile, -like her mother; she was a serene young lady, and silent, as loveliness -should be. - -"This sweet place!" said Mrs. Pickering. "How charmingly you are -improving it, Mr. Westmacott; it looks prettier every time I see it." - -"It will take years before it looks as I mean it to look," said Aubrey, -leading them up the terraces. "That's the joy of gardening, isn't it? It -gives one something to plan for one's whole future." He smiled with a -slight appealingness at Miss Pickering. "I am afraid I make myself -rather foolish sometimes; I talk so much about my garden." - -"I don't wonder that you do," said Mrs. Pickering; "it's quite a little -Paradise." - -In the drawing-room it was Mrs. Pickering who continued to talk. She -renewed her laments over the water-colours. "To think that these -beautiful old places should get into the hands of common middle-class -people!"--Aubrey had again to assure her that the people who had bought -his mother's old home were very nice indeed.--And Mrs. Pickering said -that she doted upon his room, "So old-world, so peaceful!" and -expatiated on the view of the terraced lawns and further meadows from -the window. She made no comment on his foxgloves, and it seemed like a -presage of happiness when Miss Pickering, from her chair, remarked, -looking up at them, "How lovely your pink foxgloves are!" - -"You think so? You like them? Yes, yes, are they not lovely?" He was -delighted with her commendation. - -"It's such a pretty idea, putting them with the grasses," said Miss -Pickering. "I do like lots of flowers in a room." - -He did not have an opportunity of speaking with her alone till after -tea. Then, when they had all gone into the garden--how it happened he -did not know, for he would not have dared arrange it--he found himself -walking down the path towards the copse with Miss Pickering, while -behind them, quite far already behind them, Mrs. Pickering paused and -exclaimed over the herbaceous border, Mr. Carew beside her. Mrs. Carew -and Mrs. Pomfrey had sat down under the trees near the house. - -"Would you like to see the pink foxgloves growing?" he asked her. "They -are very beautiful growing--more beautiful, I think you'll feel, than in -the house." - -"I'd love to see them," said Miss Pickering. - -They crossed the slip of meadow among the tall grasses and, "There," -said Aubrey, pointing, with a faint smile, "there they are!" - -"_How_ sweet!" said Miss Pickering, with her serene emphasis. They stood -to look. - -"Do you know," said Aubrey, wondering at himself, but he felt upborne, -"that I find they look like you--the pink ones." - -"Really?" She smiled now, turning her calm, blue eyes upon him. "That's -very flattering." - -"No, no; not flattering; not at all flattering," said Aubrey. "Not at -all, not at all," he repeated under his breath. He could say no more -just then. They walked on, his heart in a flutter. - -"Have you ever heard a willow-wren, Miss Pickering?" he asked suddenly. - -"A willow-wren? I don't think so. I don't know much about birds." - -"It is usually singing in the wood at this hour. Would you care to come -and see if we can hear it?" - -"I'd love to. I wish you'd teach me all about birds," said Miss -Pickering. - -His heart was thumping now. They entered the copse. It seemed to him, as -they passed them, that the foxgloves were tall angels set about Paradise -and welcoming him there. It was very still among the trees. Miss -Pickering walked lightly beside him. She, too, looked like an angel. -They reached a clearing, where an old fallen log lay, and here they sat -down. "We shall hear it, I think," said Aubrey, "if we sit here -quietly." - -Presently, in the stillness, the little bird began to sing its song, the -descending chromatic chain of liquid notes, melancholy and happy; the -song of his very soul, Aubrey felt, and that the bird said for him all -that he could not say as, with head bent, he sat listening, the beloved -presence beside him. She was part of the song; and in it, as they -listened together, their very hearts were mingling. They knew each -other, he felt sure, very well. - -"How sweet!" she murmured, and he nodded, not able to look at her. - -There was a silence, and then the bird sang again. He raises his eyes to -hers now, and they turned to him and smiled. Her hand lay on the rough -bark of the log, and his was near it. Was it her hand that responded to -the unconscious appeal of his, or had he dared? He held it. That was the -bewildering, the transcending fact. - -"Oh, Miss Pickering! Miss Leila--Leila," he stammered. "May I tell you? -May I ask you? Can you care for me?" - -Her eyes still smiled, if very gravely. "Do you really love me?" she -murmured. - -"Oh, Leila!" he repeated. The willow-wren still sang, but all the little -chains of sound seemed to be woven into a mist about him, trembling, -shining. He held her hand to his lips. He wished to kneel before her. -This was Paradise. - -"It's so very sudden," said Leila Pickering. "I never dreamed you cared -till just now." - -"Ever since I saw you first--ever since I saw your eyes. It has been -like the fragrance of my flowers at evening, like the moon rising on my -flowers. I did not dare to hope--you so young, so lovely;--life before -you." - -"I think we can be very happy together," said Leila Pickering. "I knew -you were a dear from the first moment I saw you, too." - -The willow-wren stopped singing now and flew away. In the distance, -then, he heard the liquid, dropping notes, and they sounded very sad. -His arm was around Leila Pickering, and she leaned her head on his -shoulder, so that in an ecstasy of wonder he felt the warm brightness of -her hair against his cheek. He had never heard her talk so much. She -told him that she had had such a dull, horrid life, so poor, knowing -such tiresome, second-rate people. And she did not get on at all well -with her mother. - -"Nobody has ever really understood me--till you came," she said, sitting -upright now beside him, the lovely colour in her cheeks delicately -heightened, her eyes shining while she talked. She confided in him. She -loved him. They were betrothed--this was the blissful, culminating -thought that seemed to go in waves of music through him as he gazed at -her. He had ceased to hear the willow-wren's melancholy little song. And -then he heard her say: - -"I don't want to live in the country, you know. You won't mind? Of -course I love it; but we can pay week-end visits, always;--you must know -such heaps of nice people; friends. And we'll travel too--I long to see -the world. India doesn't count. Only think, I've never been to Paris -except once--on a horrid, cheap trip, for a week. We never could afford -to do anything really amusing or buy any really nice things. My life has -been so frightfully dull, and I do want to stretch my wings and see lots -of people and entertain and go to plays, you know. I adore London. I'm -sure I shall be a good hostess." - -It was as if a sword had transfixed him. He seemed to hear a great bell -booming--a great London bell--Big Ben; he had always heard Big Ben from -his office in Whitehall, and there had been a jangle of bells in -Kensington, too, and a roar, a ceaseless roar. And he seemed to hear the -words "Dangerous, dangerous." He had been too happy. - -He kept his mild, kind eyes of a pastel blue upon her, and he told -himself, while he wrestled, transfixed, that she must not guess; but, as -if pressed from his anguish, he heard himself murmuring helplessly, -though the gentle, fixed smile held his lips, "You don't care for my -little place, then? You wouldn't care to go on living at Meadows? It's a -nice little place, Meadows--a nice little place; we could make it very -pretty, and we could have people here, as many as you wanted." - -Had a note of pleading, almost desperate, crept in unawares? He saw her -calm eyes harden slightly, fixed on him. And he saw, then, tears rise in -them. - -"Oh! it's so dull, so dull, down here!" she breathed. "It's a darling -little place, Meadows--of course, of course I love it. I wish we could -afford to keep it, just to run down to for a quiet week-end now and -then; but you couldn't, could you? And it's far too small for -entertaining, isn't it? And no one really smart cares to come and stay -with one if one has no shooting, nothing to offer. One can really _live_ -in London--I've always felt that. You do care more for me than you do -for Meadows?" she finished with a smile, half appealing and half -challenging. - -And looking into the blue eyes, blurred and enlarged, like a child's, -with their tears, he saw himself as mean and petty and selfish. He loved -her, and was it only as another flower to place among his flowers, -another treasure to place among his treasures, a possession of his own, -without end or purpose for itself? He loved her, and, unimaginably, she -loved him and would marry him. Love must know pain and sacrifice--"pain -and sacrifice"--he seemed to hear himself repeating. This was a young -life, with its rights to life, and it must stretch its wings. - -He smiled at her and raised her hand again to his lips, saying, "Of -course I care more for you than for Meadows, dear Leila. Of course we -will live where you choose." - -And very radiant now, rising and smiling down upon him, Leila Pickering -said, "You _are_ a dear. I'm sure it's best for us both; we'd get so -pokey here. I know we couldn't afford Mayfair--I wouldn't dream of that; -but I think a house in one of those little new streets near Cadogan -Square would be just right for us; don't you?" - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CARNATIONS - - -I - -RUPERT WILSON came into the studio where his wife, who had been out -sketching all the morning, was washing her paint-brushes, carefully -turning and rubbing them in a pot of turpentine. She wore her painting -apron, for Marian in the midst of her artistic avocations was always -neat and spotless; and, half turned from him as she was, she did not -look round as he entered. Rupert carried his stick, a rustic, ashen -stick of which he was very fond, and his Panama hat; he was going out -and Marian probably knew that he was going out, and where; this made it -more difficult to say in a sufficiently disengaged voice, "I'm just -going down to see Mrs. Dallas for a little while." - -"Oh! are you?" said Marian. She continued to stir her brushes, and -though her wish, also, very evidently was to appear disengaged and -indifferent, she was not able to carry it out, for she added, as if -irrepressibly, "You need hardly have taken the trouble to come and tell -me that." - -Rupert looked at her, and since she did not look at him, it was very -intently, as if to measure to the full the difference between this -Marian and the Marian he had known and believed in. It was hard to -realize that his wife should show a trivial and unworthy jealousy and -should strike him such a blow; for that it was a blow he knew from the -heat in his cheek and the quickening of his pulse; but, as he looked at -her, standing there turned from him, her blue apron girt about her, her -black hair bound so gracefully around her head, the realization -uppermost in his mind was that Marian, since the second baby had come, -had grown very stout and matronly. He seemed to see it to-day for the -first time, as if his awareness of it came to emphasize his sudden -consciousness of her spiritual deficiency. - -When he had met and fallen so very deeply in love with Marian, she had -been, if not slender, yet of a supple and shapely form, with just -roundness and softness enough to contrast delightfully with her rather -boyish head, her air, clear, fresh, frank, of efficiency and swiftness. -He had, of course, found her a great deal more than clear and fresh and -frank; but, entangled as he had been in that wretched love-affair with -Aimee Pollard,--the pretty, untalented young actress who had so -shamefully misused him,--torn to pieces and sunken in quagmires as he -had been, these qualities in Marian had reached him first like a draught -of cold spring water, like dawn over valley hills. These were the -metaphors he had very soon used to her when she had applied her firm, -kind hands to the disentangling of his knots and her merry, steady mind -to tracing out for him the path of honourable retreat. He had found her -so wonderful and lovely and had fallen so much in love with her that his -ardour, aided by her quiet fidelity, had overborne all the opposition -of her people. Foolish, conventional people they were,--their opposition -based, it appeared, almost unimaginably to his generous young mind, on -the fact that Marian happened to have money and that he had none, except -what he might make by his books; and also, though it was nearly as -unimaginable, on the fact that a good many of these people were in the -peerage. Marian, a year before he had met her, had broken away from the -stereotyped routine of their country life and had come to London to -study painting; and it was that Marian of the past who had seemed to -share to the full all his idealisms. They had married within three -months of their meeting. - -From such a dawn, white, fresh, blissful, to this dull daylight! from -such a Marian to this narrow-minded matron! Marian still had beauty. Her -clear eyes were as blue, her wide, pale lips as sweet; but she was a -matron. Her neck had grown shorter, her chin heavier; the girlish grace -of glance and smile seemed muted, muffled by their setting; there was no -longer any poetry in her physique. And as Rupert stood looking at her -and seeing all this, his sense of grievance, though he was unaware of -this factor in it, grew deeper. - -A little while passed before he said,--and it was, he felt, with -dignity,--"I really don't know what you mean by that, Marian." - -She had now finished her brushes and had taken up her palette. She began -to scrape the edges as she answered,--and her voice was not schooled, it -was heavy with its irony and gloom,--"Don't you? I'm sorry." - -"I trust indeed that it doesn't mean that you are jealous of my -friendship for Mrs. Dallas?" - -"Friendship? Oh, no; I'm not jealous of any friendship." - -"Of my affection, then; of my love, if you like," said Rupert. "You know -perfectly well what I feel about all that--and I thought you felt it, -too. It's the very centre of my life, of my art; my books turn on it. -It's the thing I have most of all to say to the world. Love isn't a -measured, limited thing; its nature is to grow and give. My love for -Mrs. Dallas doesn't touch your and my relation; it enriches it rather." - -Marian scraped her palette and said nothing. He could see her cheek, the -cheek that ran too massively into her neck. Marian's skin was white and -fine; a faint colour now rose to it; a faint colour was, in Marian, a -deep blush. - -To see her blush like that gave him an odd sensation. It was as if the -blush were echoed in his heart; he felt it grow and melt softly, and -there drifted through his mind a thought of Mrs. Dallas and of her -magic. - -Through the studio window, draped with its summer creepers, he could see -the two perambulators moored in the shade of the lime tree on the lawn. -The babies were having their afternoon sleep. He was very fond of his -children; and to feel, now, mingling with the strange, yearning glow, -this pause of contemplative fondness, was to feel himself justified anew -and anew aggrieved. The glow of tenderness seemed to envelope the babies -as well as Mrs. Dallas. And it shut out Marian. - -What had she to complain of? Was he not a tender husband and a loving -father? Could she suspect his love for Mrs. Dallas--it was she herself -who had forced him to use that word--of grossness or vulgarity? It was -as high and as pure as his love for her. - -His love for Marian had evolved into the perambulators, and this -recognition, flitting unseasonably, vexed him with a sense of slight -confusion that made him feel more injured than before. It was true that, -theoretically, he held views so advanced as to justify, in true, -self-dedicating passion, all manifestations. Practice and theory in his -young life had been far apart; but the thought of passion, in connection -with Mrs. Dallas, had, as it were, been made visible by Marian's blush; -and, slightly swinging his hat, slightly knotting his brows as he looked -at the matronly Marian, he groped for some new formulation of his creed, -since it was evident that however much he might love Marian it was no -longer passion he felt for her. One must perhaps allow that passions -could not be contemporaneous; but he had always combated this shackling -view. - -He stood there, gazing, trying to think it out,--a tall young man, well -made yet slightly uncouth, with ruffled, heavy locks and large intent -eyes. Something of the look of a not quite purely bred Saint Bernard -puppy he had; confiding, young and foolish, with his knotted brow and -nose a little overlong. And as he found himself unable to think it out -and as Marian still stood silent, scraping, scraping away at the palette -in an exasperating fashion, he said,--and now in an openly aggrieved -voice,--"I thought you liked her yourself; I thought you quite loved -her. You seemed to." - -Now that he was losing his temper, Marian was regaining hers. Her voice -had all the advantage of quiet intentions as she answered, "I did like -her; I thought her very charming. I don't dislike her now. But I'm -sorry to see a woman of her age behaving with so little dignity." - -"A woman of her age! Dignity!" - -"She is at least forty-five." - -"I don't follow your meaning. Is a woman of forty-five cut off from -human relationships?" - -"From some, certainly; if she has any regard, as I say, for her dignity. -And a woman in Mrs. Dallas's position ought to be particularly careful." - -"Mrs. Dallas's position!" She really reduced him to disgusted -exclamations. - -"You know, Rupert, that there are all sorts of stories about her. You -know that Mrs. Trotter told us that her first husband divorced her on -account of Colonel Dallas.--Other stories, too." - -"Upon my word! You astonish me, Marian! You heard all these vile tales -when we first came here,--from people, too, who you'll observe, run to -Mrs. Dallas's dinner-parties whenever they have the chance,--and you -didn't seem to mind them much when you were going there almost every -day--and taking every one you knew to see her. What about your Aunt -Sophy--if you believed these stories?--An old dragon of conventionality -like your Aunt Sophy! You took her again and again, and arranged that -luncheon in London with her when you and Mrs. Dallas went up--so that -they should have another chance really to make friends. I remember you -used the expression, 'really make friends.' It's odd to hear you talking -of stories at this late hour." - -"I only talk of them because Mrs. Dallas has made me remember them. I am -quite as open-minded as you are about such things. I was just as ready -to think well of her--even if they were true. Why do you call them vile? -You wouldn't think it wrong for a woman to leave her husband if she -didn't love him, and to go with a man she did love. If Mrs. Dallas did -that, why is it vile to say so?--Aunt Sophy, as a matter of fact, said -it was a different story. And she was charmed with Mrs. Dallas, just as -I'd determined she should be, stories or no stories. I did all I could -for her, because I counted myself her friend and thought it a shame that -any one so charming should be handicapped in any way. But I didn't -imagine that a friend would try to take my husband from me." Marian -spoke with severe and deliberate calm. - -"I like that! I really do like that!" said Rupert, laughing bitterly. -"It's really funny to hear you talk as if Mrs. Dallas could owe you -anything! I wish she could hear you! I wish we could have her -dispassionate opinion of that hideous old bore of an Aunt Sophy. It was -obvious enough that she put up with her simply and solely through -friendship for you. Do all you could for her! A woman who has hordes of -friends--charming, finished, cosmopolitan people of the world! Why, my -dear girl, it's she, let me tell you, who has given you more chances -than you ever had in your life for meeting really interesting people! -They're not the sort you'd be likely to meet at your Aunt Sophy's, -certainly. They'd perish in her _milieu_!" - -"Mrs. Dallas doesn't perish in it," Marian coldly commented. "On the -contrary, I never saw her more alert. She didn't seem to find Aunt Sophy -in the least a bore. She was very much pleased indeed to lunch there and -she has looked her up every time she's gone to London since; moreover, -she's going to stay with her at Crofts this autumn. It doesn't look -like boredom." - -"I wish her joy of Crofts! She's a complete woman of the world, of -course, and she knows how to put up with all sorts and conditions of -bores. She's taken on Lady Sophy because she's your friend. It's -pitiful--it's unbelievable to see her so misjudged!--Take me from you! -I've never gone there but she's asked me why you didn't come. She still -sends you flowers pretty well every day. Those are hers, I see. I'm glad -that you've deigned to put them in water." - -The tall sheaf of carnations, white and rose and yellow, that stood in a -jug on a shelf in the studio must, evidently, have come from Mrs. -Dallas's garden. No other person grew such carnations. The garden at -Ashleigh Lodge, this pleasant country house that they had taken for the -six summer months, was not its strong point, and Mrs. Dallas had kept -them reinforced from her abundance. Rupert associated the carnations, -their soft and glowing colours, their formal grace and spicy sweetness, -with the whole growth of his devotion to Mrs. Dallas. He fixed his -indignant eyes on them now. - -"Of course I put them into water. I am going to arrange them and take -them into the drawing-room presently," said Marian with her hateful -calm. "But they give me no more pleasure. Nor does she. She is like -them. They are heartless flowers and she is a heartless woman. I see -quite plainly now what I didn't see before. She's that type,--the -smiling, calculating siren. She lives for admiration; she's herself only -when she has someone at her feet, and she's seen to it that you should -be,--though I'm bound to say that you haven't made it difficult for her. -It fits in with all the stories." - -Rupert, at this, turned away and went out. He thrust his hat firmly down -on his fair locks and swung his stick as he strode by the little -footpath through the woods. Bitter disappointment with Marian surged in -him, and hot anger, but above all an atoning tenderness that seemed -almost to break his heart in its longing to protect and justify the -woman so traduced by her. His head throbbed and drummed as he went. To -have it come to this! To have such hands laid on it--their love! their -silent, hidden love! That Mrs. Dallas returned his love he seemed to -see, with many other things, clearly, rapturously, if with trembling, -for the first time to-day. He saw it with Marian's unworthiness; -Marian's unworthiness had shown it to him; and now, exulting, he claimed -it. She loved him, veiling the depth in her vagueness, her aloofness, -her indulgent irony. His mind retraced, with yearning gratitude, the -steps of their relationship. No one had ever been to him what she was. -How she helped and lifted him! How juvenile and undiscriminating in -their happy acceptances were Marian's appreciations of his work beside -Mrs. Dallas's half-idle comments. He had read through to her, in -manuscript, all his last novel; and Marian had not seen it yet. He had -not wanted to read it to Marian; and she, besides, had been very busy -with her painting. - -Mrs. Dallas had listened to the novel almost every day, sitting in the -shade of her veranda, in her white dress, with the hands that, unless -she were gardening, seemed always exquisitely idle, yet that in their -idleness seemed to dream and smile;--he could see the white skin, the -delicate finger-tips, the pearls and rubies slipping down, and his heart -contracted with a pang and ecstasy as he saw himself holding her hand, -kissing it. He must kiss it, to-day, and he must tell her. For she -needed him; he was sure of it. She needed him terribly. If she lifted -him, yet how much, too, he could lift her, out of the lethargic shallows -and sullen quagmires of her life. - -She could not be happy with her husband. He felt himself shut his eyes -before the retrospect of what the disenchantments and disasters must be -that lay behind her. If she had taken great risks, with that heart of -highest courage he divined in her, if she had faced great sacrifices for -her present husband, what wonder that her loveliness was now clouded by -that irony and languor? She was not kind to Colonel Dallas; he could not -hide from himself that she was not kind to him; but, as he owned it, he -yearned over her with a deeper comprehension of tenderness, feeling his -rights the greater. How could she be kind to the selfish, complaining, -elegant old man?--for, to Rupert, Colonel Dallas's fifty-five years -seemed old. She never said anything actually sharp or disagreeable to -him--even when he was at his most fretful and tiresome; but when he was -least so she was not any the kinder, and by her glances, by the -inflections of her cool and indolent voice in answering him, she -displayed to the full, to others and to himself, did he take the pains -to see it, how dull and how tiresome she found him. No; she was like a -weary, naughty child in this; and seeing her as a child, with a child's -faults--and did it not prove how unblinded his love must be that he -should see it?--he felt himself fold her to his heart in a tenderness -more than a lover's; a paternal passion was in it; he had known that it -must be in true love; he had said so in one of his books. How his books -would grow from his knowledge of her! - - -II - -He had now passed through the woods and crossed the road and entered the -footpath that ran down to Woodlands, the small house encircled by birch -and fir woods where, for now some four or five years, the Dallases had -pitched their errant tent. One could reach it, also, by the road; but -Rupert always took this short cut that brought him out at a little gate -opening on the upper lawn. There was an upper and a lower lawn at -Woodlands; on the upper Colonel Dallas had a putting-green; the lower -was a tiny square surrounded by Mrs. Dallas's beds of carnations. -Rupert, when he emerged upon the putting-green, could look down past the -red-tiled roofs and the white rough-cast walls of the house at the -carnations, massed in their appointed colours--from deep to palest rose, -from fawn and citron to snowy white--among flagged paths. - -Mrs. Dallas had told him, in one of her infrequent moments of -communicativeness, that during years of wandering as a soldier's -wife--her first husband, also, had been a soldier--she had come to be -known as the woman who could make things grow anywhere. She had grown -flowers in sands and marshes. She had snatched it might be but the one -season of fulfilment from the most temporary of sojournings--in China, -in India, in Africa. Sometimes only bulbs would grow; sometimes only -roses; but what she tried for, always, and had never attained in more -perfection than at Woodlands, was carnations. They were her favourite -flower and they atoned to her here, she said, for living in a house that -made her always think of an ornamental bottle of some popular -dentifrice, so red and white, so fresh and spick and span, and with such -a well-advertised air, was Woodlands. Her carnations were the only -things of which he had ever heard her speak with feeling. Rupert, as he -looked down at them from the upper lawn and descended the stone steps, -felt his heart beating violently. - -A veranda ran along the front of Woodlands, and Mrs. Dallas was sitting -on it, just outside her drawing-room windows. The shaded depths of the -room behind her glimmered here and there with the half-drowned -brightness of crystal, porcelain, lacquer,--the things, none very good -but all rather charming, that she had picked up for a song in the course -of her wanderings; and she sat there, rather like a siren indeed, at the -mouth of her cavern, its treasures seeming to shine in the translucent -darkness behind her as if through water. Rupert, remembering and -accepting the simile, saw her as a siren, a creature of poetry and -romance, though he recognized that her poetry, like her romance, was -hidden from the ordinary observer. Even to his eyes she always appeared -first and foremost as a woman of extreme fashion, and his other -perceptions of her were tinged with the half-tormenting, half-delicious -pungency of this one, for Rupert had known till now no women of -fashion. He had passed his youth, until going to Oxford, in a -provincial town, where his father, an admirable and sagacious man, was a -hard-worked doctor; and his only glimpses of society had been in his -encounters, always displeasing to him, with Marian's tiresome and -conventional kinsfolk and the few haphazard contacts in London that came -in the way of a young writer. Mrs. Dallas might embody poetry and -romance, but she also embodied luxury and the exercised and competent -economy that made it possible. She might have to live in small, gimcrack -Woodlands and do without a motor; but she had her maid. The slices of -bacon at breakfast were carefully computed; but the coffee was of the -best and blackest. - -To-day, as always when he had seen her, she seemed ready for any -possible social emergency. She could have stepped from her veranda, with -those wonderfully cut little white shoes, into the smartest of -garden-parties, or have received in her shimmering cavern the unexpected -visit of a royal personage; and her soft white linen with its heavy -Italian embroideries clotted, like thick cream, about the hem and wrists -and breast, would have been as exquisitely appropriate as it was to this -empty afternoon of reverie. - -She was a small, very shapely woman, soft and curved and compact. Her -coiffure would have looked old-fashioned in its artifice and elegance, -and with its "royal fringe," were it not for its air of a rightness as -unquestionable as that of some foreign princess's, who kept and did not -follow fashions. Mrs. Dallas's face, too, was small and colourless and -slightly faded; her hair was of a lighter brown than her arched eyebrows -and her melancholy and dissatisfied eyes; her eyelids, tinged with a -dusky mauve, drooped heavily and made her always look a little sleepy; -the smiling line of her full-lipped yet minute mouth was ironic rather -than mirthful. To have called it a bewitching or an alluring face would -have been to imply a mobility it did not possess; but it was potent -through its very passivity; it was provocative through its profound and -slumbrous indifference. - -There was certainly no hint of allurement in the glance she turned on -Rupert Wilson as he came round the corner of the veranda; it was, -indeed, even to his rapt preoccupation, a little harder in its quiet -attentiveness than usual; yet she smiled at him, and her smile was -always sweet, holding out a languid hand in silence and leaving it to -him to say, "You expected me." - -It was hardly a question, and Mrs. Dallas gave it no answer. He had, -indeed, come to see her every day for many weeks now. But yesterday had -finished the novel, and to-day was almost the first they had had without -some definite programme of reading. - -Rupert sat down on the steps of the veranda at her feet and took off his -hat and looked out across the carnations; and since she said nothing, -he, too, was silent, and to his trembling young heart the silence was -full of new avowals. - -Colonel Dallas's smoking-room also opened on the veranda, and as they -sat there he came out. He was a tall, heavy man, with large pale cheeks -drooping on either side of a white moustache, and a gloomy eye that -could become fretful. He cast now a glance that was only gloomy at his -wife and her companion. - -"Beastly hot day," he said, to her rather than to Rupert. "It's worse in -the house than out, I think." - -"Are you going over to the Trotters' for tea and croquet?" his wife -inquired. - -"To the Trotters'? Why should I go to the Trotters'?" - -"They asked you, and you accepted." - -"Well, I certainly don't feel inclined to endure that broiling walk for -the sake of _les beaux yeux_ of Madame Trotter _et filles_. It's a dull -neighbourhood, this, but the Trotters are, perhaps, when all's done and -told, the dullest people in it." - -"You've always seemed to get on particularly well with them, I've -thought," said Mrs. Dallas, in the voice that when it seemed considerate -could contrive to be most disparaging. "It's a pity not to go. You need -a walk. You can't afford Carlsbad this year, you know." - -"I need hardly be reminded of that," said Colonel Dallas, and now it was -fretfully. "To run the risk of apoplexy on the road and to drink the -Trotters' foul Indian tea is hardly an equivalent. No; I shall practise -some putting shots, and perhaps, if it gets cooler towards evening, I'll -go over to the links. The Trotters can manage without me.--What time do -the Varleys arrive?" - -"At seven-thirty. There's no other train they could arrive by, as far as -I'm aware." - -The colonel looked at his watch, drew his hat down over his eyes, and -went slowly away round the corner of the house. - -His wife's eyes did not follow him, nor, it was evident, her thoughts. - -"It has been rather oppressive, hasn't it?" said Rupert, glancing up at -her. "You haven't been feeling it too much, I hope." - -"Not at all. I like it. I think it's only people who don't know how to -be quiet who mind the heat," said Mrs. Dallas. "This is the one time of -the year that one can sit out of doors in a thin dress, and I am very -grateful for it." Even about small things Mrs. Dallas always seemed to -have her mind quite made up. Her likes and dislikes, for all the -inertness of her demeanour, were clear and unshifting. She sometimes -made Rupert feel himself amorphous, vague, uncertain; and this feeling, -though blissful, had yet its sting of sadness and anxiety. - -"Well, some people aren't able to be quiet, are they?" he observed. "On -a day like this I always think of people in factories,--great, roaring, -clanking places with the sun gnawing at their iron roofs,--and the pale, -moist faces, the monotonously rapid hands." - -"Do you?" said Mrs. Dallas. She often said that, in that tone, when he -gave expression to some enthusiasm or sympathy. She did not make him -feel snubbed, but always, when she said, "Do you?" she made him feel -young again, a little bewildered and a little sad. He imagined, to -explain it in her, that people's thoughts did not interest her, her -woman's intuition probing below their thoughts to their personalities. -It was he, himself, with his heart full of devotion, that interested -Mrs. Dallas. Yet it was not of him that she next spoke. "How is Marian?" -she asked. "Is she painting to-day?" - -He was aware that his face altered and that his colour rose. He had to -steady something, in his glance and in his voice, the pressure of his -new consciousness was so great, as he answered, "Yes, she's been -painting all the morning." - -"I haven't seen her for some days now," Mrs. Dallas remarked. - -"No." The longing in him to confide in her, to pour out his grief and -his devotion, was so strong that for the moment he could find only the -simple negative. - -"I quite miss Marian," Mrs. Dallas added. - -He looked down at the little foot placed on a cushion beside him, and he -said, "You've always been so kind, so charming to Marian." He remembered -Marian's words with a deepened wrath and tenderness. - -"Have I? I'm glad you think so. It's been very easy," said Mrs. Dallas. - -A silence fell. - -"May I talk to you?" Rupert jerked out suddenly. "May I tell you things -I've been feeling? I have been feeling so much--about you--about -myself.--I long to tell you." - -"By all means tell me," said Mrs. Dallas with great placidity; and one -could see that she had often made the same sort of reply to the same -sort of appeal. - -"You know what you have been to me," said Rupert, turning on the step so -that he could look up at her. "You know how it's all grown--beautifully, -inevitably. No one has ever been to me what you are." - -Mrs. Dallas's sleepy eyes rested on him, and her delicate nostrils, -slightly dilating, might have been, though without excitement, inhaling -a familiar incense. - -"I do love you so much," said Rupert in a trembling voice, gazing at -her; "I do love you. You understand what I mean. You know me now and you -couldn't misunderstand. I want to serve you. I want to help you. I want -you to lean on me and trust me--to let me be everything to you that I -can." And as he spoke he stretched out his hand and laid it on her hands -folded in her lap. - -Mrs. Dallas let it lie there, and she looked back at him, not moved, -apparently, but a little grave. "No, I don't think I misunderstand your -feeling," she said after a moment. "Of course I've seen it plainly." - -"Yes, yes, I knew you did.--And that you accepted -it,--dearest--loveliest--best." He had drawn her hand to him now and he -pressed his lips upon it. And as he kissed Mrs. Dallas's hand, as that -imagined happiness was consummated, he felt his mind cloud suddenly, as -if in a cloud of fragrance, and, thought sinking away from him, he knew -only an aching sweetness, the white, warm hand against his lips, the -darkness of the glimmering room near by, and the scent of the -carnations, exhaling their spices in the hot sunshine. Closing his eyes, -he breathed quickly. And above him, a little paler, Mrs. Dallas, for a -moment, as if with the conscious acceptance of a familiar ritual, also -closed her eyes and breathed in, with the scent of her carnations, the -immortal fragrance of the youth and passion that, to her, could soon no -longer come. "Dear boy!" she murmured. - -They heard the step of Colonel Dallas descending from the upper lawn. -Rupert drew back sharply; Mrs. Dallas softly replaced her hand upon the -other in her lap. Her husband appeared, and he looked very fretful. - -"The sun is quite tropical. It's impossible to play in it. We don't get -a breath of air down in this hole." He took out his watch--Colonel -Dallas was always taking out his watch. "What time is tea?" he asked. - -"At five o'clock, as usual, I suppose," said his wife. - -"It's only just past four," said the colonel, with the bitterly resigned -air of one who loses a wager he had hardly hoped to win. "I shall go to -the Trotters'. It's better than being baked in this oven. Their lawn is -shaded at all events." He spoke as if there had been some attempt to -dissuade him from the alleviations of the Trotters' lawn. - -"I don't know why you didn't go half an hour ago," said his wife. -"You've so often discovered that the sun is tropical on the upper lawn -at this hour." And as the colonel moved off she added, "Just tell them -that I'll have lemon-squash instead of tea, will you?" - -It was a rather absurd little interlude; yet it had its point, its -appropriateness; it fitted in with those thoughts of succour, and Rupert -tried, now, to recover them, saying, after the gate had closed upon the -colonel and keeping still at his little distance, "Are you very -unhappy?" - -How he was to help Mrs. Dallas except by loving her and coming to see -her every day and being allowed to kiss her and hold her hand he did not -clearly know, but it seemed the moment for returning to those offers of -service. He did not attempt to regain her hand. Mingling with the -rapture, when the kiss and the scent of the carnations had blurred his -mind, there was also a sense of fear. He was different; and there was -more in his love than he had known. - -"Very unhappy? Not more than most people, I suppose. Why?" Mrs. Dallas -asked. Her tone was changed. Her moment of diffusion, of languor and -acceptance, was gone by. - -"Why?" Rupert felt the change and the question hurt him. "When that's -your life?--This?" - -"By that, do you mean my husband?" Mrs. Dallas inquired kindly. "He's -not my life. As for this--if you mean my situation and occupation--having -love made to me by a pleasant young man while I smell carnations, I can -assure you that there's nothing I enjoy much more." - -She did more than hurt him now; she astonished him. "Don't!" he -breathed. It was as if something beautiful were being taken from him. -Instinctively he stretched out his hand for hers and again she gave it; -but now she looked clearly at him, a touch of malice in her smile, -though her smile was always sweet. - -"Don't what?" - -"Don't pretend to be hard--flippant. Don't hide from me. Give yourself -to the real beauty that we have found." - -"I have just said that I enjoy it." - -"Enjoy is not the word," said Rupert, in a low voice, looking down at -the hand in his. "It's an initiation. A dedication." - -"A dedication? To what?" Mrs. Dallas asked, and even more kindly; yet -her kindness made her more removed. - -Her words seemed to strike with soft yet bruising blows upon his heart. -"To life. To love," he answered. - -"And what about Marian?" Mrs. Dallas inquired. And now, still gently, -she withdrew her hand and leaned her cheek on it as, her elbow on the -cushions of her chair, she bent her indolent but attentive gaze upon -him. "I should have thought that dedication lay in that direction." - -His forehead was hot and his eyes, hurt, bewildered, indignant, -challenged hers yet supplicated, too. "Please don't let me think that -I'm to hear mean conventionalities from you--as I have from Marian. You -know," he said, and his voice slightly shook, "that dedication isn't a -limiting, limited thing. You've read my books and cared for them, and -understood them,--better, you made me feel, that I did myself,--so that -you mustn't pretend to forget. Love doesn't shut out. It widens." - -"Does it?" said Mrs. Dallas. "And what," she added, "were the mean -conventionalities you heard from Marian? I've been wondering about -Marian." - -"She is jealous," said Rupert shortly, looking away. "I could hardly -believe it, but she made it too plain. It seemed to take the -foundation-stones of our life away to hear her. It made all our past, -all the things I believed we shared, seem illusory. It made me feel that -the Marian I'd loved and trusted was a stranger." - -Mrs. Dallas contemplated his averted face, and as she heard him her -glance altered. It withdrew itself; it veiled itself; it became at once -less kind and more indolent. "And you really don't think Marian has -anything to complain of?" she inquired presently. - -"No, I do not," said Rupert. "Nothing is taken from her." - -"Isn't it? And if I became your mistress, would you still think she had -nothing to complain of?" Mrs. Dallas asked the question in a tone of -detached and impartial inquiry. - -How far apart in the young man's experience were theory and practice was -manifested by the hot blush that sprang to his brow, the quick stare in -which an acute eye might have read an ingenuous and provincial dismay. -"My mistress?" he stammered. "You know that such a thought never entered -my head." - -"Hasn't it? Why not?" - -"You know I only asked to serve--to help--to care for you." - -"You would think it wrong, then, to be unfaithful, technically, to your -wife?" - -"Wrong?" His brow showed the Saint-Bernard-puppy knot of perplexity. -"It's not a question of wrong. Wrongness lies only in the sort of love. -Real love is sacred in all its expressions of itself; my ideal of love, -just because it includes that one, can do without it." - -"But, on your theory, why should it do without it?" Mrs. Dallas, all -mildness, inquired. - -His mind was driven back to those questionings in the studio, when he -had thought of the incongruous yet allied themes of passion and -perambulators, and groped again, angrily, in the same obscurity. -"It's--it's--a matter of convenience," he found, frowning; "it--it -wouldn't work in with other beautiful things. It wouldn't be -convenient." - -"I'm glad to hear you find such a reasonable objection," said Mrs. -Dallas. "There could hardly be a better one. It wouldn't be at all -convenient. Though, I gather, if it could be made convenient, you still -think that Marian would have nothing to complain of." - -"I don't know why you are trying to pin me down like this." Rupert, -stooping, gathered some flakes of stone from the path and scattered them -with a sharp gesture that expressed his exasperation. "You know what I -believe. Love is free, free as air and sunshine. How can one stop one's -self from loving? Why should one? And if our love, yours and mine, could -mean that complete relation, then, yes, the ideal thing, the really -ideal thing, would be for Marian to feel it right and beautiful and to -be glad that there should be two perfected and complete relations -instead of one. As it is, that inclusive vision isn't asked of her." - -"She's not, in fact, to be asked to be a Mormon," Mrs. Dallas remarked. -"All that she has to put up with is that her husband should be in love, -platonically, with another woman, and should have ceased to be in love -with her. It's hard, you know, when some one has been in love with you, -to give it up." - -"But I have not ceased to love Marian!" Rupert cried. "Why should you -suppose it? My love for you doesn't shut out my love for her. It's a -vulgar old remnant of sexual savagery to think it does. A mother doesn't -love one child the less for loving another. Why can't people purify and -widen their minds by looking at the truth?--That jeer about Mormons is -unworthy of you. Marriage is a prison unless husband and wife are both -free to go on giving and growing. What does love mean but growth?" - -Mrs. Dallas's eyes had drifted away to her beds of carnations and they -now rested on them for a little while. Rupert took up his hat and fanned -himself. He was hot, and very miserable. - -"It always strikes me, when I hear talk like yours," said Mrs. Dallas -presently, "that it is so much less generous and noble than it imagines -itself to be. It's the man, only, who frames the new code and the man, -only, who is to enlarge himself and run two or three loves abreast." - -"Not at all. Marian is precisely as free as I am to love somebody else -as well as me." - -"As free? Oh no," said Mrs. Dallas, laughing softly. "Theoretically, -perhaps, but not actually. Nature has seen to that. When women have -babies and lose their figures it's most unlikely that they'll ever be -given an opportunity to exercise their freedom. That fact in itself -should make you reconsider your ideas about love. Own frankly that they -apply only to men and don't pretend to generosity. The only free women -are the _femmes galantes_; and you'll observe that they are seldom -burdened with a nursery, and that they never grow fat." - -She touched, with an accuracy malignant in its clairvoyance, his -subconscious awareness of Marian's physical alteration. Something in him -shrank away from her in fear and indignation. She was trying to make him -see things from a false and petty standpoint, the standpoint of a woman -of the world, a mere woman of the world--that world of shameful -tolerances and cruel stupidities. "I don't know anything about _femmes -galantes_," he said, "nor do I wish to. You misunderstand me if you -think that by love I mean sensuality." - -With slightly lifted brows she looked out at the carnations; and had she -been angry with him he could have felt less angry with her. He was, -indeed, very angry with her when she remarked, tranquilly, "I don't -think you know what you mean by love." - -"I mean by love what Shelley meant by it," Rupert declared. - - "True love in this differs from gold and clay, - That to divide is not to take away. - Love is like understanding that grows bright - Gazing on many truths. - -"I mean what all the true, great hearts of the world have meant by -it,--poetry, rapture, religion; and they can only be sustained, renewed, -created, by emotion, by passion, by sexual passion--if you like to call -it by a name you imagine to be derogatory." He felt himself warmed and -sustained against the menace that emanated from her by the sound of his -own familiar eloquence. - -But Mrs. Dallas still tranquilly contemplated the carnations. - -"That's the man's point of view. The view of the artist, the creator. -Perhaps there's truth in it. Perhaps he can't write his poems and paint -his pictures without taking intoxicants. But it will never be the view -of the woman. Mary Shelley will never really like it when Shelley makes -love to Jane Clairmont; Marian will never like it when you make love to -me. They'll try to believe it's the ideal, to please him, when they are -the ones he is in love with; but when he is in love with other women -they won't go on believing." - -"That is their fault, their littleness, then. The wide, glorious outlook -is theirs, too, if they choose to open their eyes. I don't accept your -antithesis for women,--humdrum respectability, roast mutton, milk -pudding, or dissipation. I don't believe that when a woman marries and -becomes a mother she must turn her back on love." - -Mrs. Dallas at this began to laugh, unkindly. "Turn her back on love? No -indeed. Why should she? Hasn't she her husband and children, to say -nothing of her friends, her father and mother, her sisters and brothers? -You idealists seem always to forget these means of expansion. By love -you mean simply and solely the intoxicant. Call it poetry and religion, -if you like, but don't expect other people, who merely see that you are -intoxicated, to call it that." - -He sat, trying to think. Idly, half absently, with languid fingers, she -seemed to be breaking his idols as though they had been silly little -earthenware figures, not good enough--here was the stab, the -bewilderment--for her drawing-room. And who was she to do it, this -remote, mysterious creature, steeped in the perfume of her passionate -past? He felt as he gazed at her that it was not only himself he must -defend against her. - -"It's curious to me to hear you talk in this way." He armed himself, as -he spoke, with all that he could muster of wisdom and of weight. "You -are the last woman I'd have expected to hear it from. You've made me -your friend, so that I'd have a right to be frank, even if you hadn't -let me love you. What right have you to turn your back on all the -beauty and romance of life--to smile at them and mock them? You haven't -allowed yourself to be bandaged and crippled by convention, I'm sure of -it. You have followed your heart--bravely, truly--out into life. You -have loved--and loved--and loved--I know it. It breathes from you. It's -all you've lived for." - -"And you think the result so satisfactory?" said Mrs. Dallas. She looked -at him now, and if it was with irony it was with sadness. She turned -from her question. "Well, if you like, I am one of the _femmes -galantes_; they are of many types, you know; I wasn't thinking, when I -shocked you so, of the obvious, gross type. I was thinking of the woman -who corresponds to you--the idealist, the spiritual _femme galante_. -And, I'm convinced of it, for a woman, it doesn't work. A man, if he is -a big man, or has a big life,--it isn't always the same thing by the -way,--may have his succession of passions, or, as you'd claim,--and I -don't believe it,--his contemporaneities; he has a context to frame them -in; they may fall into place. But a woman's life can't be calculated in -those terms of dimension. It is big enough for the emotion that leads to -marriage and to the loves that grow from that, the loves you think so -little of. It is an emotion that can't be repeated over and over again, -simply because, in a normal life, it has grown into something else, -something even better, I should say: a form of poetry and rapture and -religion quite compatible with roast mutton and respectability. But the -women who miss the normal life and who try to live on the emotions, -they--well, I can only say that to my mind they always come to look -silly. Silly is the only word for them." - -He stared at her. "You don't look silly." - -"Why should I?" Mrs. Dallas asked. "I'm not of the idealist type. I -don't confuse intoxication with religion and think I have the one when -I've only the other. I may have missed the real thing, but I've not -repeated the emotion that ought to lead to it. You are quite mistaken in -imagining that I've loved and loved and loved. I haven't. I have allowed -other people to love me. That, as you'll own, is a very different -matter. I am hard and cold and disillusioned. I am not soft and yearning -and frustrated. Why should I look silly?" - -He stared at her, and his heart was flooded with pain. What was she, -then? What was her feeling for him? What had she meant? As she spoke and -as he looked at her, the veil of romance dissolved from about her and he -saw her for the first time with her own eyes,--devoid of poetry, a hard, -cold, faded, worldly woman. Yet she was still a Sphinx, strange and -alluring, and still he struggled against her, for her, saying hotly, -though his heart was chilled, "If it's true, you've hurt -yourself--you've hurt yourself horribly, through fear of looking silly." - -"No, I've not hurt myself," said Mrs. Dallas. "I've been hurt, perhaps; -but I've not allowed my hurts to repeat themselves too often. Some -things in life should be unique and final. The people who don't keep -them so become shoddy. Marian, for instance, is neither hard nor cold, -nor shoddy either. You have made one of the mistakes that idealists are -always making in imagining that she was humdrum respectability and that -I was poetry and rapture and religion.--Oh, it's no good protesting. If -I had a double chin and thin hair you'd never have wanted to help my -soul, however unhappy I was. And if Marian had sat about in carefully -chosen clothes and looked mysterious and not let you feel sure that she -cared about you, you would probably have remained in love with her. So -please own that you have been mistaken and that on the one side is love, -the love that Marian feels for you, although she knows you; because she -knows you; and on the other is illusion, intoxication, sensuality; yes, -my dear Rupert, such as you felt when I let you kiss my hand a little -while ago." - -He sat, sullen, even sulky, half turned from her, and again he stooped -and gathered up the flakes of stone and tossed them away down the path. - -The clink and chink of ice and glass was heard approaching through the -drawing-room, and the maid stepped out bearing the tray, which she set -down on a wicker table before her mistress. The tall crystal jug, veiled -in frosty rime, showed tones of jade and chalcedony, and fillets of -lemon peel threaded it like pale, bright enamel. This gem-like beaker, -the plate of golden cakes, with the scent of the carnations, with Mrs. -Dallas's little foot on its cushion, with her rings of pearl and ruby, -had all been part of the magic she had meant to him. The very sound of -the ice, dully yet resonantly chinking, brought a suffocating sense of -nostalgia. It was over, all over. He was disenchanted. She was cruel to -him, to him who had loved her. She had cut into him and killed bright, -ingenuous, trustful things. And, in a placid voice, she asked him if he -would have some cake, and filled his glass. - -He took it from her and drank it off in silence. The icy, aromatic -liquid seemed an antidote to that other intoxicant she had mocked. Irony -flowed through his veins; a bitter-sweet sense of vengeful maturity. -When he set down the glass, he looked up at her, and he felt himself -measuring his sword against the stiletto of an adversary. - -"Well, I've had my lesson," he said. "I've been a generous but deluded -idealist, it seems, in imagining that men and women are equals in their -claims on life. Since I'm an artist, I have a right to my raptures, I -take it. And poor Marian must be jealous with reason. Well, well; it's -an odd morality to hear preached." - -Mrs. Dallas still sipped her lemonade and she quietly considered him. -She said nothing, and even after she had finished and set down her glass -she sat for still a little while in silence. - -"I'm sorry I've seemed to preach," she then remarked, "and I certainly -think that Marian has every reason to be jealous. What more did I say? -That a man isn't as ridiculous and undignified as a woman when he falls -in and out of love-affairs on the condition that he has a big life? That -was it, wasn't it?" - -"That was it, and I'm glad to have your assurance that I am in no danger -of being ridiculous or undignified." - -"Do you mean," said Mrs. Dallas, looking at him, "that you think yours -such a big life?" - -It had been, before, his heart, its tenderness, its devotion and -dedication, that she had cut into; it was into something deeper now, -something more substantially and vitally at the centre of his life, -something of which his heart and all its ardours were but tributaries. -He was to learn that self-love could bleed with a fiercer, darker gush. -The blood, as if foretelling his ordeal, sprang to his forehead as he -looked back at her. - -"I have my art," he said, and he disdained any pretended humility; he -spoke with pride and even with solemnity. "I live for my art. I don't -think that I am an insignificant man." - -"Don't you?" said Mrs. Dallas. It was with an unaffected curiosity that -her eyes rested on him, and it sank into him, drop by drop, like poison. -"Not insignificant, perhaps," she took up after a moment. "That's not -quite the word, perhaps. You are very intelligent and appreciative and -good-hearted. I don't suppose one can be quite insignificant if one is -that. But--do you call it art, your writing? I wonder. Oh, you are quite -right to live for it, of course, just as other men do for stock-broking -or fox-hunting or print-collecting, or anything else that employs their -energies or satisfies their tastes or brings in money; but, to count as -art, a man's activities must mean more than just his own satisfaction in -them, mustn't they? You write careful, intelligent, sentimental little -books; but I can't feel that the world would be any the poorer if you -were to take to stock-broking or fox-hunting instead. No, it doesn't -seem to me, my dear Rupert, that your life is nearly large enough for a -succession of love-affairs. It's all right when one is young and looking -for a mate; experiments are in order then; but you've found your mate, -and you'll soon be not so very young, and if on the strength of your art -you imagine yourself entitled to unseasonable intoxications, you'll -become, in time, an emotional dram-drinker, one of those foolish old -inebriates we are all familiar with, and you'll spoil yourself for what -you were meant to be and can be,--a devoted husband and an excellent -_pere de famille_." - -Stretched on his rack, broken, bleeding, Rupert stared at her. Who was -this woman, this cruel, ambiguous woman who watched his agony with -deliberating, drowsy eyes? There came into his mind the memory of a -picture seen in childhood, some sentimental print that had strongly -impressed his boyish sensibilities. A corner of a Roman amphitheatre, a -rising tier of seats; sham architecture, sham Romans, no doubt, and a -poor piece of claptrap, looked back on from his maturity; but the face -of the Roman woman, leaning so quietly forward under its gold tiara, to -watch, unmoved, the tormented combatants below, was it not like this -face? Yes, she was of that stony-hearted breed, unaltered by the -centuries. - -The torment of his humiliation snatched at anger for a veil. He said, -smiling, "You have been very successful till now in concealing your real -opinion of me." - -"Have I concealed it?" - -"My work certainly seemed to be of absorbing interest to you." - -"I listened to it; yes." - -"I didn't imagine you'd stoop to feign interest. I didn't imagine you'd -take such pains to allure and flatter a commonplace young _pere de -famille_." - -"Did I take pains to allure and flatter him?" - -"From the first!--From the very first!--That day we met!--My God!" Even -now he could not help feeling himself, seeing himself, as one of his own -heroes; and, for a moment, he bent his head upon his hands--as they -would have done had a calamity as unimaginable as this befallen them. -"That first day!--The apple-blossoms framing you! You stood under your -white parasol in our orchard--and you smiled at me!" - -"I generally do at agreeable-looking young men when I see that they -admire me," Mrs. Dallas commented. - -"Oh, don't pretend!--Don't hide and shift!" He lifted fierce eyes; "It -wasn't only that. You seemed to care. You seemed to need me. You made it -easy--inevitable. You came--and came; and you asked me here again and -again." - -"Not 'me,'--'us,'" Mrs. Dallas amended suavely. She was looking at him, -all this time, with that thoughtful, poisonous curiosity; and as he now -sat, finding for the moment no words, his fury baffled by her quiet -checkmating, she went on, "And afterwards I let you come alone because I -saw that you admired me, and that is always pleasant to me. When, at -first, as you say, I showed myself so affable, it was because I liked -Marian. I do still like her; more than I ever liked you, my dear Rupert; -if you are good-hearted and intelligent, she is more so, and she has -more sense of humour than you have, and doesn't take herself so -seriously. And, to be quite frank, since we are talking it all out like -this, I not only liked Marian, but saw that she could be of use to me. -I've had, in some ways, a tiresome, tangled life, and things haven't -always gone as I wanted them to go, so that I don't let opportunities -for strengthening and straightening here and there pass me by. Through -Marian I met several people I wanted to meet and make sure of. People -useful to me. I think Marian quite understood and quite wanted to help. -She would. She is of my world in a sense you aren't, you know, my dear -Rupert. And, in my idle way, I did take a good deal of trouble to be -agreeable to her. It all turned out exceedingly well and I was very -grateful to Marian. That's one reason, you see, why I felt to-day that -our little flirtation was going too far and must be put a stop to. I -don't want Marian to be jealous of me; it would be distinctly -inconvenient. But there is more in it than that. I wouldn't have put -myself to this bother and talked things out like this if it hadn't been -because of my liking for Marian. It makes me angry to see that you don't -know how lucky you are to have such a wife. I want you to see how very -lucky you are. I want you to see yourself as others see you,--a very -unimportant young man, without position and without money, married to a -quite unusually delightful girl who has both. This isn't the young man's -fault, of course; one wouldn't like him the less for it; but one does -expect him to be aware of his own felicity. One does expect him to feel -that, at present, his wife is too good for him. I don't mean in the -conventional sense; one wouldn't ask him to recognize that; but in the -sense of worth and charm and distinction, for those are the things he -supposes himself to care for." - -She had, while she spoke of the "young man" thus impartially, turned her -eyes from him, and they rested again on the beds of carnations. The sun -had sunk behind the hill, and though the bright soft colours were -unshadowed, they all lay in a different light and seemed to glow coolly -in their own radiance, like jewels. - -Rupert rose. His anger had passed from him. He no longer felt Mrs. -Dallas to be an antagonist; but he felt her to be a stranger; and he -felt himself to be a stranger. A sense of fear and loneliness and -disembodiment had fallen upon him while he listened to her. He held out -his hand to her. "Good-bye," he said. "I think I must be going." - -She took his hand and looked up at him with the gaze so remote, so -irrevocable. "Good-bye," she said; "I hope to see you and Marian some -day soon, perhaps." - -The words, with their quiet relapse on convention, made him feel himself -in a new world. He had been thinking of final, fatal things, things dark -and trenchant; she showed him compromise, continuity, commonplace good -sense; and, dispossessed, bereft as he was, something in him struggled -to place itself beside her in this alien atmosphere, to make itself a -denizen of the new since he had forever lost the old world. - -"Oh yes, I'll tell her," he said. And as he released her hand he found, -"Thank you. I'm sure you meant it all most kindly." - -"It's very nice of you to say so," said Mrs. Dallas, smiling. - -It was the world of convention; yet with all his bewildered groping for -clues and footholds, he felt, dimly, as a glimmer before his eyes or a -frail thread in his hands, that the smile was perhaps the most sincerely -sweet that he had ever had from Mrs. Dallas. It was as if she saw his -struggle and commended it. - - -III - -He walked away, up the steps, across the putting-green and out into the -woods. He went slowly as he began the gradual ascent. He felt very -tired, as though he had been beaten with rods, and there was in him a -curious mingling of confusion and lucidity, of pain and contemplation. -The present and the future were curtained with shame, uncertainty, and -dismay; but the past was vivid, and, like a singular, outgrown husk, he -seemed to look back at that Rupert on the veranda, so blind, so bland, -so fatuous, and to see him as Mrs. Dallas had seen him. - -Beyond the curtain was Marian. He knew that he went towards Marian as if -towards safety and succour; yet all was opaque before his eyes, for who -was it that Marian was to succour but that fatuous Rupert? and was it -for such as he that he could seek support? How could he go to Marian and -say, "I have been given eyes to see you as you are; help me, now, to be -blind again to what I am." No; he could not, if he were to follow his -glimmer and hold his thread, seek succour from Marian. - -When he reached the house he went into the drawing-room and found her -sitting there in a cool dress, a book upon her knee. She did not see him -as he entered quietly and he stood for some moments in the doorway -looking at her. - -She had been crying; her cheeks were white and her eyelids heavy; but -though this perception came to him with a blow of feeling, it did not, -for the moment, move him from his contemplation of her, with all that it -brought of new and strange to the familiar. - -She was strange, though she was not a stranger, as he had become to -himself. He noted the black curves of her hair, the ample line of her -bosom, the gentle, white maternal hand laid along the book. On a -cabinet, above her head, he saw that she had very beautifully arranged -the white, rose and yellow carnations. It was like her to do this -justice to her rival's gift; like her to place them there not only -faithfully but beautifully. And as she sat, unaware of him, in the -luminous evening air, he felt her to be full of enchantment and this -enchantment to centre in the hand laid along the book. His eyes fixed -themselves on the hand. It seemed a symbol of the Marian of grace and -girlhood whom he had loved with such ardent presage of eternal faith, -and of this Marian sitting quietly in her saddened and accepted life, -not changed except in so far as she was yet more worthy of fidelity. He -saw that she had passed through her ordeal and transcended it; he saw -that she would never again show him jealousy; and he saw that as the old -Marian he had, perhaps, forever lost her. A lover must always show -jealousy. This was a wife, maternal and aloof. - -He came into the room and she looked round at him. Her eyes, altered by -weeping, were mild and alien. They were without hostility, without -accusation; deliberating, gentle; the eyes of a wife. "Did you have a -nice afternoon?" she asked laying down her book. "It's been delicious, -hasn't it?" - -Quite as irrevocably as Mrs. Dallas she made the world that he must -enter. She, too, in her different way, a way founded on acceptance -rather than rejection, showed him compromise and continuity. And nothing -that Mrs. Dallas had said to him cut into him so horribly as to see -Marian show him this new world. - -An impulse came to fall on his knees beside her, bury his head in her -lap, and pour out all his griefs. But already, and for Marian's sake, -now, he had learned a better wisdom. To fall and weep and confess would -be, again, to act like one of his own heroes; and Marian, in her heart, -knew all that there was to know of that old Rupert. He must make her now -know, and make himself know, a new Rupert. - -He sat down opposite her and, smiling a little, he said, "Mrs. Dallas -has done with me." - -"Done with you!" Marian repeated. Her faint colour rose. - -"Quite," said Rupert, nodding; "in any way I'd thought she had me." - -"Do you mean," said Marian, after a moment, "that she's been horrid to -you?" - -"Not in the least, though it felt horrid. She merely let me see that I'd -been mistaken." - -"Mistaken? In what way?" - -"In almost every way. In my ideas about myself, and about life, and -about her.--It wasn't, for one thing, me she liked in particular, at -all. It was you." - -Marian's flush had deepened. "She seemed to like you very much indeed." - -"Only frivolously; not seriously. She showed me to-day how silly I'd -been to think it anything but frivolous. She made me see that I'd been a -serious ass." - -Marian sat looking at him. She was startled, and on his -behalf--wonderful maternal instinct!--she was angry; yet--he saw it all -in the sweet, subtle alteration of her face--she was happy, half -incredulously yet marvelously happy. And as he saw her happiness, tears -came to Rupert's eyes and he felt himself, deeply and inarticulately, -blessing Mrs. Dallas. She had been right. This was something "even -better." - -"She's an exceedingly clever woman," he said, smiling at Marian, though -she must see the tears. "And an exceedingly first-rate woman, too. And -I'll always be grateful to her. The question is,"--he got up and came -and stood over his wife,--"I've been such an ass, darling. Can you -forgive me?" - -He had found her hand as he questioned her and he held it now up to his -cheek closing his eyes, how differently! - - -IV - -Mrs. Dallas, after her young friend had left her, sat on for quite a -long while on the veranda. The concentration of her recent enterprise -effaced itself from her eyes and lips. Her glance, steeping itself again -in indolent and melancholy retrospects, fell into a reverie. Once or -twice, putting up a languid hand, she yawned. - -When the whole garden lay in coolness, she went in and got her gardening -apron and gloves and basket of implements. It was an ideal moment for -layering her carnations. Tripping out again on her little high-heeled -shoes, she placed her kneeling-mat before a splendid plant and set to -work. She scorned complicated aids. A box of long hairpins were her -chief allies, and a sharp knife. Deftly she selected a blue-gray shoot -and stripped the narrow leaves, sharply cut a transverse slit into the -tender stalk, firmly bent and pinned the half-severed spray into the -heaped earth where it was to make new roots and establish itself in a -new life. And, as she did so, her mind reverting to thoughts of Rupert -and of her rough usage of him, a simile came to her that made her smile, -her hard and not unkindly smile. She did not regret it, though -unquestionably she had had her own moment of reluctance and of loss. It -had hurt him terribly, no doubt, as, if they had feeling, it must now -hurt her carnations to be cut and bent and pinned. But "It might be the -making of him," Mrs. Dallas thought. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -STAKING A LARKSPUR - - -AS a matter of fact (one has often to take one's stand on fact when -thinking about Vera), it's I who am the gardener; it's I, that is to -say, who draw the plans and compute the cost and give the orders and see -that the men carry them out. I often lend a hand at carrying them out, -too, for I love planting seedlings and staking plants and tweaking out -weeds here and there when I've the chance. That wonderful blue border -Vera had on the south terrace last summer,--it was just going over when -the war broke out,--I put in all the new blue larkspurs myself, three -hundred of them,--the larkspurs that Mrs. Thornton was to remind me -of,--and I designed and planted and with my own hands helped to lay out -the dream-garden, Vera's special garden. It was she, certainly, who had -had the idea, standing on the site of the little, old, abandoned sunken -garden in its circle of stone wall and cypresses, and saying, "I see a -dream-garden here, Judith; a place where one can come and sit alone and -dream dreams." She often has charming ideas, Vera, but she knows nothing -about gardening. I sound already as if I were crabbing her, I know; and -perhaps I am. Certainly I never think of her relation to her garden -without a touch of irony, and this story, which begins in the -dream-garden, isn't to her advantage. It was there that I felt my first -definite irascibility in regard to Vera and little Mrs. Thornton, and -felt the impulse, as far as I was able, to take Mrs. Thornton under my -wing. - -It's a rather clipped and confined wing, and yet I can do pretty much as -I choose at Compton Dally; I don't quite know why, for Vera doesn't -exactly like me. Still, she doesn't dislike me, and I think she's a -little bit afraid of me; for I am as definite and determined as a pair -of garden shears, and my silence is often only the good manners of the -dependant, and Vera knows it. - -I am her cousin, an impecunious cousin, my mother a sister of her -father's, old Lord Charleyford, who died last year. Vera herself was -very impecunious until she married Percival Dixon; impecunious, but -always very lovely and very clever, and she was on the crest of every -wave, always, and never missed anything, except ready money and a really -good offer, even before Percival Dixon came along--he came _via_ South -Africa--and gave her all the money that even she could spend, and bought -back Compton Dally for her. Compton Dally had been in the family for -hundreds of years, and it was our grandfather, Vera's and mine, who had -ruined us all and finally sold it. It was everything for Vera to get it -back, even if she had to take Percival Dixon with it; and I confess that -for Compton Dally I could almost have taken Percival Dixon myself; but -not quite, even for Compton Dally. - -Well, she has always been fairly decent to me; not as decent as she -might have been, certainly, but more decent than I, at all events, -expected, whatever may have been poor mother's hopes and indignations. I -always thought mother unfair; there was no reason why Vera should go out -of her way to give me a good time, and it showed some real consideration -in her to have suggested, when mother died and while Jack was reading -for the bar, that, until he and I could set up housekeeping in London -together, I should come and be her companion and secretary and general -odd-job woman; and for people like Vera to show any consideration is -creditable to them. I am five years older than Jack, and our plan has -always been to live together. I intend, of course,--though Jack at -present doesn't, dear lamb!--that he shall marry; but until then I'm to -live with him and take care of him and help him with his work. All this -if he ever comes back again. He is fighting at the front as I write, so -that it remains to be seen whether I'm to go on always with Vera. If -Jack doesn't come back I shan't find it more difficult than anything -else. We have always been all in all to each other, he and I; but that -is quite another story and one that will never be written. This one is -neither about Jack nor me, but about Vera and her garden and little Mrs. -Thornton and her husband and her clothes. - -Vera had thrown open Compton Dally to wounded Tommies and wounded -officers, and the Thorntons came in that way. He'd only been back from -the Boulogne hospital for a week, was badly crippled, and had a very -gallant record. Most of Vera's officers before this had been colonials -who had no homes to go to. The Thorntons weren't colonials, but they had -no home and were very poor, so that the arrangement for them to spend -six weeks or two months at Compton Dally while Captain Thornton got back -his strength--as far as he was able to get it back, poor man!--seemed an -admirable one. - -They came on a hot June afternoon both very tired, while we were all -having tea on the west terrace. The Tommies--there were over a dozen of -them, with two Red Cross nurses to take care of them--had their tea in -the billiard-room, which is made over to them for their games and meals -and almost constant gramophone, and the accurate laughter of Harry -Lauder is wafted out to us on various music-hall strains at most hours -of the day. He was laughing loudly and richly as the Thorntons arrived. -After tea Vera led them about the garden. Vera's garden is merely a part -of her toilette, and plays almost as important a part as her clothes in -her general introduction of herself; and that she intended to introduce -herself gracefully to Captain Thornton was evident; and that I was to -pilot Mrs. Thornton, I had known after Vera's glance at her imitation -Panama hat, her blue linen skirt, of an obsolete cut and a bad one at -that, and her white blouse, shrunken in washing. Vera placed her swiftly -as dull and dowdy, and it was my part, always, to pilot the dowdy and -the dull. - -I don't mind that, however; even now, after three years of it, I always -enjoy going over Compton Dally and the gardens with newcomers. It's such -a beautiful old place, so grave and so serene, its splendid Tudor front -lifted high on stone terraces, and its courts and corners behind -breaking out into all sorts of unexpected and enchanting antiquities. It -symbolizes, if you begin with the Saxon arches in the cellars, the -whole history of England, and means so much more than any person who has -ever lived there, or who ever will live there, can ever mean. It's worth -the sacrifice of generations of younger sons and myriads of marriageable -daughters. What could they all do better than to keep it going? I always -recalled this when I wondered how Vera could have married Percival -Dixon, and felt almost as much satisfaction as she could feel in the -fact that two robust little boys, still at their preparatory school, -stood reassuringly behind her and Percival; the elder, too, a thorough -Compton, with hardly a trail of Dixon apparent on his ingenuous young -countenance. I have the whole history of Compton Dally at the tips of my -fingers, and if people give me an opening and show that they care about -it, I can talk to them for hours as I take them round, feeling, for my -little part and share in it, that, even if Vera weren't as decent as she -is, I should put up with a great deal to stay in it and take care of it. - -We didn't go about the house to-day. The Thorntons saw the big -herbaceous border and the rose-garden, the rock-garden, tinkling with -its little rivulet, the moat, and the lime-tree alley; and then Vera, -trailing her gossamer draperies along the flagged path between the -cypresses,--for Vera, even at this epoch of shortened petticoats, -manages always to trail,--murmured, as I've heard her murmur, when she's -at Compton Dally, at least once a week, "And this is my dream-garden, -where I come and sit alone and dream dreams." - -She led Captain Thornton down among the cypress boughs. He had a -splinted leg and an unaccustomed crutch, and found the steps a -difficulty; but Vera put a hand under his elbow and let him lean -heavily on her shoulder, and he reached the dream-garden without, I -hope, too many twinges. - -It is really very lovely. I don't like hearing it called a dream-garden, -naturally; but I do feel always, when I come into it, that it is like -sinking into the stillness and magic of a happy dream. The gypsophila -wasn't out yet, but it made a mist, like drowsiness; white peonies, grey -santolina, white roses and silver sea-thistle, the dreamy spires of -white foxgloves, low, purple pansies, and tall irises, white and grey -and purple--these, in their twilight colours, were massed against the -grey stone walls, and there were four bay-trees in stone urns at the -corners. The beautiful old stone seat (I found it in Brompton Road, but -it might have been made for Compton Dally three hundred years ago in -Italy) was heaped with grey and purple cushions. In the centre rose the -fluent shaft of the fountain, falling, with a musical rustle and murmur -into the stone basin where pale goldfish move among the water-lilies. - -We sat down, and Vera went on to say, as always: - -"The other gardens are for friends. I plan them for them. I see them -there. This is for loneliness, for my very self; and to me it is the -heart of the whole, as solitude should be the heart of life." - -Vera, as a matter of fact (you see, the phrase recurs constantly), is -never alone. If she is wan and strange and wistful, it isn't from -dreaming dreams, but from not having enough sleep and doing five times -too many things and seeing five times too many people in the day. Vera, -too, I may say it here, isn't in the least an ass, though she may, on -occasions she finds suitable, talk like one. Occasions are often -suitable, so that, as I once told her, she's in danger of making a habit -of it. She looked at me, when I told her this, with the pausing, -penetrating, ironic gaze she is so capable of, and finally, with a -slight grimace, said, "I'll be careful, Judith." - -I have moments of feeling fond of her and this was one of them. She is -careful; I've very rarely heard her talk like an ass when the occasion -was unsuitable; but so many people are stupid that these are rare, and I -foresee that, as she gets on and sinks by degrees into the automatism -that overtakes so many artificial people, it may become a habit, just as -the touch of rouge on her pale lips is already becoming more emphasized. - -Captain Thornton, I saw at once, as she did,--for she saw most -things,--was not stupid; but he was very simple. There was a certain -bewilderment on his handsome, sturdy face, wistfulness rather than -delight, such as a soul newly arrived in Paradise might feel, unable to -forget the passes of death and the companions left behind in suffering. -He wasn't forgetting; I felt that as I looked at him. So many of them -forget. Vera, I am sure, hardly ever remembers what it all really -means--all these wounded heroes. Perhaps it is natural that she -shouldn't; she has no one near in it. - -Captain Thornton gazed about him quietly, and from the garden looked -back at the angel who had led him there. Of course Vera must have looked -like an angel to him. I haven't described Vera, and she is difficult to -describe. To say that she is pale and dark, with attenuated features and -dwelling, melancholy eyes, is only the beginning of it. Of course she -is getting on now,--she is nearing forty-five,--but she's still lovely; -her smile makes me think of a pearl dropped in wine, and behind the -melancholy of her eyes is that well of waiting irony. She looks as soft, -as tenderly encompassing, as a summer night; but she is really sharp, -sharp, sharp. Thwart or vex her, and out leaps the stiletto; or, rather, -it would be more exact to say, out come the claws. But women of the Vera -type will always, to young men like Captain Thornton, be angels pure and -simple. I don't suppose, for one thing, that he'd ever talked intimately -with any one quite like her. He came, I was to learn, from a remote -country rectory where the great ladies of the neighbourhood had been -unfashionable, matter of fact, and clothed for the most part in tweed -and leather, and none of them would have been likely to make much, -before the war, of a young soldier. Vera was making much of him, and a -fashionable angel is an angel doubly equipped. He would not know what it -was that made her so strange in her sweetness; but fashion of that -achieved and recondite kind is like a soft incense wafted around a -woman. She is first, everywhere, always, without an effort; and people -who are first, if they also look like angels, win hearts as easily as -they run and twist their fingers among their ropes of pearls, as Vera -was doing now. She always wore her pearls; they fell together in a milky -heap in her lap, and long earrings glimmered in the shadows of her hair. - -Vera's way of talking, too, is like a spell. Her voice is rather like -the fountain, so low, so inarticulate, yet so expressive. She murmurs -rather than speaks, with now and then a pause that is almost a soft -gurgle. Sometimes it exasperates me to hear her, but sometimes even -cross-grained I am charmed. - -The voice purled and rippled and gurgled over Captain Thornton now. He -sat on Vera's farther hand, and Mrs. Thornton sat between Vera and me. -Already, at tea-time, Mrs. Thornton had interested me. She had remained -silent without seeming shy. Superficially, no doubt, she was dowdy, and -superficially she looked dull, or, as I saw it, dulled; and dull and -dowdy is what at tea they all put her down for. It's curious, how in a -group of highly civilized people, a newcomer, without a word or glance -exchanged between them, is in a moment assessed and placed and -relegated. Everybody was going to be very kind to Mrs. Thornton, that I -saw, and everybody was going to relegate her; only the highly civilized -can manage the combination. - -Mrs. Thornton, from one point of view, had a pallid, podgy little face, -with wide lips and short nose and a broad, infantile brow above eyes -singularly far apart. All the same, and the more I looked at her the -more I saw it, it was a delicious face; squared here, stubborn there, -sweet by turns and glances. And she was of the loveliest colour, with a -skin silver-white, and thick, shining, pale-gold hair, and eyes of a -deep, dense, meditative blue. All her attributes, however, were -invisible to Vera, and I was fully prepared for the glance with which, -over Mrs. Thornton's imitation Panama, she presently said to me: - -"Darling, do take Mrs. Thornton round the water-garden. It's so lovely -at this hour. Captain Thornton must wait for it till to-morrow. He's too -tired to go farther now." - -Mrs. Thornton got up at once, with her air of vague acquiescence in -anything proposed, and I led her up and out and down the lime-tree alley -and through the copse, where Vera, in spring, has her wild garden, to -the banks of the river, the clear, wandering little stream, bridged and -islanded, golden in the afternoon light under its willows and reflecting -irises and meadow-sweet. - -"Now we can sit down," I said, and on a bench under a willow we did sit, -Mrs. Thornton with an involuntary sigh of weariness. "I expect your -husband will soon get all right here," I said presently. "It's such good -air. Is his leg badly damaged?" - -"Well, you see, he can already get about quite well with it," said Mrs. -Thornton; "but I'm afraid he'll never be able to do any of the things he -most cares for again--riding and cricket, and his soldiering, of course. -He will have to give up the army. I am afraid it's afterwards one will -begin to feel all the things that one must give up. Just now all that I -can think about is that he has come back alive. Have you any one out -there?" she asked. - -I told her about Jack and how he had got a commission at the beginning -of the war and gone out in January. - -"It must be even more of a wrench to have them go when they aren't -already in the army," said Mrs. Thornton. "A soldier's wife ought not to -feel it so much of a wrench. I'm afraid I did, though." - -I saw already that Mrs. Thornton had taken to me. It was natural that -she should. I had taken to her quite tremendously, and she must have -felt it; and, besides, a great many women do feel confidence in me at -once. I, to be sure, look like anything but an angel, though I, like -Vera, have small, pale features and dark hair. But mine's not a -melancholy or mysterious face. My eyebrows dip together over my nose, -and my mouth is at once placid and irascible. I look, in my straight, -austere clothes,--the silver buckles on my shoes and the fob of old -trinkets at my waist for all adornment,--like a cross between a young -priest in his soutane and a Blue-Coat boy; and I think it is the boyish -woman, curt and kind and impersonal, who gains the confidence of others -of her sex. - -"I don't know that it was more of a wrench," I said. "I expect that you -and I felt pretty much the same sort of thing on that Victoria platform -when we said good-bye to them. What do you and your husband intend -doing, now that he has to give up his profession?" - -"Well, we had thought of having a chicken-farm somewhere. We are both so -fond of the country, and I've a cousin who has a chicken-farm, and I've -helped her with it, and she has made it pay. Even if Clive's leg stays -so bad, I am very strong. But we've had, really, no time yet to talk -things over." - -"You don't look very strong," I observed, "but that may be because you -are over-tired. You look very tired. I should say that you got up at six -this morning, and raced around London shopping in the heat, and packed, -and had no lunch, and a journey on top of it all. So no wonder you are -tired." - -"How clever of you!" Mrs. Thornton cried, laughing. "That is exactly -what I have been doing. And I've been in a Belgian refugee hostel ever -since Clive went, and that is tiring, though it keeps one going, too. -Don't you find it difficult just to go on from day to day?" She was -leaning forward on her knee now to look up into my face while I knitted. -"I mean, when one wakes in the morning, for instance, to think that one -has to get up and brush one's teeth and do one's hair and all the rest -of it. It seems impossible when what one is feeling is that one wants to -be chloroformed till it is all over. It was then that the hostel was so -sustaining; one had to get up whether one felt like it or not." - -"I know; yes," I said, nodding. "I've work, too, though it's not so -sustaining as a hostel. I'm my cousin's secretary, and we have all these -Tommies now; they take up a good deal of time. It must be curious, -having it all over, all that weight of anxiety." - -"It is, it is," said little Mrs. Thornton, eagerly, with her look of -gratitude for finding some one with whom to talk about it. "It's almost -like losing a limb. I feel crippled, as well as Clive. Isn't it absurd? -But it's almost like loss. And one is dazed with the relief of it." - -"How long have you been married?" I asked. - -"Only a year and a half," she told me, and that Clive's mother and hers -had been great friends, and that she had often gone to stay with his -people in the country, so that she had always known him. Her mother had -died when she was a child and her father only two years ago. She had -lived in London with her father, who had been an artist. She was just -twenty. And after she had told me about herself, she asked me about -Jack, and I found myself telling her all about him and about those plans -of ours for living together in London if he ever comes back. - -The party at Compton Dally was small, and they were all there (except -Sir Francis who was an old family friend and who was paying a long -visit), to help Vera with her Tommies. The only other officer besides -Captain Thornton was poor Colonel Appleby, a pale, frightened, -middle-aged man invalided home with nervous shock. At dinner that night -Lady Dighton, who is the embodiment of lassitude and acquiescence, had -him, and Mrs. Travers-Cray had Sir Francis, and Vera had Captain -Thornton, so that Percival fell to the share of Mollie Thornton, and I -wondered how she liked him. If she was already feeling herself out of -it, to have Percival at dinner wouldn't make her feel herself in; quite -the reverse. Percival's appearance is always summed up to me by the back -of his head: the wedge of fat, red neck above his high collar, the -sleek, glittering black hair, and the rims of his red ears curving -forward on each side. The back of his head seems really as -characteristic as the front, though that is jovial and not unkindly. -Percival looks sly over his food, and looks over his wine like the sort -of man who is going to tell a story that no one else will find at all -amusing. He told Mollie several such stories that night, I inferred, -though she was evidently neither shy nor shocked; it was in the quality -of her smile that I read her kindly endurance. - -Milly, Vera's girl, just seventeen and just promoted to late dinner, sat -on Mollie's other hand and did not, as far as I observed, address her -once during the meal. But, then, Milly never makes efforts unless they -are plainly useful. All Vera's beauty had been spoiled in her by the -Dixon admixture, and yet she is a most engaging-looking little minx, -with broad, bold, black, idle eyes and a blunted nose, auburn hair and a -skin of roses and carnations. Vera had seen to that. Poor Vera is quite -fond of the child, a half-vexed, half-ironic constantly rebuffed -tenderness. But Milly says to me, "Mother is such a bore, you know," and -likes me far better, who make no claim upon her and who, she must feel, -like her very little. She will soon take flight, however, when a -sufficiently advantageous occasion presents itself. The war has been a -sad blow to her projects, and what I like in Milly is the fact that she -has never uttered a word of complaint as to the shattering of her -girlish gaieties. However, to get back to Mollie Thornton, I don't think -she could have enjoyed her companions at dinner. - -After dinner I go and amuse the Tommies and talk to the nurses until -bedtime, but, before I went, I observed that Vera, after her wont with -the detrimental belongings of a guest, had placed Mollie in a corner -with a book and the urgent, smiling murmur: "By a friend of mine. Quite, -quite beautiful. I know you'll love it." It is a book called "Spiritual -Control," with a portrait of its author, who is a stock-broker, a sleek, -stalwart, satisfied person whom Vera characterizes, why I can't think, -except that she had him once to stay after hearing his lecture, as her -"friend." A great many people find the book inspiring; Vera, as a matter -of fact, doesn't, and she found Mr. Cuthbert Dawson a terrible bore. It -was plain from her giving poor Mrs. Thornton "Spiritual Control" to -read, where she placed her. - -When I came back an hour later she was still in her corner with -"Spiritual Control," but she wasn't reading it. She had drawn the -curtain at the window where she sat, and was looking out at the -splendid, dramatic moonlight. Sir Francis and Colonel Appleby were -reading the evening papers, Lady Dighton and Leila Travers-Cray talked -together while they knitted, Milly had disappeared, and at the farthest -end of the great room, on its farthest sofa, Vera, pale and pearly, was -talking to Captain Thornton. - -"Well," I said, "how is your spirit? Is it more controlled?" - -Mrs. Thornton looked up at me, and after a moment her smile of -understanding merged into one of friendly enjoyment. - -"How do you manage," she said, "to be so austere in the daytime and so -splendid at night? You make me think of a Venetian princess in that -brocade." - -"It is nice, isn't it?" I said. "And made by the littlest of -dressmakers. I'm clever at clothes. But tell me how you like Mr. -Cuthbert Dawson." - -"Well, he is very cheerful and sincere," said Mrs. Thornton, kindly; -"but I don't seem to get much out of it. I'm really too tired and stupid -to read to-night." - -"And it's time your husband was in bed," I said. "One of the nurses is -coming for him." - -Mrs. Thornton looked down the long room at her husband. - -"If only I'd had the Red Cross training," she said, "I could have taken -care of his leg then. I suppose I mustn't ask to be allowed to. Isn't it -quite early?" she added. "He's enjoying the talk with Lady Vera." - -"It's half-past ten, and we are strict with our invalids. Here is nurse -now. I'll come up with you and see that you are comfortable." - -No one could have said that there was any creature comfort lacking in -Mrs. Thornton's reception at Compton Dally. Captain Thornton, as the -invalid, had a larger room, but Mrs. Thornton's room, next it, was quite -as charming a one, pink and grey, with old French prints and hangings of -_toile de Jouy_. She went up to the prints for a moment of silent -appreciation before turning to me with a sigh, half pleasure and half -wistfulness. - -"How lovely everything is here! Papa would have been in rapture over -those Cochins. I shall enjoy my sleep to-night." And then,--it was her -only sign of awareness,--"I suppose I'm to be allowed to go and say -good-night to Clive when nurse has done with him." - - * * * * * - -My study at Compton Dally, where I type and write and do accounts, opens -on the west terrace, and from my bureau I seemed, at most hours of the -days that followed, to have a view of Mollie Thornton's little figure -wandering, as it were, on the outskirts, not plaintive,--there was never -a touch of plaintiveness,--but passive. With her sewing or knitting or a -book she sat a good deal under the shade of the cedar that stands at the -corner of the terrace, and she spent a good deal of time drifting up and -down the vistas of the lawns and park watching birds, a binocular in her -hand. She was certainly a most comfortable person to relegate, since she -never looked melancholy and usually contrived to seem occupied, and -Vera, when she passed behind her on the terrace on her way to the -dream-garden, Captain Thornton beside her, would pause and put her hand -on her shoulder and say, "Happy, dear?" in the most dulcet tone. And -when Mrs. Thornton, lifting those meditative eyes, answered, "Yes, thank -you," Vera, all bland benevolence, would say, "That's right," and pass -on. Leila Travers-Cray and Lady Dighton sometimes exchanged a few -friendly remarks with her, and she read the morning papers to Colonel -Appleby when his eyes hurt him; but she was relegated far, far away, as -completely as any human being could be who could in any way count as a -guest. - -I was very busy and had not much time to be with her, though all the -time I had was hers; but I knew accurately what she was feeling. I -related it always with that dreadful Victoria platform, with those -moments of pain and yet of rapture which we had both known, when we had -felt ourselves, in our suffering, stand for England, lifted up in -accepting sacrifice to the august and beautiful spirit that claimed our -dearest. One would expect, after that transcendent suffering, to find as -transcending a joy; but how was joy possible to a young wife caught into -what might be to her husband a fairyland or a paradise, but to her was a -cruel and complicated machine where her only part was to turn round with -the other wheels and pretend to like it? I knew that it must not be -taken too seriously. It was only to last for six weeks, and then she -would have her Clive back again; yet while it lasted it must make the -months of suffering passed through seem happy by comparison. There had -then been nothing between them but distance and the fear of death; and -now everything was between them--everything Vera stood for; her house, -her friends, her smile, her pearls, her dream-garden. - -On morning after morning I saw Vera leading him away to it, with her -armful of books, and Chang, her Pekinese, trotting at her heels. I -perfectly understood Vera's state of mind in regard to Captain Thornton. -There was no occasion for commonplace jealousy. He merely made her feel -cheerful and rejuvenated. Everything she had to show and tell him was -new to him. She became new to herself, poor old Vera! and gained from -the quiet regard of his sane and simple eyes--handsome eyes under -straight, dark brows--a sense of freshness and worth in everything. She -liked him better than any of the wounded heroes she had yet had. Some of -them had been merely stupid, and one or two had been gloomy, sardonic -men--men of her own world, to whom nothing she had to say would seem -new. Clive Thornton was neither stupid nor sardonic, and he was simple -enough to accept Vera's fancy tricks--her talk of dreaming dreams and -solitude--as part of an angel's manner, and he was just clever enough to -be able to appreciate anything she had to say. I could quite see how -endearing Vera must find his steady gaze and his considering silences. -Even with my vigorous espousal of his wife's side I never felt angry -with him. His not seeing that she was unhappy was part of the same -innocence that made him not see that Vera was a cat. Mollie, besides, -took quite as much care to conceal her unhappiness as Vera to behave -like an angel. It never crossed his mind that his wife was relegated; it -never crossed his mind that they were separated. He did not feel -separated; they were both, as far as he knew, in fairyland together. And -yet I knew it might not all be so trivial and transient as it seemed. A -new standard was being formed for him; a new idea of what it was to be -an angel. It was possible that all unconsciously he would no longer -think of Mollie as one when he left Compton Dally; and when I took this -in I began to gather up my weapons. - -I found Mollie one afternoon sitting on the bench under the willow-tree -where we had had our first talk. She had her knitting, but her hands -were still, and she was gazing before her at the water. If she were not -a tragic figure, it was only because there are some things sadder than -tragedy. She had faced everything, been through everything, she had gone -down into the Hades where so many of us were still living, and now she -found herself baulked and menaced by commonplace daylight. Tragedy is, -in some ways, an easy thing to bear. - -"Well, what are you doing here by yourself?" I asked her, advancing. -There was a look on her face, startled and steadied, that showed me what -she had been thinking about in the fancied security of her solitude. But -she managed at once the vague smile that concealed so much, and said -that she had been, as usual, resting. "I seem to find out every day more -and more how tired I was," she added. - -"You didn't care to go with the others, motoring?" I took my place -beside her. "You'd have liked Marjorams. It's a lovely old place. Some -people think it beats Compton Dally, though, naturally, I'm not one of -them." - -"I'm sure you're not," said Mollie, laughing a little. "That was one of -the things that first struck me about you--how you loved it. I felt that -you were a fiercely loyal person." - -"I think I am--narrow loyalties, but fierce ones," I said. "But you -haven't answered my question." - -"About motoring? I don't care much about it, you know. And there really -wasn't room enough for me." - -I knew there hadn't been; but I was deliberately eschewing tact. - -"Has Captain Thornton gone?" I inquired, knowing, also, that he hadn't. - -"No; Lady Vera is reading to him in the flagged garden," said Mollie in -the voice that showed me how little she had to learn about spiritual -control. "Lady Vera is going to take him out for a run in her two-seater -before dinner. He enjoys that a great deal more than the big car." - -"It's far pleasanter, certainly," I agreed. And I went on: "They are -reading, you mean, in the dream-garden. You mustn't forget that it's a -dream-garden--where one goes to be alone." - -She looked round at me quickly, and after a moment I saw that she -faintly coloured. She said nothing, leaving it to me to follow up my -graceless gibe. I was quite ready to follow it up. - -"As a matter of fact," I said, knitting the loops along the side of my -heel, "Vera hardly ever is alone there. It's always, with Vera, a -_solitude a deux_. She's not at all the sort of woman for real solitude. -She is the sort of woman who likes to feel, or, rather, to look lonely -and not to be alone." - -To this, after a pause, Mollie said: - -"She is very charming; Clive finds her very charming." And, forced to -it, apparently, by my crudity, she added, "Aren't you fond of her, -then?" - -"No, I'm not; not particularly," I said. "Especially not just now. Vera -is not at her best, to my mind, when she is being angelic to young -married men." - -Mollie Thornton now blushed deeply. - -"I am perfectly contented that she should be angelic to Clive," she -said. - -"You are very loyal," I returned. "But you'll own that he is getting -more out of it than you are. It's a place, Compton Dally, for wounded -heroes rather than for a wounded hero's wife." - -"Do you mean," she asked after a moment, "that I oughtn't to have come?" -She had indeed owned to everything in the bewilderment of the question. -I laughed at it. - -"Oughtn't to have been with your husband at a time like this! Even Vera -could hardly ask that, could she? And that's my quarrel with her; that -it's the time of all times that you should be together and that she -never lets you see him, practically." - -She looked away, and after a moment I saw that her eyes had filled with -tears. - -"He hasn't an idea of it," she said at last. - -"That fact doesn't make you happier, does it?" - -"He thinks I'm as happy as he is. He thinks that we are together in it -all, and that she is an angel to me, too," said Mollie. "She always is -an angel to me when she sees me." - -"All men are rather stupid when it comes to knowing whether their wives -are happy," I remarked. "I think your Clive is a great dear; but I like -you best because you see things he doesn't. You, for instance, see that -Vera isn't an angel, though she may look like one." - -"He has no reason to think anything else, has he?" said Mollie, and I -saw that I had brought her to the point to which I had intended to bring -her. "I don't let him guess that I'm not happy; it would be horrid of me -if I did, for it would only mean that he'd feel at once that we must go -away, and all this loveliness would be over for him. A stuffy little -flat in Bayswater isn't a very alluring alternative; and that's where -we'd have to go--to my aunt's--till Clive was better." - -"How you'd love the stuffy flat! How glad you'd be to be there with him! -And, to do him justice, how happy he'd be there with you! He will be in -a month's time. The only question is, the month. No, Vera isn't an -angel. If she were an angel, she'd have seen to it that you were happy -here, too. But when it comes to being nice to other women,--really nice, -I mean,--she can be a cat. And what I'd like very much to see now is -what she'd make of it if you could show her that you could look like an -angel, too. It's so much a matter of looks." - -"Make of it? But I couldn't look like an angel." - -"You could look like a rival; that's another way of doing it. You could -look like another woman of her own sort. You could make her see you. She -simply doesn't see you now. I suspect that if Vera saw you and saw that -you were charming, she'd show her claws. I'd like Captain Thornton to -see her showing her claws." - -In silent astonishment, her blue eyes fixed upon me, Mollie gazed. - -"No, I don't hate Vera, if that's what you're wondering," I said. "I -like you, that's all, and I don't intend that she shall go on making you -unhappy." - -"But I don't want Clive made unhappy," Mollie said. "I can't imagine -what you mean; but, whatever it is, I don't want it. I couldn't bear all -this to be spoiled for him. I couldn't bear it not to be always, for -him, a paradise." - -It was my turn to gaze at her, and I gazed penetratingly. - -"And what if it all came to mean that you yourself, because of it, were -never to be more to him than a second-rate paradise? What if she were to -spoil you for him?" - -I brought out the cruel questions deliberately, and for a moment Mollie -faced them and me. - -"Why do you say that? How cruel to say that!" she murmured, and then -suddenly she bowed her head upon her hands. "It's been my terror. I'm -ashamed of myself for thinking it. And now--you see it!" - -I put my arm around her shoulders. - -"I'm not cruel. I only want us to see things together. I don't really -think they'd ever come to that; and, at all events, he would never know -that they had." - -"But I should," Mollie said. - -"Yes, you would. And it's horribly true that real things can be spoiled -and blighted by false things. I've often seen it happen. You do see the -danger, and you must take up the burden, my dear, of being cleverer than -your husband, and save him along with yourself. If Vera were what she -looks and seems to him, he might be right in feeling that he found in -her something he couldn't find in you. You must show him that she isn't -what she looks and seems and you must show him that you can be a -first-rate paradise, too." - -"In a little flat in Bayswater! On a chicken-farm! No, it can't be done. -Paradises of this sort don't grow in such places," poor Mollie moaned. - -"You can keep up the real paradise in them--the one he has already--when -you get there. The point is that you must show him now that you can look -like this one here. And the way to look it is to dress it. I'm sure -you've realized the absolutely supreme importance of dress for women of -the paradise type--the women you see here, all these sweet ministering -angels to the Tommies and the young husbands. I don't mean to say that, -with the exception of Vera, they're not as nice as you are in spite of -being well dressed; but I do mean that if they dressed as you do they'd -not be women of the paradise." - -Mollie's hands had fallen, and she was gazing again with eyes childlike, -astonished, and trusting. - -"But, Judith, what do you mean?" she asked. "Dress? Of course you all -dress beautifully. Haven't I loved simply looking at you all, as if -you'd been the most exquisite birds? But how could I do it? I haven't -the money; I never have had. If one has no money, one must be either -aesthetic or dowdy, and I've always prefered to be dowdy." - -"Yes, I saw that; I liked you for that. There's hope for the dowdy, but -none for the aesthetic; the one is humble, and the other is complacent. -Your clothes express renunciation simply--and the summer sales. But -though it is a question of money, some women who have masses of money -never learn how to dress. They remain mere dressmakers' formulas; and -others, with very little, can't be passed by. They count anywhere. -You've noticed my clothes. I've hardly any money, yet I'm perfect. All -my clothes mean just what I intend them to; just as Vera's mean what she -intends, and Mrs. Travers-Cray's and Lady Dighton's, and Milly's, for -Milly already is as clever as possible at knowing her thing. But you've -abandoned the attempt to intend. You've sunk down, and you let the winds -rake over you. You've always made me think of a larkspur, that blue and -silver kind, all pensive grace and delicacy; but you're a larkspur that -hasn't been staked. Your sprays don't count; they tumble anyhow, and no -one sees your shape or colour. Last night, for instance--that -turquoise-blue chiffon: not turquoise, and not that sort of chiffon." - -"I know it. I hated it," she said. - -"Of course you did, and so does any one who looks at you in it." - -"But I couldn't afford the better qualities," she appealed. "And in the -cheaper ones I couldn't get the blue I wanted, the soft Japanese blue." - -"No, you couldn't. And you thought it wouldn't show if you had it made -up on sateen. It always does show. No, it needs thought and time and -computing, too much time, too much thought, to say nothing of too much -money for many women, of course; for them it wouldn't be worth it. There -are other things to do than to live in paradise. But for you it is worth -it; to show him that you can look like an angel, and to show him that -Vera can look like a cat. No, _I'll_ show him; mine is the -responsibility. It's worth it, at all events, to me. I'll put in the -stakes, and tie you and loop you and display you. You'll see. I told you -I'd a clever little dressmaker. That's an essential. And we'll scrape up -the money. You shall be dressed for once as you intend." - -She was bewildered, aghast, tempted, and, on the top of everything, -intensely amused. Her face was lighted as I'd never seen it before with -pure mirth, and it looked like still, silver water that becomes suddenly -glimmering, quivering, eddying, and sunlit. She was charming thus -lighted. It was a sort of illumination of which Vera's face is -incapable; her gaiety is always clouded with irony. - -"It is all too kind, too astonishing, too funny for words," Mollie said. -"Of course I should love to be well dressed for once, and I can't see -why I shouldn't avail myself of your little dressmaker now,--especially -now, since, as you tell me, I offend through my dowdiness. And I do -really need some new clothes. I'm wearing out my trousseau ones, you -know. Yes; wasn't it a horrid little trousseau? But, don't you see," and -the sunlight faded, "I can't be a real, not a real angel, not a real -paradise. It's much deeper. It's a question of roots. It's the way they -smile, the way they walk, the way they know what they want to say and -what they don't want to say." - -I nodded. "You know, too, and you'd say it, if people saw you and cared -to hear what you said." - -"That would help, of course. I've never felt so stupid in my life as -here. But, oh, it's deeper!" said Mollie. "I don't belong to it. How -they all make me feel it! I'm an outsider; and why should I pretend not -to be?" - -"It wouldn't be pretending anything to dress as you'd like to dress. No -one who _sees_ is an outsider now a days, if they can contrive to make -themselves seen. That's the whole point. And there's nothing you don't -see. You see far more than Vera does. Don't bother about the roots. Take -care of the flowers, and the roots will take care of themselves; that's -another modern maxim for you. Your flowers are there, and all that we -need think of now is how to show them. Wait. You'll see. We'll go to -London to-morrow," I said; "and this very evening we'll have a talk -about your hair." - - * * * * * - -You may be sure that I was on the spot to see a week or so later my -larkspur's debut as an angel. We were all assembled in the drawing-room -before dinner, and she was a little late, as I, not she, had intended -that she should be. It was precisely the moment for a mild sensation. -The day had been hot and long. Everybody, apart from being anxious,--for -everybody was anxious, Sir Francis and Mrs. Travers-Cray with sons at -the front and Lady Dighton's husband in the Dardanelles--apart from that -ever-present strain, everybody to-day was a little jaded, blank, and -tired of one another. There reigned, as a symptom, that silence that in -the moments before dinner falls sometimes upon people who know each -other too well for surmise or ceremony. They stood about looking at the -evening newspapers; they picked up a book; they sat side by side, -knitting without speaking. Vera, sunken in a deep chair near my sofa, -yawned wearily. No one, in fact, had anything to look to before bedtime -except the stimulant of the consomme or a possible surprise in the way -of sweets. - -I had known that I could count upon Mollie not to be self-conscious when -she appeared in her new array, but I hadn't counted upon such complete -and pensive simplicity. Her eyes were on me as she entered, her husband -limping behind her, and they seemed to ask me, with a half-wistful -amusement, if she came up to my expectations. She far surpassed them. I -never saw a woman to whom it made more difference. "It," on this -occasion, was blue--the blue of a night sky and the blue of a sky at -dawn, the blue, too, of my larkspurs, lapping at the edges here and -there, as delicately as filaments of cloud crossing the sky, into white. -It made one think, soft, suave triumph that it was, of breezes over the -sea at daybreak and of a crescent moon low on a horizon and of white -shores and blue Grecian hills; at least it made me think of these -things, it and Mollie together; and with it went the alteration of her -hair--bands of folded gold swathed round and round her little head. No -one but myself had ever seen before that Mollie had the poise and -lightness of a Tanagra figure nor that the shape of her face was curious -and her eyes strange and her skin like silver; but I knew, as she -advanced down the long room, that Vera, sunken in her chair, saw it all -at last, drank in every drop of it, with an astonishment that, though it -expressed itself in no gesture, I was able to gauge from her very -stillness, her concentration of stillness, as she watched the relegated -becoming visible at last. It's not pleasant for anybody to have to own -that they've been blind and made a mistake, and Vera was specially fond -of discovering oddity and charm and of claiming and displaying and -discussing a discovery. And here was oddity and charm which she had not -only failed to discover, but had helped to obscure. Mollie was indeed -visible, and every eye was on her as she drifted quietly forward in the -evening light and sat down beside me. She was mine, and no one else's; -that was quite evident, too. - -That Captain Thornton had received something of a revelation was also -evident, though it had not probably amounted to more than seeing, and -saying, that Mollie was looking awfully well; but it expressed itself in -the fact that, instead of joining Vera, as was his wont, he came and sat -down next to Mollie on my sofa. We began to talk, and, though the -watching pause was prolonged for yet another moment, the others then -began to talk, too. It was as if, not quite knowing what had happened to -them, they were all a little cheered and exhilarated; as if they'd had -their consomme and as if the sweet had been altogether a surprise. A -spectacle of any sort has this effect upon a group of jaded people. Only -Vera kept her ominous silence. - -Dinner was announced, and we all got up. Percival, with a new alacrity, -approached Mollie,--he almost always had Mollie,--the others paired off -as usual, and Vera rose to Captain Thornton's arm. It was then that she -said, smiling thoughtfully upon Mollie: - -"Aren't you doing your hair in a new way, dear?" - -I saw from Mollie's answering smile that she was still ingenuous enough -to hope that she might win Vera's approval with that of the others, the -hope, too, that while Clive might think of herself as a first-rate -angel, he should never see Vera as a cat. - -"It is new," she said. "I've just learned how to; Judith showed me. Do -you like it?" - -Leaning on Captain Thornton's arm, Vera, with gently lifted brows, -rather sadly shook her head. - -"I suppose I don't care about fashions. It's very fashionable, isn't it? -But I loved so that great, girlish knot. People's way of doing their -hair is part of their personality to me. Judith cares so much about -fashion, I know. Do you care about fashion, Captain Thornton? Do you -like this fashionable way? You know, I can't help always thinking that -it makes women's heads look like cheeses; in napkins, you -know--Stiltons." - -It was the first scratch. Mollie, though with a little startled glance, -took it with all mildness, making no comment as Percival led her away, -Percival remarking that it was, he thought, a ripping way of doing her -hair; and I, as I went out manless, heard Captain Thornton, behind me, -saying, in answer to Vera's murmurs: - -"Yes; I see; I see what you mean. But, do you know, all the same I think -it's most awfully becoming to Mollie. It brings out the shape of her -face so." - -"What a _dear_ little face it is!" said Vera, rapidly leaving the -cheese. - -It all worked like a stealing spell. There was nothing marked or sudden -in it. No one, I think, except Vera, was aware that his or her attitude -to little Mrs. Thornton had changed. She had become visible, that was -all, and they became aware that she was not only worth looking at, but -worth talking to. At dinner that night old Sir Francis fixed his -eye-glass to observe her more than once and after dinner he joined her -in the drawing-room and talked with her till bedtime. It turned out -then that he had known her father and actually possessed one of his -pictures; had been a great admirer. Next morning he was walking with her -on the terrace before breakfast. Mollie in a blue lawn, as sprightly as -it was demure, her casque of golden hair shining in the sunlight. Lady -Dighton asked her that afternoon to come motoring with her and the -Tommies, and in the evening I heard Mrs. Travers-Cray, while she and -Mollie wound wool together, telling her about her two boys at the front. -The only person who didn't see more of Mollie was Captain Thornton; but -that, I felt sure, was because Vera was determined that he shouldn't. - -It was not for a day or two that I was able to compare notes with -Mollie. - -"Well," I said, joining her on the terrace before dinner, "_ca y est_." - -"It's extraordinary," said Mollie. "Everything is different. I myself am -different. I feel, for one thing, as if I'd become clever to match my -clothes. It would be almost humiliating to have the mere clothes make so -much difference and every one change so to me unless I could really feel -that I'd changed, too." - -"You're staked. I told you how it would be." - -"And I owe it all to you. It's a wonderfully sustaining feeling to be -staked; secure, peaceful. Such a funny change, Judith, is little Milly! -Have you noticed? She came up to me when I was walking this afternoon -and linked her arm in mine, and in ten minutes was confiding in me all -about her perplexed love-affairs, as if we'd been old friends." - -"Yes, she would. She loves to tell people about her love-affairs." - -"But I couldn't have imagined that she was really so ingenuous; for, in -a sense, she is ingenuous." - -"Exceedingly ingenuous when she isn't exceedingly sophisticated; I think -one often sees the mixture. The only thing you must be prepared for with -the Milly type is that in a week's time she may forget that she ever -confided in you and, almost, that she ever knew you. Her ingenuousness -is a form of presumptuousness." - -"Yes, I think I saw that. I'm beginning to see so many things--far more -things than I'll ever have use for on a chicken-farm, Judith." And -Mollie laughed a little. - -"And what does your husband say?" I asked. - -"Well, I've not seen much of him, you know. But I'm sure he likes it -awfully, the way I look." - -"Only Vera won't let him get at you to tell you so." - -"Oh, he sees enough of me to tell me so," said Mollie, smiling: "only it -takes him time to come to the point of saying things, and it's true that -we haven't much time." - -"And she hasn't given you any more scratches before him?" - -"Not before him." Mollie flushed a little. "It _was_ a scratch, wasn't -it? I don't think he saw that it was." - -"He will see in time. And it's worth it, isn't it, since it's to make -him see?" - -"Yes, I can bear it. She's rather rude to me now when he isn't there, -you know; but it's really less blighting to have some one see you enough -to be rude to you than to see you so little that they are affectionate. -Yet I hope she won't be too rude." - -"She can hardly bear it," I said. - -It was the next morning that Vera showed me how little she was able to -bear it. She had kept me singularly busy, as if afraid that I might wave -a magic wand even more transformingly, and she came into the study where -I was writing invitations for a garden-fete in aid of the Red Cross -fund, and after giving me very dulcetly a long list of instructions, she -went to the window and looked out for some silent moments at Mollie -sauntering up and down with Sir Francis under the blue bubble of her -parasol. - -"I suppose you dressed her when you took her up to town that day," she -then remarked. - -I had wondered how long Vera could keep under cover and I was pleased to -see her emerge. - -"Well, hardly that," I said, marking off with my pen the names of the -people on my list who were away and not to be counted on for help with -the bazaar. "She badly needed some clothes and couldn't afford expensive -places; so I took her to my little woman. She was able to carry out -Mollie's ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, hasn't she? She knows -so exactly what suits her." - -"Carry out her ideas? She hasn't an idea in her head. Carry out yours, -you mean, you funny creature. I can't conceive why you took the pains to -dress up the deadly little dowd." Vera drummed with her fingers on the -window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and -they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray, -sweet, impassive, honey-coloured woman, was one of the few people for -whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard. - -"Oh, you're mistaken there, Vera, just as you've been mistaken about her -looks," I said, all dispassionate limpidity. "She has heaps of ideas, I -can assure you, and I saw it from the beginning; just as I saw that she -was enchanting looking." - -"Enchanting! Help! Help! That little skim-milk face, with those great -calf's eyes! Who is the poor dear martyr thing who carries her eyes on a -plate? St. Lucia, isn't it? She makes me think of that--as much -expression. You may have succeeded in making her less of a dowd, but -you'll never succeed in making her less of a bore." - -"Well, Mrs. Travers-Cray doesn't find her a bore," I remarked, casting a -glance of quiet, satisfied possessorship at the group outside. - -"Oh, Leila always was an angel," said Vera, "and your little protegee -has made a very determined set at her." - -"Sir Francis is an angel, too, then. He delights in her; that's -evident." It was perhaps rather indiscreet of me to goad Vera like this, -but I could not resist taking it out of her and rubbing it into her, and -I knew that Sir Francis would vex her almost as much as Mrs. -Travers-Cray. "And look at Milly," I added. "You can't say that Milly is -an angel. The fact is that Mrs. Thornton is a very charming young woman, -and that if you don't see it you are the only person who doesn't." - -"Another person who doesn't see it is her husband," said Vera. She was -determined not to show that she was angry, but I could see how angry she -was. "Sir Francis, of course, old goose, thinks any one charming if they -are young and dress well and look at him with appealing eyes. It is her -husband I'm really sorry for. It's evident that he never spoke to a -civilized woman in his life till he came here. He doesn't show much -signs of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It's -pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first -curate's daughter they find round the corner. And now that she's pushing -herself forward like this, he is done for." Vera, I saw, was very angry -to be goaded so far. - -"Surely she is the more interesting of the two," I blandly urged. -"Neither of them has a spark of ambition if it comes to pushing; they'll -be quite happy on their chicken-farm. But if it were a question of -getting on and getting in with the right people, it would, I imagine, be -she rather than he who would count. This last day or two has made that -evident to my mind. In her soft, strange way little Mollie is unique, -whereas he is only an honest young soldier, and there are thousands more -just like him, thank goodness!" - -Vera at this turned her head and looked at me for a moment. After all, -even if I wasn't angry, I, too, had given myself away. And it evidently -pleased her to recognize this--to recognize that she wasn't being -worsted merely by Mollie's newly revealed charm, but by my diplomacy as -well. And it is rather a good mark to Vera, I think, that I don't -believe it ever crossed her mind for a moment that she had the simplest -method of speedy vengeance in her hands--had simply to send me packing. -Of course we should both have known that to use such a method would have -been to reveal one's self as crude and vulgar; yet a cattish woman who -is very angry may easily become both. Vera didn't. There are things I -always like about her. - -She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling -with cousinly good-humour: - -"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that, -Judith darling--how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he doesn't. -You are so essentially a woman's woman, aren't you? I suppose it's just -because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don't feel -drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you, -of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their -hair and the colour of their ties. You're a first-rate woman's woman, I -grant you, and you're very clever and you've succeeded in foisting your -little friend on silly Sir Francis and on Leila Travers-Cray, and it's -all rather dear and funny of you, and I've quite loved watching it all -and seeing you at work; but you won't succeed in foisting Mrs. Thornton -on her husband, and he'll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out -whether he's anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found -him,"--and Vera now spoke with a simple candour,--"quite, quite a dear; -with a great deal in him--sensitiveness, tact, flavour. So much could -have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and -started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who doesn't -know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? No; -I'm afraid Mrs. Mollie, after she's left your hands, Judith dear, will -tumble quite, quite flat again. _Would_ you mind, darling, getting all -the invitations off to-day? We mustn't be slipshod about it. And don't -forget to write to the merry-go-round man, and to Mark Hammond to see if -he'll sing." So, having delivered what she hoped might be a somewhat -stinging shaft at my complacency, Vera trailed away. - -If I hadn't so goaded her I don't believe, really, that she'd have taken -the trouble that she did take to prove herself right and me wrong. There -had been, before this, little conscious malice or intended unkindness. -But now the claws were out. During the next day or two it at once -justified and infuriated me to watch the manifold little slights and -snubs of which poor Mollie was the victim, the dexterity with which, -while seeming all sweetness, Vera essayed to belittle and discompose -her, to display her as ignorant or awkward or second-rate. Only a woman -can be aware of what another woman is accomplishing on these lines, and -though Captain Thornton once or twice showed a puzzled brow, her skill -equalled her malice, and he never really saw. I was prepared for it when -Mollie came to my study one morning and shut the door and said: - -"I'm afraid I can't stand it any longer, Judith." - -"It has been pretty bad," I said. "She's been so infernally clever, -too." - -"Our time is really nearly up," said Mollie, "and I'm trying to think of -some excuse for getting Clive to feel we'd better go before it comes. -Only now she's telling him that I am jealous of her." - -Pen in hand, I leaned back and looked up at my poor little accomplice. -This, I recognized, was indeed Vera's trump-card, but I certainly hadn't -foreseen that she would use it. - -"Has he told you so?" I asked. - -"Oh, no, he wouldn't. He couldn't, could he? But I know it. Men are very -transparent, aren't they, Judith? He is always urging me to see more of -her, and telling me that she is so kind, so clever, such a dear, and -that I'd really think so, too, if I'd try to see more of her. And when -I say that I'm sure she is, and that I hope I shall see more of her, he -thinks--I can see it--that I'm only playing up, and between us, her and -me, he is rather wretched and uncomfortable. What shall I do, Judith? -You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures, -she was really sneering at father's, and when I tried to -answer,--because I felt I had to answer about that,--making me seem so -rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he didn't -understand. And it's all the time like that. I have to pretend not to -see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns -everything against me." - -"Be patient. Give her a little more time," I said. "She'll run to earth -if you give her a little more time." - -"But it is so horrid, between Clive and me, Judith: if I say what I -think to him, he will only see it as jealousy, so even with him I have -to pretend, and it makes me feel as if I were growing to be like her, -and I can't bear it." - -I meditated while poor Mollie dried her eyes, to which the irrepressible -tears had risen. "Ask him if he can't arrange for you to see more of -her," I said presently. - -She looked at me with a general trust, yet a particular scepticism. - -"But she will make that seem as if I were trying to force myself on -them; because she's always with him, isn't she?" - -"Only now because she keeps him, not because he wants to stay. I'm quite -sure that he wants to be more with you. I think you can manage it, -Mollie. Just say, when he next urges: 'Oh, but I'd love to, Clive. Only -you must tell me when. Perhaps sometime you'd take me to the -dream-garden when you think she'll be there and that she'd care to have -me, and then, when you get us started, you could leave us. You could go -and take Judith for a stroll.' Something of that sort." - -She eyed me sadly and doubtfully. - -"I'll try whatever you tell me to try, but I feel afraid of her. I feel -as if she cared, really cared, to do me harm." - -"She's been proved wrong," I said, "and I've rather rubbed it in; but at -the worst, Mollie, she can never harm you now as there was danger of her -doing. It's better, far better, you'll own, for your husband to think -you're jealous and a naughty angel than for him to think you're a -second-rate one." With this aphorism, for the time being, she had to be -contented. I myself felt sure that the hour of reckoning was to come. - -It was next afternoon, after lunch, Vera being engaged in the -drawing-room with visitors, that I met Captain Thornton on the lawn with -his wife. Mollie was very large-eyed and rather pale, and I inferred -from her demeanour that she had taken a step or made a move of some -kind. - -"Do come with us, Miss Elliot," said Captain Thornton. "I'm just taking -Mollie along to the dream-garden. She wants to have a little talk, all -to herself, with Lady Vera, and Lady Vera told me to wait for her there -till these people were gone; so it's just the thing. And you and I can -leave them together, do you see? People never get really to know each -other unless they are alone together, do they?" - -"No, they don't," I replied. "Though sometimes they never get to know -each other when they are alone together," I couldn't resist adding; but -as I saw a slight bewilderment on his honest face I indulged in no -further subtleties, and made haste to add, "Does Vera know that you were -going to arrange a meeting?" - -"Oh, not a bit of it. That's just the point," said the guileless young -man. "I want her to think that it's all Mollie's doing, you know; -because she's got it into her head that Mollie doesn't really care about -her. Funny idea, isn't it? As if Mollie could be like that to any one -who's been as kind to us as Lady Vera has! But I'm sure that if they -have a few quiet talks it will all come right. Mollie is so -undemonstrative; I told her that. It needs time for her to get used to -anybody." - -Mollie, her arm within her husband's, cast across his unconscious breast -a grave, deep glance upon me as he thus quoted his defence of her. What -was she to do with Vera, the glance perhaps asked me, too, now that she -was to have her? What account of the interview would Vera serve up to -Clive? Was not her last state to be worse than her first? I tried, in my -answering glance, to reassure and sustain, yet I myself felt uncertainty -about this fulfilment of my counsel. - -We reached the dream-garden. Vera and Captain Thornton had been there -for most of the morning, and books and papers were piled on the seat -where the grey and purple cushions denoted attitudes of confident -tete-a-tete. - -Captain Thornton and I talked about the war, and I saw, with a mild, -reminiscent irony, remembering Vera's sting, that he was perfectly -prepared to give me every opportunity for judging him. I felt, indeed, -though Vera had so absorbed him, that he had never cared to talk about -the war with her. She and the other angels were there to help one to -forget, but with me he was glad to remember. It was I who heard Vera's -swift footfall approaching. Captain Thornton, stooping to mark out with -books and pencils the plan of a battle, had, I think, almost forgotten -the coming interview, and until Vera appeared among the cypresses, -flushed above her pearls, he remained unaware. She stood there at the -top of the steps for a moment, looking down at us, at Captain Thornton -and me, our heads so close together, and at Mollie in her blue and with -her unrevealing little face, and I saw from her expression, as she took -us all in, that she had not been succeeding so well with Captain -Thornton as Mollie and even I had feared. It was a smouldering -irritation against him that flared up with her anger against Mollie and -me. - -"Oh!" she said, a dreadfully significant monosyllable on Vera's -competent lips. It expressed surprise and weariness and the slight -embarrassment of the civilized confronted with the barbarian. "Oh!" she -repeated, and she descended the steps, Chang trotting after her with his -countenance of quizzical superciliousness. "I'm so very, very sorry." -She did not look at any of us now; her voice was exceedingly -inarticulate and exceedingly sweet. "I'm afraid there's been a mistake. -It's the other gardens that are for my friends. I'm charmed always to -see them there. And there are so many other gardens, aren't there? But -this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to -be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired." - -We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those -weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook -them into place. - -"It's my fault," Clive stammered. "I mean--I didn't understand. I -thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know -you better, and I suggested this." - -Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang -sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. "I'm very, very -sorry," she gurgled, with oh, such vagueness! "It's my one corner. My -one place to be alone. I don't see people here unless I've asked them to -come." She took up a review and opened it, and her eyes scanned its -pages. - -We were dismissed,--"thrown out," as the Americans say,--and we -retreated up the steps, Mollie helping Clive, and down the flagged path -and out into the lime-tree alley. - -It was a display so complete that it left me, indeed, a little abashed -by the success of my manoeuvres, while at the same time I felt that I -mustn't let Captain Thornton discern the irrepressible smile that -quivered at the corners of my mouth. When we were out on the lawn he -turned his startled eyes on me. - -"Really, you know, I'd no idea, Miss Elliot--what?" He appealed to me. - -"That Vera could lose her temper?" I asked. - -Clive continued to stare. - -"It comes to that, doesn't it? What else can it mean?" He looked now at -his wife. "To speak like that to you, Mollie! And when she's been saying -she wanted so awfully to make real friends with you." - -Mollie, I saw, was dismayed. The triumph had been too complete. She -could not keep up with it. - -"I am sure that Lady Vera is very badly overwrought about something," -she said. "She wanted particularly to be alone and she found us there, -and it put her on edge." Actually she was trying to patch up his fallen -angel for him. - -"But she told me to wait there for her.--Sent me off to wait for her -when those people came," said Clive. "It seems to me that it was you she -minded finding. And yet she's been going on about your never coming to -talk to her. She's been going on about it like anything." He caught -himself up, blushing, and I saw that Vera was all revealed to him. I -hardly needed to pluck another pinion from her, though I didn't resist -the temptation to do so, saying: - -"You see, Vera is rather jealous. She can't bear sharing things--her -friends of her dream-garden. She liked to have you there, but she didn't -like to have Mollie there. Did she tell you she wanted to make friends -with Mollie? She's never taken any pains to show it, has she?" - -"Oh, please, Judith!" Mollie implored. - -"But he sees it all now, Mollie, so why shouldn't I say it?" I inquired. -"Her point has been, Captain Thornton, to keep you in and to keep Mollie -out, and she very nearly succeeded in doing it." - -"Please, Judith! It's not only that. She's been such a real friend to -you, Clive! I'm sure she is overwrought about something, and it will be -all right when you next meet her." But Mollie pleaded in vain. - -"I'm hanged if it will be all right!" said Captain Thornton. - -Vera made no attempt to reinstate herself. It was part of her strength -never to try to recover what was lost. She kept up appearances, it is -true, but that was for her own sake rather than in any hope, or even -wish, to regain his good opinion. When we all met at tea, she came -trailing in, with Chang under her arm, and as she sank into her place, -diffusing the suavest unconsciousness, she said to Mrs. Travers-Cray: - -"Charlie Carlton's been killed, have you heard? This war is something -more than I can bear." - -Charlie Carlton, as I knew, was a cousin of the recent callers and a -most remote friend of Vera's; but it was the best that she could do for -the occasion, and all that she was inclined to do, though a melancholy -smile, as impersonal as it was impartial, was turned more than once on -Captain Thornton and Mollie as she inquired whether they liked sugar in -their tea or had enough cream. She had made their tea for six weeks now, -and after the first week she had never forgotten that they both liked -sugar and both disliked cream. But she thus washed her hands of intimacy -while keeping up the graces of hostess-ship. They might have arrived -that afternoon. - -Mollie and her husband rose beautifully to the situation, for their last -two days at Compton Dally; that is, Mollie rose, for the husband at such -times has only to follow and be silent. I don't think that she could -have shown a grace and a distance as achieved as Vera's had it not been -for those charming clothes of hers. You must have something to rise from -if you are to float serenely above people's heads; otherwise you merely -stand on tiptoe, very uncomfortably. Mollie and Vera might have been -two silken balloons, passing and repassing suavely in the dulcet summer -air. And on the last day Vera's sense of dramatic fitness prompted her, -evidently, to the most imperturbable _volte-face_: she showed to Mollie -a marked tenderness. To Captain Thornton she was kind, perfectly kind, -but that she found him rather dull was evident. It might have been -Mollie with whom she had spent all those hours in the dream-garden. - -"Must you really go, dear?" she asked. - -Mollie said that she was afraid they must. She had heard from her aunt, -who was waiting to take them in, and, owing to all Vera's kindness, -Clive was now quite strong again. Vera did not insist. - -"I've _so_ loved getting to know you!" she said, holding Mollie's hand -at the door of the motor on the morning of their departure. "It's been -_such_ a pleasure. You must often, often come to Compton Dally again. -_Good_-bye, dear!" - -But Mollie knew, and Vera knew that she knew, that never again would -they be asked to Compton Dally. Meanwhile, if the war isn't over and -Jack hasn't come back, I'm to go and stay with them next spring on the -chicken-farm. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -EVENING PRIMROSES - - -IT had been a hot day and there seemed to be thunder in the air, but she -was afraid there would be no rain that night. The abandoned garden -needed it sadly; though, as she reflected, rain would encourage weeds -rather than the few remaining flowers. Poppies had sown themselves -everywhere, degenerates of the Shirleys which, three years ago, had -spread their silken cups in the large bed at the foot of the lawn. Their -withered stalks cracked beneath her steps in the paths and glimmered -under the unpruned branches of the cordon apple trees. There were -thistles, too, sorrel, and tall nettles, a matted carpet of bindweed and -groundsel in the little kitchen-garden, once so neat, and, of course, as -poor Charlie had predicted, the Michaelmas daisies had eaten up nearly -everything in the herbaceous border. That was one of the last questions -he had written to her: "How are my pink phloxes? Have the Michaelmas -daisies smothered them?" They had. It was the season at which the -phloxes should be in fullest flower, but not one was to be seen; the -dense, fine foliage of the daisies had advanced in a wall of green -nearly to the border's edge. - -It was still oppressively warm. A toad hopped indolently away and -paused at the box edging, lying up against it, his front feet extended, -as if so wearied by the heat that he took his chances of discovery. She -stopped to look at the clumsy creature, in which so little of nature's -accurate grace was expressed; and as she stood there, a sudden rustle in -the box betrayed another inhabitant--this time a baby hedgehog which, -too young for fear, moved busily about among the flat dandelion plants -that rosetted the path, and even, encountering the tips of her shoes, -stopped to examine them carefully before moving on again. The baby -hedgehog would have amused Charlie. He had always been delightful about -animals; he and the boys had always had that great interest in common. - -Yes, the bird-boxes were still there. She could see one in the big apple -tree and one fixed to the porch of the house, under the rose. How well -she remembered the frantic delight that hailed the hatching of the first -brood of tits. And the day when Charlie had deemed it prudent to -withdraw the door for a peep at the beautifully fitted mosaic of bright -little heads and bodies within, lifting up Giles in his holland pinafore -for a long, blissful gaze. Six years ago that must have been. - -The light was altering now, and when she turned at the end of the path, -a great moon had risen across the lane and seemed to hang in the -branches of the walnut tree that grew in the field beyond. A great, -shining, heavy moon, and mournful, it seemed to her; her desolate -thoughts, she was aware, lending their colour to everything. Heavy, -mournful, desolate; that was the rhythm of her own steps passing along -in the twilight, pursued by the unformulated consciousness that lay -behind all these pictures of the past; pausing at last, as if to let the -dogging sorrow overtake her, as she came to where, near the -summer-house, against the wall, the evening primroses grew. - -It was years since Charlie had first planted them there, and she had -said to herself at the time that they would never be rid of them, -tenacious, recurrent things, sowing themselves patiently, and coming up -loyally even when there was no one to wish them well. She felt touched -by their presence; for though she had always found them untidy and -uninteresting, she saw, really now for the first time, that they could -be beautiful. Homely, loyal flowers; yet--was it the invading sense of -sorrow colouring them, too?--a little uncanny, showing at this neutral -hour of mingled dusk and moonlight their pale, evident gold; becoming -conscious, as it were, becoming personal at the time when other flowers -became invisible. Not that it was a sinister uncanniness; not that of -ghosts; of fairies, rather; the very strangeness, sadness, sweetness of -the moon, to which, from them, she lifted her eyes. And they reminded -her of something, but what, she could not say. Not of Charlie. There had -never been anything strange or sad about Charlie, except the fact, -pursuing her now in his deserted garden, that he was dead and would -never see it again. - -It was a year to-day since he had been killed, and she had come down to -the country with the sense of commemoration. She wanted, alone in the -little place so full of thoughts of him, to find him, to recall him; and -she had been doing that at every turn. Yet the evening primroses shining -there brought a pang deeper than any vision of him. They, though so -homely, seemed to personify loneliness; they seemed to be missing -something; and although she was desolate because Charlie was dead, -because he would never again delight in his garden, it was, in a sense, -for him rather than for herself that she sorrowed, and, in a sense, she -did not miss him at all. - -She stood still in the path, her hands clasped behind her, her head -bent, a personification of widowhood in her thin black draperies, her -intent, memorial poise. And she could have said of herself with truth -that, during all this year, she had known only a widow's sad -preoccupations. There had been the settling of business matters; lawyers -and bankers to interview; planning for the boys, with school-masters to -visit; and the tending of bereaved relations--Charlie's dear old parents -clung to her. But now, on the day of his death, it was as if for the -first time she had had leisure, at last, to realize that, with it all, -she had never had the widow's heart. She had grieved over him; she had -longed to do all for him that could be done--there was nothing new in -that; but it was far worse than not being heartbroken: it was the sorry -fact that she did not even miss him. He had left, as it were, no -emptiness behind him. - -She had lifted her head and looked round the garden, trying, in the -physical fact of absence, to summon the spiritual void. How he had -planned, dug, planted it; pruned his fruit trees; placed his anemones in -leaf-mould, his bulbs on sand. She saw his kindly, handsome figure -everywhere; his brown cheek, good grey eye, and close-cropped, tawny -hair. A manly, simple creature; the salt of the earth, as honest as the -day--oh, she saw it all; she had said it to herself a hundred times; and -there had, indeed, been nothing one could say against Charlie. But then, -as a wife, there had been nothing to say against her, either; he had -been perfectly happy with her--the happiest creature, even in the manner -of his death. He had been killed instantaneously, while walking, on a -sunny day, beside his men along a road in France. Every letter she had -had from his brother officers over there spoke of his gaiety and good -spirits. The war itself had, on the whole, meant happiness to him, for -all his gravity over certain of its tragedies. But he had been almost as -grave over mischances with his Boy Scouts, and it had all remained for -him an immense, magnificent form of boy-scouting. - -Dear, good Charlie! Yet--was it possible that something of the old -long-conquered exasperation could still, at this hour, thrust itself -into her memories? He had not been quite boyish enough to justify his -lightness and make it loveable. That had been the final fundamental -trouble in their mistaken marriage; she had not been able to mother him. -He had not been appealing, beguiling, endearing, like a child. Not like -a child; not boyish, fatherly, rather; even, playfully didactic, and -assuming always that theirs was a completely reciprocal marital -intimacy. It had not been his fault, of course. She had been too clever -ever to let him guess how stupid she found him. She felt the possessive -arm laid about her shoulders for an evening stroll; saw the wag of his -premonitory finger as he raised himself from a border to call out a -jocose reprimand; heard the chaff with which, before friends, he counted -her mistaken opinions. - -And it had been when they were alone, especially at dinner,--Charlie -across the table from her in his faultless black and white,--that the -pressure of their distance had been most difficult to protect him from. -He talked then, and she had to answer adequately. He was fond of talk, -and, while the most uncritical of Conservatives, was full of solutions -for old ills. He took Trade-Unionists, Home-Rulers, and Dissenters -playfully and held them up to kindly ridicule. "You can laugh most -people out of their nonsense," was one of Charlie's maxims; and if they -didn't respond to the treatment,--he had tried it unsuccessfully on the -village cobbler who preached in the tin chapel on Sunday,--he suspected -them of being rather wicked. - -In the first year of their marriage she had paid him the compliment of -disagreement, or, at least, discrimination. She had, until her marriage, -thought of herself as a Conservative; to be counted one by Charlie -disturbed her sense of rectitude. But Charlie opposed, became puzzled, -and finally aggrieved. He bothered and bothered and argued and argued, -with the air of trying to bring an erring child to reason. "Now look at -it in this light," he would say. Or, "Try to see the thing squarely, -Rosamund"; and would turn upon her irrelevant batteries from the -_Spectator_. She had at last the sensation of flying, battered and -breathless, from his platitudes, and found, soon, her only refuge in -duplicity. After that, through all the years of their married life, -Charlie, she knew, thought of their evening hours alone together as -exceedingly pleasant and successful. He wasn't one of your fellows who -doze over the _Field_ with a cigar after dinner. He had a clever wife -and he appreciated her and was proud--in spite of feminine aberrations -affectionately recognized and checked--of what he called her -"intellects." He called his father and mother his "respected -progenitors" and his stomach was never other than "Little Mary." And -while he talked and expounded and made his unexacting jests, Rosamund -knew that her silences had no provocation, her smile no irony. - -So it had gone on--so it might have gone on for the normal span of life. -The only insecurity that had threatened her careful edifice was the -question of the boys. The boys were like herself, or, rather, like her -adored and brilliant father--proud, sensitive, ardent little creatures, -tender-hearted and frightfully intelligent. Physically, too, they were -of a different race from Charlie, with thick brown locks, passionate yet -gentle eyes, and full, small, closely closing mouths. As boys, Charlie -had fairly well understood them,--he got on well with the average -boy,--as persons, never; and though as boys, at least as little boys, -they got on beautifully with him, they had, as persons, almost at once -understood him, even when they were too young to evade or hide from him. -If they had not been so young, they would, already, then, have hurt him -often. - -And for her the boys at once complicated everything. It had been easy, -in one way, to yield in non-essentials, though she was woman enough to -cry her eyes out when Charlie had taken Philip and Giles, at the -earliest age, to have their dear Jeanne-d'Arc heads close-cropped in -pursuit of the ideal of manliness; easy, comparatively, to steel her -heart when timid little Philip, blanched with terror, was made to ride -at six. Charlie had been right about that,--how glad she had been to -own it!--for Philip had, in a week's time, forgotten his fears. But she -and Charlie had come near quarrelling over Giles's rag-doll Bessie. -Giles was only three and adored Bessie, and Charlie had tossed her in -the air, mocked her, and held her up by the toe while Giles sobbed -convulsively. - -"Do you really want our boys to be milksops, Rosamund?" he had asked, -as, refusing to argue, she took the doll from him, placed her in Giles's -arms, and kept them both on her lap, pressed within her arms, her head -bent down over them so that she need not look at her husband. He had -gone away vanquished, and Giles had kept his Bessie, until, in the -course of nature, she had dropped away from him. - -Worse than this came one day when Charlie had found Philip in a corner -writing poetry. He had not been altogether pleased by the children's -literary tastes. To grind dutifully at Latin and Greek was one thing, -and he was fond of a tag from Tennyson. But he had never cared to read -Keats and Shelley when he was a kid. He took the copy-book out of -Philip's reluctant hands and, turning from page to page, read out, in -mock-dramatic tones, the derivative, boyish efforts, which yet, to her -ear, had every now and then their innocent, bird-like note of reality. - -"And now this--'To a Skylark,'" said Charlie, laying a restraining, -affectionate hand on Philip's shoulder, wishing him to rise superior to -vanity and join in the fun, once it was pointed out to him. - - "'Glad creature from the dew upspringing - And through the sky your path upwinging!' - -Up, up, pretty creature!" - -Philip, twisting round under his father's arm, burst into tears of rage, -tore the book from his hand and struck him. - -It had been a terrible moment, and Rosamund, reduced as she almost was -to Philip's condition, had never more admired her husband, who, turning -only rather pale, had walked away, saying, "I think you'll be sorry for -that when you think it over, old fellow." That he had been astonished, -cut to the quick, she had seen, feeling it all for him at the moment of -her deepest feeling for Philip. - -"I'm not sorry! I'm not sorry!" Philip had sobbed, rushing to her arms -and burying his head on her breast. "I'm not sorry! He's stupid! stupid! -stupid!" - -"Hush, hush," she had said--what a horrid moment it had been! "That is -wrong and conceited of you, Philip. You must learn to take a little -chaffing. You know how your father loves you." - -"It's not conceited! It's not conceited to care about what one tries to -do. You know it's not. _You're_ not stupid!" the boy had sobbed. - -Alas, it had been only four years ago; only a year before the war! Even -then, at nine, Philip had been old enough, when he recovered from his -weeping, to know that he had hurt her most, had made things difficult -for her; and he had been sorry about his father, too, going to him -bravely with a tremulous, "Please forgive me, father." "That's all -right, old boy," Charlie had said. It _was_ all right, too, in a sense. -It left not a trace in the sweetness of Charlie's nature. It was Philip -who had been shaken, frightened to the very core, by what his own -outburst had revealed to himself and to her. The boy would always have -felt affection for his father; but he, too, would soon have protected -him; he, too, would hardly miss him. - -The moon had now risen far up out of the walnut branches, and flooded -the garden with sorrowful brightness. Poor, poor Charlie! was that all -it came to, then, for him? this deserted garden and a wife and children -who hardly missed him? Why, was it not the very heart of his tragedy for -her to see that they would be happier without him? "And he _was_ a -dear," she said to herself, remembering with an almost passionate -determination kind, trustful looks and the happy love of fifteen years -ago. - -She had been standing still all this while, near the evening primroses; -but now, with the great sigh that lifted her breast, she moved forward -again, and a bird, disturbed in its rest, flew out from the thick tangle -of honeysuckle at the entrance to the summer-house, startling her. As -she stopped, her eyes drawn to the spot, she saw, suddenly, that a pale -figure was sitting in the summer-house, closely shrunken to one side; -hoping in its stillness,--that was apparent,--to remain undiscovered. -Ever since she had entered the garden it must have been sitting there; -and ever since she had entered the garden it must have been watching -her. But why? How strange! - -Dispelling a momentary qualm, she stooped her head under the honeysuckle -and entered; and then, clearly visible, with her pale hair and face,--as -pale, as evident as an evening's primrose,--the girl sitting there, -wide-eyed, revealed, with her identity, that haunting analogy of a -little while ago. Of course, it came in a flash now, that was what they -reminded her of. Long ago she had thought--conceding them their most -lovable association--that Pamela Braithwaite looked like an evening -primrose. - -"My dear Pamela," she said, almost as gently as she would have said it -to a somnambulist; for, like the flowers, again, she was sad, even -uncanny; although Pamela's uncanniness too,--sweet, homely -creature,--could never be sinister. She put a hand upon her arm, for the -girl had started to her feet. - -"Oh--do forgive me, Mrs. Hayward!" Pamela gasped. Sad? It was more than -that. She was broken, spent with weeping. "I didn't know you were -coming. I sit here sometimes in the evenings. I thought you wouldn't -mind." - -"My dear child, why should I mind? I'm thankful to you for coming to the -sad little place. It's much less lonely to think about, for you have -always been so much of our life here." - -This, she knew, was an exaggeration; but she must be more than kind to -such grief as this: she must find some comfort, if that were possible. - -And to feel herself accepted, welcomed, did give comfort; for, sinking -again on the seat, bending her face on her hands, Pamela sobbed, "Oh, -how kind you are!" - -"Poor child, poor, poor child!" said Rosamund. She was only five years -older, but she felt as a mother might feel towards the stricken girl. -She put an arm around her, murmuring, "Can you tell me what it is? Don't -cry so, dear Pamela." - -Pamela Braithwaite had been a girl of eighteen when they had come, in -the first year of their marriage, to Crossfields. The Braithwaites lived -a mile away, near the river, a large, affectionate, desultory family, -in a large, dilapidated house. Already Pamela mothered the younger -brood, and mothered the widowed father as well--a retired tea-planter, -who had brought from Ceylon some undefined but convenient complaint that -enabled him to pass the rest of his days wrapped in a number of coats, -eating very heartily, and, as he expressed it, "sitting about." A -peaceful, idle man, legs outstretched in sun or firelight, hat-brim -turned down over his eyes (he had a curious way, even in the house, of -almost always wearing his hat), pipe between his teeth; good-looking, -too, tall and fair, like his daughters, and with a touch in his -appearance, though not in his character, of amicable distinction. - -Pamela, except for a brother already married and in Ceylon, was the -eldest, with a long gap between her and the group of younger brothers, -of whom Rosamund thought mainly as a reservoir of Boy Scouts until they -had had to be thought of as a reservoir of volunteers. There were three -or four younger sisters, too, some of whom had married and some of whom -had gone forth into the world--always with an extreme light-heartedness -and confidence--as companions or secretaries. These again were hardly -individualized in Rosamund's recollection, except for the fact that, -since Pamela was always making blouses or trimming hats for them, she -had become aware that it was Phyllis who wore pink and Marjory blue. - -But whoever went, Pamela always stayed; and even when the war broke upon -the world, with Frank, the Braithwaite baby, just old enough to enlist, -and Phyllis and Marjory at once enrolling themselves as V.A.D.'s, Pamela -remained rooted. Who, indeed, had she gone, would have taken care of -Mr. Braithwaite, and of the brothers and sisters home on leave, and of -the garden earnestly dedicated to potatoes, or the small family of -Ceylon nephews and nieces deposited continually in her charge by their -parents? - -Poor little Pamela! She had had a burdened life; the assiduities of -maternity and none of its initial romance. With her large, clear eyes, -very far apart, she had always a wistful look; but it was that of a -child watching a game and waiting for its turn to come in, and no -creature could have given less the impression of weariness or routine. -For she had remained, even at thirty-three, the merely bigger sister; an -atmosphere of schoolroom tea and the nurture of rabbits and guinea-pigs -still hanging about her; her resource and cheerfulness seeming concerned -always with the organizing of games, the care of pets, and the soothing -of unimportant distresses. Tall, in her scant tweed skirts, her -much-repaired white blouse, her slender feet laced into heavy boots, -gardening gloves on her hands, so Rosamund had last seen her, a year -ago, just before Charlie had been killed, when she had straightened -herself from moulding potatoes in the lawn borders and had come forward -with her pretty smile to greet her visitor and take her in to tea. Frank -had been killed since then, as well as Charlie, but at that time, for -both households, the war was splendid adventure rather than sorrow. - -Mr. Braithwaite, in the sunny, shabby drawing-room, had stumbled up -among his wrappings, to point out to her his accurate flags, advancing -or retreating on the many maps that were pinned upon the walls. Frank's -last letter had been read to her, and Dick's and Eustace's; and Pamela -had come in and out, helping the maid with the tea (the Braithwaite -maids were always as cheerful and desultory as the family, and Rosamund -never remembered seeing one of them who had not her cap askew or her -cuffs untied), standing to butter the bread herself, the side of the -loaf before cutting the slice, after her old schoolroom fashion; her -discreet yet generous use of the butter--the crust covered to a nicety -and no lumps on the crumb--seeming to express her, as did the pouring -out of the excellent tea, drawn to a point and never over, and the -pleasant, capacious cups with their gilt rims and the immersed rose -which, as one drank, discovered itself at the bottom. - -A sweet, old-fashioned, homely creature; like the evening primroses; -like them, obliterated, unnoticed in daylight; and like them now, -becoming visible, becoming personal, even becoming tragic at this -nocturnal hour; for was this really Pamela, sweet, prosaic Pamela, -sobbing so broken-heartedly beside her? How meagre, intellectual, and -unsubstantial her own grief seemed to Rosamund as she listened, almost -aghast, her arm about Pamela's shoulders; and her instinct told her: "It -is a man. It is some one she loves--not Frank, but some one she loves -far more--who is dead. It is something final and fatal that has broken -her down like this." And aloud she repeated: "Can you tell me, Pamela -dear? Please try to tell me. It may help you to tell." Her own heart was -shaken and tears were in her own eyes. - -Between her sobs Pamela answered, "I love him--I love him so much. He is -dead. And sometimes I can't bear it." - -Rosamund had never heard of a love-affair. But these years of war had -done many things, had found out even the hidden Pamelas. - -"I didn't know.--My poor child!--I never heard. Were you engaged?" - -She had Pamela's ringless hand in hers. - -"No! No! It wasn't that. No--I've never had any one like that. No one -ever knew. He never knew." Pamela lifted her head. Her face seemed now -only a message emerging from the darkness; shadowed light upon the -shadow, it was expression rather than form. "May I tell you?" she said. -"Can you forgive my telling you--here and now,--and to-night, when -you've come to be with him? It was Mr. Hayward I loved. I've always -loved him. He has been all my life. Ever since you first came here to -live." - -Rosamund gazed at her, and through all her astonishment there ran an -undertone of accomplished presage. Yes, that was it, of course. Had she -not been feeling it, seeking it all the evening?--or had it not been -seeking her? Here it was, then, the lacking emptiness. Desolate voids -seemed to open upon her in Pamela's shadowy eyes. She tightly held the -ringless hand and felt, presently, that she pressed it against her heart -where something pierced her. Was it pity for Pamela? or for Charlie? -This was his; had always been his. And Pamela, who had had nothing, had -lost everything. "My dear!" she murmured. - -"Oh, how kind you are!" said Pamela. She sat quiet, looking down at -their two hands held against Rosamund's heart. And with all the -austerity of her grief she had never been more childlike in Rosamund's -eyes. Like a child, once the barriers of shyness were down and trust -established, she would confide everything. - -Rosamund knew how it must help her to confide. "Tell me if you will," -she said. "I am glad you loved him, if it has not hurt you too much. You -understand, don't you, that I must be glad--for him?" - -"Yes, oh, yes; I understand. How beautiful of you to see it all!--Even -though it's so little, it is his; something he did; and so you must -care. But I don't think there's much to tell; nothing about him that you -don't know." - -"About you, then. About what he was to you." - -"That would simply be my whole life," said Pamela. "It's so wonderful of -you to understand and not to blame me. So many people would have thought -it wrong; but it came before I knew what it was going to be, and I never -can feel that it was wrong. He never knew. And even if he had, it -couldn't have made any difference. It must be because of that that I can -tell you. If you hadn't been so happy, if it hadn't been so perfect--for -you and him--I don't think that I could have told. I should just have -rushed away when you came in and hidden from you." - -"Why?" asked Rosamund after a moment. She heard something in her own -voice that Pamela would not hear. - -"I don't quite know why," said Pamela; "but don't you feel it too? -Perhaps if it hadn't been so perfect, even my little outside love might -have hurt you--or troubled you--to hear about. But I see now that you -are the only person in the world who could care to hear. It is a comfort -to tell you. I am so glad you came." Pamela turned her eyes upon her -and it was almost with her smile. "When I see you like this I can -believe that he is here, listening with you, and sorry for me, too." - -How like an evening primrose she was! Rosamund could see her clearly -now: the candid oval of the face, the eyes, the innocent, child forehead -with thick, fair hair falling across it. - -"Yes. Go on," she said, smiling back. - -She was not worthy of Pamela, and poor Charlie was not worthy of her; -but no human being is worthy of a flower. And though so innocent, she -was not stupid; subtlety like a fragrance was about her as she said, -"You can comfort me because you have so much to comfort with." - -"So much grief, or so much remembered happiness?" - -"They go together, don't they?" said Pamela. "Every sort of fulness. But -I needn't try to get it clear. You understand. I always thought that -perhaps people who had fulness couldn't; now I see that I was mistaken." - -"Have you been very unhappy, dear child?" - -"Until now? While he was here? Oh, no, I have been lonely. Even before -he came, even though my life was so crowded, it was rather lonely. I -never had any one of my own, for myself. But afterwards, even if I felt -lonely, I was happy. At least, after just at first. Because, just at -first, it was miserable, for I couldn't help longing to see him more and -to have him like me more, and that made me understand that I was in love -with him, and I was frightened. I can't explain clearly about it, even -to myself. But I was very, very unhappy. Perhaps you remember the time -when I was twenty, and got so run down, and they sent me to Germany to -my old governess--the only time I ever went away from home, out of -England. It was a miserable time. I tried not to think of him and not to -care. But I had to come back, and he was there, and I knew I couldn't -stop caring, and that all I could do about it was to try to be better -because of him,--you know,--and make people happier, and not think of -myself, but of him and them. And everything changed after that. I was -never frightened any more, and though perhaps it wasn't exactly -happiness, it was, sometimes, I believe, almost better. I can't explain -it, but what I mean is in some poetry. I never cared much about poetry -till he came. Then I seemed to understand things I'd never understood -before, and to feel everything that was beautiful. - -"You remember how dear he was to us all--to the boys and me. I always -shared in everything they did. Every bit of this country is full of him; -I could never bear to go away and leave it. I want always to stay here -till I die.--Flowers and birds--wasn't he wonderful about them? And our -walks in the woods! He saw everything, and made us see it. I never woke -in the morning without thinking, Will he come to-day? What will he say -and do? I was never tired of watching him and listening to him. All his -little ways--you know. When I pleased him,--sometimes I saw the bird we -were watching for first, or caught my trout well,--it was a red-letter -day. And in big things--to feel I should have pleased him if he'd known. -It was he who helped me in every way, without knowing it. And I took -more and more joy in you. At first I had felt dreadfully shy with -you--and afraid of you. You were so clever, with all your books and -music and friends, and you didn't seem to need anything. But afterwards -you were so kind, that, though I was always shy, I was not frightened -any longer. I used to think about you so much, and imagine what he felt -about you--and you about him.--You won't mind my saying it, I know. -Perhaps you remember the way I used so often, in the evenings, to walk -past with the children, and say good-night over the wall. That was to -see you and him walking together. You were so beautiful! You are far and -far away the most beautiful person I've ever known. I always noticed -everything you wore, and how your hair was done. I was glad when you -took it down from the knot and had it all at the back, as you do now. -And the lovely pale blue dress, with the little flounces--do you -remember?--a summer dress of lawn. I did love that. And the white linen -coats and skirts, and the big white hat with the lemon-coloured bow. -Your very shoes--those grey ones you always had, with the low heels and -little silver buckles. No one had such lovely clothes. And the way you -poured out tea and looked across the table at one. Always like a -beautiful muse--you don't mind my saying it?--a little above everything, -and apart, and quietly looking on.--How I understood what he felt for -you! I felt it, too, I think, with him." - -Yes, dear flower and child, she had: offering to Charlie that last -tribute of a woman's worship, the imaginative love of the woman he -loves; cherishing the cruelly sweet closeness of that piercing -community. How she had idealized them both. How she had idealized -Charlie's love. Charlie had never seen her like this. Charlie had never -dreamed of her as a muse, above, apart, and quietly watching. Why, with -Pamela's Charlie she herself could almost have been in love! - -"What did you talk about, you and he," she asked, "when you were -together?" Their sylvan life, Pamela's and Charlie's, was almost as -unknown to her as that of the birds they watched. She had almost a soft -small hope that perhaps Pamela could show her something she had missed. -"Did you ever talk about poetry, for instance?" - -"No; never about things like that," Pamela answered. "He talked more to -the boys than to me; he talked to us all together--about what we were -doing. But I used to love listening to him when he came and talked to -father. Politics, you know; and the way things ought to be done. He was -a great deal discouraged, you remember, by the way they _were_ being -done. All those unjust taxes, you know. He wanted, he used always to -say, to _give_ to the poor himself; he _loved_ taking care of them. But -he hated that his money should be taken from him like that, against his -will. And he always, always foresaw the war; always knew that Germany -was plotting, and how England swarmed with spies. He thought we ought to -have declared war upon her long ago and struck first.--I'm rather glad -we didn't, aren't you? because then, in a way, we should have been in -the wrong rather than they; but of course he felt it as a statesman, not -like an ignorant woman.--You think Germany plotted, too?" - -"Yes, oh, yes." How glad Rosamund was to be able to think it, to be -able, here, with a clear conscience, to remember that, on the theme of -Germany's craft and crime, she and Charlie had thought quite -sufficiently alike. "But I am with you about not striking first." - -"Are you really?" There was surprise in Pamela's voice. She did not -dwell on the slight perplexity. "Of course, he always worsted father if -he disagreed. It was rather wicked of me, but I couldn't help enjoying -seeing father worsted. He'd never thought things out, as Mr. Hayward -had. But that's what he talked about--things like that--and you." - -"Me?" Rosamund's voice was gentle, meditative--her old voice of the -encounters with Charlie. How she could hear him through all Pamela's -candid recitative! - -"He was always thinking about you. 'My wife says so and so. My wife -agrees with me about it. I brought my wife last night to see it as I -do.' Oh, you were with him in everything! It was so beautiful to see and -hear! I used to imagine that the Brownings were like that--after I read -their lives. He was a sort of poet, wasn't he? Any one so loving and so -happy is a sort of poet--even if they don't write poetry. Down in the -meadows one day, when we were watching lapwings, he and I and the -boys,--he wanted to show us a nest; you know how difficult they are to -find,--you passed up on the hillside, with Philip and Giles. We could -see you against the larchwood, they in their holland smocks and you in -white, with the white-and-yellow hat. I shall never forget the way he -stood up and smiled, his eyes following you. 'There's Rosamund and the -progeny,' he said.--You know the dear, funny way he had of saying -things." - -Yes--she knew it. Yet tears had risen to Rosamund's eyes. Dear old -Charlie; dear, old, tiresome Charlie! The tears had come as she saw him -standing to look after her and his boys; but there was nothing more, -nothing that she could give to Pamela, not one crumb of enrichment from -what Pamela believed to be her great store. Pamela had seen all--and -more than all--that there was to see. - -In her own silence now she was aware of a growing oppression. She was -too silent, even for one mute from the depth and sacredness of memory. -Might not such silence seem to reprove Pamela's flooding confidence? She -struggled with her thoughts. "The lapwings?" she heard herself -murmuring. "I remember his showing me a nest. How he loved birds and how -much he knew about them! Weren't you with us on the day we put up all -the nesting-boxes here? Do you remember how he planned for the placing -of each one, each bird to have its own appropriate domain? It was a -lovely day, in very early spring." - -"Oh--_do_ you remember that?" How Pamela craved the crumb was shown by -her lightened face; it was almost happy, as it turned to Rosamund, with -its sense of recovered treasures. "Very early spring--March. Snowdrops -were up over there,--and there,--and there were daffodils at the foot of -the wall. You were in blue: a frieze coat and skirt of Japanese blue, -with a grey silk scarf and a little soft grey hat with a blue wing in -it; and you said,--you were standing just over there, near the -pond,--'We can always count on tits.'--But you did get robins, too, and -thrushes in the big boxes; and then the splendid year when the -nut-hatches came to the box down in the orchard. And you were tying up -one box, but it was too high and he came and did it for you. I can see -you both so plainly, your hands stretching up against the sky. Tall as -you are he was taller; his head seemed to tower up into the branches. -Such a blue sky it was! And afterwards we had tea in the drawing-room, -and the tea wasn't strong enough for him, and you liked China and he -Indian tea. And you teased him and said that you had always to make him -the little brown pot all for himself. He said, 'Tea never tastes so -right as out of a brown pot.' There were white tulips growing in a bowl -on the tea-table. And then you played to us. And you sang--'I need no -star in heaven to guide me.'--He was so fond of that. Oh, do you remember -it all, too?" - -All--all. Rosamund, though her tears fell, felt her cheek flushing in -the darkness. How often he had asked for "I need no star in heaven to -guide me"! How often she had sung it to him, rejoicing so soon, while -she threw the proper tumultuous fervour that Charlie loved into the -foolish air, in the atoning thought that already Philip's favourite was -"Der Nussbaum" and that even little Giles asked for "the sheep song," -the bleak, beautiful old Scottish strain: "Ca' the yowes to the knowes," -with its sweetest drop to "my bonnie dearie." "Oh--give us something -cheerful!" Charlie would exclaim after it. - -"I remember it all, dear," she answered; and there was silence for a -while. - -"How do you bear it?" Pamela whispered suddenly. - -The hour, the stillness, the hands that held her, drew her past the last -barrier. Her broken heart yearned for the comfort that the greater loss -alone could give. What was the strength that enabled his wife to sit -there so quietly, so gently, so full of peace and pity? - -Rosamund felt herself faltering, stumbling, as she heard the inevitable -question, and knew, as it came, that even Pamela's heavenly blindness -might not protect her, unless she could be very careful, from horrid -loss or suspicion. To touch with a breath of her daylight reality that -silver world of recollection would be to desecrate. Could she hold her -breath and tread softly while she answered? Yes, surely. Surely she, who -had hidden through all the years from Charlie, could hide from Pamela, -although Pamela already was nearer than Charlie and knew her better than -he had ever done. All the old strength and resource welled up in her, -protecting this lovely thing, as, after the long moment, not looking at -Pamela, but into Charlie's garden, she found the right answer. - -"You see, dear, it is so different with me. You have only your memories. -I have the boys--his boys--to live for." - -It was right. It was the only answer. She heard Pamela's long, soft -breaths, full of a gentle awe, and felt her hand more tightly clasped. -Once the right step was taken, it was easier to go on: - -"I want to tell you why I am so glad to have found you here, Pamela -dear. You'll understand, I think, when I say that motherhood lives in -the present and future, and is almost cruel, cruel to everything not -itself, for it forgets the past in the present. Do you see,"--she found -the beautiful untruth,--"he is so much in them for me, that I might -almost forget him in them--forget to mourn him, as one would if they -were not there. So do you see why it comforts me to know that, while I -must go on into the future with them, you will be keeping him here and -remembering?" - -She could look at Pamela now, in safety, and she turned to her, finding -rapt eyes upon her. - -"Come here often, won't you, when I'm away as well as when I'm here. We -must make it all look again as it did when he was with us--flowers and -trees and bird-boxes. You will help me in it all and you will think of -him here and love him. I know what happiness you meant to him--more than -he was aware of. You were a beautiful part of his life. You say you were -always, for him, only together, with the boys. That is only partly true. -He used often to speak of you to me, the little passing things people -say of any one they are very fond of and take for granted. He -appreciated you and counted upon you. I came here so sad, Pamela, so -burdened. I've never been sadder in my life than I was to-night as I -walked here. And you have lifted it all. It makes all the difference to -know that you are here, in his garden, remembering him. More difference -than I can say." - -It was an unutterable gratitude that, with her tears, with love and pity -and reverence, welled up in her, seeing what Pamela had done. The garden -was no longer empty, and Charlie not forgotten. In the night of his -death and disappearance this flower had become visible. Always, when she -thought of him, she would think of evening primroses and of Pamela, so -that it would be with tenderness, with the understanding, homely, -unexacting, consecrating, that Pamela gave; Pamela herself becoming a -gift from Charlie; emerging from the darkness, evident and -beautiful,--almost another child whose future she must carry in her -heart; though the only gift she could give her now, in return for all -that she had given, was the full and free possession of the past, -where, outside the garden wall, she had been a wistful onlooker. She -felt that she opened the gate, drew Pamela in, and put into her keeping -all the keys that had weighed so heavily in her unfitted hands. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -AUTUMN CROCUSES - - -I - -"WHAT you need is a complete change, and quiet," said his cousin -Dorothy. - -Guy, indeed, in spite of his efforts to keep up appearances, was a -dismal figure. He had been passing the teacups and the bread and butter, -enduring all the jests about sugar-rations and margarine, and enduring, -which was so much worse, the complacencies over the approaching end of -the war. His haggard face, narrow-jawed and high-foreheaded, expressed -this endurance rather than any social amenity, and he was aware that -Aunt Emily could hardly feel that the presence of her poet and soldier -nephew added much to her tea-party. Indeed, the chattering, cheerful -women affected his nerves almost as painfully as did the sound of the -motor-buses when--every day it happened--he stopped on the curb, after -leaving his office in Whitehall, and wondered how long it would take him -to summon courage to cross the street. He felt, then, like breaking down -and crying; and he felt like it now when they said, "Isn't it all _too_ -splendid!" - -Cousin Dorothy was as chattering and as cheerful as the rest of them, -and she had every reason to be, he remembered, with Tom, her _fiance_, -ensconced in Paris, safe after all his perils. Dorothy, though like -everybody else she had worked hard during the war, had seen nothing and -lost nothing. And she had never had any imagination. All the same, he -was thankful when she rescued him from the woman who would talk to him -idiotically about his poetry (she evidently hadn't understood a word of -it), and took him into a quiet nook near the piano. - -It might, then, have been mere consanguinity, for he had never before -found intimacy possible where Dorothy was concerned; or it might have -been a symptom of his state (his being at Aunt Emily's tea-party at all -was that!); but, at all events after admitting that Mrs. Dickson had -been boring him, he found himself presently confessing his terrors about -the motor-buses, his terror of the dark, his sleeplessness and general -disintegration. His nervous laugh was a concession to Dorothy's possible -misunderstanding; but as he went on, he felt himself almost loving her -for the matter-of-factness she infused into her sympathy. After all, -even good old Dorothy wasn't stupid enough to suspect him of cowardice; -and although, from a military point of view, he had made such a mess of -it (invalided home again and again on account of digestive complaints, -and finally, last spring, transferred to his small official post in -London), to any one, really, who had at all followed his career, it -would be apparent that no one could have stuck harder to the loathly -job. He had felt it that, and only that, even while, prompted by pride, -he had made his effort to enlist, in the first months of the war. It had -been with a deep relief that he had found himself at once rejected and -free to stay behind, free to serve humanity with his gift rather than -with his inefficiency; for he took his poetic vocation with a youthful -seriousness. And when, later on, through one of the blunders of medical -examinations, he was drawn into the net of conscription, no one could -have denied that he marched off to the shambles with unflinching -readiness. - -Dorothy, he saw, took courage all along for granted: "It's simply a case -of shell-shock," she said, as if it were her daily fare; "you're queer -and jumpy, and you can't stand noise. It's quite like Tommy." - -He couldn't associate Tommy, short-nosed, round-headed, red-eared Tommy, -with anything of the sort, and said so in some resentment. But Dorothy -assured him that for some months--just a year ago--Tommy had been at -home on sick leave, and really bad enough for anything. "He suffered in -every way just as you do." - -Guy was quite sure he hadn't, but he did not want to argue about it. For -nothing in the world would he have defined to Dorothy what he really -suffered. - -"It's country air you need; country food and country quiet," Dorothy -went on. "You _can_ get away?" - -"Oh, yes; I can get away all right. Old Forsyth is most decent about it. -He was telling me this morning that I ought to take a month." - -"I wonder if Mrs. Baldwin could have you at Thatches," Dorothy mused. -"Tommy got well directly." - -"Mrs. Baldwin?" His voice, he knew, expressed an unflattering -scepticism, but he couldn't help it. "Is she at home--an institution?" -He saw Mrs. Baldwin, hatefully tactful, in a Red Cross uniform. "No, -thank you, my dear." - -"Of course not. What do you take me for?" Dorothy kept her competent -eyes upon him. "It's not even a P.G. place--at all events, not a regular -one, though of course you do pay for your keep. She has very narrow -means and takes friends sometimes, and, since the war, it's just -happened--by people telling each other, as I'm telling you--to be -shell-shock cases rather particularly. It's a lovely country, and a -dear, quaint little cottage, and she does you most awfully well, Tommy -said." - -"I don't like the idea of settling down like that on a stranger." - -"But she wouldn't be a stranger. You'd go through me, and I feel as if I -knew her already through Tommy. He said he was at home at once. 'Cosy,' - was how he expressed it. And you get honey on your bread at tea and -cream in your coffee at breakfast, and all sorts of delightful things -_en casserole_, that she cooks with her own hands, quite equal, Tommy -said, to the French. And, Tommy knows, _now_, you see." - -"It's Mrs. Baldwin herself who frightens me. She frightens me more than -the motor-buses in Whitehall." - -"That's just what she won't do. She's perfectly sweet. Cosy. -Middle-aged. A widow. Her nice old father lives with her, and Tommy -liked him so much, too. You help her to garden, and with the bees, you -know. And the old father plays chess with you in the evenings. There's a -stream near by where you can fish if you want to. It's late for that, -of course; but Tommy got some quite good sport; he was there at just -this time of year. And he said that it was most awfully jolly country, -and that the meadows all about were full of autumn crocuses." - -"Autumn crocuses? In the fields? I've never seen them wild." - -"They do grow wild, though, in some parts of England. They are wild -there. Tommy particularly wrote about them. He said one walked down to -the stream among the autumn crocuses." - -Dorothy was baiting her hook very prettily, and he gloomily smiled his -recognition of it. "They do sound attractive," he owned. He hadn't -imagined Tom a man to notice crocuses, and he was the more inclined to -trust his good impressions further. After all, apart from Mrs. Baldwin -and her father, the country, with honey, cream, and autumn crocuses, was -a happy combination, if he had been in condition for feeling anything -happy. - -What would Dorothy have thought of him, could she have known that, while -they talked, her rosy, bonnie face kept constantly, before his haunted -eyes, dissolving into a skull? Faces had a way of doing this with him -since his last encounter with the war in the spring. And all the people -talking in the room squeaked and gibbered. How could they go on talking? -How could they go on living--after what had happened? How could he? The -familiar nausea rose in him even as he forced himself to smile and say, -"Well, could she have me--Mrs. Baldwin?" - -He could not have made an effort to find a place for himself. Such -efforts, he felt sure, would have landed him at some God-forsaken -farmhouse miles from the station, where the beds were damp and the meat -tough; or, even worse, at a Bournemouth hotel, amid orchestras and -people who made a point of dressing for dinner. But, if some one found -it for him, he would let himself be pushed off. - -"I'm sure she could," said Dorothy with conviction. "I have her address -and I'll write to-night and tell her all about you: that you're a rising -poet, and that your friends and relations will be _so_ grateful if -she'll do for you what she did for Tommy." - -He had an ironic glance for her "rising." His relations--and Aunt Emily -and her brood were the nearest left to him--had never in the least taken -in his standing or realized that he was, among people who knew, looked -upon as completely risen. At the same time, sunken was what he felt -himself; drowned deep; too deep, he sometimes thought, for recovery. His -last little volume had been like a final fight for breath. He had -written most of it over there, after Ronnie's death and before his own -decisive breakdown, and he knew it a result as much of his malady as of -his war experience. - -He wondered now, anew, whether these people had really read the poems. -If they had, it only showed how impervious to reality they must remain. -And there had actually been one, written after one of his leaves, called -"Eating Bread-and-Butter," that should indeed have embarrassed them, had -they remembered it, inviting them to eat it with him in a trench with -unburied comrades lying in No-Man's Land before them. His head, as he -thought of that,--from unburied comrades passing to unburied -friends,--gave a nervous, backward jerk, for he had told himself before -that he _must_ stop thinking in certain directions; and indeed the poems -had helped to exorcise the obsession at the time when they had been -written. - -All the same, it was very strange--such a poet at such a tea-party. He -had plunged into Aunt Emily's tea-party as he plunged nowadays into -anything that presented itself as offering distraction. And now, as he -said, "Well, if you'll put it through, I'll go, and be very grateful to -you," he felt that he was making another plunge into Mrs. Baldwin's -cottage. - - -II - -It was a pretty cottage he found, as, on the September evening, his -station fly drew up at the wicket-gate. They had come a long way from -the station, and, after leaving a small village, the winding lane, too, -had seemed long. He saw, nevertheless, as he alighted, that the rustic -building, old stones below and modern thatch above, could not be far -from the central group of which it formed an adjunct; for it had been -contrived, by devices dear to the heart of the week-ender, from two or -three labourers' cottages thrown into one and covered all over with the -capacious and brooding thatch. "Quaint," Dorothy's really inevitable -word, altogether expressed it, from the box hedges that ran on either -side of the flagged path, to the pale yellow hollyhocks beside the door. - -A round-cheeked country girl, neatly capped and aproned, opened the door -on a square, rush-matted hall; and beyond that he saw a room full of the -sunset, where a table was being laid and from which Mrs. Baldwin came -out to greet him. - -She was not tall, and had thick, closely bound braids. He had dreaded -finding himself at once dealt with as a case; but Mrs. Baldwin's manner -was not even that of one accustomed to paying guests. Her murmur of -welcome, her questions about his journey, her mild directions as she led -him up to his room, "Be careful at this landing, the level of the floor -goes up and the beam comes down so low,"--were rather those of a shy and -entirely unprofessional hostess. - -He thought, as soon as he took in his room, with its _voile-de-Genes_ -hangings and dear old furniture, that he pleased her by saying, "What a -delicious room!" and even more when, on going to the wide, low, -mullioned window, its panes open to the west, he added, "And what a -delicious view!" There were meadows and tall hedgerow elms, and, running -in a tranquil band of brightness, the stream that reflected the sky. - -She did not say that she was glad he liked it, but her very gentle smile -at the welcome it all made for him was part of the welcome. What she did -say was, with the little air of shy preoccupation, while she wrung her -finger-tips together, those of one hand in those of the other, "I think -the water's very hot. I have a rather young little maid. You'll tell me -if you want anything. Are three blankets and the down quilt enough? The -nights are rather cold already." - -He said that three would be perfect, secure, from his glance at the -deep, comely bed, that they would be beautifully thick and fleecy. - -"Then you'll come down to us when you are ready." She stood in the door -to look round again. "Matches here, you see; biscuits in the little -earthenware box; and the spirit-lamp is in case you should wake in the -night--you could make yourself a cup of cocoa? Everything is -there--cocoa, milk, and sugar. It usually sends one off again directly." - -It was all the slightly shy hostess rather than the businesslike soother -and sustainer; and, no, it wasn't a bit cosy. He repudiated that word -indignantly, while he washed--the water _was_ very hot, admirably hot; -there was a complacency about cosy, and Mrs. Baldwin had no complacency, -though she was, for all her shyness and the unconscious gestures of -physical nervousness, composed. Her hands, he remembered, recalling -their little trick,--he had noticed it in the hall,--were like a -child's; not the hands of a practical housewife. Yet, from the look of -that bed (yes, thank heaven, a box-spring mattress!), from the heat of -the water, and, above all, the deft and accessible grouping of the -spirit-lamp and its adjuncts, she proved that she knew how to make one -comfortable. - -There were the meadows and--going again to the window, he wondered -leaning out,--could he see the autumn crocuses? Yes, surely; even at -this evening hour his eyes distinguished the pale yet delicately -purpling tint that streaked the pastoral verdure. What a delicious -place, indeed! He stood, absorbed in looking out, until the maid came to -say that supper would be ready in five minutes. - -The long room, the living-room,--for it combined, he saw, all social -functions,--also faced the meadows at the back of the house, and the -primrose coloured sunset still filled it as he entered. Mrs. Baldwin was -busying herself with the table, and an old gentleman with a very long -white beard rose, with much dignity, from the grandfather's chair near -a window-seat. Mr. Haseltine, so his daughter named him, had more the -air of seeing the visitor as a P.G., perhaps even as a shell-shock -patient; but he was a nice old man, Guy felt, although his beard was too -long. He wore a brown velveteen jacket, and Guy surmised that he might -have been a writer or scholar of some not very significant sort. - -"Yes, we think ours a very favored nook indeed," he said, as Guy again -praised the prospect. "Yes; three cottages. Very happily contrived, is -it not? There is a clever builder in the next town. He kept the old -fireplace, you see; that end was a kitchen and the beams are all the old -ones. Three gardens, too, thrown into one; but that is entirely my -daughter's creation. Pig-styes used to be in that corner." - -Guy looked out at the squares of colour, the low beds of mignonette, the -phloxes, larkspurs, and the late sweet-peas a screen of stained-glass -tints against the sky. Where the pig-styes had been was a little -thatched summer-house with rustic seat and table. The bee-hives were -just outside the hedge, at an angle of the meadow. Mr. Haseltine -continued to talk while Mrs. Baldwin and the maid came in and out, -carrying tea and eggs and covered dishes. - -"I hope you don't mind high tea," she said. "It seems to go with our -life here." - -He felt that high tea was his favourite meal. There was a big white -earthenware bowl on the table, filled with sweet-peas. "Where do you get -the old-fashioned colours?" he asked her. "I thought the growers had -extirpated them; one sees only the long-stemmed ones nowadays, with the -tiresome artistic shades." - -He pleased her again, he felt sure, and she told him that she always -saved the seed, liking the old bright colours better, too. - -He was glad that he had come, although Mr. Haseltine's beard was too -long and he feared that he would prove talkative in the worst way, the -deliberate and retaining way. He liked the smell of everything,--a -mingling of sweet-peas, rush-matting, and China tea,--and the look of -everything; good, unpretentious old oak furniture, fresh, if faded, -chintzes, and book-lined walls; and he presently liked the taste of -everything too. - -"I feel already as if I should sleep to-night," he said to Mrs. Baldwin. - -She sat behind the tea-urn a little distracted, if anything so mild -could be called distraction, by the plunging movements of the little -maid as she moved about the table. "That will do nicely, Cathy," she -said. "We can manage now. You can bring in some more hot water if I -ring.--Oh, I do hope you'll sleep. People usually sleep here." - -She was hardly middle-aged, though, after Dorothy's bright browns and -pinks, Tommy might well have thought her so. Many years older than -Dorothy, of course, yet how many he could not in the least compute. -There was an agelessness, with something tough and solid, about her; she -was as little slender as she was stout; she might, with her neutral -tints,--hair, skin, dress,--have looked almost the same at sixty as she -did now. She wasn't pale, or sallow, or sunburned; yet her complexion -seemed so to go with her hair that the whole head might have been carved -in some pleasantly tinted stone. Only her eyes gave any depth of -difference; gentle eyes, like a grey-blue breadth of evening. She had a -broad, short face and broad, beautifully drawn lips, and looked almost -mysteriously innocent. - -Guy took her in to this extent, swift as he was at taking people in, and -sensitive as he was to what he found. He felt sure--and the depth of -comfort it gave him made him aware of all the reluctances Dorothy's -decision had overborne--that she hadn't the ghost of a method or of a -theory. Shell-shock people had merely happened to come and had happened -to get well quickly. He even gathered, as the peaceful evening wore -on,--Cathy clearing, placid lamps lighted, the windows still left open -to the twilight--that she didn't really think very much about her cases, -in so far as they were cases and not guests. Having done her best in the -way of blankets, hot water, and spirit-kettles, and seen them settled -down into the life she had made for herself,--and not at all for -them,--she went her own way, irresponsible and unpreoccupied. - -To-night she didn't attempt to entertain him. It was Mr. Haseltine, at -supper, who kept up the conversation, and with the air of always keeping -it up, with even the air, Guy imagined once or twice, of feeling it -specially his part to make amends, in that sort of resource, for his -dear daughter's deficiency. She was, Guy saw, very much his dear -daughter; but he felt sure that it had never entered the old gentleman's -head that any one would find her interesting when he himself was there. - -After supper she was occupied for a little while at her desk, adding up -figures, it appeared, in house-books; for she came to her father and -asked him if he would do a column for her. "It has come out differently -three times with me," she confessed, but without ruefulness. "I'm so -dull at my accounts!" - -Guy, as Mr. Haseltine fumbled for his large tortoise-shell eyeglasses, -offered to help her, and then came over and sat beside the desk and did -the rest of the sums for her. She was tidying up for the month, she told -him, and always found it rather confusing. "It's having to put the -pennies, which are twelves, into pounds, which are twenties, isn't it?" -she said, and thanked him so much. - -But this could hardly be called entertaining him, nor could it, when he -accompanied her across the lane in the now deepening dusk, to shut up -her fowls. After that, there was the game of chess, during which Mrs. -Baldwin absented herself a good deal, helping Cathy, Guy imagined, with -the beds and hot-water bottles; and at nine-thirty they all lighted -their candles and went upstairs. - -Bedtime had been, for many months, his most dreaded moment. The door -shut him in and shut away the last chance of alleviation. There was -nothing for it but to stretch himself haggardly on his couch and cling -to every detail in the day's events, or in the morrow's prospects, that -might preserve him from the past. To fight _not_ to remember was a -losing game, and filled one's brain with the white flame of insomnia. He -had found that it was when, exhausted by the fruitless effort, he -suffered the waiting vultures to settle upon him, abandoned himself to -the beaks and talons, that, through the sheer passivity of anguish, -oblivion most often came. - -To-night, from the habit of it, his mind braced itself as he came into -the room, and he was aware, as he had been for nearly a year now, that -Ronnie's face was waiting, as it were, on the outskirts of -consciousness, to seize upon him. But, after he had lighted the candles -on his dressing-table and the candles on the mantelpiece, taken off his -coat, and started undressing, he found that his thoughts, quite -effortlessly, were engaged with his new surroundings, old Mr. -Haseltine's beard and eyeglasses occupying them, and the clucking noise -he made in drinking the glass of hot ginger and water that had been -brought to them on a tray while they played; Mrs. Baldwin's accounts, -her fowls, and the colour of her eyes. He decided that the colour was -Wedgwood, or perhaps periwinkle blue--some very dense, quiet colour. - -As he moved about the room, this protective interest came to him from -the little objects he made acquaintance with: the round Venetian box, -dim gilt and blue and red, on the chest of drawers in which he found a -handful of tiny shells--shells, no doubt, that Mrs. Baldwin had picked -up during a seaside outing; the faded old blue leather blotter on the -writing-table, marked E. H., which had probably been hers since maiden -days (and did E stand for Ethel or Edith or Ellen?); the pretty -lettering in fine black script of the writing-paper so pleasantly -stacked; the dear old Dutch coffee-pot and jug on the mantelpiece, and -the bowl of mignonette that she, of course, had arranged. He sank his -face into its fragrance, and peace seemed breathed upon him from the -flowers. - -He was wondering, as he got into bed, with a glance, before he blew out -the candle, at the birds and branches, the whites and blacks and roses -of the _voile-de-Genes_, whether he would find the autumn crocuses open -in the meadows next morning; it had looked like the evening of another -fine day. Then, the candle out, his thoughts, for a little while, were -tangled in the magical dreamland of the _voile-de-Genes_, and the breath -of the mignonette seemed to lie upon his eyelids with a soft compulsion -to peace, until, all thought sliding suddenly away, he dropped into -delicious slumber. - - -III - -He found the crocuses open, before breakfast. Only Cathy was in the -living-room, sweeping, when he crossed it, though he thought he heard -Mrs. Baldwin in the kitchen. A robin was singing on a spray over the -summer-house. The sky arched pale and high; and though there was no mist -in the air, its softness made him think of milk. - -From the garden he passed into the meadows, and, almost at once, saw, -everywhere, the fragile, purple flowers about him, if purple were not -too rich a word for their clear, cold tint. Lower down, near the stream, -they made him think of the silver bobbins set playing by great rain -drops when they fall heavily upon wide, shallow pools of water; and they -seemed to grow even more thickly in the farther meadow beyond the wooden -bridge. A sense of bliss was upon him as he walked among the flowers. He -had never seen anything more lovely, and all but the darker buds were -open, showing pale golden hearts to the sun. - -Yet, by the time that he had crossed the bridge, leaning on the high -rail to look down into the limpid, sliding water, he knew that it could -never stay at that or mean that for him. He had seen fields of flowers -in France, and, while the horrors there had been enacted, these fields -of crocuses, year after year, had bloomed. What they meant for his mind -was the unbridged chasm between nature and the sufferings of man. Only -when one ceased to be a man, ceased to remember and to think, could such -a day, such sights, bring the unreasoning joy. - -Walking back, he saw, as he approached the house, that Mrs. Baldwin was -standing at the garden-gate, and, bare-headed, in the linen dress of -pale lavender, she made him at once think of the crocuses, or they of -her. Their gentleness was like her, their simplicity, and something, -too,--for he felt this in her,--of unearthliness. More perhaps, than any -other flower they seemed to belong to the air rather than to the ground, -and, with their faint, pale stalks, their fragile petals unconfined by -leaf or calyx, to be rising like emanations from the sod and ready to -dissolve in mist into the sunlight. - -"You've had a little walk?" Mrs. Baldwin asked him as they met. - -He said he had been looking at the crocuses. "Are they really crocuses?" -he questioned. "I've never seen them wild before." - -"They're not real crocuses," she said, "though those grow wild, too, in -a few places in England. These flowers are always called autumn crocuses -hereabouts; but they are really, botanically, meadow saffron; and they -grow wild in a great many places. You see they are not so dark a purple -as the wild crocus, and they are much taller, and the petals are more -pointed. Much more beautiful flowers, I think." - -"Meadow saffron. That's a pretty name, too. But I think I'll go on -calling them autumn crocuses. They were one of the reasons that made me -want to come here," he told her. - -They were leaning on the little garden-gate looking over the meadows. - -"Really? Did you hear about them?" - -He told her what Dorothy had said, passed on from the appreciative -Tommy, and she said again, "Really!" and with surprise, so that, -laughing a little, he said that he believed she would never have thought -of Mr. Barnet as an appreciator of crocuses. She laughed a little, too, -confessing to a community of perception where Tommy was concerned, and -remarked that it was very nice of him to have cared. "What he talked -about," she said, "was the food. He was never done praising my coffee. -It's time for coffee now," she added. - -Guy, as they went in, said that, after all, if that was what Tommy -talked about, he wondered that his caring for the crocuses should have -surprised her, for he was sure that the one was almost as poetical as -the others. It was poetical, indeed, as she made it, in a delightful and -complicated apparatus, glass and brass and premonitory scented steam; -and the milk was as hot as the water had been, and there was cream. "How -do you manage it, in these days?" he asked. But she said that it wasn't -wickedness and bribery, really: she and Cathy skimmed it from the milk -that was brought from the nearest farm. - -He realized that he was himself talking about the food just as Tommy had -done; just as the chattering women at Aunt Emily's tea-party had done; -just as everybody, of course, had been doing in England ever since food -became such an important matter. But it was Mrs. Baldwin who made him do -it; for though unearthly, she was deliciously prosaic. He felt that anew -when he heard her going about the house in her low-heeled little shoes, -with Cathy. They did, evidently, all the work, and how fresh, composed, -and shining everything was. The living-room, with its happy southern -windows, its tempting writing-tables, its flowers and books, was an -embodiment of the poetry that only such prose can secure. - -Guy, while Mr. Haseltine sat behind his rustling _Times_, strolled -before the shelves, surprised, presently, at their range of subject. -Surely not Mrs. Baldwin's, such reading; hardly, he thought, Mr. -Haseltine's. He took down a volume of Plotinus and found, on the -fly-leaf, "Oliver Baldwin," written in a small, scholarly hand. That -explained it, then. Her husband's. The Charles d'Orleans, too, the -Fustel de Coulanges, the Croce, and the Dante, with marginal notes. He -had been a man of letters, perhaps. Of the dozen books he took down to -examine, only one was initialled "E. H.," and that, suitably, was -_Dominique_. But it had been given her by "O. B." - -As in the garden, presently, he and the old gentleman walked up and -down, smoking, Guy asked him, with the diffidence natural to the -question, whether his son-in-law, Mrs. Baldwin's husband, had been -killed in the war; though he couldn't imagine her a war-widow. One -didn't indeed think of her in connection with marrying and giving in -marriage--that was part of the unearthliness; yet widowhood, permanent -widowhood, seemed a suitable state. She was not girlish, nor was she -wifely. She was widowed, and it had happened, he felt sure, in spite of -his question, long ago. - -As he had expected, his companion replied, "Ah, no; he died eight, nine -years since." And Mr. Haseltine then went on to tell, taking the war as -the obvious interest, and not without the satisfaction that Guy had so -often met and so often loathed, that he had lost dear ones. "Children of -my eldest son. Fine lads. Brave boys. One in the first month--at the -Marne; the other only last year, flying. Yes; I've done my bit," said -Mr. Haseltine, with the fatuity that he was so plentifully companioned -in displaying. - -"Bit." Odious word. His "bit." Why his? Had any one written a poem on -the formula coming from the lips of those for whom others had died? A -scattered, flagellating line or two floated through Guy's mind. -Something about barbed wire came in. He wondered how old Mr. Haseltine -would have felt about his "bit," hung up on that and unable to die. He -wondered where the fine lads now lay. No more coffee for them, with -cream in it; no more robins singing; no more strolling smokes among -mignonette in the sunlight. How they were forgotten, already, except for -trophies, for self-glorification to display! How pleased, how smug this -rescued, comfortable world! Something of his distaste attached itself -even to Mrs. Baldwin when she next appeared. Something irritating him in -her peacefulness. She, too, had seen nothing and lost nothing. But, at -all events, she wouldn't, he knew that, take any stand on the two -nephews to claim her "bit." There was nothing fatuous about Mrs. -Baldwin. The slight distaste still lingered, however, and he found -himself wondering once or twice, during the day that passed, in spite of -it, so pleasantly, whether she wasn't, for all his idealizing similes, a -stupid as well as a sweet woman. It was not because of filial -self-effacement that she let her father do all the talking at meals: it -was simply because she had nothing to say, and the good old boy was -quite right in taking his responsibility for granted. The person who -could talk was the responsible person. Her mind, though so occupied, was -quite singularly inactive and, he was sure, completely uncritical. She -didn't find her father in the least a bore, or suspect that anybody else -might find him so. She did find, Guy felt sure, satisfaction in all her -occupations. He heard her laughing--a quiet little laugh--with Cathy in -the kitchen; and in the afternoon, when he helped her to prick out -seedlings, her attentive profile--as, after he had dug each hole, she -dropped in the little plant, pressed the earth about its roots, and -fixed it in its place--made him think of the profile of a child putting -its dolls to bed. They planted three beautiful long rows, and Guy was -quite tired by tea-time, for though they had high tea at half-past six, -they were not deprived of the precious afternoon pause, taking place as -it did at the unaccustomed but pleasing hour of four. - -After tea she went to see some people in the village, Mr. Haseltine -dozed in his chair, and Guy took a long walk. - -So the days went on, and at the end of a week he was able to write to -Dorothy and tell her that he was sleeping wonderfully and that Mrs. -Baldwin's cottage was all that she had pictured it. By the end of the -week he had even grown rather attached to Mr. Haseltine, and he enjoyed -playing chess with him every evening; and sometimes they had a game in -the afternoon when tea was over. The undercurrent of irritation still -flowed, but he had learned to put up with the old gentleman and to -circumvent his communicativeness, and in the case of Mrs. Baldwin he -more and more felt that she was the sort of person to whom one would, -probably, forgive anything. It had become evident to him that what might -be dulness might also be unawareness. That was a certain kind of -dulness, it was true, but it didn't preclude capacity for response if -the proper stimulus were applied. It amused him to note that if none of -the nearly inevitable jars of shared life seemed ever to occur between -her and her father, it was simply because, when a difference arose, she -remained unconscious of it unless it were put before her. Nothing could -have been less in the line of selfishness; it was she who thought of -him, of his comfort and happiness, and who ordered her life to further -them; he, in this respect, was passive; but Guy felt that the poor old -boy often brooded in some disconsolateness over small trials and -perplexities that a companion more alert to symptoms would have -discerned and dispelled at once. Mr. Haseltine even, sometimes, confided -such grievances to the P.G. - -"I don't want to bother Effie about it," he said;--E. had stood for -Effie--"she's a dreamy creature and very forgetful. But it's quite -evident to me that the rector and his wife have been expecting to be -asked to tea to meet you. I've just been talking to them in the lane, -and I saw it plainly. They had asked us to bring you before you arrived, -hearing we were to have another guest,--they've always been most kind -and neighbourly in helping us to entertain our new friends,--and I -really don't know why Effie should have got out of it. I usually have to -remind her, it's true. But I sometimes get tired of always having to. -She doesn't care for them herself; but that's no reason why you might -not. We have few enough interests to offer visitors." - -Guy was glad to have escaped the rectory tea, though he did not say this -in assuring Mr. Haseltine that the entertainment offered at Thatches was -absolutely to his taste. He was completely out of place at any rectory; -he could imagine no rector who would not find his poems pernicious; but -he felt that there was justice in Mr. Haseltine's contention. He _might_ -have cared for them. As it was, Mr. Haseltine was brought once again to -reminding her. It was evident then that she was ready to please anybody -or everybody. - -"Ask them? Ought I to ask them?" - -"My dear, it's ten days since they sent their invitation. They spoke -again--and it's the second time--of having been so sorry not to see us, -when I met them yesterday, in the lane. I don't know why you did not -go." - -"I thought it would bore Mr. Norris, father. He came here for quiet, you -know. But would it bore you?" she asked Guy. "They are very nice. I -don't mean that." - -"It's certainly very pleasant being quiet," said Guy; "but if Mr. -Haseltine likes having them, I assure you that people don't frighten me -in the least." - -"Oh, not on my account," Mr. Haseltine protested. "I see our good -friends continually. It is of them I am thinking, as well as of Mr. -Norris. He might find them more interesting than you do, Effie, and they -will, I fear, be hurt." - -Now that it was put before her, Mrs. Baldwin did it every justice, -rising from the breakfast-table, where she had just finished, to go to -her desk, and murmuring as she went, "I hadn't thought of that. They -might be hurt. So, if it _won't_ bore you, Mr. Norris." - -And the Laycocks were asked, and did indeed bore Guy sadly. - -It was on the night after their visit--Mr. Laycock had questioned him -earnestly about his personal impressions of the war and to evade him had -been wearying--that Guy, for the first time, really, since he had come, -found sleep difficult and even menaced. It was because of that, he felt -sure, looking back on it, that the curious occurrence of the next day -took place--curious, and, had it taken place in the presence of any one -else, embarrassing. But what made it most curious was just that; he had -not felt it embarrassing to break down and sob before Mrs. Baldwin. - -The morning had begun badly. The breakfast-table papers had been full of -the approaching victory. Mr. Haseltine read out passages from the -_Times_ as he broke his toast and drank his coffee. He had reiterated -the triumph of his long conviction, and Mrs. Baldwin had murmured -assent. "All's well with the world," was the suffocating assurance that -seemed to breathe from them both. "All's blue." Was hell forgotten like -that? What if the war were won? Of course, it had to be won--that was an -unquestioned premise that had underlain his rebellions as well as Mr. -Haseltine's complacencies since the beginning. But what of it? No -victory could redeem what had been done. - -He went out into the garden, to be away from Mr. Haseltine, as soon as -he could, and took a book into the summer-house; and it was here, a -little later, that Mrs. Baldwin, seeing him as she passed, her -garden-basket on her arm, paused to ask him, with her smile of the shy -hostess, if he were all right. She didn't often ask him that, and he saw -at once that his recent recalcitrancy to rejoicing had pierced even her -vagueness. He knew that he still looked recalcitrant, and he was -determined not to soften the overt opposition rising in him; so he -raised his eyes to her over his book and said that he was not, perhaps, -feeling very fit that morning. - -Mrs. Baldwin hesitated at the entrance to the summer-house. She looked -behind her at the garden and up at the roses clustering over the lintel -under the thatch; she even took out her scissors, in the uncertainty -that, evidently, beset her, and snipped off a dead rose, and she said -presently, "It was all that talk about the war, wasn't it--when what you -must ask is to forget it." - -"Oh, I don't ask that at all," said Guy. "I should scorn myself for -forgetting it." She glanced in again at him, mildly. "I want to forget -what's irrelevant, like victory," he said; "but not what is relevant, -like irremediable wrong." - -Her awareness had not, of course, gone nearly as far as this. She kept -her eyes on him, and he was glad to feel that he could probably shock -her. "You see," he found himself saying, "I saw the wrong. I saw the -war--at the closest quarters." - -"Yes--oh, yes," Mrs. Baldwin murmured. - -"For me, tragedy doesn't cease to exist when it's shovelled underground. -If one goes down into hell, one doesn't want to forget the fact--though -one may hope to forget the torments and horrors; one wants, rather, to -remember that hell exists--and to try and square life with that -actuality." - -There was silence after this for a moment, and he imagined that she was -very much at a loss. Her next words seemed indeed to express nothing so -much as her failure to follow--that and a silliness really rather -adorable, had he been in a mood to find it anything but exasperating. -"But, still--hell doesn't exist, does it?" she offered him for his -appeasement. - -Guy laughed. "Doesn't it? When things like this war can happen? How -could it ever have existed but in men's hearts? It's there that it -smoulders and, when its moment comes, leaps out to blast the world." - -He could talk to her like this because she was too simple to suspect in -him a poetical attitudinizing; any one else would of course suspect it. -Guy was even aware that to any one else that was what it would have -been. She looked kind and troubled and as much as ever at a loss. She -didn't know at all how to deal with the patient, and she was evidently -uncertain what to do, since it might seem heartless to go away and leave -him to his black thoughts, yet intrudingly intimate to come and sit down -beside him. Nothing could be less intimate than Mrs. Baldwin. It was he, -of course, who was tasteless in talking to her in a vein appropriate -only to intimacy. - -"Don't bother over me," he said, offering her the patent artifice of a -smile. "I'm simply a bad case. You mustn't let me trouble you. You must -just turn your back on me when I'm like this." - -It was not poetic attitudinizing now; there was in his voice a quaver of -grief and she responded to it at once. - -"Oh, but I don't like to do that. I do wish I could be of some help. I -see you haven't slept, for you look so tired, as you did when you first -came. And Mr. Laycock did bore you. It's wrong of people to talk to you -about the war." - -For the first time he saw in the eyes fixed upon him, pity, evident pity -and solicitude. And before it he felt himself crumble suddenly. He saw -all the reasons she had for pitying him, did she but know. He saw -Ronnie's face again; he saw his own haunted night and his own grief. He -wanted her to see it. "Oh--one can't be guarded like that," he murmured; -"I must try to get used to it. But--I didn't sleep; that's true. I'm so -horribly afraid of not sleeping. You can't imagine what it is. I've the -most awful visions." And leaning his elbows on the table, he put his -hands before his face and began to cry. - -She stood there; he did not hear her move at first; and then she entered -and sat down on the seat beside him. But she said nothing and did not -touch him. He had had in all the tumult of his disintegration, a swift -passage of surmise; would she not draw his head upon her shoulder, like -a mother, and comfort him? But that would have broken him down heaven -knew how much further. - -He cried frankly, articulating presently, "It's my nerves, you know; -they have all gone to pieces. I lost my friend; my dearest friend. For -months I didn't sleep." - -Mrs. Baldwin's silence was not oppressive, or repressive either. He -heard her hands move slightly on the basket she held on her knees and -the soft chafing in the folds of her linen bodice that her breathing -made. It was an accepting stillness and it presently quieted him; more -than that, it enabled him at last to lift his head and look at her -without feeling ashamed of himself. Oddly enough, he knew that he, -perhaps, ought to be. He _could_ have helped himself. There had been an -element of wilfulness in his breakdown; he had wanted her to see; but, -even had she known this about him, he would not have felt ashamed. She -was so curiously a person with whom one could not associate blames and -judgments. She was an accepting person. - -She wasn't looking at him, but out at the sweet, bright, autumnal little -garden; and as her eyes came to him, he felt them full of thought; felt, -for the first time, sure that, whatever she might be, she was not dull. - -He could not remember, looking back at the little scene, that she had -said a single further word. He did not think that he had said anything -further. He was helping her, a little while after, to prune the Aimee -Vibert rose that had grown with great unruliness over the little -tool-house near the kitchen door. "It will really pull it down unless we -cut out some of these great branches," she had said, as, equipped with -stout gloves, they had worked away together, unfastening the tangled -trails and stretching them out on the ground. So displayed, the Aimee -Vibert was drastically dealt with, and it was midday before they -finished fastening the thinned and shortened shoots into place. - -She had said nothing further; but he believed that, for the first time, -her thought really included him. He had been put before her. She was -different afterwards. He had become an individual to her, and had ceased -to be merely the paying guest. - - -IV - -The third week came. There was rain, rather sad September rain, for a -day or two. They sat in the evenings before the wide fireplace where -logs blazed. Mrs. Baldwin, at his suggestion, read aloud to them Fabre's -_Souvenirs Entomologiques_. She read French prettily, better than he did -himself, and he was a little chagrined once or twice to find that she -knew it better, priding himself on his French as he did. He had lived -for a year in Paris, with Ronnie, before the war. - -The horrors of the grim, complicated underworld revealed by the French -seer distressed him. Mrs. Baldwin did not feel them as he did, feeling -the marvels rather than the horrors, perhaps. She laughed a little, -rather callously, at the ladies who devoured their husbands, and seemed -pleased by the odious forethought of the egg-laying mothers. She shared -Fabre's humorous dispassionateness, if not the fond partiality which, -while it made him the more charming, didn't, Guy insisted, make his -horrid wasps and beetles a bit more so. As usual, she vexed him a -little, even while, more and more, he felt her intelligent; perhaps she -vexed him all the more for that. - -"She's so devilishly contented with the world," he said to himself -sometimes, even while he smiled, remembering her laughter. - -Old Mr. Haseltine fell asleep one night while she read, and to be -together there before the fire, the old man sleeping beside them, made -them nearer than they had ever been before. Guy was aware of this -nearness while he listened and while he watched her hand, short, like a -child's (and her face was so short) support the book, and her eyelashes -dropping down the page or raised to a fresh one. - -When he went to his room that night, he stood still for a long time, his -candle in his hand, listening to the soft beat of the rain against the -window. He was hardly ever now afraid of being alone, or of the dark, -and he stood there musing and listening, while he still seemed to see -Mrs. Baldwin's hand as it held the book, and her reading profile. Her -life seemed to breathe upon him and he rested in it. He slept -deliciously. - -"Did you know that I write?" he asked her next day. He had wondered -about this once or twice before. - -"Oh, yes; your cousin, in her letter, you know, told me that you wrote," -said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They were in the living-room after midday dinner, and alone. She looked -up at him very kindly from the papers and letters she was sorting at her -desk. - -"You've never heard of my effusions otherwise, though?" He put on a -rueful air. "Such is fame!" - -"Are you famous?" Her smile was a little troubled. "I don't follow -things, you know, living here as I do." - -"You read the papers. I _have_ had reviews: good ones." - -"I don't read them very regularly," she admitted. "And I so often don't -remember the names of people in reviews, even when I've liked what is -said of them. Have you any of your poems here? Perhaps you'll let me -read them." - -He felt, with the familiar chagrin, that she would never, of herself, -have thought of asking him. - -"Yes, my last volume. It's just out." - -He was going for a walk in the rain with Mr. Haseltine that afternoon. -There was an old church in the neighbouring village that his friend -wanted him to see. Mrs. Baldwin had letters to write. "Will you have -time to look at it while we are out?" he asked. - -Although she had shown so little interest in him, he was eager, -pathetically so, he felt, that she should read and care about his poems. -She said that it was just the time: her letters would not take long. And -so he ran up to his room and got the little book for her: _Burnt -Offerings_. - -All the time that he was walking with Mr. Haseltine and seeing the -church, and the old manor house that took them a half mile further, he -wondered what she was thinking about his poems. - -By the time they had returned the rain had ceased. A warm September -sunlight diffused itself. Veils lifted from the stream and trailed upon -the lower meadows. The sky grew clear and the leaves all sparkled. They -found that Mrs. Baldwin had had her cup of tea, for it was past four; -but all had been left in readiness for them, the kettle boiling; and -after Guy had swallowed his, he went out and saw her walking down among -the crocuses. - -"Oh, you are back?" she said when he joined her. "I wanted to be there -to give you your tea. Was it all right?" - -"Perfectly," he said. "We put in just your number of spoonfuls." - -Mrs. Baldwin wore her little knitted jacket and had put on her white, -rubber-soled canvas shoes against the wet; but her head, with its thick, -close braids, was bare to the sunlight. - -"I had to come out as soon as it stopped raining," she said; "and I'm -afraid I simply forgot to look out for you and father." - -Her gentleness had always seemed contentment; this afternoon it seemed -happiness, and he had never seen her look so young. He wondered if she -were going to take him so dreadfully aback as not even to mention his -poems; if she had simply forgotten them, too. Already her demeanour, -unclouded, almost radiant, inflicted a wound; she had either forgotten, -or she had cared little indeed, since she could look like that. But, -after he had commented, consentingly, on the lovely hour, she went on -with a change of tone, a voice a little shy, "I've read the poems. Thank -you so much for letting me see them." - -"You read all of them?" - -"Yes. I didn't write my letters." - -"I hope you read them, then, because you cared for them." - -She didn't answer for a moment, walking along and placing the small -white feet carefully among the crocuses. "They are very sad," she then -said. - -He was aware, after an instant of adjustment to the blow, that she made -him very angry. Terrible, his poems, searing, scorching; wicked, if one -would; but not sad. - -"Oh!" he murmured; and he wondered if the divided feeling she had from -the first roused in him had been this hatred, not perhaps of her, but of -her unvarying acquiescence, her untroubled inadequacy. - -"They interested me very much," she said, feeling, no doubt, that, -whatever he was, he was not pleased. "They made me see, I mean, all the -things you have been through." - -"Sad things, you call them. You know, I rather feel as if I'd heard you -call hell sad." - -She looked up at him quickly, and it was now she who was taken aback -and, as she had been the other day, at a loss. And, as on the other day, -she found the same answer, though she offered it deprecatingly, feeling -his displeasure. "But hell doesn't exist." - -"Don't you think anything horrible exists?" - -They turned at the end of the meadow. It seemed to him, although he felt -as if he hated her, that they were suddenly intimate in their -antagonism. He would force that antagonism, and its intimacy, upon -her--to its last implication. - -"Horrible? Oh, yes, yes!" she said, startled, and that was, he reflected -grimly, to the good. "But it would have to be irretrievable, wouldn't -it, to be hell?" she urged. - -"Do you suggest that it's not irretrievable? You own it's horrible. -Irretrievably horrible, I call it. And that's what I call hell. Yet all -that you can find to say of my poems is that they are sad." - -She hesitated, feeling her way, hearing in the recurrent word how it had -rankled. "I meant sad, I think, because of you; because you had suffered -so much." - -"You seem always to imply that one might _not_ have suffered!" And -thrusting aside her quickly murmured, "Oh, no, no!" he went on: "I can't -understand your attitude of mind. Do you realize at all, I sometimes -wonder, what it has all meant, this nightmare we are living in--we, that -is, to whom it came? Can you imagine what it was to me to see boys, dead -boys, buried stealthily, at night, under fire? Boys so mangled, so -disfigured--you read that poem, 'Half a Corpse'?--that their mothers -wouldn't have known them; featureless, dismembered boys, heaped one upon -the other in the mud. Has your mind ever dwelt upon the community of -corruption in which they lie, as their mothers' minds must dwell? I do -not understand you. I do not understand how you can dare to call such -things sad." - -His own wrath shook and yet sustained him, though he knew a fear lest he -had gone too far; but in her silence--they had reached the other end of -the meadow and turned again in their walk--he felt that there was no -resentment. It was as if she realized that those who have returned from -hell cannot be asked to stop and pick their words with courtesy, and -accepted his vehemence, if not his blame; and again, when she spoke at -last, he felt that her bewilderment had settled into thought. - -"Yes, I can imagine," she said. "But no, I don't think that my mind has -dwelt on those things. If I were their mothers, I don't think that my -mind would dwell, as you say. Something would burn through. There are -other kinds of suffering--better kinds; they help, I believe. And, for -that kind, it is worse, but is it so much worse than in ordinary life? -That is what happens all the time when there is no war; dreadful changes -in the dead; and burials. They are not quite so near each other in a -churchyard, and their graves are named; but do you think that makes it -easier to bear?" - -He felt now as if it were insult she was offering him. - -"You deny all tragedy to war, then? It's all to you on a level with an -Elegy in a Country Churchyard, with curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths? You read 'His Eyes,'"--Guy's voice had a hoarser -note, but, mingled with the sincerity of what, at last, he knew he was -to tell her, the very centre of his sick heart, went a surface -appreciation of what he had just said and of how curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths would go into a bitter poem one day,--"you read that -poem of mine at the end of the book. 'His Eyes' is about myself and my -friend Ronnie Barlow, the artist; you never heard of him, I know. He -hung, with shattered legs, dying, just in front of us, on the barbed -wire, for three days and nights. When he could speak, it was to beg to -be shot. We tried to get to him, four, five times; it was no good. There -was barbed wire between, and the Germans spotted us every time. He died -during the third night, and next morning I found him looking at me--as -he had looked during these three days--his torment and his reproach. And -so he went on looking until the rats came and he had no more eyes to -look with. Will you tell me that that is no worse than the deaths died -in the parishes of England? Will you tell me that it's the sort of death -died by the cheery, mature gentlemen who ate their dinners and slept -warm and dropped a tear--while they did their 'bit' in their Government -offices--over the brave lads saving England?" - -He had taken refuge from Ronnie in hatred of those whom, in the poem, he -called his murderers, and his voice was weighted with its fierce -indictment. In the pause that followed he had time to wonder if she -found him, at last, intolerable. She walked beside him, still looking -down, and it might well have been in a chill withdrawal. He almost -expected to hear her, in another moment, find the conventional phrase -with which to leave him. But no,--and in his own long sigh he recognized -the depth of his relief,--she was not going to punish him with -convention; she was not going to leave him. And what she said at last -was, "I'm so sorry! Please believe that I'm so very, very sorry! -Only--why do you speak, and write, as though it were some one's fault?" - -Ah, here then, at last, they had come to it, the barrier, on one side of -which he stood with his hell and she on the other in her artificial -paradise. - -"I write it and speak it because it is the truth," he said. "Millions of -innocent creatures, of gifted, beautiful creatures, like my friend, have -been slaughtered, tortured, driven mad, because of greasy, greedy -wire-pullers in their leather chairs at home." - -"In this war, too?" - -"In this war preeminently." - -"You don't feel that the crime was Germany's?" - -"Oh, of course!" his laugh sneered the facile acquiescence. "Let us put -it on Germany, by all means. We'll sleep the sounder! Certainly, I grant -it to you freely--Germany struck the match and lighted the fuse." - -"And weren't we all responsible for the fuse--you and I, I mean, as much -as the people in the leather chairs?" There was no irony in her -repetition. "The people who fought, as much as the people who didn't -fight? Wasn't the fuse simply our conception of our national safety? of -our national honour? That is what I feel so sad about your -poems,--though I should never have wanted to explain it,--that you are -so wrong, so ungenerous, so vindictive." - -In all his life it had rarely been his lot to know such astonishment. -Astonishment came first; and then the deep, deep hurt that rose, wave -after wave, within him. Was this, then, what she felt for him--only -this? Hadn't he told her about Ronnie--her alone of all the world? -Should not that have made her reverent of him, and pitiful? Should a man -who had endured such griefs receive such blows? Waves of colour, too, -flooded his face and tears rushed to his eyes. He thought, when he was -able at last to gather thoughts together, that it should now be for him -to find the conventional phrase and leave her. But, glancing again at -her profile, finding it, though singularly pale, so much more gentle -than severe, the impulse dropped. He was not strong enough for -convention. He was shaken, shattered; too weak even for -self-preservation. - -He walked, miserable, and his mind full of a whirling darkness, beside -her, determining only that she should be the first to speak again. She -was. She had quite come out of her shyness,--if it had ever been -that,--and though it was with something faltering, something that was, -he made out, sorry for them both in the predicament to which, after all, -he, and not she, had brought them, it was more than all with resolution -that she said,-- - -"I am so sorry if I seem presumptuous. But you asked me. And your poems -aren't the first I've read. So many young men, who have been so brave, -like you, and who have been through it all so that they have the right -to speak, seem to feel more than anything that hatred, not against -war,--we all hate war,--but against people, some groups of people, they -make responsible. There are bad and selfish people everywhere,--among -poets, I feel sure, just as much as among statesmen; but hasn't this war -proved--since everybody has gone--that no one group is bad and selfish; -that there are men in every group who have been glad to die for their -country? I know I have no weight with young men like you; I am not a -person of any importance for opinion; but how I wish that I could make -you believe that you ought not to write like that--with hatred in your -heart. Can great poetry be written out of hatred? And it's not only -yourself it hurts: it hurts other people; harms them, I mean. It spreads -a mood of darkness and fever just when they are so in need of light and -calm. And for the mothers, for people who have lost, cruelly, those whom -they loved as much, perhaps even more, than you loved your friend--do -you not see how your poems must sicken them? Do you not see that it all -becomes just that--a community of corruption? You imprison them, force -them back into their helpless suffering; when what they pray for is -strength to rise above it and to feel all the goodness and love that has -been given for them; to feel what is beautiful, not what is horrible; so -as to be worthy of their dead." - -As he listened to her,--and with a slow revulsion of all his nature, as -if, against his very will and mind, she moved his heart to breaking with -something passionate that spoke in her words,--an overwhelming -experience befell him. - -The crocuses beneath their feet, her sunlit shape beside him, her voice, -as she spoke to him thus, with her very soul, blended together in a -rising wave of light, or music, piercing, sweeping him, lifting him up -to some new capacity, leaving the old inert and dangling, lifting and -still lifting him, until at last, as if with a great, emerging breath, -he came into a region bright and fair, whence, looking down on the dark -and tattered past, he saw all life differently, even Ronnie's death, -even Ronnie's eyes. Ronnie was with him, with Mrs. Baldwin, in the -bright stillness. - -Upborne, sustained, like a swimmer in some strange, new element, he -seemed to gaze down through its golden spaces at the inert, alien -darkness that had been himself. "Rubbish! Rubbish!" he seemed to hear -himself say. Yet all was not left behind; all was not rubbish; else how -could he be here, with her, with Ronnie? It was bliss to see himself as -he had been, since something else was so immeasurably secure. Oh--could -one stay always like this! This was to taste of everlasting life. His -longing, as if with a cry, a grasp from the swimmer, marked the soft -turning of the tide. He sank, but it was sweetly, if with a strange, an -infinite sadness, a sadness recorded, accepted, while he sank, as making -forever the portion of the temporal consciousness. And the bliss still -stayed in the acceptance, and purple ripples seemed to glide back -rhythmically as the crocuses swam before his eyes. It had all been only -an instant then, for her last words came to him as if she had but spoken -them and he heard his own voice murmuring, as if from very far away, -"Perhaps you are right." - -The ripples stayed themselves. He looked down at the crocuses and saw -Mrs. Baldwin's white shoes standing still among them. Lifting his eyes, -which felt heavy, he found her looking at him with attention, with -anxiety. - -"It's nothing," he tried to smile. "Nothing at all. I mean--you've done -me good." He saw that she hadn't an idea of how she had done it. - -"Do take my arm," she said. "I ought to have remembered that you are not -strong yet." - -He took her arm. Perhaps he needed it. His normal consciousness was -gathering about him once again, but no longer with the old close -texture. It was all more permeable to light--that was how he tried to -put it. And he heard his voice go on, "You see--what it all amounts -to--oh, I'm not thinking about the poems, I know that you must be -right--it's not what you say, is it? It's something far more right than -what you say. But I love you. That's why you can do it to me. I wonder I -didn't see it before. You made me angry with your peacefulness. I didn't -understand. I needed your peace. You, you were what I needed. You will -forgive my speaking? Surely you'll understand. Perhaps you feel you -hardly know me, while you are like my life. Is it possible that some day -you might love me back and marry me?" - -He had used the words that came. They were the words of the normal -consciousness. How else could he ask her to keep him always near her so -that he might never lose that sense of paradise? - -But she had stopped still and had drawn her arm from his. Was it -possible that after what she had done to him, for him, she could see him -only thus? "Oh, no," she said. "No. No." Never had he seen a human face -express with such ineffable gentleness such repudiation. And she -repeated it, as if he had given her too much to bear; as if for her own -reassurance; as if to efface even the memory of his words: "No; no; -no!" She began again to walk towards the house. - -Had it not been for the initiation that had passed he knew so clearly -now, in all unawareness from her spirit to his, he would have felt to -the full the shame of his rejection, the deserved shame. For he was a -stranger and she had given him no right to believe that she even liked -him. But he could feel no shame. Had he really thought that she could -love him? Had it not been only that he wanted to tell her that he loved -her, and had wanted her, as it were, to keep him safe? He found himself -trying to explain this to her,--not pleading,--only so that she should -not be angry. "I had to tell you. You'd done me so much good. Everything -came different. Really, I'm not so presumptuous. I never meant to ask -anything." - -But she was not angry. "Forgive me," she said. "I hardly know what I am -saying. You so astonished me. Forgive me. But I don't feel as if I knew -you at all. Please don't think me reproaching you. I begin to -understand. You are not at all strong. It was like the other day when -you cried, I mean--I feel sure you think you care for me; but you -couldn't have said it, when we know each other so little, if you had -been well." - -She was putting it aside, for his sake, as an aberration, and he really -smiled a little as he shook his head. "No; really, really, it's not -that; not because I've been on edge and ill. It was something that came -to me from what you are; something that's been coming ever since I saw -you. I know that I am nothing to you; but for a moment, just now, it -seemed, when I had received so much, that you must know what you had -given; it seemed that a person to whom so much could be given, could -not be so far away. But even then I saw quite clearly what you saw in -me; a vain, pretentious, emotional creature; insincere, too, and proud -of my suffering. I am that. But I had never seen it before. And when it -came to me from you and, instead of crushing me, lifted me up, I knew -that I loved you.--No; I won't try to explain. Only you do forgive me? -You will let me go on as if it hadn't happened? I promise you that I'll -never trouble you again." - -Oh, the gentleness, the heavenly gentleness! It breathed through him -like the colour of the crocuses, although she was as impersonal, as -untouched, and as mysterious as they. He was nothing to her--nothing; -but she stood before him, looking at him, and though she gave nothing -but the gentleness, he knew that he received all that he needed. It was -enough that she was there. - -"But it's _I_ to be forgiven--_I_," she repeated. "Of course we will go -on. Oh, you look very tired. Please take my arm again. I spoke so -strangely to you. But--but--" She had flushed: for the first time he saw -the colour darken her face as if with a veil of pain, and in her voice -was the passion, deeper, stiller, that he had heard a little while ago -and that had enfranchised him. "I am married--I mean, my husband is -dead, but I am married. Perhaps you don't understand. Perhaps you will -some day, if you should lose some one you love and feel them still your -very life. We were like that. He is always with me." - -They had said nothing more as they walked up the meadow to the house, -his arm in hers. He had no sense of loss; rather, from her last words -to him, came a sense of further gain. She would be like that. He saw now -that her peace, against which he had pressed and protested, was -something won, was depth, not emptiness. She, too, had lost and -suffered. She was made dearer to him, more sacred. As for his love, it -did not belong--he had seen this even before she told him why--to this -everyday world to which he had returned. But it was everything to have -found it, with that other world, and to know that there it had its -being, its reality, forever. What was it that had enlarged, transformed -his life, but that very certitude of an eternity where all good was -secure? He could not explain it to himself in any words. Words were the -keys of temporality. But he had seen, if only for the few shining -moments, that Ronnie was not lost; that nothing had been in vain. - -If he found no difficulty, it was evident to him that Mrs. Baldwin felt -none, and he was glad to believe that this might be because he showed -her so completely, in his candid contentment, that he would never -trouble her again. She was not more kind to him; but she took, perhaps, -even more care, as if feeling that she had miscalculated something in -his recovery. She inaugurated a glass of hot milk, instead of spiced hot -water, at bedtime, and a rest on the sofa, with a rug, before the midday -dinner. "You will look so much better when you go back than when you -came," she said. - -For the time of going back drew near, and he did not dread it, though -loving Thatches and all it meant more and more with every day. But of -course, even in the temporal world, he was not to lose Thatches. That -was quite understood between them. The P.G. would be welcome whenever -he cared to come. - - -V - -He was playing chess on the afternoon before his departure. Tea was over -and Mrs. Baldwin had gone out. Guy had noticed that she had been perhaps -a little stiller than usual that day, when he had seen her, and that he -had seen her little. The game did not go very well; they were neither of -them keen on it; and when the old gentleman had won an easy victory, he -leaned back in his chair, the board still on its little table between -them, and said, "Poor Effie! She's still in the church, or in the -churchyard, I expect." - -Guy felt the shock of a great surprise. Strangely enough, though Mrs. -Baldwin had spoken of her husband and of his death, and though his books -were there, he did not associate him with Thatches, nor with the -churchyard. And with the word, "churchyard," a painful anxiety rose in -him. - -"Is it an anniversary?" he asked. - -"Yes," Mr. Haseltine nodded, sighing and rubbing his hand over his head. -"September twenty-ninth. I'd forgotten myself till just a little while -ago. Oliver died on this day. Her husband. Poor Effie!" - -"They lived here?" Guy asked. He had imagined that it had been after her -bereavement that she and her father had found and made a home of -Thatches. - -"Oh, yes. They lived here. All their married life," said Mr. Haseltine. -"Ten years or so. It was a great love-match. They were very happy. I -never saw a happier couple--until the end." - -"Did anything part them?" - -Mr. Haseltine had put his hands into his pockets and was gazing at the -board as if with a painful concentration, and though he shook his head -he answered, "It was the malady. Cancer, you know. Cancer of the face. -Such a handsome fellow, too: beautiful, bright, smiling eyes; beautiful -mouth. All gone. All disfigured, cruelly disfigured, and with horrible -suffering." - -Guy felt his breath coming thickly. "Was it long?" he asked. - -"Yes. Long. Eighteen months, I think. Morphia did little good at last. -He couldn't swallow; could hardly speak; begged to be killed and put out -of his torment. She was with him in it all. She never left him, day or -night; nor could he have borne it if she had. Nothing quieted him except -her hand in his. But at the end," said Mr. Haseltine, pushing away the -table and rising, "at the end, it attacked his brain and then he raved -at her. She couldn't go into the room at the last." - -The old man, with step lagging, as if weighted, walked away to the -window and stood looking out, while Guy, at the table, felt his heart -turn to stone. - -"Poor Effie!" Mr. Haseltine repeated after a little while. He came back -into the room and moved up and down, pausing to look at the books and -pictures. "She has never been the same since. For a long while we were -afraid she couldn't live. She hardly slept for months; and when she did -sleep, she used to wake crying, crying, always for him. When she became -stronger, she used to walk up and down those meadows, sometimes for -hours at a time. Very gentle; no complaint; always ready to talk to -people, to go on with things as best she could; but changed; completely -changed. We speak very little of him; but when we do, it's quite -naturally. She goes to the church sometimes, and there are always -flowers on his grave; but I don't think she has any orthodox beliefs; I -don't know that she has any beliefs at all. Still, she seems helped. She -is a very dear, unselfish woman; a dreamer, she was always a dreamer; -but always meaning well; and she does good in her quiet way. And I think -she likes this plan of having people come and stay and seeing after -them; especially now that they are so often people who have had a bad -time. Dear me, dear me!" Mr. Haseltine again shook his head, stationed -again at the window and looking out. "You would hardly have recognized -her had you seen her ten years ago. She had bright hair and a charming -colour; and full of gaiety and mischief. You'd hardly believe it now." - -"I'm so sorry," Guy heard himself saying. He remembered that those were -the words Mrs. Baldwin had used to him about Ronnie. - -"Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Haseltine. "Life is certainly very -difficult for some of us, and Effie has had her share. Somehow one -doesn't remember it when one is with her. I only recalled the day by -chance." - -Guy was walking in the meadows when Mrs. Baldwin returned. He saw her in -the garden, reading the letters that the evening post had brought, and -his first impulse was to remove himself as speedily as might be from her -sight, to cross the bridge and the farther meadow, and turn into the -lane that led away from it. But then he saw, as he stood irresolute, -that she was coming down to him, and he stood there, helpless, watching -her approach in the soft radiance of the late afternoon. She wore one -of the lavender-coloured dresses and the little knitted jacket. In her -hand were the opened letters. Her face was tranquil. She was, of course, -unaware of what had happened to him. - -She joined him. "You are having your last look at the crocuses?" - -It was their last look together. That, of course, was why she had come, -full of care and of kindness. - -"Yes. Yes. My last look for the year." He heard that his voice was -strange. And his heart seemed to lie like a cold hard block in his side. - -"Aren't you feeling well?" she asked. - -He walked beside her in silence. What could he say? But how was it -possible not to tell her? - -They had turned towards the sunset and came now to the bridge. She was -looking at him, with solicitude. He stopped before they crossed. - -"I must say something to you," broke from him. "I must. I can't go away -without your knowing--my shame--my unutterable remorse." - -She looked at him with the look he knew so well. Kindly, firmly, if with -anxiety, she prepared to hear him thrust some new torment upon her. - -"Shame? Remorse?" she murmured. - -"About my poems. About my griefs. What I've said to you. What I've given -you to bear. I thought I'd borne so much. I thought you unfeeling, -without experience. I thought I'd been set apart--that all of us had -been set apart, who suffered in the war. Stop me at once if you won't -hear it from me. But your father told me, just now, about your husband's -death." - -She became very pale. She looked away from him, but she said nothing. - -"That's all," said Guy after a long silence. He saw that there was -nothing more to tell her. She had understood. - -"Let us walk up and down," said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They crossed the bridge. He saw the stream sliding brightly below them -between the old, black planks. In the farther meadows the crocuses grew -more thickly and opened widely their pale purple chalices. - -"We have all suffered," said Mrs. Baldwin. "You mustn't have remorse or -shame. Nothing is harmed between us." - -The horrible stricture around his heart relaxed, and as they went very -slowly up and down he felt his throat tighten and tears rising, rising -to his eyes. He could not keep them back. He wasn't really quite strong -enough for this. They fell and fell, and from time to time he put up his -hand to brush them away. - -"We have all suffered," Mrs. Baldwin repeated gently. - -"Some, more! some, more!" he said brokenly. "Some, most of all!" - -They came back to the bridge, but though they crossed over, they did not -pass out through the high gate that barred the other end. The gate was -closed, and Guy stopped at it and leaned on it and put his face on his -hands. Mrs. Baldwin stood at the gatepost beside him, her hand holding -it and her head leaned against her hand. - -"He would have liked you," she said. "He was so interested in young men, -young poets. He was not old himself; and he wrote, too, did you know? -All those books in the living-room are his. He used to work there. I -will give you his two books if you care to have them. They were thought -very good; I think you will like them.--It was because of the crocuses -we came here," she went on. "We found them one September, just like -this, and the three little ruined cottages, and we knew at once that we -must live here. He so loved them. When he was very ill--but before the -very end when nothing could come to him any longer, when he was quite -shut away--he used to lie at the window and look out at them--that big -window above the living-room." - -Divinely she was helping him. It was as if, taking him by the hand, she -led him again away from his darkness and into her own light. - -Yes, brokenly it came to him, it was there, secure; how won, he knew -not. Through her he had found it; but that was because her feet had -passed before him up the calvary. She had gone through everything; and -she knew everything. - -And, to his new hearing, something of the infinite weariness of that -ascent was in her voice when she next spoke, although it was a voice as -peaceful as the evening air around them. "Are they not beautiful?" she -said. - -He raised his head and looked at the flowers through his tears. They had -never been so beautiful. "They make me think of you," he told her. - -"Do they?" Mrs. Baldwin still leaned her head against her hand, still -looked out over the meadows. "But there are so many of them," she said. -"So many. That is what I feel first of all about them. I could not think -of them as like one person. Multitudes. Multitudes.--And so silent! They -make me think always of the souls of the happy dead." - -_The Riverside Press_ - -CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS - -U. S. A. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -embody the spendour=> embody the splendour {pg 105} - -in spite of Florre's good cheer=> in spite of Florrie's good cheer {pg -136} - - * * * * * - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - -***** This file should be named 40650.txt or 40650.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/6/5/40650/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/40650.zip b/40650.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index a962dc7..0000000 --- a/40650.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/40650-0.txt b/old/40650-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4b1fc0f..0000000 --- a/old/40650-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9858 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -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/license - - -Title: Christmas Roses and Other Stories - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: September 2, 2012 [EBook #40650] -[Last updated: December 20, 2012] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -CHRISTMAS ROSES -AND OTHER STORIES - -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt) -_Author of “Tante,” “The Third Window,” etc._ - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge -1920 - -COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SÉLINCOURT - -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - - - -CONTENTS - -CHRISTMAS ROSES 1 - -HEPATICAS 63 - -DAFFODILS 92 - -PANSIES 121 - -PINK FOXGLOVES 147 - -CARNATIONS 168 - -STAKING A LARKSPUR 208 - -EVENING PRIMROSES 253 - -AUTUMN CROCUSES 279 - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -Christmas Roses - - -I - -THEY were coming up everywhere in their sheltered corner on the -wall-border, between the laurustinus and the yew hedge. She had always -loved to watch their manner of emerging from the wintry ground: neck -first, arched and stubborn; heads bent down as if with held breath and -thrusting effort; the pale, bowed, folded flower, when finally it rose, -still earthy, still part, as it were, of the cold and dark from which it -came; so that to find them, as on this morning, clear, white, -triumphant, all open to the wind and snow, was to renew the sense of the -miraculous that, more than any other flower, they always gave her. More -than any other flower, they seemed to _mean_ to come, to will and -compass it by the force of their own mysterious life. More than any -other flower, winter piled upon their heads, unallured by spring and the -promise of sunlight, they seemed to come from the pressure of a gift to -bring rather than a life to seek. She thought always, when she saw them, -of Christmas bells over snowy fields, in bygone centuries; of the Star -in the East, and of the manger at Bethlehem. They were as ancient as -that tradition, austere and immaculate witnesses in an unresponsive -world; yet they were young and new, always; always a surprise, and even -to her, old as she was, bereft and sorrowful, a reminder that life was -forever a thing of births, of gifts, of miracles. - -They did not fail her this morning when she came out to them, and she -thought, as she stopped to look at them, that one was not really old -when, in the shock of sheer happiness, one knew childhood again and its -wonder. Yet, as she worked among them, cutting away dead leaves and -adjusting sprays of evergreen so that the rains should not splash them -with mud, it was a new analogy they brought; and, for the first time, -measuring her resource after the appeal Tim’s letter had made upon it, -she reflected that the Christmas roses were rather like herself. She, -too, in this wintry season of her life, was still determined and -indomitable. Widowed and childless, with many mournings in her heart, -griefs and devastations in her memory, she, too, was a force, silent and -patient; and it was this that people still found in her. For the appeal -always brought the answer. She had felt herself, so often, benumbed into -lethargy, and, yielding to the mere mute instinct of self-preservation, -had so often folded herself up and lapsed into the blank darkness of her -grief (her husband’s death, so many years ago; and Miles’s, and little -Hugh’s, and her dear, dear Peggy’s). But it had always been to hear -herself, as if in a dream, called to from the outside world, and to feel -herself, in answer, coming up again, rising, if only to snows and -tempests, in a renewal of life which brought with it, always, a renewal -of joy in life. - -For months now, since August, she had been sunken in the last grief--it -must be--that could come to her; for Miles was the last, of her own, who -had remained--Peggy’s youngest boy. The oldest, already a soldier, had -been killed in the first months of the war, and, after all his years of -peril, it had seemed as if Miles was to escape. But, cruelly, just at -the turning of the tide, when victory had become assured, he had been -shot down, and in his crashing fall through the air she had felt the end -of everything, Peggy dying again with him; for Peggy, too, had died like -that, crashing and falling and dragged, in a horrible hunting accident. -There seemed, now, nothing more left to suffer, and nothing more to live -for, either, unless it were her poor Tim; and it had, exactly, been -Tim’s letter that had driven her out to wrestle with the elements, after -her wont in any disturbance or perplexity, so that she could think over -what he told her while she wielded her trowel and fork on the convenient -wall-border. - -She had, on rising from the breakfast-table, sent Tim a wire: “I shall -expect her. Writing later,” and had then called to Parton to bring her -old warm coat, her hood with its satin lining, and her buckled galoshes. - -Parton was accustomed to her mistress’s vagaries in regard to gardening, -and made no comment on the enterprise except to express the hope that it -would not snow again. Parton, in spite of her youth a most efficient -combination of parlourmaid and lady’s-maid, was devoted to her mistress; -the little pat and tweak she gave to the bow of the hood, and the -gentleness with which she adjusted the galoshes, expressed a close yet -almost reverential relationship. - -It was not freezing, and under the light fall of snow the ground was -soft. Mrs. Delafield found herself enjoying the morning freshness as she -tidied and weeded, and had her usual affectionate eye for the -bullfinches nipping away at her plum-buds and the tits and robins at the -little table spread with scraps for them near the house; while all the -time Tim’s letter weighed on her, and the problem it presented; and as -she pondered on it, and on Rhoda, her niece, Tim’s only child, her firm, -square, handsome, old, white face was not devoid of a certain grimness. - -Mrs. Delafield was very handsome, perhaps more handsome now than she had -been in youth. Her brow, with the peak of thick white hair descending -upon it, her thick black eyebrows and her rather thick, projecting nose, -were commanding--almost alarmingly so to those who in her presence had -cause for alarm. The merely shy were swiftly reassured by something -merry in her gaze and by the benevolent grace still lingering on her -firm, small lips. She had square eyes clearly drawn, and with an oddity -in their mountain-brook colouring, for one was brown and one was freaked -with grey. Her form was ample and upright, and in all her gestures there -was swiftness and decision. - -It was of Tim she thought at first, rather than of Rhoda, the cause of -all their distresses. But she was not seeing Tim as he now existed, -bleached, after his years of India, invalided, fretted by family cares, -plaintive and pitiful. She saw him as a very little boy in their distant -Northern nursery of sixty years ago, with bright curls, ruddy cheeks, -and the blue eyes, candid and trusting, that he still kept; standing -there, bare-armed and bare-legged, in his stiff, funny little dress of -plaid, before the fire-guard, while nurse, irate, benevolent figure, cut -bread and butter for breakfast. Dear little Tim! still her younger -brother; still turning to her, as he had always done, for counsel or -succour in any stress or anxiety. It was nothing new that the anxiety -should be about Rhoda; there was nothing, even, that had surprised her -in Tim’s letter; yet she knew from the sense of urgency and even -breathlessness within her that the blow which had been dealt him could -not leave her unaffected. She could, after all, still suffer in Tim’s -suffering. And even before she had let her thoughts dwell decisively on -Rhoda, she had found herself thinking, while the grimness settled on her -face, “I shall know how to talk to her.” - -She had always known how to talk to the moody young beauty; that was why -Tim had sent off this letter of desperate appeal. She never quite saw -why Rhoda had not, from the first, felt in her merely an echo of her -father’s commonplace conventionality and discounted her as that. Rhoda -had never, she felt sure, guessed how far from conventional she was; how -much at heart, in spite of a life that had never left appointed paths, -she knew herself to be a rebel and a sceptic; no one had ever guessed -it. But there had always been between her and Rhoda an intuitive -understanding; and that Rhoda from the first had listened and, from the -first, had sometimes yielded, proved that she was intelligent. - -Mrs. Delafield saw herself so accurately as Rhoda must see her. The -terse, old-fashioned aunt in the country residence--yes, dear Fernleigh, -square and mid-Victorian, with its name, and its creepers, its -conservatory, and its shrubberies, was so eminently a residence; and she -had never wanted to alter it into anything else, for it was so that she -had found it when, on her mother-in-law’s death, she and the young -husband of so many years ago had first gone there to live. Rhoda must -see her, her hair so smooth under its cap of snowy net, her black -gowns--stuff for morning wear, silk for evening--so invariable, with the -frills at neck and wrists, thick gold chains and the dim old brooches -that went with them, as belonging almost to an epoch of albums on -centre-tables, of Mendelssohn’s sacred songs, and archery tournaments; -an epoch of morning family-prayers and moral categories, where some -people still believed in hell and everybody believed in sin. She didn’t -think that Rhoda had ever seen through all these alienating appearances -to the reality she herself knew to be so different; but it had always -been evident that she felt it through them; that she was at ease with -her aunt, candid, even if angry, and willing, even when most silent and -recalcitrant, to come down to Fernleigh, when her distracted parents -could deal with her no longer, and to “think things over,” as they put -it to her, imploringly. - -Mrs. Delafield could see Rhoda thinking things over from a very early -age, from the earliest age at which recalcitrancy could count as -practically alarming. She could see her walking slowly past this very -border at the time that she had determined to go on the stage,--she had -only just left the hands of her devastated governesses,--pausing now and -then to examine unseeingly a plant, her hands clasped behind her, her -dark, gloomy, lovely, young head brooding on the sense of wrong, and, -even more, no doubt, on plots and stratagems. Her aunt had always -watched her, while seeming, in the most comfortable manner possible, to -give her no attention; noting everything about her,--and everything -counted against poor Tim’s and Frances’s peace of mind,--from the -slender, silken ankles to the tall column of the proud young throat; all -of it, every bit of Rhoda, so determined by an insatiable vanity, which -was the worst of her, and by a sardonic pride, which was the best. - -Rhoda, to do her further justice, was even more wonderful in the eyes of -her admirers than in her own. Her consciousness was not occupied so much -with her own significance as with all the things due to it; and it was -upon these things, and the methods of obtaining them, that she brooded -as she walked. “Naughty girl,” had been her aunt’s unexpressed comment; -and perhaps one reason why Rhoda had found it comfortable, or, at least, -composing, to be with her, was that it was a relief to be seen as a -naughty girl rather than as a terrifying portent. - -Mrs. Delafield had determined at once that Rhoda should not go on the -stage, though not, really, because Tim and Frances had begged her to -dissuade the child. She could perfectly imagine having wished to go on -the stage herself in her young days; and it was this consciousness, -perhaps, that made her so fair to Rhoda’s desire. She had taken her -stand on no conventional objection; she had not even argued with Rhoda; -she had simply been able to make her feel, bit by bit, that she hadn’t -one little atom of talent. - -It had been the same thing, really, when Rhoda had announced her -intention of marrying a dreadful young man, a bad young man,--Mrs. -Delafield knew where to apply her categories,--who had a large studio -where he gave teas and painted small, disagreeable pictures. They were -clever pictures; Mrs. Delafield was aware of this, though Tim and -Frances saw them only as disagreeable; and the young man, if bad, was -clever. Mrs. Delafield had travelled up to town several times in this -emergency, and had even accompanied Rhoda to the studio, where a young -lady with bare legs and feet was dancing, with more concentration than -spontaneity, before a cigaretted audience. Oddly enough, after this -visit, it had been much easier to make Rhoda give up Mr. Austin Dell -than it had been to make her give up the stage. Mrs. Delafield had -merely talked him over, very mildly, him and his friends, asking here -and there a kindly question about one or a slightly perplexed question -about another. It had been Rhoda herself who had expressed awareness of -the second-rate flavour that had brooded so heavily over dancer and -audience, not leaving Mr. Dell himself untouched. On the point of Mr. -Dell’s income Mrs. Delafield soon felt that Rhoda knew -misgivings--misgivings as to her own fitness to be a needy artist’s -wife. She made no overt recantation, but over her tea, presently, agreed -with her aunt that it was a pity to dance with bare feet unless the feet -were flawlessly well-shaped. “She is such a little fool, that Miss -Matthews!” Rhoda had remarked. And after this there was no more talk of -Mr. Dell. - - -II - -When, in the second year of the war, poor Tim and Frances, dusty, jaded, -nearly shattered, but appeased at last, were able to announce the -engagement of their daughter Rhoda to the unexceptionable Niel Quentyn, -Mrs. Delafield’s special function seemed ended; but, looking back over -her long intercourse with her niece, she knew that Rhoda had felt her a -relief rather than an influence; that she had made things easier rather -than more difficult to her; that, in short, she had always successfully -appealed to the girl’s intelligence rather than to what poor Tim and -Frances called her better self; and it was of Rhoda’s intelligence, and -of what possible pressure she might be able to bring to bear upon it, -that she thought finally, as she worked at her border and waited for the -fly that was to bring Rhoda’s baby and its nurse from the station. - -She had not been able to rejoice with her brother and his wife over -Rhoda’s match. She who had measured, during her years of -acquaintanceship with her, her niece’s force, had measured accurately, -in her first glance at him, Niel’s insignificance. He was good-looking, -good-tempered, and very much in love; but caste, clothes, code, and the -emotion of his age and situation summed him up. He had money, too, and -could give Rhoda, together with a little handle to her name, the dim, -rich, startling drawing-room in which her taste at once expressed -itself, and a pleasant country house, where, as he confided to Mrs. -Delafield, he hoped to inspire her, when the war was over, with his own -ardour for hunting. - -Rhoda was far too clever to quarrel with such excellent bread and -butter; but what could he give her more? for Rhoda would want more than -bread and butter; what food for excitement and adventure could he offer -her indolent yet eager mind and her nature, at once so greedy and so -fastidious? Mrs. Delafield asked herself the question, even while she -watched Rhoda’s wonderful white form move up the nave at her splendid, -martial wedding; even while poor Frances wept for joy and “The Voice -that breathed o’er Eden” surged from the organ; and she feared that Niel -was getting far more than he had bargained for and Rhoda far less. - -The first year, it was true, passed successfully. Poor Frances, who had, -fortunately, died at the end of it, had known no reason for abated -rejoicing. She lived long enough to see the baby, little Jane Amoret, as -Rhoda persisted in calling the child; and she had welcomed Niel home -once on leave--Niel as much infatuated as ever and trying to take an -intelligent interest in Picasso. It was since then, during the past -year, that Tim’s letters had expressed a growing presage and appeal. -Moved by the latter, and only a short time before her own grief had -overtaken her, she had gone up to London and stayed with him for a few -days, and had taken tea with Rhoda. - -At Rhoda’s it had been exactly as she expected. The drawing-room was -worthy of its fame; so worthy that Mrs. Delafield wondered how Niel -afforded it--and in war-time, too. Rhoda, as she often announced, was -clever at picking up things, and many of the objects with which she had -surrounded herself were undoubted trophies of her resource and -knowledge. But all the taste and skill in the world didn’t give one that -air of pervading splendour, as of the setting for a Russian ballet, in -which the red lacquer and the Chinese screens, the blacks and golds and -rich, dim whites were, like Rhoda herself, sunken with her customary air -of gloomy mirth in the deepest cushions and surpassingly dressed, merged -in the soft, unstressed, yet magnificent atmosphere. It was the -practical side of matters--the depth of good, dull Niel’s purse measured -against the depth of Rhoda’s atmosphere--that alarmed Mrs. Delafield, -rather than Rhoda herself and Rhoda’s friends, of whom poor Tim had so -distressingly written. - -There were many suave and merry young men, mainly in khaki, and various -ladies, acute or languorous, who had the air of being as carefully -selected as the chairs and china. There were tea and cigarettes, and an -abundance of wonderful talk that showed no sign of mitigation on account -of her mid-Victorian presence; though, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, -musing on the young people about her, no one could say, except their -clever selves, how much mitigation there might not be. Like Rhoda, no -doubt, they felt her reality through her mid-Victorianism. Her small -black bonnet with its velvet strings, and her long, loose jacket trimmed -with fringe, would not restrain them beyond a certain point. Yet she -suspected that they had a point, and she wondered, though the question -did not alarm her, where it could be placed. - -They talked, at all events, and she listened; at times she even smiled; -and since by no possibility could her smiles be taken as complicities, -she was willing that they should be taken as comprehensions. Rhoda’s -friends, though so young, were chill and arid, and the enthusiasms they -allowed themselves had the ring of provocation rather than of ardour. -Yet she did not dislike them; they were none of them like Mr. Dell; -and, though so withered by sophistication, they had at moments flashes -of an uncanny, almost an ingenuous wisdom. - -The occasion had not alarmed her, and she had found but one moment -oppressive, that of the appearance--the displayal, as of a Chinese idol, -indeed, or a Pekinese spaniel (Rhoda had three of these)--of poor little -Jane Amoret. She rarely disliked her niece, even when feeling her most -naughty; but she found herself disliking her calculated maternity, with -its kisses, embraces and reiterated “darlings.” Jane Amoret had eyed her -gravely and, as gravely, had held out her arms to her nurse to be taken -back when the spectacle was over. Jane Amoret’s attire was quite as -strange as her mother’s drawing-room, and Rhoda had contrived to make -her look like a cross between an Aubrey Beardsley and a gorgeous, -dressed-up doll Madonna in a Spanish cathedral. - -On returning to Tim, Mrs. Delafield found that she could not completely -reassure him, but she laid stress, knowing it would be, comparatively, a -comfort, on Rhoda’s extravagance, eliciting from him a groan of “I -know!--I know!--Poor Niel’s been writing to me about it!--Dances; -dinners; gowns. One would say she had no conscience at all--and at a -time like this!” But he went on, “That’s nothing, though. That can be -managed when Niel gets back--if he ever does, poor fellow!--and can put -his foot down on the spot. You didn’t see him, then? He wasn’t -there--the young man?” - -Tim had never before spoken definitely of a young man. - -“The young man?” she questioned. “There were a dozen of them. Of -course, she’ll have a special one: that’s part of the convention. Rhoda -may cultivate--like all the rest of them--every appearance of lawless -attachment; but you may be sure, dear Tim, that it’s only a pose, a -formula, like the painted lips and dyed hair, which doesn’t in the least -mean they are demi-mondaines.” - -“Painted lips? Dyed hair? Demi-mondaines?” Tim had wanly echoed. “Do you -really mean, Isabel, that Rhoda paints and dyes?” - -“Not her hair. It’s too lovely to be dyed. But her lips,--why, haven’t -you seen it?--ever since she was eighteen. It is all, as I say, a pose; -a formula. They are all afraid of nothing so much as of seeming -respectable. I imagine that there’s just as much marital virtue at large -in the world nowadays as when we were young.--Who is the young man?” she -had, nevertheless, ended. - -“My dear, don’t ask me!” Tim had moaned, blanched and battered in his -invalid’s chair. (Why wouldn’t he come down and live with her? Why, -indeed, except that, since Frances’s death, he had felt that he must -stand by, in London, and watch over Rhoda.) “I only know what I’ve -heard. Amy has talked and talked. And everybody else is talking, -according to her.” Amy was Frances’s sister, a well-meaning, but -disturbing woman, with a large family of well-conducted, well-married, -unpainted, and unfashionable daughters. “She is here every day about it. -They are always together. He is always there. The poet--the new young -poet. He has a heart or a chest or a stomach--something that has sent -him home and that keeps him safe at Whitehall, while poor Niel fights in -France. Surely, Isabel, you’ve heard of Christopher Darley? Wasn’t he -there? Young. Younger than Rhoda. Black hair. Big eyes. Silent.” - -Silent.--Yes, there had been, beside Jane Amoret, one silent person in -Rhoda’s drawing-room. And she had been aware of him constantly, though, -till now, unconsciously. Very young; very pale; aloof, near a window, -with an uncalculated aloofness. She reconstructed an impression that -became deeper the further she went into it. Thick backward locks that -had given his forehead a wind-blown look, and a gaze now and then -directed on herself, a gaze grave, withdrawing, yet scrutinizing, too. - -“Yes; I think, now that you describe him, I must have seen him,” she -murmured; while a curious alarm mounted in her, an alarm that none of -Rhoda’s more characteristic circle had aroused. “He wasn’t living by a -formula of freedom,” she reflected. “And he wasn’t arid.” Aloud she -said, “He looked a nice young creature, I remember.” - -“He writes horrible poems, Amy says; blasphemous. There they are. I -can’t understand them. He casts down everything; has no beliefs of any -kind. Nice? I should think that’s the last adjective that would describe -him.” - -She had picked up the unobtrusive volume and found herself arrested; not -as she had been by the memory of the young man’s gaze, nor yet in the -manner that Tim’s account indicated; but still arrested. Very young--but -austere, dignified, and strange, genuinely and effortlessly strange. So -a young priest might have written, seeking in close-pressed metaphysical -analogies to find expression for spiritual passion. She stood, puzzled -and absorbed. - -“No, it isn’t blasphemous,” she said presently. “And he has beliefs. -But surely, Tim dear, surely this young man can’t care for Rhoda.” - -How could a young man who wrote like that about the mystic vision care -for Rhoda? - -“Not care for Rhoda!” Tim’s voice had now the quaintest ring of paternal -resentment. “The most beautiful young woman in London! Why, he’s head -over heels in love with her. And the worst of it is that, from what Amy -sees and hears, she cares for him.” - -“It’s curious,” Mrs. Delafield said, laying down the book. “I shouldn’t -have thought he’d care about beautiful young women.” - -And now Tim’s letter, on this December morning, announced that Rhoda had -gone off with Christopher Darley; and Mrs. Delafield could find it in -her heart, as she worked and pondered, to wish that her dear Tim had -followed Frances before this catastrophe overtook him. - -“Good heavens!” she heard herself muttering, “if only she’d been meaner, -more cowardly, and stayed and lied--as women of her kind are supposed to -do. If only she’d let him die in peace; he can’t have many years.” - -But no: it had been done with _le beau geste_. Tim had known nothing, -and poor Niel, home for his first peace leave, had come to him, -bewildered and aghast, with the news. He had found a letter waiting for -him, sent from the country. Tim copied the letter for her:-- - - DEAR NIEL: - - I’m sure you felt, too, that our life couldn’t go on. It had become - too unsatisfactory for both of us. Luckily we are sensible people - nowadays, and such mistakes can be remedied. You must mend your - life as I am mending mine. I am leaving you, with Christopher - Darley. I am so sorry if it seems sudden; but I felt it better that - we should not meet again. - - Yours affectionately - - RHODA - -“If only the poet hadn’t had money, too!” Mrs. Delafield had thought. -For this fact she had learned about Mr. Darley in London. Rhoda would -never have abandoned that drawing-room had she not been secure of -another as good. - -Tim wrote that nothing could have been manlier, more generous, than -Niel’s behaviour. He was willing, for the sake of the child, to take -Rhoda back, reinstate her, and protect her from the consequences of her -act; and what Tim now begged of his sister was that she should see -Rhoda, see if, confronting her, she could not induce her to return to -her husband. Meanwhile Jane Amoret would be dispatched at once with her -nurse to Fernleigh. Tim had written to his child in her retreat, and had -implored her to go to her aunt. “I told her that you would receive her, -Isabel,” so Tim’s letter ended; “and I trust you now to save us--as far -as we can be saved. Tell her that her husband will forgive, and that I -forgive, if she will return. Let her see the child. Let that be your -appeal.” - -Poor, darling Tim! Very mid-Victorian. “Forgive.” Would “receive” her. -The words had an antediluvian ring. With what battledore and -shuttle-cock of mirth and repartee they would be sent sailing and -spinning in Rhoda’s world. All the same, she, who was mid-Victorian in -seeming rather than in reality, would make other appeals, if Rhoda -came. Already she could almost count the steady heads of her intentions -thrusting up as if through the ground. Even in Rhoda’s world repartee -and mirth might be displayed rather than acted upon, and Rhoda might -find herself, as a result of _le beau geste_, less favourably placed for -the creation of another drawing-room than she imagined. That, of course, -was the line to take with Rhoda; and as she reflected, carefully now, on -what she would say to her,--as she determined that Rhoda should not -leave her until she had turned her face firmly homeward,--the sound of -wheels came up the road, and outside the high walls she heard the -station fly drawing up at her gates. In another moment she was welcoming -Jane Amoret and her nurse. - - -III - -SHE had not seen the child for five months now, and her first glance at -her, for all its sweetness, brought something of a shock, revealing as -it did how deeply she cared for the little creature. She was not a -child-lover, not undiscriminatingly fond of all examples of the -undeveloped, though her kind solicitude might have given her that -appearance. Children had always affected her, from the cradle, as -personalities; and some, like the mature, were lovable and some the -reverse. Jane Amoret had already paid her more than one visit--she had -been more than willing that Rhoda should find her a convenience in this -respect; and she had, from the first, found her lovable. But the five -months had brought much more to the mere charm of babyhood. She was now -potent and arresting in her appeal and dignity. She sat in her nurse’s -arms, her eyes fixed on her great-aunt, and, as Mrs. Delafield held out -her hands to her, she unhesitatingly, if unsmilingly, answered, leaning -forward to be taken. - -She was a pale, delicate baby, her narrow little face framed in -straightly cut dark hair, her mournful little lips only tinted with a -rosy mauve; and, under long, fine brows, her great eyes were full of -meditativeness. Rhoda, though now so richly a brunette, had, as a baby, -been ruddy-haired and rosy-cheeked, with eyes of a velvety, submerging -darkness. Jane Amoret’s grey iris rayed out from the expanded pupil like -the corolla of a flower. There was no likeness between the child and her -mother. Nor was there anything of Niel’s sleepy young countenance, with -its air of still waters running shallow. - -Mrs. Delafield, something of a student of heredity, saw in the little -face an almost uncanny modern replica of her own paternal grandmother, -whose pensive gaze, under high-dressed powdered hair, had followed her -down the drawing-room in the home of her childhood. In Jane Amoret she -recovered the sense of that forgotten romance of her youth--the -wonderful, beautiful great-grandmother with the following eyes. Had they -not, even then, been asking something of her? - -“It isn’t everyone she’ll go to, ma’am,” said the nurse, as they went up -the path to the house, Mrs. Delafield carrying Jane Amoret. - -Nurse was a highly efficient example of her type--crisp, cheerful, a -little glib. Mrs. Delafield had never warmly liked her, and felt -convinced now, that in spite of her decorous veneer of reticence, the -servants' hall would be enlightened as to the whole story before many -hours were over. Well, it could not be helped. - -They went up to the big nursery overlooking the walled garden at the -back of the house, where, since the morning’s post and its -announcements, a great fire of logs had been blazing. Nurse made but one -respectful, passing reference to Rhoda. The country air would do Lady -Quentyn good. She had, nurse thought, over-tired herself of late. What -else she thought, Parton and the others were soon to hear hinted. And as -Rhoda’s calculated maternity had chilled her aunt on that day five -months ago, so she was chilled now to think that Rhoda should have had -more taste in the choice of her drawing-room than in that of her baby’s -nurse. - -While, in the next room, the unpleasing woman was unpacking her own and -Jane Amoret’s effects, Mrs. Delafield was left alone with the child. She -had found, on a shelf, a box of well-worn blocks, and seating herself in -the low, chintz-covered wicker chair beside the fire, she placed them, -one by one, before Jane Amoret, who, on her white wool rug, gave them a -gentle attention. She had been too young for blocks on her last visit. - -The old chair, as Mrs. Delafield moved in it, leaning down, creaked -softly, and she remembered, a curious excitement stirring under all -these recoveries of the past, that it had been condemned as really too -decrepit when Peggy had been a baby. Yet the threat had never been -carried out. It had gone on through Peggy’s babyhood and through the -babyhood of Peggy’s children, and, unused for all these years, here it -gave forth again just the plaintive yet comfortable sounds which, even -more, it seemed, than another baby’s presence, evoked Peggy and her own -young maternity. - -The chair, the blocks, the firelight playing on the happy walls, with -their framed Caldecotts and Cherry Ripes and Bubbles, all evoked that -past, filling her with the mingled acquiescence and yearning of old age. -And Jane Amoret evoked a past far, far more distant. Peggy had not been -like the great-grandmother. None of them had ever reincarnated that -vanished loveliness. But here, mysterious and appealing, it was before -her; and it seemed to brush across her very heartstrings every time -that, from the blocks, the child lifted the meditative grey of her eyes -to her great-aunt’s face. - -Far too mysterious, far too lovely, far too gentle, this frail -potentiality, for any uses ever to be made of it by Rhoda, by Niel, or -by nurse. And the yearning became a yearning over Jane Amoret. - -Yes, there the edifice rose, block by block--her deft, deliberate -fingers placed them one after the other, under Jane Amoret’s eyes, -absorbed in this towering achievement. The miniature Alhambra finished, -she sat and gazed, and her little chest lifted in a great sigh of wonder -and appeasement. Then, her baby interest dropping, she looked round at -the flames, and, for a little time, gazed at them, while her -great-aunt’s hand moved softly to rest upon her head. It seemed then, as -if in answer to the rapt and tender look bent above her, that Jane -Amoret’s eyes were again raised and that she stretched up her arms to be -taken. - -“She really loves me,” said Mrs. Delafield, as touched and trembling as -a young lover. She lifted her, pressing the little body against her -breast; and, as Jane Amoret gave herself to the enfolding, a thought -that was as sharp and as sudden as a pang flashed through her -great-aunt’s mind. “I can never give her up.” - -What came to her first, as she sat there, Jane Amoret’s head leaning -against her, was the thought of Christmas roses. It was a gift, a -miracle. And to what depths of loneliness the gift had been given; with -what depths of life she answered it! But she was breathless while she -tried to think, knowing something terrible in her own swift acceptance; -seeing for the first time something lawless and perilous in her own -nature. Never in her life had she betrayed a trust; never broken a law. -Yet often, through the years, she had paused, contemplative and -questioning, to gaze at something her mirror showed her, an implication -that only she could see, a capacity never realized. And what she saw -sometimes, with discomfort and shrinking, in those freaked eyes, those -firm lips, was an untamed wildness that had come to her from much -further back than a great-grandmother; something predatory and reckless, -perhaps from the days of border robbers, and Highland chiefs whose only -law was their own will. - -She knew now what were the faces waiting to seize upon her accusingly. -Not Rhoda’s. She swept Rhoda and her forfeited claim aside. Let her stay -with her poet, since that was what she had chosen. It was Niel and poor -Tim who looked at her aghast. But another face hovered softly and -effacingly before them; a pale young face with rosy-mauve lips and -following eyes that said, “They will never understand me. This is what I -was trying to tell you, always. I knew that I was coming back. This is -what I was asking you to do.” - -It was superstition; it did not deceive her for a moment. Desire -dressing itself in a supernatural appeal. Absurd and discreditable. But, -in all truth and honour, wasn’t there something in it? Wasn’t there a -time, once in a blue moon, for lawlessness, when it came as a miracle? -Whom would she harm, really? What could his paternity mean, really, to -drowsy young Niel? And could she not salve Tim’s wounds? - -The only thing that could count,--she came to that at last, feeling the -child, with sleeping, drooping head and little hands held within her -hand, already so profoundly her own,--the only thing was Jane Amoret -herself. Had she a right to keep her from what was, perhaps, her chance -of the normal, even if the defective, life? Wasn’t even a bad and -foolish mother better than no mother at all, and an untarnished name -supremely desirable? She struggled, her eyes fixed on the fire, her hand -unconsciously closing fast on the little intertwined hands within it. -And with the face of the great-grandmother came again the thought of the -Christmas roses, of the gift, the miracle. - -She had not sought anything. She had not even chosen. It was rather as -if Jane Amoret had chosen her. She need not make an effort to keep the -gift. She need merely make no effort to give it back. If Rhoda came (oh, -she could but pray that Rhoda would not come!), she need not find the -right words for her. She had only to remain the passive spectator of -Rhoda’s enterprise and not put out a hand to withdraw her from it. And, -thrusting, feverishly, final decisions from her, her mind sprang out -into far projects and promises. She could, with a will, live for twenty -more years yet and fill them full for Jane Amoret. Niel must not lose -his child, evidently. She would arrange with Niel. He had always liked -her and turned to her. Let this be his home, and welcome. But of course, -he would marry again. She could persuade him not to take Jane Amoret -from her to give to a step-mother. Niel would be easy. - -And Tim, now, must come, of course. Tim should, with her, enjoy Jane -Amoret to the full. What a happy childhood she could make it! It was, to -begin with, quite the happiest nursery she knew, this long-empty nursery -of hers. In a few years' time Jane Amoret would be old enough to have -her own little plot in the garden--Peggy’s plot; and a pony like Peggy’s -should come to the empty stables. She saw already the merry, instructed -girl she would choose as Jane Amoret’s governess: some one young enough -to play out of lesson hours; some one who would teach her to know birds -and flowers as well as history and Latin. She would keep Jane Amoret’s -hair cut like this,--it was the only point in the child’s array in which -her taste was Rhoda’s,--straight across the forehead and straight across -the neck, until she was fifteen, and she should wear smocked blue linen -for morning and white for afternoon, as her own children had done. With -good luck, she might even see Jane Amoret married. - -Actually, she was thinking about Jane Amoret’s marriage, actually -wondering about the nice little eldest boy at the manor,--while her arms -tightened in instinctive maternal anxiety around the sleeping -baby,--when Parton, doing her best not to look round-eyed, announced -Lady Quentyn. - - -IV - -SHE knew, as she waited for Rhoda to come up, that something she had -forgotten during this last half-hour--perhaps it was her -conscience--steeled her suddenly to the endurance of a test. Tim had -worded it, “Let her see the child. Let that be your appeal.” Would it -not appease her conscience to stand or fall by that? It should be her -appeal. But the only one. - -Jane Amoret had waked, and now, dazed but unfretful, suffered herself to -be placed again on the rug among the blocks, one of which Mrs. Delafield -put into her hands, bidding her build a beautiful big house, as -great-aunt had done. The anguish of her own suspense was made manifest -to her in the restless gesture with which, after that, and while she -waited, she bent to put another log on the fire. - -Rhoda’s soft, deliberate rustle was outside. In another moment she had -entered, and the effect that Mrs. Delafield dreaded seemed produced on -the spot; for, arrested at the very threshold, almost before her eyes -had sought her aunt’s, Rhoda stared down at the child with knotted, with -even incredulous brows. - -“Oh! He’s sent her already, then!” she exclaimed. - -What did the stare, the exclamation, portend? - -“Yes. He sent her, of course, as soon as he came back.” - -“But why?--until our interview is over?” - -“Why not? She’d been alone for a week.” Mrs. Delafield spoke with the -mildness which, she determined, should not leave her. “Niel, of course, -wanted to have her cared for.” - -Rhoda, during this little interchange, had remained near the door; but -now, perceiving, perhaps, that she had come near to giving herself away, -she cleared her brows of their perplexity and moved forward to the fire, -where, leaning her velvet elbow on the mantelpiece, she answered, drily -laughing; “Oh! Niel’s care! He wouldn’t know whether the child were fed -on suet-pudding or cold ham! She’s not alone, with nurse. There’s no one -who can take such care of her as nurse. I knew that.” And she went on -immediately, putting the question of Jane Amoret’s presence behind her -with decision, “Well, poor Aunt Isabel, what have you to say to me? -Father wrote that you would consent to be the go-between. He absolutely -implored me to come, and it’s to satisfy him I’m here, for I really -can’t imagine what good it can do.” - -No; Mrs. Delafield had grasped her own security and her own danger. It -had not been in remorse or tenderness that Rhoda’s eyes had fixed -themselves upon her child, it had been in anxiety, lest Jane Amoret’s -presence should be the signal of some final verdict against her. She had -come because she hoped to be taken back; and if there was all the needed -justification in Rhoda’s callousness, there was an undreamed-of danger -in her expectation. - -“Well, we must see,” Mrs. Delafield remarked; and already she was -measuring the necessities of Rhoda’s pride against the urgencies of -Rhoda’s disenchantment. It was Rhoda’s pride that she must hold to. -Rhoda, even if she had come, had only come to make her own terms. - -“Did you motor over?” she asked. “You are not very far from here, are -you?” - -No train could have brought her at that hour. - -“Twenty miles or so away,” said Rhoda. “I was able to hire a motor, a -horrible, open affair with torn flaps that let in all the air, so that -I’m frozen.” - -Her loveliness did, indeed, look a little pinched and sharpened, and -there was more than the cold drive to account for it. But she was still -surpassingly lovely, with the loveliness that, once you were confronted -with it, seemed to explain everything that might need explanation. That -was Rhoda’s strongest card. She left her appearance to speak for her and -made no explanations, as now, when, indeed, she had all the air of -expecting other people to make them. But her aunt only said, while Jane -Amoret, from her rug, kept her grave gaze upon her mother, “Won’t you -have some hot milk?” - -“Thanks, yes, I should be glad of it,” said Rhoda. “How lucky you are to -have it. We are given only condensed for our coffee at the hotel. It’s -quite revolting.” And after Mrs. Delafield had rung, and since no -initiative came from her, she was, in a manner, forced to open the -conversation. “Niel has only himself to thank,” she said. “He’s been -making himself too impossible for a long time.” - -“Really? In what way? Perhaps the hard life over there has affected his -temper.” - -Mrs. Delafield allowed herself the irony. Rhoda, indeed, must expect -that special flavour from her. - -“Something has certainly affected it,” said Rhoda, drawing a chair to -the fire and spreading her beautiful hands before it. “I’m quite tired, -I confess,--horrid as I’m perfectly aware it sounds to say it,--of -hearing about the hard life. Life’s hard enough for all of us just now, -heaven knows; and I think they haven’t had half a bad time over there, -numbers of them--men like Niel, I mean, who’ve travelled comfortably -about the world and never had the least little wound, nor been, ever, in -any real danger, as far as I can make out; at least, not since he’s had -the staff work. It’s very different from my poor Christopher, who rotted -in the cold and mud until it nearly killed him. There would be some -point in his talking of a hard life.” - -This was all very illuminating, and the bold advance of Christopher won -Mrs. Delafield’s admiration for its manner; but she passed it over to -inquire again, “In what way has Niel been making himself impossible?” -The more impossible Rhoda depicted him, the easier to leave her there, -shut out by his impossibility. - -“Why, his meanness,” said Rhoda, her cold, dark eyes, as she turned them -upon her aunt, expressing, indeed, quite a righteous depth of -reprobation. “For months and months it’s been the same wearisome cry. -He’s written about nothing but economy, fussing, fuming, and preaching. -It’s so ugly, at his time of life.” - -“Have you been a little extravagant, perhaps? Everything is so much more -costly, isn’t it? He may well have been anxious about your future, and -the child’s.” - -It was perfectly mild, and the irony Rhoda would expect from her. - -“Oh, no he wasn’t,” said Rhoda, now with her gloomy laugh. “He was -anxious about his hunting. I don’t happen to care for that primitive -form of amusement, and Niel doesn’t happen to care about anything else; -certainly he doesn’t care about beauty, and that’s all I do care about. -So in his view, since, precisely, life has become so costly, beauty had -to go to the wall and I mustn’t dress decently or have a decently -ordered house. I haven’t been in the least extravagant,” said Rhoda. -"I’ve known what it is to be cold; I’ve known what it is to be hungry; -it’s been, at times, literally impossible to get food and coal in -London. Oh, you don’t know anything about it, Aunt Isabel, tucked away -comfortably down here with logs and milk. And if Niel had had any -appreciation of the position and had realized at all that I prefer being -hungry to being ill-dressed, he would have turned his mind to cutting -down his own extravagances and offered to allow me"--and now, for an -instant, if velvet can show sharpness, Mrs. Delafield caught in the -sliding velvet eye an evident edge of cogitation, even, of -calculation--“at least two thousand a year for myself. Money buys -absolutely nothing nowadays.” - -So there it was, and it amounted to an offer. Or, rather, it amounted to -saying that it was the sum for which she would be willing to consider -any offer of Niel’s. Mrs. Delafield, measuring still Rhoda’s pride -against Rhoda’s urgency, mused on her velvet garments, the fur that -broadly bordered her skirts, slipped from her shoulders, and framed her -hands. Poor Tim had been able to give his daughter only a few hundred a -year, and Niel’s hunting must indeed have been in danger. Rhoda’s pride, -she knew, stood, as yet, between herself and any pressure from the -urgency; she could safely leave the offer to lie and go on presently to -question, “And you’ll be better off now?” - -Inevitably unsuspecting as she was, Rhoda, all the same, must feel an -unexpectedness in her attitude, and at this it was with a full, frank -sombreness that she turned her gaze upon her. Anything but a fool she -had always been, and she answered, after the moment of gloomy scrutiny, -“Don’t imagine, please, Aunt Isabel, that because I speak openly of -practical matters I left Niel to get a better establishment. I left him -because I didn’t love him. I was willing to sacrifice anything rather -than stay. Because it is a sacrifice. I took the step I’ve taken under -no illusion. We are too uncivilized yet for things to be anything but -difficult for a woman who takes the step, and the brave people have to -pay for the cowards and hypocrites.” - -This, somehow, was not at all Rhoda’s own note. Mrs. Delafield felt sure -she caught an echo of Mr. Darley’s ministrations. She was glad that -Rhoda should receive them: they would sustain her; and since she was -determined--or almost--that Rhoda should stay with Mr. Darley, it was -well that she should receive all the sustainment possible. - -“It certainly must require great love and great courage,” she assented. - -Rhoda’s eyes still sombrely scrutinized her. “I didn’t expect you to see -it, I confess, Aunt, Isabel.” - -“Oh, but I do,” said Mrs. Delafield. - -The milk was now brought and Rhoda began to sip it. - -“As for my being better off, since you are kind enough to take an -interest in that aspect of my situation,” she went back, “Christopher -hasn’t, it’s true, as much money as Niel. But our tastes are the same, -so that I shall certainly be very much better off. We shall live in -London--after Niel sets me free.” And here again she just glanced at her -aunt, who bowed assent, murmuring, "Yes; yes; he is quite willing to set -you free; at once."--“And until then,” Rhoda went on, as if she hadn’t -needed the assurance,--second-rate assurance as, Mrs. Delafield felt -sure, she found it,--“and until then I shall stay in the country. -Christopher has his post still at the Censor’s office, and won’t, I’m -afraid, get his demobilization for some time. He translates things, you -know. So we are going to find a little old house, for me,--we are -looking for one now,--and I shall see a few friends there, quite -quietly, and Christopher can come up and down, until everything is -settled. I think that’s the best plan.” - -Rhoda spoke with a dignity that had even a savour of conscious -sweetness, and, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, was running herself very -completely into her corner. - -There was silence now for a little while. Rhoda finished her milk, and -Jane Amoret, gently and unobtrusively moving among her blocks, -succeeded, at length, in balancing the last one on her edifice and -looked up at her great-aunt for approbation. - -“Very good, darling. A beautiful house,” said Mrs. Delafield, leaning -over her, but with a guarded tenderness. What a serpent she had become! -There was Rhoda’s jealousy to look out for. She might imagine herself -fond of Jane Amoret, if she saw that some one else adored her. - -“She’s quite used to you already, isn’t she?” said Rhoda, watching them. -“I wonder what you’ll make of her. She strikes me as rather a dull -little thing, though she’s certainly very pretty. She’s rather like -Niel, isn’t she? Though she certainly isn’t as dull as Niel!” She -laughed slightly. "All the same,"--and Mrs. Delafield now, in Rhoda’s -voice, scented the close approach of danger, and was aware, though she -did not look up to meet it, that Rhoda’s eyes took on a new -watchfulness,--“All the same I must consider the poor little thing’s -future. That is, of course, my one real difficulty.” - -“Was it? In going away? In having left her, you mean?” Mrs Delafield -prayed that her mildness might gloss, to Rhoda’s ear, the transition to -conscious combat that her instinctive change of tense revealed to her -own. “Oh, but you need not do that. Don’t let that trouble you for a -moment, Rhoda. I will take charge of her--complete charge. I can do it -easily. My house is empty, and the child will be a companion to me. I -don’t find her dull. She is a dear little thing, so good and gentle. You -need really have no anxiety.” - -“Oh, I see.” Rhoda was gazing at her earnestly. “Thanks. That’s -certainly a relief. Though all the same I don’t suppose you’d claim that -you could replace the child’s mother.” - -“Yes. I think so, Rhoda. A mother who had left her for a lover.” - -Mrs. Delafield kept her eyes fixed on the fire. Rhoda stood up and -leaned her back against the mantelpiece. She could no longer control the -manifestations of her impatience and her perplexity. - -“That would be your view, of course; and father’s; and Niel’s. It’s not -mine. I consider the responsibility to be Niel’s.” - -“Well, whosesoever the responsibility, the deed is done, isn’t it?” -Mrs. Delafield observed. “I’m not arraigning you, you know. I’m merely -stating the fact. You have left her.” - -Rhoda’s impatience now visibly brushed past these definitions. “You say -that Niel is ready to set me free. I took that for granted, of course. -It’s only common decency. But that’s hardly what father could have meant -in imploring me to come to--you. He told me nothing--only implored, and -lamented. And, since I am here, I’d like some information, I confess.” - -It was the first step away from pride, and it was a long one. And Mrs. -Delafield knew that with it came her own final turning-point. Here, at -this moment, she must be true to Tim and Niel, or betray their trust. -And here no less--for so it seemed to her--she might, in betraying them, -take the law into her own hands and promise herself, and them, that, in -breaking it, she would make something better. Yet she did not feel these -alternatives, now, at war within her mind. She knew that they were -there, implicit, but she knew them already answered. Rhoda had answered -for her; and Jane Amoret had answered. It took her, however, a moment to -find her own answer, the verbal one, and while she looked for it, she -kept her eyes on the fire. - -“Your father wants you to go back,” she said at last. “Niel is willing -to take you back. That is the information I had for you. Not for a -moment because he would accept your interpretation of responsibility, -and not for a moment because of any personal feeling for you; which must -be a relief to you. Merely for your sake, and the child’s. But I don’t -know how to plead such a cause with you, Rhoda. I understand you, I -think, better than your father does. I’ve always seen your point of view -as he could never see it, and I see it even now. So that I should feel -that I asked you something outrageous in asking you to go back to your -husband when you love another man. If you should want to go back, that -would be a very different matter--if, by chance, you feel you’ve made a -mistake and are tired, already, of Mr. Darley.” - -She had time, in the pause that followed, the scales pulsing almost -evenly--it was as if she saw them--between Rhoda’s pride and Rhoda’s -urgency, to wonder at herself. And most of all to wonder that she -regretted nothing. She kept her eyes on the fire, but she knew that -Rhoda, very still, scrutinized her intently. The sharply drawn tension -of the moment had resolved itself, to her imagination, into a series of -tiny ticks, as if of the scales settling down to the choice, before -Rhoda spoke. Then what she found to say was, “That’s hardly likely, is -it?” - -“I felt it impossible, you will be glad to hear,” said Mrs. Delafield. -“No one who understands you could suspect you, whatever your faults, of -two infidelities in the space of a fortnight.” - -And now again there was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of -the flames up the chimney and the soft movements of Jane Amoret among -her blocks. - -Rhoda turned away at last, facing the fire and looking down at it, her -hands on the edge of the mantelpiece, her foot on the fender; and she -presently lifted the foot and dealt the logs a kick. - -It was all clear to Mrs. Delafield. She was tired of her poet, or, at -all events, did not, in the new life, find compensations enough. She -had come, hoping to have her way made clear for a reëntry, dignified, if -not triumphant, into the old life. And here she was, in her corner, her -head fairly fixed to the wall. - -Meanwhile, what had become of the mid-Victorian conscience? What had, -indeed, become of any conscience at all, since she continued to regret -nothing? She even found excuses, perfidious, no doubt, yet satisfactory. -It had been the truth she had given Rhoda--the real truth, her own, if -not the truth she owed her, not the truth as Tim and Niel had placed it, -all confidently, in her hands. But since it was preëminently not the -truth that Rhoda had come to seize, she was willing, now that she had -fixed her so firmly, to give her something else, and she really rejoiced -to find it ready, going on presently and with a note of relief that -Rhoda’s ear could not fail to catch:-- - -“Not only from the point of view of dignity one couldn’t suspect it of -you, Rhoda, but--I want to say it to you, having had my glimpse of Mr. -Darley--from the point of view of taste. If you were going to do -anything of this sort,--and I don’t need to tell you how deeply I -deplore it nor how wrong I think you,--but if you were going to do it, -you couldn’t have chosen better. He is gifted; he is charming; he is -good. I saw it all at once.” - -There was her further truth, and really it was due to Rhoda. Rhoda, at -this, faced her again and, highly civilized creature that she was, it -was with her genuine grim mirth. - -“Upon my word, Aunt Isabel!” she commented. “You are astonishing.” - -“Am I? Why?” asked Mrs. Delafield, though she knew quite well. - -“Why, my dear? Because you are over sixty years old and you wear caps. I -expected to find dismay, reproach, and lamentations--all the strains of -poor old father’s harmonium; to have you down on your knees begging me -to return to the paths of virtue. And here you are, cool and unperturbed -and, positively, patting us on the back; positively giving us your -blessing. Well, well, wonders will never cease! Yes, he is charming, no -one can deny that; and good and gifted, too. But to think of your having -spotted it so quickly! Why, you only saw him once, if I remember, and I -don’t remember that you talked at all.” - -“We didn’t. I only saw him once.” - -“And it was enough! To make you understand! To make you condone!--Come, -out with it, Aunt Isabel, you wicked old lady! I see now why I’ve always -got on so well with you. You _are_ wicked.” - -“To make me understand. I won’t say condone.” - -“You needn’t say it. You’ve said enough. And certainly it is a feather -in Christopher’s cap. But he is the sort of person one falls in love -with at first sight.” - -“So I see.” - -“And so do I,” said Rhoda, still laughing. But her slightly avenging -gaiety dropped from her after the last sally, and turning again to the -fire, and again kicking her log, she said, almost sombrely, “He -absolutely worships me.” - -Was not this everybody’s justification? Mrs. Delafield seized it, -rising, as on a satisfying close. - -“Will you stay to lunch?” she asked. - -“Dear me, no!” Rhoda laughed. “I must get back to Christopher. And the -motor is there waiting. So you’ll write to father and tell him that I -came here and that you advised me to stick to Christopher.” - -"Advised? Have I seemed to advise, Rhoda? Do you mean"--it was, Mrs. -Delafield knew, the final peril--“that you had considered not sticking -to him?” - -Rhoda continued to laugh a little, drawing up her furs. - -“Rather not! It couldn’t have entered my head, could it, either from the -point of view of dignity or of taste--as you’ve been telling me? You -have been very wonderful, you know! Tell father, then, if you like, that -you gave us your blessing.” - -“I’ll tell him,” said Mrs. Delafield, “that I’m convinced you ought not -to go back to Niel.” - -"I see,"--Rhoda nodded, and their eyes sounded each other, -curiously,--“though father thinks I ought.” - -“Of course. That’s why you’re here.” - -“Father would have gone down on his knees to beg me.” - -“Yes. Down on his knees. Poor Tim!” - -She was horribly frightened, but she faced Rhoda’s grim mirth deliberate -with gravity. And Rhoda, whatever she might have seen or guessed, -accepted her defeat; accepted the dignity and taste thrust upon her. - -“Father, in other words, isn’t a wicked old gentleman as you are a -wicked old lady. I see it all, and it’s all a feather in Christopher’s -cap. Well, Aunt Isabel, good-bye. Shall I see you again? Will you come -and call when I’m Mrs. Darley? I don’t see how, with a clear conscience, -you can chuck us, you know.” - -“Nor do I,” Mrs. Delafield conceded, after only a pause. “I don’t often -go to London, but, when I do, I shall look in upon you, if you want me -to.” - -“Rather!” Rhoda, now gloved and muffled, had fallen back on her normal -rich economy of speech. “You’ll be useful as well as pleasant. And -Christopher will adore you, I’m sure. I’ll tell him that you think him -charming.” - -“Do,” said Mrs. Delafield, following her to the door. - -She had forgotten even to kiss Jane Amoret good-bye. - - -V - -Still Mrs. Delafield knew no remorse. Rather, a wine-like elation filled -her. She thought of her state of consciousness in terms of wine, and -ordered up from her modest cellar a special old port, hardly tasted -since her husband’s death, and, all alone, drank at lunch a little glass -in honour of Jane Amoret’s advent. Also, though elated, she was -conscious of needing a stimulant. The scene with Rhoda had cost her more -than could, at the moment, be quite computed. - -What it had won for her she was able to compute when, after lunch, she -went upstairs to look at Jane Amoret asleep in her white cot. She did -not feel like a robber brooding in guilty joy over ill-gotten booty. She -could not feel herself that, nor Jane Amoret booty. Jane Amoret was -treasure, pure heaven-sent treasure, her flower of miracle. Christmas -roses had been in her mind since morning, and the darkness, the -whiteness of the child, as well as her beautiful unexpectedness, made -her think of them anew; her gravity, too; something of melancholy that -the flowers embodied; for they were not smiling flowers--gazing rather -at the wintry sky in earnest meditation. - -Jane Amoret’s black lashes lay upon her cheek, ever so slightly turned -up at the tips, and her great-aunt, leaning over her, felt herself -doting upon them and upon the little softly breathing profile embedded -in the pillow, a bud-like, folded hand beside it. - -“Little darling, we will make each other happy,” she whispered. - -Rhoda had passed from their lives like a storm-cloud. - -Jane Amoret was still sleeping, and she had gone downstairs to the -little morning-room where, since the war, she had really lived, to -settle with herself what she must say to Tim, when there came a ringing -at the front-door bell. The morning-room, at the back of the house, like -the nursery, overlooked the southern lawn and the walls of the -kitchen-garden; but she could usually hear if a motor drove up, and, in -her still concentration upon the empty sheet lying before her on the -desk, she was aware that there had been no sound. It was too early for a -visitor, too early for the post, and she looked up with some curiosity -as Parton came in. - -“It’s a gentleman, ma’am, to see you,” said Parton; and her young, -trained visage showed signs of a discomfiture deeper than that Rhoda’s -coming had evoked. “Mr. Darley, ma’am; and he hopes very much you are -disengaged.” - -Mrs. Delafield had, as a first sensation, that of sympathy with Parton. -Parton evidently knew all about it and was evidently in distress lest -her face betrayed her knowledge. In her effort to maintain her own -standards of impassivity she suddenly blushed crimson, and Mrs. -Delafield then felt that she was very old and Parton very young, and -that in that fact alone was a bond, even if there had been no other. She -had many bonds with Parton, and now, seeing her so soft, uncertain, and -dismayed, she would have liked to pat her on the shoulder and say, -“There, my dear, it doesn’t make any difference. I assure you I’m not -disturbed.” And since she could not say it, she looked it, replying with -the utmost equability, “Mr. Darley? By all means. Show him in at once, -Parton.” - -There was, after Parton had gone, a short interval, while Mr. Darley -doubtless was taking off his coat, and during which she felt herself -mainly engaged in maintaining her equability. But, after her encounter -with Rhoda, wasn’t she equable enough for any situation? Besides, Mr. -Darley could in no fashion menace Jane Amoret, and under all her -conjectures and amazements there lay a certain satisfaction. She knew, -from her encounter with Parton, that she was interested in all young -creatures when they were nice, and she was not sorry to have another -look at Mr. Darley. - -When he entered and she saw him,--not in khaki as that first time, but -in a gray tweed suit,--when Parton had softly and securely closed the -door and left them together, she found herself borne along on a curious -deepening of the current of sympathy for mere youth. She had not -remembered how young he was; she had not had that as her dominant -impression at Rhoda’s tea, as she had it now. He must be several years -younger than Rhoda; hardly more than twenty-two or three, she thought; -and it must have been as a mere child that the war had swept him out -into maturing initiations. Something of an experience, shattering yet -solidifying, was in his face, fragile, wasted, yet more final and -finished than one would have expected at his time of life; and also, in -curious contrast to his boyish, beardless look, a deep line was engraved -across his forehead; whether by suffering or by the trick she soon -discovered in him of raising his eyebrows in an effort of intense -concentration, she could not tell. - -She gave him her hand simply, and said, “Do sit down.” - -But Mr. Darley, though he looked at the chair she indicated, did not -take it. He remained standing on the hearthrug, facing the windows, his -hands clasped behind him, and she then became aware that he was enduring -a veritable agony of shyness. It did not take the form of -blushes,--though his was a girlish skin that would display them -instantly,--or of awkward gestures or faltering speech. It was a shyness -wild, still, and bereft of all appeal, like that of a bird,--the simile -came sharply to her,--a bird that had followed some swift impulse and -that now, caught in a sudden hand, relapsed into utter immobility. His -large eyes were on hers--fixed. His expression was like a throbbing -heart. She knew that all she wanted, for the moment, was to show him -that the hand was gentle. - -“I’m afraid you came hoping to find Rhoda,” she said, looking away from -him and giving her chair, as a pretext, sundry little adjustments before -drawing it to the fire. “But she left this morning, after seeing me, and -you must have crossed her on the road. At least--have you motored?” - -The large eyes, she found, were still fixed on her as, with the -question, she glanced up at him; but he answered immediately--rather as -if with a croaking cry from the blackbird when one pressed it,-- - -“No; I came by train. I left a little after Rhoda did.” - -“By train?” she marvelled kindly. “But we are four miles from the -station here. Aren’t you, at your end, as far? And such roads!” She saw -now that his boots and upturned trousers were, indeed, deeply mired. - -“Oh--I didn’t mind the walk,” said Mr. Darley. “It wasn’t far.” - -She was sure he hadn’t found it far. His whole demeanour expressed the -overmastering impulse that had, till then, sustained him. - -“Have you had any lunch?” she went on. “I can’t think where you can have -lunched. There’s nothing at the station. Do let me send for something. -I’ve only just finished.” - -It seemed strangely indicated that she should, to-day, feed Rhoda and -her lover. - -But the caught blackbird was in no state for feeding. More wildly, yet -more faintly than before he gave forth the croaking cry with, “Oh, no. -Thanks so much. Yes. At our station. I found something at our station. -Sandwiches; no, a bun. I had a cup of Bovril.” - -And now, curiously, poignantly to her, he began to blush as though -suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of himself and of how idiotically he -must be behaving. Poor child! How young he was! And how ill he had been -in the trenches; and how beautiful it was to remember--as she did -suddenly, and not irrelevantly, she knew, though she could not trace the -relevance--that, in the little volume, written since his return, there -had not been a shadow of the ugly rancour, revengeful and provocative, -one met in some other soldier-poets whom one might have fancied to be of -his kind. For how he must have hated it! And, at the same time,--memory -brought back a line, a stanza here and there, from her snatched -reading--how holy he had found it; seeing so much more than error, -death, and suffering. - -Her eyes dwelt on him with something beyond the kindly wish to spare him -as she said, “Please sit down. You must be very tired and you are not -strong, Rhoda told me. Don’t be afraid of me. I am an old lady who can -listen to anything and, I think, understand a great deal. I’ve already -heard a great deal from Rhoda. I’m anything but unfriendly to you, I -assure you.” - -It was--she was aware of it when it had crossed her lips--a curious -thing to say to her niece’s lover, to the man who had destroyed Tim’s -happiness and wrecked Niel’s home; but it was too true not to be said. -And she was perfectly sure now that it was not Mr. Darley who had -wrecked and destroyed. It was Rhoda who had taken him, of course; not he -Rhoda. He would never take anybody. He would stand and gaze at them as -he now gazed at her, and only when they threw out appealing arms would -he move towards them. Rhoda had thrown out appealing arms--after she -discovered that alluring arms had no effect. Mrs. Delafield’s -impressions and intuitions tumbled forth in positive clusters as she -took in her companion. Allurements, Russian-ballet back-grounds, snowy -throats and velvet eyes, would have no effect upon him at all; he cared -as little about them at one end of the scale of sensations as about rats -and corpses at the other. He would not even see them. It was something -else he had seen in Rhoda; something she had found herself driven to -display. And if she were getting tired of him already, it was simply -because, having trapped him with the artifice, she now found herself -shut up with him in a cage, which, while it was of her own making, was -extremely uncongenial to her. - -Mr. Darley was far too absorbed in what she had just said to him to -think of taking the chair. It had helped him incalculably--that was -quite apparent; for though the blush stayed, and though he was still -wild and shy, they had already, indubitably, begun to understand each -other. - -“Do you mean,” he asked, “not unfriendly to me or not unfriendly to -Rhoda?” - -This was an unexpected question, and for a moment, not knowing what it -portended, she hardly knew how to meet it. But the understanding that -seemed to deepen with every moment made truth the most essential thing, -and she replied after only a hesitation, “To you.” - -Mr. Darley looked all his astonishment. “But why? Do you feel that you -like me, too? Because, of course, I’ve never forgotten you. That’s why I -felt it possible to come to-day.” - -And since truth was essential, it was she, now, who looked, with her -surprise, something that she felt to be a recognition, as she replied, -“I suppose it must be that. I suppose we liked each other at first -sight. I certainly didn’t know the feeling was reciprocal.” - -“Nor did I!” Mr. Darley exclaimed. He took the chair at the other end of -the hearthrug, facing her, his knees crossed, his arms clutched tightly -across his chest; and now he was able to reach his journey’s goal. As -all, on Rhoda’s side, had been made clear to her that morning, so on -his, all was clear, as he said, with a solemnity so young, so genuine -that it almost brought tears to her eyes, “Then since you do like me, -please don’t let her leave me!” - -The situation was before her, definite and overpowering; but how it -could have come about remained veiled like the misty approaches to a -mountain. - -“Does Rhoda want to leave you?” she questioned. - -“Why--didn’t you know?” Mr. Darley’s face flashed with a sort of stupor. -“Didn’t she come for that?” - -“You answer my questions first,” Mrs. Delafield said after a moment. - -He was obedient and full of trust. “It’s because of the child, you know, -that lovely little creature in London. From the first--you can’t think -how long ago it already seems, though we have hardly been a week -together--I’ve seen it growing, that feeling in her that she couldn’t -bear it. Other things, too; but that more than all. At least,” he was -truthful to the last point of scruple, “I think so. And though she did -not tell me that she was saying good-bye this morning, I knew--I -knew--that she was coming to you because she wanted her child, and would -accept anything, endure anything, to be with it again.” - -“What do you think Rhoda had to endure?” Mrs. Delafield inquired. - -“Oh--you can’t ask me that! I saw you in it and you saw me!” Mr. Darley -exclaimed. “You _will_ be straight with me? You saw that soulless life -of hers, with that selfish figurehead of a husband for all guide. She -was suffocating in it. She didn’t need to tell me. I saw it in her face -before she told me. How can a woman live with a man she doesn’t love? -When you said not unfriendly to me, did you mean to make a difference? -Did you mean that you don’t care for Rhoda? Yet she’s always loved and -trusted you, she told me, more than any one. You were the one reality -she clung to. That’s why _she_ could come to you to-day.” - -“What I mean is that I’m on your side, not on Rhoda’s,” said Mrs. -Delafield, and at the moment her charming old white face expressed, -perhaps as never before in her life, the quality of decisiveness. “I am -on your side. But I have to see what that is.” - -He was feeling her face even more than her words. He was gazing at her -with a rapt scrutiny which, she reflected, exonerating Rhoda to that -extent, would make it difficult for a woman receiving such a tribute not -to wish to retain it permanently. It enriched and sustained one -and--although it was strange that she should feel this--troubled and -moved one, too. A sense of pain stirred in her, and of wonder about -herself and her fitness to receive such gazes. One really couldn’t, at -sixty-three, have growing pains; yet Mr. Darley’s gaze filled her with -that troubled consciousness of expanding life. He wanted Rhoda. She -wanted Jane Amoret. So, wasn’t it all right? Wasn’t she all right? His -side was her side. They wanted the same thing. But the troubled sap of -the new consciousness was rising in her. - -“My side is really Rhoda’s side,” said Mr. Darley, as if answering her -thought. He held his knee in gripped hands and spoke with rapid -security. He was still shy, but he now knew exactly what he wished to -say, and how to say it. “It’s Rhoda’s side, if only she’d see it. That’s -why I was not disloyal in asking my question when you said you weren’t -unfriendly. Really--really--you _will_ believe me--it’s for her, too. I -wouldn’t have let her come with me if it hadn’t been. I’m not so selfish -as I seem. I know it’s dreadful about the child. But--this is my secret; -Rhoda does not guess it and I could never tell her--she doesn’t love the -child as she thinks she does. Not really. In spite of her longing. She -longs to love it, of course; but she isn’t a mother; not to that child. -That’s another reason. It was all false. The whole thing. The whole of -her life. The real truth is,” said Christopher Darley, gazing large-eyed -at her, “that Rhoda is frightened and wants to go back. She’s not as -brave as she thought she was. Not quite as brave as I thought. But if -she yields to her fear and leaves me,--she hasn’t yet, I know, I see -that in your face--but if she goes back to her old life, it will mean -dust, humiliation, imprisonment forever.” - -“That’s what I told her,” Mrs. Delafield said, her eyes on his. - -“I knew! I knew!” cried the young man. “I knew you’d done something -beautiful for me--for us. Because you see the truth. And you were able -to succeed where I failed! You were able to convince her! You’ve saved -us both! Oh, how I thank you!” - -“It wasn’t quite like that,” said Mrs. Delafield. "It wasn’t to save -either of you. I don’t think it right for a woman to leave her husband -with another man because she has ceased to love her husband. But I made -her go back. I wouldn’t even let her tell me that she wanted to leave -you. I didn’t convince her. I merely made it impossible for her. She -left me reluctant and bewildered. You haven’t found out yet,"--Mrs. -Delafield leaned forward and picked up the little poker; the fire needed -no poking and the movement expressed only her inner restlessness,--“you -haven’t found out that Rhoda, at all events, _is_ very selfish?” - -Christopher Darley at that stopped short. “Oh, yes, I have,” he answered -then; but the frightened croak was in his voice as he said it. - -“And have you found out, too,” said Mrs. Delafield, eyeing her poker, -sparing him, giving him time, “that she’s unscrupulous and cold-hearted? -Do you see the sort of life she’ll make for you, if she is faithful to -you and stays with you, not because she’s faithful, not because she -wants to stay, but gagged and baulked by me? Haven’t you -already--yourself, been a little frightened sometimes?” she finished. - -She kept her eyes on her poker and gave Mr. Darley his time, and indeed -he needed it. - -“If you’ve been so wonderful,” he said at last, with the slow care of -one who threads his way among swords; “if, though you think we’re -lawbreakers, you think, too, that we’ve made ourselves another law and -are bound to stand by it; if you’ve sent her back to me--why do you ask -me that? But no,” he went on, “I’m not frightened. You see--I love her.” - -“She doesn’t love you,” said Mrs. Delafield. - -"She will! She will!"--It made Mrs. Delafield think of the shaking -heart-throbs of the blackbird.--“All that you see,--yes, yes, I won’t -pretend to you, because I trust you as I’ve never before trusted any -human being, because you are truer than any one I’ve ever met,--it’s all -true. She is all that. But don’t you see further? Don’t you see it’s the -life? She’s never known anything else. She’s never had a chance.” - -“She’s known me. She’s had me.” - -Mrs. Delafield’s eyes did not leave the poker. But under the quiet -statement the struggle in her reached its bitter close. She had lost -Jane Amoret. She must give her up. Not for her sake; nor for -Rhoda’s,--oh, in no sense for Rhoda’s,--but for his. She could not let -him pay the price. She must save him from Rhoda. - -“What do you mean?” he asked; and it was as if crumbling before her -secure strength, almost with tears. - -"I mean that you’ll never make anything different of her. I never have, -and I’ve known her since she was born. You won’t make her, and she’ll -unmake you. She is disintegrating. She has always been like that. -Nothing has spoiled her. From the first she’s been selfish and untender. -I don’t mean to say that she hasn’t good points. She has a sense of -humour; and she’s honest with herself: she knows what she wants and why -she wants it--although she may take care that you don’t. She isn’t petty -or spiteful or revengeful. No,"--Mrs. Delafield moved her poker slowly -up and down as she carved it out for him, and it seemed to be into her -own heart she was cutting,--“there is a largeness and a dignity about -Rhoda. But she feels no beauty and no tragedy in life, only irony and -opportunity. You’ll no more change her than you’ll change a flower, a -fish, or a stone.” - -Holding his knee in the strained grasp, Christopher Darley kept his eyes -on her, breathing quickly. - -“Why did she come with me, then?” he asked, after the silence between -them had grown long. (Strange, she thought, so near they were, that he -could not know her heart was breaking, too. All the time it was Jane -Amoret’s sleeping eyelashes she saw.) “Why did she love me? I am not -irony or opportunity.” - -“Do you think she ever loved you?” said Mrs. Delafield. “Was it not only -that she wanted you to love her? Wasn’t it because you were different, -and difficult, and new? I think so. I think you found her at a bored, -antagonistic moment; money-quarrels with her husband,--he is a good -young fellow, Niel, and he used to worship her,--the war over and life -to take up again on terms already stale. She is calculating; but she is -adventurous and reckless, too. So she went. And of course she was in -love with you then. That goes without saying, and you’ll know what I -mean by it. But Rhoda gets through things quickly. She has no soil in -her in which roots can grow; perhaps that’s what I mean by saying she -can’t change. One can’t, if one can’t grow roots. But now you are no -longer new or difficult. You are easy and old--already old; and she’s -tired of you. You bore her. You constrain and baffle her--if she’s to -keep up appearances with you at all; and she’d like to do that, because -she admires you exceedingly. So she wants to go back to Niel. I know,” -said Mrs. Delafield, slightly shaking her poker, “that if I’d given her -a loophole this morning, she’d be on her way to London now.” - -“And why didn’t you?” asked Christopher Darley. - -Ah, why? Again she brooded over the softly breathing little profile, -again met the upward gaze of Jane Amoret’s grey eyes. Well might he ask -why. But there was the one truth she could not give him. There was -another that she could, and she had it ready. “I hadn’t seen you,” she -said. - -“You thought it right for her to come back to me, until you saw me?” - -“I thought it beneath her dignity--as I said to her--to be unfaithful to -two men within a fortnight.” - -“But why should you care for her dignity?” Mr. Darley strangely pressed. -“Why shouldn’t you care more for your brother’s dignity, and her -husband’s, and her child’s--all the things she said you’d care for?” - -He had brought her eyes to his now, and, for the first time since they -met, it was he who had the advantage. Frowning, yet clear, he bent his -great young eyes upon her and she knew, dismayingly, that her thoughts -were scattered. - -“I have always cared for Rhoda.” She seized the first one. - -“Is it a future for Rhoda to disintegrate the life of the man who loves -her and to get no good of him? Isn’t it better for a woman like Rhoda to -go back to the apparent dignity, since she has no feeling for the real? -Isn’t that what you would have felt, if you’d been feeling for Rhoda? It -wasn’t because you felt for her,” said Christopher Darley. “You had some -other reason. You are keeping another reason from me. You know,” he -urged upon her with a strange, still austerity, “you know you can’t do -that. You know we must say the truth to each other. You know that we -simply belong to each other, you and I.” - -“My dear Mr. Darley--my dear young man!” - -She was, indeed, bereft of all resource. She laid down her poker and, as -she did so, felt herself disarming before him. His eyes, following her -retreat, challenged her, almost with fierceness. - -“I know--I know that you are giving up something because of me,” he -said. “You want her to go back to her husband now, so that I may be -free. It wasn’t of me you thought this morning; nor of your brother, nor -of Rhoda. Everything changed for you after you saw me. What is it? What -is it that made you send Rhoda back to me and that makes you now want to -free me? You are beautiful--but you are terrible. You do beautiful and -terrible things. And you must let me share. You must let me decide, too, -if you do them for me!” - -He had started up, but not to come nearer in his appeal and his demand. -Cut to the heart as he was,--for she knew how she had pierced,--it was -rather the probing of some more intolerable pain that moved him. And -looking down at her with eyes intolerant of her mercy, he embodied to -her her sense of a new life and a new conscience. Absurd though his -words might seem, they were true. Though never, perhaps, again to meet, -she and Christopher Darley recognized in each other some final affinity -and owed each other final truth. - -She no longer felt old and wise, but young and helpless before the -compulsion of the kindred soul. She owed him the truth, and in giving it -she must risk his freedom and his happiness. Looking up at him, that -sense of compulsion upon her, she said, “It was because of Jane Amoret. -It was because I loved her and wanted to keep her.” - -Christopher Darley grew paler than before. “She is here?” - -“Yes. She came this morning. She is upstairs, sleeping.” - -“Rhoda saw her?” - -“Yes.” - -“And left her? To you?” - -“Yes. Left her to me.” - -He raised his head with a backward jerk and stared out of the window -before him. She kept her eyes on his face, measuring its strength -against hers. He was not measuring. He seemed to be seeing the beautiful -and terrible things of which, he had told her, she was capable. She -felt, when his eyes came back to her, that he had judged her. - -“You see you can’t,” he said gently. - -“Can’t what? Can’t keep her, you mean, of course.” - -“Anything but that. You can’t abandon her--even for my sake.” - -So that had been the judgment. He saw only beauty. - -“I shan’t abandon her. I shall always be able to see as much of her as I -did of Rhoda, and more. And she is different from Rhoda. I shan’t have -the special joy of her, but I shall have the good.” - -“Moreover,” he went on, with perfect gentleness, putting her words -aside, “I can’t abandon Rhoda. All that you have said is true. But it -doesn’t go far enough. You yourself, you know, see life too much in -terms of irony, of fact rather than faith. You’ve owned that Rhoda is -adventurous and honest; you’ve owned that she doesn’t lie to herself. -Then she has growth in her. No human being can be like a flower or a -fish or a stone. It was mere literature, your saying that. Every human -being has futures and futures within it. You know it really. Why you -yourself, though you are so old and fixed, are different now from what -you were an hour ago. I am different, of course. And Rhoda will be -different, too. She won’t disintegrate me. She’ll make me very -miserable, doubtless; she has already. And I shall make her angry. But I -shall hold her, and she’ll change. You shall see. I promise you. And you -will keep Jane Amoret, and she will be eternally different because of -you.” - -Mrs. Delafield, while he spoke, had risen. She stood before him, -grasping her gold chain on either side, her eyes very nearly level with -his, and she summoned all her will, her strength, her wisdom to meet -him. Yes, they had come to that, she and this boy. - -“I accept all your faith,” she said. “Only you must help me to make my -world, and not yours, with it. Don’t be afraid for Jane Amoret. I shall -be firmly in her life. Rhoda shan’t keep me out. She won’t want to keep -me out. Rhoda has far more chance of changing, of learning something -from this experience, as a disconcerted and forgiven wife than as a -sullen adventuress; and you--you will not be miserable; not with Rhoda, -at all events; and you will be free. I am going to send a wire to Rhoda, -at once, and tell her that I have reconsidered my advice to her. That, -in itself, will show her how I managed her this morning. I shall tell -her that she must go to London to-night, to her father. And to-morrow -I’ll take Jane Amoret up and bring Rhoda and Niel together.” - -He took it all in, wide-eyed, he too now measuring the threat. - -“You can’t,” he said; “I won’t let you!” - -“You’ll have to let me. I have the fact on my side as well as the faith. -She wants to leave you. She wants only the excuse of being asked. You -can’t stop my giving her the excuse.” Yes, after all, her fact against -his faith, she must have her way. What could his love for Rhoda and his -feeling for herself do against the ironic fact that Rhoda, simply, was -tired of him? “You must see that you can’t force her to stay,” she said. -“You couldn’t even prevent her coming to me this morning.” - -She looked at him with all the force of her advantage and saw that -before the cruel fact, and her determination, he knew his helplessness. -It was, again, the bird arrested in its impulse; and a veil seemed to -fall across his face, a shyness, almost a wildness to shut them out from -each other. He dropped his eyes before her. - -“Dear Mr. Darley, my dear young friend, see that it’s best. See that -it’s best all round. See it with me,” she begged. “I was wrong this -morning; wrong from the very first. Let it come to that only. Count -yourself out. It was of myself, of my own delight in the child that I -was thinking. No, not even thinking; I tried to think it was for her; -but it was my own feeling that decided. If you had never come, it would -still have been right to give her up--though I should never have seen it -unless you’d come. It was almost a crime that I committed. They had -asked me to implore her to go back; they trusted me. And I prevented the -message coming to her. I did not believe the things I said to her--not -as she thought I believed them. I did not care a rap about her dignity; -you saw the falsity at once. I cared only about keeping Jane Amoret.” - -He stood there before her, remote, unmoved, with downcast, unanswering -eyes. - -“Are you angry? Don’t you see it, too?” she pleaded. - -“No.” He shook his head. “You had a right to keep the child.” - -“Against all those other reasons? Against my own conscience?” - -“Yes. Because you were strong enough. You were right, because you were -strong enough. I believe in law, too, you see--unless one is strong -enough to break it for something better. You were. It was a beautiful -thing to do.” - -“But then, if you think me so strong, why not trust me now? This, now, -is the thing I want to do.” - -“Because of me. It isn’t against the law you are acting now; it’s -against your own life. I am not angry. But it crushes me.” - -They stood there then, she deeply meditating, he fixed in his unyielding -grief, for how long she could not have said. Parton’s step outside broke -in upon their mute opposition. - - -VI - -She and Mr. Darley, Mrs. Delafield was aware, presented precisely the -abstracted, alienated air that Parton would expect. The young man moved -away to the window while she took from the salver the note Parton -presented. Then, her hand arrested in the very act by a recognition, - -“Is there an answer?” she asked. - -“No answer, ma’am.” - -“Who brought it?” - -“A man from the station, ma’am.” - -“Very well, Parton.” - -Parton was gone. Mr. Darley kept his back turned. She held the note in -her hand and stared at it. The writing was Rhoda’s; the envelope one of -the station-master’s. She had been at the station, then, when she wrote, -four miles away. The London train, for which she had been waiting, had -gone long since; it had gone before the arrival of Mr. Darley’s. - -An almost overpowering presage rose in her mind; she could hardly, for a -moment, summon the decision with which to open the envelope. Then, -reading as she stood, she felt the blood flow up to her face. - -For it was almost too much, although it was, through Rhoda’s act, she -who had won finally. Even she, then, had not yet correctly measured -Rhoda’s irony or Rhoda’s sardonic assurance. Rhoda, after all, did not -care to keep up appearances with her, and, after all, why should she? -Here was fact, and it had been fact all through. She wanted most to go -back. She wanted it more than to be dignified in her aunt’s eyes, or, -really, in anybody else’s. Once back Rhoda would take care of her -dignity. In a flash Mrs. Delafield saw how little, when all was said and -done, Rhoda would pay. - - DEAR AUNT ISABEL [she wrote, in her ample, tranquil hand]: I’ve - been thinking over all you said and have come to the conclusion - that you are considering me too much. I feel that I must consider - my child. I have made a grave mistake and am not too proud to own - it. Christopher and I are not at all fitted to make each other - happy. So I have wired to father that I arrive this afternoon, and - to Niel that I will see him to-morrow. I have written too, of - course, to my poor Christopher. But he will understand me. Thank - you so much, dear Aunt Isabel, for your kindness and helpfulness. - -Your affectionate RHODA - - P.S. Will you send nurse up with Jane Amoret within the week? Not - at once, please; that would look rather foolish. - -With the accumulated weight of absurdity, relief, dismay, she had sunk -down into her chair, still gazing at the letter, and it was dismay that -grew. As if with a violent jolt back to earth, Rhoda seemed to show her -that life was not docile to nobilities. She hated to think that he must -feel with her that shattering fall. There was nothing for them to do now -for each other; no contest and no sacrifice. Rhoda had settled -everything. - -She spoke to him at last, and, as he came to her, not looking around at -him, she held out the note. He stood behind her to read it; and after -that he did not speak. - -She heard him move presently, vaguely, and then, vaguely, he drifted to -and fro. He walked here and there; he paused, no doubt to feel his bones -and to count how many had been broken, and then, with a start, he went -on again. - -“Please come where I can see you,” she said at last. - -He came at once, obediently, standing as he had stood a little while ago -before the fire, his hands locked behind him, but now with face bent -down, fixed in its effort to see clearly what had happened to them. - -“You see, it was over. You see, you couldn’t have made anything of it.” -It was almost with tears that she besought him not to suffer too much. -“You have nothing to regret, except having believed in her. Tell me that -you are not too unhappy.” - -“I don’t know what I am,” Christopher said. “But I know I’ve more to -regret than having believed in her. I’ve all the folly and mischief I’ve -made.” He had thought it out and she could not deny what he had seen, -not even when he went on, "If it could have been in our way,--yours and -mine, or, at least, what was yours this morning, when you thought you -had kept her with me,--everything might have been atoned for. It might -have meant a certain kind of beauty, and a certain kind of happiness, -even, perhaps. But in this way, the way she’s chosen, it only means just -that--folly, mischief,"--he turned to the fire and looked down into -it,--“sin,” he finished. - -She could not deny it, even to give him comfort; but she could find -something else. “It was Rhoda who chose. You, whatever your mistakes, -chose very differently. I'm not trying to shift responsibility; to make -mistakes is to be foolish and mischievous. But can’t even sin be atoned -for? Doesn’t it all now depend on you? That you should make yourself -worth it. You are the only one of us who can do that.” - -He turned to her and his eyes studied her with an unaccepting -gentleness. - -“You mean because I’m a poet? It isn’t like you, really, to say that. -You don’t believe in poets and their mission in that sense. It’s too -facile.” - -“Not only because you are a poet. I wasn’t thinking so much of that, -although your gift helps. But simply because you are young and good.” - -“I’m not good enough,” said Christopher. “And I’m too young. You’ve -shown me that. I am afraid of myself. I see what one can do while -meaning the best.” - -She watched him with grave tenderness, feeling again, in his -dispassionate capacity for accepted experience, his strange maturity. -And knowing all that might be difficult, yet knowing that it would be, -after all, to a decision like her own, the merest gossamers of -convention that she must brave, she said,--and as she looked up at him -his face seemed to blend with the face of her little, sleeping, lost -Jane Amoret,--“Don’t you think I, perhaps, could be of help, while you -are so young?” - -He did not understand her at all. He, too, was absorbed in his inner -image of loss, yet he, too, was almost as aware of her as she of him, -and his eyes, with their austere gentleness, dwelt on her, as if -treasuring, of this last encounter, his completed vision of her. - -“Yes, you will be. I shall never forget you and what you’ve been to me. -I’ll do my best,” he promised her. “But I seem to have lost everything. -I could be strong for her; I don’t know that I can be strong enough for -myself.” - -“That’s what I mean,” said Mrs. Delafield. “It takes years to be strong -enough for one’s self, and even when one’s old one hasn’t sometimes -learned how to be. I’m not sure, after this morning, that I’ve learned -yet. But I know that I could be strong for you. Will you let me try? -Will you let me take care of you a little and guard you from the Rhodas -until the right person comes?” - -“What do you mean?” he asked; and, answering the look in her face, tears -sprang to his eyes. - -“We belong to each other. Didn’t you say it?” she smiled. “We are -friends. We ought not to lose each other now.” - -“Oh! But--” He gazed at her. “How could you! After what I’ve done!” - -“You’ve done nothing that makes me like you less.” - -“Oh--I can’t! I can’t!” said Christopher Darley. “How could I accept it -from you? Already you’ve been unbelievably beautiful to me. It’s not as -if you were a Bohemian sort of creature, like me. Appearances must count -for you. And the appearance of being friends with your niece’s discarded -lover--no--I can’t see it for you. I can imagine you being above the -law, but I can’t imagine you being above appearances. I don’t think that -I should want you to be. I care about appearances, too, when they are -yours.” - -It crossed her mind, with almost a mirthful sense of the sort of -appearances she would have to deal with, that Parton’s face would be -worth watching. Poor Tim’s hovered more grievously in the background. -But, after all, it would be a Tim with wounds well salved. - -“It’s just because mine are so secure and recognized, don’t you see, -that I can do what I like with them,” she said. “It’s not for me a -question of appearances, but of realities. After all, my dear young man, -what am I going to get out of it all? My roots have been torn up too, -you know.” - -“Because of me! Because of me!” Christopher groaned. “Do you think you -need remind me of that? Shall I ever forgive myself for it? Get out of -it? You’ll get nothing. You’ve been tormented between us all, and you -lose Jane Amoret.” - -“Then don’t let me lose you too,” said Mrs. Delafield. - -Again, with the tears, his blush sprang to his face, and he stood there -incredulous, looking down at her, almost as helpless in the shyness the -unexpected gift brought upon him as he had been when he first came in to -her. - -“Really you mean it?” he murmured. “Really I can do something for you, -too? Because, unless I can, I couldn’t accept it.” - -“You can make me much less lonely, when she’s gone,” said Mrs. -Delafield. - -She knew that this was to give the gift in such a way as to ensure its -acceptance; but he murmured, stung again intolerably by the thought of -Jane Amoret, “Oh--I can’t bear it for you!” - -“You can help me to bear it.” - -Still he pressed upon her what he saw as her sacrifice. - -“You mean that I may see you when I like? I may always write and you’ll -always answer? I can sometimes, even, come and stay, like any other -friend? Please realize that if you let me come down on you like that, I -may come hard. I’m frightfully lonely, too.” - -“As hard as you like. I want you to come hard. Like any friend. Yes.” - -She was smiling up at the young man, and, as she had promised herself -years for Jane Amoret, she promised herself now years--though not so -many would be needed--for Christopher Darley. It was in the thought of -what she could do for Christopher Darley that she saw Rhoda’s -punishment. Not for having left him, but for having taken him; for not -having known what to do with him without taking him. And Rhoda would see -it with her, if no one else did. - -“Come, you must quite believe in me,” she said. “Give me your hand, dear -Christopher, and tell me that you take this meddling, commanding old -woman to be your friend.” - -He had no words as he took the hand she gave him, but from his look it -might have been as if he at last received into his keeping the great -gift, the precious casket of the future; and his eyes, like those of a -devout young knight, dedicated themselves to her service. - -It was again gift and miracle; and though in her mind was the thought of -all her mournings, and of the lost Jane Amoret, she felt, rooting itself -in the darkness and sorrow, yet another flower. - -“And now,” she said, for they must not both begin to cry, “please ring -the bell for me. The time has not quite come for your first visit; but, -before you go, we will have our first tea together.” - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -HEPATICAS - - -I - -OTHER people’s sons were coming home for the three or four days' leave. -The first gigantic struggle--furious onslaught and grim resistance--was -over. Paris, pale, and slightly shuddering still, stood safe. Calais was -not taken, and, dug into their trenches, it was evident that the -opposing armies would lie face to face with no decisive encounter -possible until the spring. - -There was, with all their beauty and terror, an element of the facetious -in these unexpected holidays, of the matter-of-factness, the freedom -from strain or sentiment that was the English oddity and the English -strength. Men who had known the horrors of the retreat from Mons or the -carnage of Ypres, who had not taken off their clothes for ten days at a -stretch or slept for four nights, came home from trenches knee-deep in -mud, from battlefields heaped with unburied dead, and appeared -immaculate and cheerful at breakfast; a little sober and preoccupied, -perhaps; touched, perhaps, with strangeness; but ready for the valorous -family jest, and alluding to the war as if, while something too solemn -for adequate comment, it were yet something that lent itself to -laughter. One did such funny things, and saw them; of the other things -one did not speak; and there was the huge standing joke of an enemy who -actually hated one. These grave and cheerful young men hated nobody; but -they were very eager to go back again; and they were all ready, not only -to die but to die good-humouredly. From the demeanour of mothers and -wives and sisters it was evident that nothing would be said or done to -make this readiness difficult; but Mrs. Bradley, who showed serenity to -the world and did not even when alone allow herself to cry, suspected -that the others, beneath their smiles, carried hearts as heavy with -dread as her own. - -It had been heavy, with hope now as well as with dread, for the past -week. It was a week since she had last heard from Jack. Mrs. Crawley -over the hill, had had a wire, and her husband was now with her; and -Lady Wrexham expected her boy to-morrow. There was no certainty at all -as regarded herself; yet at any moment she might have her wire; and -feeling to-day the stress of waiting too great to be borne in passivity, -she left her books and letters and put on her gardening shoes and gloves -and went out to her borders. - -For weeks now the incessant rain had made the relief and solace of -gardening almost an impossibility; but to-day was mild and clear. There -was no radiance in the air; curtains of pearly mist shut out the sky; -yet here and there a soft opening in the white showed a pale, far blue, -gentle and remote as the gaze of a wandering goddess, and the hills -seemed to smile quietly up at the unseen sun. Mrs. Bradley, as she went -along the river-path, could look across at the hills; the river-path and -the hills were the great feature of Dorrington,--the placid, comely red -brick house to which she and Jack had come fifteen years ago, after the -death of her husband in India. Enclosed by woods, and almost catching -sight of the road,--from its upper windows and over its old brick -wall,--the house would have seemed to her too commonplace and almost -suburban, in spite of the indubitably old oak-panelling of the -drawing-room, had it not been for the river and the hills. Stepping out -on to the lawn from the windows of the drawing-room, she and Jack, on -that April day, had found themselves confronting both--the limpid, rapid -little stream, spanned near the house by its mossy bridge, and the -hills, beyond the meadows, streaked with purple woodlands and rising, -above the woods, to slopes russet, fawn, and azure. Jack, holding her by -the hand, had pointed at once with an eager "Isn’t it pretty, -mummy!"--even at eight he had cared almost as much as she, and -extraordinarily in the same way, for the sights of the country; and if -the hills hadn’t settled the question, it was settled, quite finally, -ten minutes later, by the white hepaticas. - -They had come upon them suddenly, after their tour of the walled kitchen -garden and their survey of the lawn with its ugly shrubberies,--now long -forgotten,--penetrating a thicket of hazels and finding themselves in an -opening under trees where neighbouring woods looked at them over an old -stone wall, and where, from an old stone bench, one could see the river. -The ground was soft with the fallen leaves of many an autumn; a narrow -path ran, half obliterated, down to the river; and among the faded -brown, everywhere, rose the thick clusters, the dark leaves, and the -snowy flowers,--poignant, amazing in their beauty. - -She and Jack had stopped short to gaze. She had never before seen such -white hepaticas, or so many, or so placed. And Jack, presently, lifting -his dear nut-brown head and nut-brown eyes, had said, gazing up at her -as he had gazed at the flowers, “They are just like you, mummy.” - -She had felt at once that they were like her; more like than the little -boy’s instinct could grasp. He had thought of the darkness and -whiteness; her widow’s weeds and pale face had suggested that; but he -could not know the sorrow, the longing, the earthly sense of irreparable -loss, the heavenly sense of a possession unalterably hers, that the -dark, melancholy leaves and celestial whiteness of the flowers expressed -to her. Tears had risen to her eyes and she had stooped and kissed her -child,--how like her husband’s that little face!--and had said, after a -moment, “We must never leave them, Jack.” - -They had never left them. Dorrington had been their home for fifteen -years, and the hepaticas the heart of it. It had always seemed to them -both the loveliest ritual of the year, that early spring one when, in -the hazel copse, they would find the white hepaticas again in flower. -And of all the garden labours none were sweeter than those that -cherished and divided and protected the beloved flowers. - -Mrs. Bradley, to-day, worked in her long border, weeding, forking, -placing belated labels. She was dressed in black, her straw hat bound -beneath her chin by a ribbon and her soft gardening gloves rolling back -from her firm, white wrists. Her gestures expressed a calm energy, an -accurate grace. She was tall, and when she raised herself to look over -the meadows at the hills, she showed small, decisive features, all -marked, in the pallor of her face, as if with the delicate, neutral -emphasis of an etching: the grey, scrutinizing eyes, the charming yet -ugly nose, the tranquil mouth that had, at the corners, a little fall, -half sweet, half bitter, as if with tears repressed or a summoned smile. -Squared at brow and chin, it would, but for the mildness of the gaze, -have been an imperious face; and her head, its whitened hair drawn back -and looped in wide braids behind, had an air at once majestic and -unworldly. - -She had worked for over an hour and the last label was set beside a -precious clump of iris. The hazel copse lay near by; and gathering up -her tools, drawing off her wet gloves, she followed the path under the -leafless branches and among the hepatica leaves to the stone bench, -where, sinking down, she knew that she was very tired. She could see, -below the bank, the dark, quick stream; a pale, diffused light in the -sky showed where the sun was dropping toward the hills. - -Where was Jack at this moment, this quiet moment of a monotonous English -winter day?--so like the days of all the other years that it was -impossible to think of what was happening a few hours' journey away -across the Channel. Impossible to think of it; yet the thick throb of -her heart spoke to the full of its significance. She had told herself -from the beginning--passionate, rebellious creature as, at bottom, she -knew herself to be, always in need of discipline and only in these later -years schooled to a control and submission that, in her youth, she would -have believed impossible to her--she had told herself, when he had gone -from her, that, as a soldier’s widow, she must see her soldier son go -to death. She must give him to that; be ready for it; and if he came -back to her it would be as if he were born again, a gift, a grace, -unexpected and unclaimed. She must feel, for herself as well as for her -country, that these days of dread were also days of a splendour and -beauty unmatched by any in England’s history, and that a soldier’s widow -must ask for no more glorious fate for her son than death in such a -cause. She had told herself all this many times; yet, as she sat there, -her hands folded on her lap, her eyes on the stream below, she felt that -she was now merely motherhood, tense, huddled, throbbing and longing, -longing for its child. - -Then, suddenly, she heard Jack’s footsteps. They came, quick and light, -along the garden path; they entered the wood; they were near, but -softened by the fallen leaves. And, half rising, afraid of her own joy, -she hardly knew that she saw him before she was in his arms; and it was -better to meet thus, in the blindness and darkness of their embrace, her -cheek pressed against his hair, his head buried close between her neck -and shoulder. - -“Jack!--Jack!” she heard herself say. - -He said nothing, holding her tightly to him, with quick breaths; and -even after she had opened her eyes and could look down at him,--her own, -her dear, beautiful Jack,--could see the nut-brown head, the smooth -brown cheek, the firm brown hand which grasped her, he did not for a -long time raise his head and look at her. When, at last, he did look up, -she could not tell, through her tears, whether, like herself, he was -trying to smile. - -They sat down together on the bench. She did not ask him why he had not -wired. That question pressed too sharply on her heart; to ask might -seem to reproach. - -“Darling--you are so thin,--so much older,--but you look--strong and -well.” - -“We’re all of us extraordinarily fit, mummy. It’s wholesome, living in -mud.” - -“And wholesome living among bursting shells? I had your last letter -telling of that miraculous escape.” - -“There have been a lot more since then. Every day seems a miracle--that -one’s alive at the end of it.” - -“But you get used to it?” - -“All except the noise. That always seems to daze me still. Some of our -fellows are deaf from it.--You heard of Toppie, mother?” Jack asked. - -Toppie was Alan Graham, Jack’s nearest friend. He had been killed ten -days before. - -“I heard it, Jack. Were you with him?” - -“Yes. It was in a bayonet charge. He didn’t suffer. A bullet went right -through him. He just gave a little cry and fell.” Jack’s voice had the -mildness of a sorrow that has passed beyond the capacity for emotion. -“We found him afterwards. He is buried out there.” - -“You must tell Frances about it, Jack. I went to her at once.” Frances -was Toppie’s sister. “She is bearing it so bravely.” - -“I must write to her. She would be sure to be plucky.” - -He answered all her questions, sitting closely against her, his arm -around her; looking down, while he spoke, and twisting, as had always -been his boyish way, a button on her coat. He was at that enchanting -moment of young manhood when the child is still apparent in the man. -His glance was shy yet candid; his small, firm lips had a child’s -gravity. With his splendid shoulders, long legs, and noble little head, -he was yet as endearing as he was impressive. His mother’s heart ached -with love and pride and fear as she gazed at him. - -And a question came, near the sharp one, yet hoping to evade it:-- - -“Jack, dearest, how long will you be with me? How long is the leave?” - -He raised his eyes then and looked at her; a curious look. Something in -it blurred her mind with a sense of some other sort of fear. - -“Only till to-night,” he said. - -It seemed confusion rather than pain that she felt. “Only till to-night, -Jack? But Richard Crawley has been back for three days already. I -thought they gave you longer?” - -“I know, mummy.” His eyes were dropped again and his hand at the -button--did it tremble?--twisted and untwisted. “I’ve been back for -three days already.--I’ve been in London.” - -“In London?” Her breath failed her. The sense of alien fear became a -fog, horrible, suffocating. “But--Jack--why?” - -“I didn’t wire, mummy, because I knew I’d have to be there for most of -my time. I felt I couldn’t wire and tell you. I felt I had to see you -when I told you. Mother--I’m married.--I came back to get married.--I -was married this morning.--Oh, mother, can you ever forgive me?” - -His shaking hands held her and his eyes could not meet hers. - -She felt the blood rush, as if her heart had been divided with a sword, -to her throat, to her eyes, choking her, burning her; and as if from -far away she heard her own voice saying, after a little time had passed, -“There’s nothing I couldn’t forgive you, Jack. Tell me. Don’t be afraid -of hurting me.” - -He held her tightly, still looking down as he said, "She is a dancer, -mother, a little dancer. It was in London, last summer. A lot of us came -up from Aldershot together. She was in the chorus of one of those -musical comedies. Mother, you can never understand. But it wasn’t just -low and vulgar. She was so lovely,--so very young,--with the most -wonderful golden hair and the sweetest eyes.--I don’t know.--I simply -went off my head when I saw her. We all had supper together afterwards. -Toppie knew one of the other girls, and Dollie was there. That’s her -name--Dollie Vaughan--her stage name. Her real name was Watson. Her -people, I think, were little tradespeople, and she’d lost her father and -mother, and an aunt had been very unkind. She told me all about it that -night. Mother, please believe just this: it wasn’t only the obvious -thing.--I know I can’t explain. But you remember, when we read _War and -Peace_"--his broken voice groped for the analogy--“You remember Natacha, -when she falls in love with Anatole, and nothing that was real before -seems real, and she is ready for anything.--It was like that. It was all -fairyland, like that. No one thought it wrong. It didn’t seem wrong. -Everything went together.” - -She had gathered his hand closely in hers and she sat there, quiet, -looking at her hopes lying slain before her. Her Jack. The wife who was, -perhaps, to have been his. The children that she, perhaps, should have -seen. All dead. The future blotted out. Only this wraith-like present; -only this moment of decision; Jack and his desperate need the only real -things left. - -And after a moment, for his labouring breath had failed, she said, “Yes, -dear?” and smiled at him. - -He covered his face with his hands. “Mother, I’ve ruined your life.” - -He had, of course, in ruining his own; yet even at that moment of -wreckage she was able to remember, if not to feel, that life could mend -from terrible wounds, could marvellously grow from compromises and -defeats. “No, dearest, no,” she said. “While I have you, nothing is -ruined. We shall see what can be done. Go on. Tell me the rest.” - -He put out his hand to hers again and sat now a little turned away from -her, speaking on in his deadened, bitter voice. - -“There wasn’t any glamour after that first time. I only saw her once or -twice again. I was awfully sorry and ashamed over the whole thing. Her -company left London, on tour, and then the war came, and I simply forgot -all about her. And the other day, over there, I had a letter from her. -She was in terrible trouble. She was ill and had no money, and no work. -And she was going to have a child--my child; and she begged me to send -her a little money to help her through, or she didn’t know what would -become of her.” - -The fog, the horrible confusion, even the despair, had passed now. The -sense of ruin, of wreckage almost irreparable, was there; yet with it, -too, was the strangest sense of gladness. He was her own Jack, -completely hers, for she saw now why he had done it; she could be glad -that he had done it. “Go on, dear,” she said. “I understand; I -understand perfectly.” - -“O mother, bless you!” He put her hand to his lips, bowing his head upon -it for a moment. “I was afraid you couldn’t. I was afraid you couldn’t -forgive me. But I had to do it. I thought it all over--out there. -Everything had become so different after what one had been through. One -saw everything differently. Some things didn’t matter at all, and other -things mattered tremendously. This was one of them. I knew I couldn’t -just send her money. I knew I couldn’t bear to have the poor child born -without a name and with only that foolish little mother to take care of -it. And when I found I could get this leave, I knew I must marry her. -That was why I didn’t wire. I thought I might not have time to come to -you at all.” - -“Where is she, Jack?” Her voice, her eyes, her smile at him, showed him -that, indeed, she understood perfectly. - -“In lodgings that I found for her; nice and quiet, with a kind landlady. -She was in such an awful place in Ealing. She is so changed, poor little -thing. I should hardly have known her. Mother, darling, I wonder, could -you just go and see her once or twice? She’s frightfully lonely; and so -very young.--If you could.--If you would just help things along a little -till the baby comes, I should be so grateful. And, then, if I don’t come -back, will you, for my sake, see that they are safe?” - -“But, Jack,” she said, smiling at him, “she is coming here, of course. I -shall go and get her to-morrow.” - -He stared at her and his colour rose. “Get her? Bring her here, to -stay?” - -“Of course, darling. And if you don’t come back, I will take care of -them, always.” - -“But, mother,” said Jack, and there were tears in his eyes, “you don’t -know, you don’t realize. I mean--she’s; a dear little thing--but you -couldn’t be happy with her. She’d get most frightfully on your nerves. -She’s just--just a silly little dancer who has got into trouble.” - -Jack was clear-sighted. Every vestige of fairyland had vanished. And she -was deeply thankful that they should see alike, while she answered, -“It’s not exactly a time for considering one’s nerves, is it, Jack? I -hope I shan’t get on hers. I must just try and make her as happy as I -can.” - -She made it all seem natural and almost sweet. The tears were in his -eyes, yet he had to smile back at her when she said, “You know that I am -good at managing people. I’ll manage her. And perhaps when you come -back, my darling, she won’t be a silly little dancer.” - -They sat now for a little while in silence. While they had talked, a -golden sunset, slowly, had illuminated the western sky. The river below -them was golden, and the wintry woodlands bathed in light. Jack held her -hands and gazed at her. Love could say no more than his eyes, in their -trust and sorrow, said to her; she could never more completely possess -her son. Sitting there with him, hand in hand, while the light slowly -ebbed and twilight fell about them, she felt it to be, in its accepted -sorrow, the culminating and transfiguring moment of her maternity. - -When they at last rose to go it was the hour for Jack’s departure, and -it had become almost dark. Far away, through the trees, they could see -the lighted windows of the house that waited for them, but to which she -must return alone. With his arms around her shoulders, Jack paused a -moment, looking about him. “Do you remember that day--when we first came -here, mummy?” he asked. - -She felt in him suddenly a sadness deeper than any he had yet shown her. -The burden of the past she had lifted from him; but he must bear now the -burden of what he had done to her, to their life, to all the future. -And, protesting against his pain, her mother’s heart strove still to -shelter him while she answered, as if she did not feel his sadness, -“Yes, dear, and do you remember the hepaticas on that day?” - -“Like you,” said Jack in a gentle voice. “I can hardly see the plants. -Are they all right?” - -“They are doing beautifully.” - -“I wish the flowers were out,” said Jack. “I wish it were the time for -the flowers to be out, so that I could have seen you and them together, -like that first day.” And then, putting his head down on her shoulder, -he murmured, “It will never be the same again. I’ve spoiled everything -for you.” - -But he was not to go from her uncomforted. She found the firmest voice -in which to answer him, stroking his hair and pressing him to her with -the full reassurance of her resolution. “Nothing is spoiled, Jack, -nothing. You have never been so near me--so how can anything be spoiled? -And when you come back, darling, you’ll find your son, perhaps; and the -hepaticas may be in flower, waiting for you.” - - -II - -Mrs. Bradley and her daughter-in-law sat together in the drawing-room. -They sat opposite each other on the two chintz chesterfields placed at -right angles to the pleasantly blazing fire, the chintz curtains drawn -against a rainy evening. It was a long, low room, with panelled walls; -and, like Mrs. Bradley’s head, it had an air at once majestic, -decorated, and old-fashioned. It was a rather crowded room, with many -deep chairs and large couches, many tables with lamps and books and -photographs upon them, many porcelains, prints, and pots of growing -flowers. Mrs. Bradley, her tea-table before her, was in her evening -black silk; lace ruffles rose about her throat; she wore her accustomed -necklace of old enamel, blue, black, and white, set with small diamonds, -and the enamel locket that had within it Jack’s face on one side and his -father’s on the other; her white hands, moving gently among the teacups, -showed an ancient cluster of diamonds above the slender wedding-ring. -From time to time she lifted her eyes and smiled quietly over at her -daughter-in-law. It was the first time that she had really seen Dollie, -that is, in any sense that meant contemplative observation. Dollie had -spent her first week at Dorrington in bed, sodden with fatigue rather -than ill. “What you need,” Mrs. Bradley had said, “is to go to sleep for -a fortnight”; and Dollie had almost literally carried out the -prescription. - -Stealing carefully into the darkened room, with its flowers and open -windows and steadily glowing fire, Mrs. Bradley had stood and looked for -long moments at all that she could see of her daughter-in-law,--a -flushed, almost babyish face lying on the pillow between thick golden -braids, sleeping so deeply, so unconsciously,--her sleep making her -mother-in-law think of a little boat gliding slowly yet steadily on and -on, between new shores; so that, when she was to awake and look about -her, it would be as if, with no bewilderment or readjustment, she found -herself transformed, a denizen of an altered world. That was what Mrs. -Bradley wanted, that Dollie should become an inmate of Dorrington with -as little effort or consciousness for any of them as possible, and the -drowsy days and nights of infantine slumbers seemed indeed to have -brought her very near. - -She and Pickering, the admirable woman who filled so skilfully the -combined positions of lady’s maid and parlourmaid in her little -establishment, had braided Dollie’s thick tresses, one on either -side,--Mrs. Bradley laughing a little and both older women touched, -almost happy in their sense of something so young and helpless to take -care of. Pickering understood, nearly as well as Jack’s mother, that -Master Jack, as he had remained to her, had married very much beneath -him; but at this time of tragic issues and primitive values, she, nearly -as much as Jack’s mother, felt only the claim, the pathos of youth and -helplessness. It was as if they had a singularly appealing case of a -refugee to take care of; social and even moral appraisals were -inapplicable to such a case, and Mrs. Bradley felt that she had never so -admired Pickering as when seeing that for her, too, they were in -abeyance. It was a comfort to feel so fond of Pickering at a time when -one was in need of any comfort one could get; and to feel that, -creature of codes and discriminations as she was, to a degree that had -made her mistress sometimes think of her as a sort of Samurai of -service, a function rather than a person, she was even more -fundamentally a kind and Christian woman. Between them, cook -intelligently sustaining them from below and the housemaids helpful in -their degree, they fed and tended and nursed Dollie, and by that eighth -day she was more than ready to get up and go down and investigate her -new surroundings. - -She sat there now, in the pretty tea-gown her mother-in-law had bought -for her, leaning back against her cushions, one arm lying along the back -of the couch and one foot in its patent-leather shoe, with its sparkling -buckle and alarming heel, thrusting forward a carefully arched instep. -The attitude made one realize, however completely tenderer -preoccupations held the foreground of one’s consciousness, how often and -successfully she must have sat to theatrical photographers. Her way of -smiling, too, very softly, yet with the effect of a calculated and -dazzling display of pearly teeth, was impersonal, and directed, as it -were, to the public _via_ the camera rather than to any individual -interlocutor. Mrs. Bradley even imagined, unversed as she was in the -methods of Dollie’s world, that of allurement in its conscious and -determined sense she was almost innocent. She placed herself, she -adjusted her arm and her foot, and she smiled gently; intention hardly -went further than that wish to look her best. - -Pink and white and gold as she was, and draped there on the chesterfield -in a profusion of youth and a frivolity that was yet all passivity, she -made her mother-in-law think, and with a certain sinking of the heart, -of a Dorothy Perkins rose, a flower she had never cared for; and Dollie -carried on the analogy in the sense she gave that there were such -myriads more just like her. On almost every page of every illustrated -weekly paper, one saw the ingenuous, limpid eyes, the display of -eyelash, the lips, their outline emphasized by just that touch of rouge, -those copious waves of hair. Like the Dorothy Perkins roses on their -pergolas, so these pretty faces seemed--looped, draped, festooned--to -climb over all the available spaces of the modern press. - -But this, Mrs. Bradley told herself, was to see Dollie with a dry, hard -eye, was to see her superficially, from the social rather than from the -human point of view. Under the photographic creature must lie the young, -young girl,--so young, so harmless that it would be very possible to -mould her, with all discretion, all tenderness, into some suitability as -Jack’s wife. Dollie, from the moment that she had found her, a sodden, -battered rose indeed, in the London lodging-house, had shown herself -grateful, even humble, and endlessly acquiescent. She had not shown -herself at all abashed or apologetic, and that had been a relief; had -counted for her, indeed, in her mother-in-law’s eyes, as a sort of -innocence, a sort of dignity. But if Dollie were contented with her new -mother-in-law, and very grateful to her, she was also contented with -herself; Mrs. Bradley had been aware of this at once; and she knew now -that if she were being carefully and commendingly watched while she -poured out the tea, this concentration did not imply unqualified -approval. Dollie was the type of young woman to whom she herself stood -as the type of the “perfect lady”; but with the appreciation went the -proviso of the sharp little London mind,--versed in the whole ritual of -smartness as it displayed itself at theatre or restaurant,--that she was -a rather dowdy one. She was a lady, perfect but not smart, while, at the -same time, the quality of her defect was, she imagined, a little -bewildering and therefore a little impressive. Actually to awe Dollie -and to make her shy, it would be necessary to be smart; but it was far -more pleasant and perhaps as efficacious merely to impress her, and it -was as well that Dollie should be impressed; for anything in the nature -of an advantage that she could recognize would make it easier to direct, -protect, and mould her. - -She asked her a good many leisurely and unstressed questions on this -first evening, and drew Dollie to ask her others in return; and she saw -herself stooping thoughtfully over a flourishing young plant that yet -needed transplanting, softly moving the soil about its roots, softly -finding out if there were any very deep tap-root that would have to be -dealt with. But Dollie, so far as tastes and ideas went, hardly seemed -to have any roots at all; so few that it was a question if any change of -soil could affect a creature so shallow. She smiled, she was at ease; -she showed her complete assurance that a young lady so lavishly endowed -with all the most significant gifts, need not occupy herself with mental -adornments. - -“You’re a great one for books, I see,” she commented, looking about the -room; “I suppose you do a great deal of reading down here to keep from -feeling too dull”; and she added that she herself, if there was -“nothing doing,” liked a good novel, especially if she had a box of -sweets to eat while she read it. - -“You shall have a box of sweets to-morrow,” Mrs. Bradley told her, “with -or without the novel, as you like.” - -And Dollie thanked her, watching her cut the cake, and, as the rain -lashed against the windows, remarking on the bad weather and cheerfully -hoping that “poor old Jack” wasn’t in those horrid trenches. “I think -war’s a wicked thing, don’t you, Mrs. Bradley?” she added. - -When Dollie talked in this conventionally solicitous tone of Jack, her -mother-in-law could but wish her upstairs again, merely young, merely -the tired and battered refugee. She had not much tenderness for Jack, -that was evident, nor much imaginativeness in regard to the feelings of -Jack’s mother. But she soon passed from the theme of Jack and his -danger. Her tea was finished and she got up and went to the piano, -remarking that there was one thing she _could_ do. “Poor mother used to -always say I was made of music. From the time I was a mere tot I could -pick out anything on the piano.” And placing herself, pressing down the -patent-leather shoe on the loud pedal, she surged into a waltz as -foolish and as conventionally alluring as her own eyes. Her inaccuracy -was equalled only by her facility. Smiling, swaying over the keys with -alternate speed and languor, she addressed her audience with altogether -the easy mastery of a music-hall _artiste_: “It’s a lovely thing--one of -my favourites. I’ll often play, Mrs. Bradley, and cheer us up. There is -nothing like music for that, is there? it speaks so to the heart.” And, -whole-heartedly, indeed, she accompanied the melody by a passionate -humming. - -The piano was Jack’s and it was poor Jack who was made of music. How was -he to bear it, his mother asked herself, as she sat listening. Dollie, -after that initiation, spent many hours at the piano every day,--so many -and such noisy hours, that her mother-in-law, unnoticed, could shut -herself in the little morning-room that overlooked the brick wall at the -front of the house and had the morning sun. - -It was difficult to devise other occupations for Dollie. She earnestly -disclaimed any wish to have proper music lessons, and when her -mother-in-law, patiently persistent, arranged for a skilful mistress to -come down twice a week from London, Dollie showed such apathy and -dulness that any hope of developing such musical ability as she -possessed had to be abandoned. She did not like walking, and the sober -pageant of the winter days was a blank book to her. Sewing, she said, -had always given her frightful fidgets; and it was with the strangest -sense of a privilege, a joy, unhoped-for and now thrust upon her, that -Mrs. Bradley sat alone working at the little garments that meant all her -future and all Jack’s. The baby seemed already more hers than Dollie’s. - -Sometimes, on a warm afternoon, Dollie, wrapped in her fur cloak, would -emerge for a little while and watch her mother-in-law at work in her -borders. The sight amused and surprised but hardly interested her, and -she soon went tottering back to the house on the preposterous heels that -Mrs. Bradley had, as yet, found no means of tactfully banishing. And -sometimes, when the piano again resounded, Mrs. Bradley would leave her -borders and retreat to the hazel-copse, where, as she sat on the stone -bench, she could hear, through the soft sound of the running water, -hardly more than the distant beat and hum of Dollie’s waltzes; and -where, with more and more the sense of escape and safety, she could find -a refuge from the sight and sound and scent of Dollie,--the thick, -sweet, penetrating scent that was always to be indelibly associated in -her mind with this winter of foreboding, of hope, and of growing -hopelessness. - -In her letters to Jack, she found herself, involuntarily at first, and -then deliberately, altering, suppressing, even falsifying. While Dollie -had been in bed, when so much hope had been possible of a creature so -unrevealed, she had written very tenderly, and she continued, now, to -write tenderly, and it was not false to do that; she could feel no -hardness or antagonism against poor Dollie. But she continued to write -hopefully, as every day hope grew less. - -Jack, himself, did not say much of Dollie, though there was always the -affectionate message and the affectionate inquiry. But what was -difficult to deal with were the hints of his anxiety and fear that stole -among the terse, cheerful descriptions of his precarious days. What was -she doing with herself? How were she and Dollie getting on? Did Dollie -care about any of the things she cared about? - -She told him that they got on excellently well, that Dollie spent a good -deal of time at the piano, and that when they went out to tea people -were perfectly nice and understanding. She knew, indeed, that she could -depend on her friends to be that. They accepted Dollie on the terms she -asked for her. From friends so near as Mrs. Crawley and Lady Wrexham -she had not concealed the fact that Dollie was a misfortune; but if -others thought so they were not to show it. She still hoped, by degrees, -to make Dollie a figure easier to deal with at such neighbourly -gatherings. She had abandoned any hope that Dollie would grow; anything -so feeble and so foolish could not grow; there was no other girl under -the little dancer; she was simply no more and no less than she showed -herself to be; but, at this later stage of their relationship, Mrs. -Bradley essayed, now and then, a deliberate if kindly severity,--as to -heels, as to scents, as to touches of rouge. - -“Oh, but I’m as careful, just as careful, Mrs. Bradley!” Dollie -protested. “I can’t walk in lower heels. They hurt my instep. I’ve a -very high instep and it needs support.” She was genuinely amazed that -any one could dislike her scent and that any one could think the rouge -unbecoming. She seemed to acquiesce, but the acquiescence was followed -by moods of mournfulness and even by tears. There was no capacity in her -for temper or rebellion, and she was all unconscious of giving a warning -as she sobbed, “It’s nothing--really nothing, Mrs. Bradley. I’m sure you -mean to be kind. Only--it’s rather quiet and lonely here. I’ve always -been used to so many people,--to having everything so bright and jolly.” - -She was not rapacious; she was not dissolute; she could be kept -respectable and even contented if she were not made too aware of the -contrast between her past existence and her present lot. With an air -only of pensive pride she would sometimes point out to Mrs. Bradley, in -the pages of those same illustrated weeklies with which her -mother-in-law associated her, the face of some former companion. One of -these young ladies had recently married the son of a peer. “She _is_ in -luck, Floss,” said Dollie. “We always thought it would come to that. -He’s been gone on her for ages, but his people were horrid.” - -Mrs. Bradley felt that, at all events, Dollie had no ground for thinking -her “horrid”; yet she imagined that there lay drowsing at the back of -her mind a plaintive little sense of being caught and imprisoned. Floss -had stepped, triumphant, from the footlights to the registrar’s office, -and apparently had succeeded in uniting the radiance of her past and -present status. No, Dollie could be kept respectable and contented only -if the pressure were of the lightest. She could not change, she could -only shift; and although Mrs. Bradley felt that for herself, her life -behind her, her story told, she could manage to put up with a merely -shifted Dollie, she could not see how Jack was to manage it. What was -Jack to do with her? was the thought that pressed with a growing weight -on her heart. She could never be of Jack’s life; yet here she was, in -it, planted there by his own generous yet inevitable act, and by -hers,--in its very centre, and not to be evaded or forgotten. - -And the contrast between what Jack’s life might have been and what it -now must be was made more poignantly apparent to her when Frances Graham -came down to stay from a Saturday to Monday; Frances in her black, tired -and thin from Red-Cross work in London; bereaved in more, her old friend -knew, than dear Toppie’s death; yet with her leisurely, unstressed -cheerfulness almost unaltered, the lightness that went with so much -tenderness, the drollery that went with so much depth. Dearest, most -charming of girls--but for Jack’s wretched stumble into “fairyland” last -summer, destined obviously to be his wife,--could any presence have -shown more disastrously, in its contrast with poor Dollie, how Jack had -done for himself? She watched the two together that evening, Frances -with her thick crinkled hair and clearly curved brow and her merry, -steady eyes, leaning, elbow on knee, to talk and listen to Dollie; and -Dollie, poor Dollie, flushed, touched with an unbecoming sulkiness, -aware, swiftly and unerringly, of a rival type. Frances was of the type -that young men married when they did not “do for themselves.” There was -now no gulf of age or habit to veil from Dollie her disadvantage. She -answered shortly, with now and then a dry, ironic little laugh; and, -getting up at last, she went to the piano and loudly played. - -“He couldn’t have done differently. It was the only thing he could do,” -Frances said that night before her bedroom fire. She did not hide her -recognition of Jack’s plight, but she was staunch. - -“I wouldn’t have had him do differently. But it will ruin his life,” -said the mother. “If he comes back it will ruin his life.” - -“No, no,” said Frances, looking at the flames. “Why should it? A man -doesn’t depend on his marriage like that. He has his career.” - -“Yes. He has his career. A career isn’t a life.” - -“Isn’t it?” The girl gazed down. “But it’s what so many people have to -put up with. And so many haven’t even a career.” Something came into her -voice and she turned from it quickly. “He’s crippled, in a sense, of -course. But you are here. He will have you to come back to always.” - -“I shall soon be old, dear, and she will always be here. That’s -inevitable. Some day I shall have to leave her to Jack to bear with -alone.” - -“She may become more of a companion.” - -“No; no, she won’t.” The bitterness of the mother’s heart expressed -itself in the dry, light utterance. It was a comfort to express -bitterness, for once, to somebody. - -“She is a harmless little thing,” Frances offered after a moment. - -“Harmless?” Mrs. Bradley turned it over drily and lightly. “I can’t feel -her that. I feel her blameless if you like. And it will be easy to keep -her contented. That is really the best that one can say of poor Dollie. -And then there will be the child. I am pinning all my hopes to the -child, Frances.” - -Frances understood that. - -Dollie, as the winter wore on, kept remarkably well. She had felt it the -proper thing to allude to Jack and his danger; and so, now, she more and -more frequently felt it the proper thing to allude, humorously if with a -touch of melancholy, to “baby.” Her main interest in baby, Mrs. Bradley -felt, was an alarmed one. She was a good deal frightened, poor little -soul, and in need of constant reassurances; and it was when one need -only pet and pity Dollie that she was easier to deal with. Mrs. Bradley -tried to interest her in plans for the baby; what it should be named, -and how its hair should be done if it were a little girl,--for only on -this assumption could Dollie’s interest be at all vividly roused; and -Mrs. Bradley more than ever hoped for a boy when she found Dollie’s -idle yet stubborn thoughts fixed on the name of Gloria. - -She was able to evade discussion of this point, and when the baby came, -fortunately and robustly, into the world on a fine March morning, she -could feel it as a minor but very real cause for thanksgiving that -Dollie need now never know what she thought of Gloria as a name. The -baby was a boy, and now that he was here Dollie seemed as well pleased -that he should be a commonplace Jack, and that there should be no -question of tying his hair with cockades of ribbon over each ear. -Smiling and rosy and languid, she lay in her charming room, not at all -more maternal--though she showed a bland satisfaction in her child and -noted that his eyes were just like Jack’s--yet subtly more wifely. Baby, -she no doubt felt, with the dim instinct that did duty for thought with -her, placed and rooted her and gave her final rights. She referred now -to Jack with the pensive but open affection of their shared complacency, -and made her mother-in-law think, as she lay there, of a soft and sleepy -and tenacious creeper, fixing tentacle after tentacle in the walls of -Jack’s house of life. - -If only one could feel that she had furnished it with a treasure! -Gravely, with a sad fondness, the grandmother studied the little face, -so unfamiliar, for signs of Jack. She was a helplessly clear-sighted -woman, and remembrance was poignantly vivid in her of Jack’s face at a -week old. Already she loved the baby since its eyes, indubitably, were -his; but she could find no other trace of him. It was not a Bradley -baby; and in the dreamy, foreboding flickers of individuality that pass -uncannily across an infant’s features, her melancholy and steady -discernment could see only the Watson ancestry. - -She was to do all she could for the baby; to save him, so far as might -be, from his Watson ancestry and to keep him, so far as might be, Jack’s -and hers. That was to be her task. But with all the moulding that could, -mercifully, be applied from the very beginning, she could not bring -herself to believe that this was ever to be a very significant human -being. - -She sent Jack his wire: “A son. Dollie doing splendidly.” And she had -his answer: “Best thanks. Love to Dollie.” It was curious, indeed, this -strange new fact they had now, always, to deal with; this light little -“Dollie” that must be passed between them. The baby might have made Jack -happy, but it had not solved the problem of his future. - - -III - -A week later the telegram was brought to her telling her that he had -been killed in action. - -It was a beautiful spring day, just such a day as that on which she and -Jack had first seen Dorrington, and she had been working in the garden. -When she had read, she turned and walked down the path that led to the -hazel-copse. She hardly knew what had happened to her; there was only an -instinct for flight, concealment, secrecy; but, as she walked, there -rose in her, without sound, as if in a nightmare, the terrible cry of -her loneliness. The dark wet earth that covered him seemed heaped upon -her heart. - -The hazel-copse was tasselled thickly with golden-green, and as she -entered it she saw that the hepaticas were in flower. They seemed to -shine with their own celestial whiteness, set in their melancholy green -among the fallen leaves. She had never seen them look so beautiful. - -She followed the path, looking down at them, and she seemed to feel -Jack’s little hand in hers and to see, at her side, his nut-brown head. -It had been on just such a morning. She came to the stone bench; but the -impulse that had led her here was altered. She did not sink down and -cover her face, but stood looking around her at the flowers, the -telegram still open in her hand; and slowly, with stealing calm, the -sense of sanctuary fell about her. - -She had lost him, and with him went all her life. He was dead, his youth -and strength and beauty. Yet what was this strange up-welling of relief, -deep, deep relief, for Jack; this gladness, poignant and celestial, like -that of the hepaticas? He was dead and the dark earth covered him; yet -he was here, with her, safe in his youth and strength and beauty, -forever. He had died the glorious death, and no future, tangled, -perplexed, fretful with its foolish burden, lay before him. There was no -loss for Jack; no fading, no waste. The burden was for her and he was -free. - -Later when pain should have dissolved thought her agony would come to -her unalleviated; but this hour was hers and his. She heard the river -and the soft whisperings of spring. A bird dropped lightly unafraid from -branch to branch of a tree near by. From the woods came the rapid -insistent tapping of a woodpecker; and as in so many springs she seemed -to hear Jack say, “Hark, mummy,” and his little hand was always held in -hers. And everywhere telling of irreparable loss, of a possession -unalterable, the tragic, the celestial hepaticas. - -She sat down on the stone bench now and closed her eyes for a little -while so holding them more closely--Jack and the hepaticas--together. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -DAFFODILS - - -I - -THOUGH he knew that he was going to die, Marmaduke Follett as he lay in -the hospital on the French coast had never in his life been so happy. -Until these last days he had not been able to feel it in its -completeness. Of the great engagement where he had fallen he remembered -only the overwhelming uproar, the blood and mud; and after that, -torments, apathies, dim awakenings to the smell of ether and relapses to -acquiescent sleep. Now the last operation had failed--or rather, he had -failed to recover from it--and there was no more hope for him; but he -hardly suffered and his thoughts were emerging into a world of -cleanliness, kindness, and repose. - -The hospital before the war had been a big hotel, and his was one of the -bedrooms on the second floor, its windows crossed by two broad blue -bands of sea and sky. As an officer he had a room to himself. The men -were in the wards downstairs. - -One of his nurses--both were pleasant girls but this was the one who -with a wing of black hair curving under her cap reminded him of his -cousin Victoria--had put a glass of daffodils beside his bed, not -garden daffodils, but the wild ones that grow in woods; and if she made -him think of Victoria how much more they made him think of the woods in -spring at Channerley! - -He was dying after a gallant deed. It was a fitting death for a Follett -and so little in his life had been at all fitted to that initial -privilege: it was only in the manner of his death that his life matched -at all those thoughts of Victoria and Channerley. - -He did not remember much of the manner; it still remained cloaked in the -overwhelming uproar; but as he lay there he seemed to read in the -columns of the London papers what all the Folletts were so soon to -read--because of him:-- - -"His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to award the Victoria -Cross to the under-mentioned officers, non-commissioned officers and -men:-- - -"Sec. Lt. Marmaduke Everard Follett. For most conspicuous bravery. - -“He was directed with 50 men to drive the enemy from their trench and -under intense shell-and machine-gun fire he personally led three -separate parties of bombers against a captured 325 yards of trench; -attacking the machine gun, shooting the firer with his revolver, and -destroying gun and _personnel_ with bombs. This very brave act saved -many lives and ensured the success of the attack. In carrying one of his -men back to safety Sec. Lt. Follett was mortally wounded.” - -He felt himself smile, as he soberly spaced it out, to remember that the -youths at the office used to call him Marmalade. It was curious that he -most felt his present and his present transfigured self, when he thought -of Cauldwell’s office, where so many years of his past had been spent. -When he thought of that, of the jocund youths, of the weary hours and -wasted years, it was to feel himself transfigured; when he thought of -the Folletts and of Channerley, to feel that he matched them; to feel at -last as if he had come home. What to the grimy, everyday world counted -as transfiguration, counted as the normal, the expected, to the world of -Channerley. - -He wondered, lying there and looking out past the daffodils, where -Victoria was; he had heard that she was nursing, too, somewhere in -France; and again, as he had smiled over the contrast of “Sec. Lt. -Marmaduke Everard Follett” and the “Marmalade” of Cauldwell’s office, he -smiled in thinking of the difference between Victoria and the nice young -nurse who, for all her resembling curve of hair, was also second-rate. -It would have been very wonderful to have been nursed by Victoria, and -yet his thought turned from that. There had never been any sweetness, -never even any kindness for him, in Victoria’s clear young gaze; when it -came to nursing, he could imagine her being kind to a Tommy, but not to -him, the dull, submerged cousin; and the nice though second-rate nurse -was very kind. He would rather die under her eyes than under Victoria’s. - -And he would rather think of Victoria as he had last seen her at the big -London dance to which, most unexpectedly, he had found himself asked -last spring--the spring before the war. He had decided, as with nervous -fingers he tied his white cravat,--how rarely disturbed had been that -neat sheaf lying in his upper drawer!--that he must have been confused -with some other Follett, for he was so seldom asked anywhere, where he -would be likely to meet Victoria. However, it was a delight to see her -in her snowy dress, her beautiful hair bound with silver, and to feel, -as he watched her dancing, that she belonged, in a sense, to him; for -he, too, was a Follett. - -How much more did she belong to him now! And not only Victoria, but all -of them, these Folletts of his and the Folletts of past generations; and -Channerley, centre of all his aching, wistful memories. It had been for -him, always, part of the very structure of his nature, that beautiful -old house where he had spent his boyhood. Perhaps it was because he had -been turned out of the nest so early that he never ceased to miss it. -His thought, like a maimed fledgling, had fluttered round and round it, -longing, exiled, helpless. - -If, now, he could have survived, his eldest brother, he felt sure, must -have asked him oftener to stay at Channerley. It still gave him a pang, -or, rather, the memory of many pangs, to recall that Robert had not -asked him for two years, and had seemed to forget all about him after -that. They had all seemed to forget about him,--that was the trouble of -it,--and almost from the very beginning: Robert, who had Channerley; -Austin, who had gone into the army and was now in Mesopotamia; Griselda, -married so splendidly up in her northern estate; and Amy, the artistic -bachelor-girl of the family, whom he associated with irony and -cigarette-smoke and prolonged absences in Paris. Even cheerful Sylvia, -of South Kensington, with her many babies and K.C. husband, whom he -always thought of, for all her well-being, as very nearly as submerged -as himself,--even Sylvia saw little of him and asked him only to family -dinners,--Mr. Shillington’s family, not hers,--at depressingly punctual -intervals. - -But Sylvia, the one nearest him in years, was the one who had forgotten -least, and she had, after her fashion, done her best for him. Confused -at study, clumsy at games, shy and tongue-tied, he had not in any way -distinguished himself at a rather second-rate public school; and to -distinguish himself had been the only hope for him. The Folletts had -never had any money to spare, and Eton and Oxford for Robert and -Sandhurst for Austin fulfilled a tradition that became detached and -terse where younger sons who could not distinguish themselves were -concerned. Still, he had always felt that, had his father lived, -something better would have been found for him than to be bundled, -through the instrumentality of Mr. Shillington, into a solicitor’s -office. There he had been bundled, and there he had stuck for all these -years, as clumsy, as confused as ever; a pallid, insignificant little -fellow (oh, he had no illusions about himself!) with the yellow hair and -small yellow moustache which, together with his name, had earned for him -his sobriquet. - -They had not disliked him, those direfully facetious companions of his. -_Noblesse oblige_ was an integral part of his conception of himself, -however little they might be aware of his unvarying courtesy towards -them as its exercise. He suspected that they thought of him as merely -inoffensive and rather piteous; but shyness might give that impression; -they could not guess at the quiet aversion that it covered. He was aware -sometimes, suddenly, that in the aloofness and contemplative disdain of -his pale sidelong glance at them, he most felt himself a Follett. If -his mind, for most practical purposes, was slow and clumsy, it was sharp -and swift in its perceptions. He judged the young men in Cauldwell’s -office as a Follett must judge them. In the accurate applying of that -standard he was as instinctively gifted as any of his race; and if he -knew, from his first look at her, that the nice young nurse was -second-rate, how coldly and calmly, all these years, he had known that -the young men who called him Marmalade were third-rate. And yet they -none of them disliked him, and he wondered whether it was because, when -he most felt disdain, he most looked merely timid, or because they -recognized in him, all dimly as it might be, the first-rateness that was -his inherently and inalienably. - -Just as the third-rate young men might recognize the first-rate but -dimly, he was aware that to the world the Folletts, too, were not -important. It was not one of the names, in spite of centuries of local -lustre, to conjure with; and he liked it all the better because of that. -They had never, it was true, distinguished themselves; but they were -people of distinction, and that was, to his quiet, reflective, -savouring, an even higher state. He sometimes wondered if, in any of -them, the centring of family consciousness was as intense as in himself. -If they were aloof about third-rate people, it was not because they were -really very conscious about themselves. They took themselves for -granted, as they took Channerley and the family history; and only Amy -was aware that some of the family portraits were good. - -The history--it was not of course accurate to call it that, yet it -seemed more spacious and significant than mere annals--pored over -during long evenings, in faded parchments, deeds, and letters, was known -in every least detail to him. How the Folletts had begun, very soberly -but very decorously, in the fifteenth century, and how they had gone on: -rooting more deeply into their pleasant woodlands and meadows; -flowering, down the centuries, now in a type of grace--that charming -Antonia who had married so well at James the First’s court; and of -gallantry--a Follett had fallen at Naseby, and a Follett had fought at -Waterloo; or of good-humoured efficiency, as in the eighteenth-century -judge and the nineteenth-century bishop. And he, who was neither -graceful nor gallant nor good-humoured (sour and sad he felt himself), -never could resist the warming, revivifying influence of these -recognitions, stretching himself, sighing, smiling happily before his -Bloomsbury fire on a winter’s evening, as he laid down the thick pile of -yellowed manuscripts to think it all over and feel himself, in spite of -everything, a link with it all. - -Robert had always been very decent about letting him have and keep the -documents for as long as he liked. - -It was strange to think that he was never to see his Bloomsbury lodgings -again, and stranger, really, that a certain tinge of regret was in the -thought; for how, for years, he had hated them, place of exile, of -relegation, as he had always felt them! Yet he had come to be fond of -his little sitting-room, just because, to his eye, with its mingled -comfort and austerity, it was so significant of exile. If a Follett -couldn’t have what he wanted, that was all he would have--his rack of -pipes, his shelves of books, his little collection of mostly marginless -mezzotints ranged along the dark, green walls. The room was a refuge and -did not pretend to be an achievement, and in that very fact might, to an -eye as sharp as his for such significance, suggest the tastes that it -relinquished. He had indeed all the tastes and none of the satisfactions -of Channerley. - -There it was; he had come back to it again, as, indeed, he had, in -spirit, never left it--never for a moment. He felt himself, lying there -in the hospital on the French coast, with the soft spring sea lapping -upon the beach under his window--he felt himself drop, drop, softly, -sweetly, deeply, back to his childhood. From his high nursery-window he -saw the dewy tree-tops,--the old hawthorn that grew so near the house, -and the old mulberry,--and the rooks wheeling on a spring sky so many -years ago. The dogs, at that early hour, just released, might be racing -over the lawns: idle, jovial Peter, the spaniel, and Jack, the plucky, -hot-tempered little Dandy-Dinmont. - -Below the lawns were the high grey garden walls, and above, rising a -little from the flagged rose-garden, were the woods where the daffodils -grew, daffodils like those beside him now, tall and small, their pale, -bright pennons set among warrior spears of green. Little bands of them -ran out upon the lawn from under the great trees, and one saw their gold -glimmering far, far along the woodlands. Oh, the beauty of it, and the -stillness; the age and youth; the smile and the security! How he had -always loved it, shambling about the woods and gardens; creeping -rather--he always saw himself as creeping somehow--about the dear, gay, -faded house! Always such an awkward, insignificant little boy; even his -dear old Nanna had felt dissatisfied with his appearance, and he had -always known it, when she sent him down with the others to the -drawing-room; and his mother, she had made it very apparent, had found -him only that. - -He shrank from the thought of his mother; perhaps it was because of her, -of her vexed and averted eyes, her silken rustle of indifference as she -passed him by, that he saw himself as creeping anywhere where she might -come. He only remembered her in glimpses: languidly and ironically -smiling at her tea-table (Amy had her smile), the artificial tone of her -voice had even then struck his boyish ear; reading on a summer -afternoon, with bored brows and dissatisfied lips, as she lay on a -garden chair in the shade of the mulberry tree; querulously arguing with -his father, who, good-humoured and very indifferent, strolled about the -hall in his pink coat on a winter morning, waiting for the horses to be -brought round; his mother’s yellow braids shining under her neatly -tilted riding-hat, her booted foot held to the blaze of the great -log-fire. A hard, selfish, sentimental woman; and--wasn’t it really the -only word for what he felt in her?--just a little shoddy. He -distinguished it from the second-rate nicely: it was a more personal -matter; for his mother, though certainly not a Follett, was of good -stock; he knew, of course, all about her stock. It always grieved him to -think that it was from her he had his yellow hair and the pale grey of -his eyes; his stature, too, for she had been a small woman; all the -other Folletts were tall; but she had given him nothing more: not a -trace of her beauty was his, and he was glad of it. - -It was curious, since he had really had so little to do with him, as -little, almost, as with his mother, how blissfully his sense of his -father’s presence pervaded his childish memories. He was so kind. The -kindest thing he remembered at Channerley, except his dear old Nanna and -Peter the spaniel. It used to give him a thrill of purest joy when, -meeting him, his father, his hands clasped behind his back after his -strolling wont, would stop and bend amused and affectionate eyes upon -him; rather the eyes, to be sure, that he bent upon his dogs; but -Marmaduke always felt of him that he looked upon his children, and upon -himself, too, as parts of the pack; and it was delightful to be one of -the pack, with him. - -“Well, old fellow, and how goes the world with you to-day?” his father -would say. - -And after that question the world would go in sunshine. - -He had always believed that, had his father lived, he would never have -been so forgotten; just as he had always believed that his father would -never have allowed one of his pack to be bundled into the solicitor’s -office. For that he had to thank, he felt sure, not only Sylvia’s -negative solicitude, but his mother’s active indifference. Between them -both they had done it to him. - -And he never felt so to the full his dispossession as in thinking of -Robert. He had always intensely feared and admired Robert. He did not -know what he feared, for Robert was never unkind. But Robert was -everything that he was not: tall and gay and competent, and possessing -everything needful, from the very beginning, for the perfect fulfilment -of his type. The difference between them had been far more than the ten -years that had made of Robert a man when he was still only a little boy. -There had been, after all, a time when they had been a very big and a -very little boy together, with Austin in between; yet the link had -seemed always to break down after Austin. Robert, in this retrospect, -had always the air of strolling away from him--for Robert, too, was a -stroller. Not that he himself had had the air of pursuit; he had never, -he felt sure, from the earliest age, lacked tact; tact and reticence and -self-effacement had been bred into him. But his relationship with Robert -had seemed always to consist in standing there, hiding ruefulness, and -gazing at Robert’s strolling back. - -The difference from Austin had perhaps been as great, but it had never -hurt so much, for Austin, though with his share of the Follett charm, -had never had the charm of Robert. A clear-voiced and clear-eyed, -masterful boy, Austin’s main contact with others was in doing things -with them, and that sort of contact did not mean congeniality. Austin -had made use of him; had let him hold his ferrets and field for him at -cricket; and a person whom you found useful did not, for the time being, -bore you. - -But he had bored Robert always--that was apparent; and beautiful -Griselda, who was older than either of them, and Amy, who was younger. -Griselda had gazed rather sadly over his head; and Amy had smiled and -teased him so that he had seldom ventured on a remark in her presence. -Even fat little Sylvia, the baby, had always preferred any of the others -to him as she grew up; had only not been bored because, while she was -good-humoured, she was also rather dull. And at the bottom of his -heart, rueful always, sore, and still patiently surprised, he knew that, -while he found them all a little brutal, he could not admire them the -less because of it. It was part of the Follett inheritance to be able to -be brutal, unconsciously, and therefore with no loss of bloom. - -And now, at last, he was not to bore them any longer; at last, he was -not to be forgotten. How could he not be happy,--it brought back every -blissful thrill of boyhood, his father’s smile, the daffodil woods in -spring, heightened to ecstasy,--when he had at last made of himself one -of the Folletts who were remembered? He would have his place in the -history beside the Follett who fell at Naseby. No family but is glad of -a V.C. in its annals. They could no longer stroll away. They would be -proud of him; he had done something for all the Folletts forever. - - -II - -The nice young nurse came in. She closed the door gently, and, with her -smile, calm before accustomed death, and always, as it were, a little -proud of him,--that was because they were both English,--she took his -wrist and felt his pulse, holding her watch in the other hand, and asked -him, presently, how he felt. Only after that did she say, contemplating -him for a moment,--Marmaduke wondered how many hours--or was it perhaps -days?--she was giving him to live,-- - -“A gentleman has come to see you. You may see him if you like. But I’ve -told him that he is only to stay for half an hour.” - -The blood flowed up to Marmaduke’s forehead. He felt it beating hard in -his neck and behind his ears, and his heart thumped down there under the -neatly drawn bed-clothes. - -“A gentleman? What’s his name?” - -Was it Robert? - -“Here is his card,” said the nurse. - -She drew it from her pocket and gave it to him. It couldn’t have been -Robert, of course. Robert would only have had to come up. Yet he was -dizzy with the disappointment. It was as if he saw Robert strolling away -for the last time. He would never see Robert again. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe was the name. The address was a London club that -Marmaduke placed at once as second-rate, and “The Beeches, Arlington -Road,” in a London suburb. On the card was written in a neat scholarly -hand: “May I see you? We are friends.” - -It was difficult for a moment to feel anything but the receding tide of -his hope. The next thing that came was a sense of dislike for Mr. Guy -Thorpe and for the words that he had written. Friends? By what right -since he did not know his name? - -“Is he a soldier?” he asked. “How did he come? I don’t know him.” - -“You needn’t see him unless you want to,” said the nurse. “No; he’s not -a soldier. An elderly man. He’s driving a motor for the French Wounded -Emergency Fund, and came on from the Alliance because he heard that you -were here. Perhaps he’s some old family friend. He spoke as if he were.” - -Marmaduke smiled a little. “That’s hardly likely. But I’ll see him, yes; -since he came for that.” - -When she had gone, he lay looking again at the blue bands across the -window. A flock of sea-gulls flew past--proud, swift, and leisurely, -glittering in the sun. They seemed to embody the splendour and -exultation of his thoughts, and, when they had disappeared, he was -sorry, almost desolate. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe. He took up the card again in his feeble hand and looked -at it. And now, dimly, it seemed to remind him of something. - -Steps approached along the passage, the nurse’s light footfall and the -heavier, careful tread of a man. An oddly polite, almost a deprecating -tread. He had gone about a great many hospitals and was cautious not to -disturb wounded men. Yet Marmaduke felt again that he did not like Mr. -Guy Thorpe, and, as they came in, he was conscious of feeling a little -frightened. - -There was nothing to frighten one in Mr. Thorpe’s appearance. He was a -tall, thin, ageing man, travel-worn, in civilian clothes, with a dingy -Red-Cross badge on the sleeve of his waterproof overcoat. Baldish and -apparently near-sighted, he seemed to blink towards the bed, and, as if -with motoring in the wind, his eyelids were moist and reddened. He sat -down, murmuring some words of thanks to the nurse. - -A very insignificant man, for all his height and his big forehead. -Altogether of The Beeches, Arlington Road. Had he turned grey, he might -have looked less shabby, but dark thin locks still clustered above his -high crown and behind his long-lobed ears. His eyes were dark, his -moustache drooped, and he had a small, straight nose. Marmaduke saw that -he was the sort of man who, in youth, might have been considered very -handsome. He looked like a seedy poet and some sort of minor civil -servant mingled, the civil servant having got the better of the poet. -Marmaduke also imagined that he would have a large family and a harassed -but ambitious wife, with a genteel accent--a wife a little below -himself. His tie was of a dull red silk. Marmaduke did not like him. - -Mr. Thorpe glanced round, as if cautiously, to see if the nurse had -closed the door, and then, it was really as if more cautiously still, -looked at Marmaduke, slightly moving back his chair. - -“I’m very grateful to you, very grateful indeed,” he said in a low -voice, “for seeing me.” - -“You’ve come a long way,” said Marmaduke. - -“Yes. A long way. I had heard of your being here. I hoped to get here. I -felt that I must see you. We are all proud of you; more proud than I can -say.” - -He looked down now at the motoring-cap he held, and Marmaduke became -aware that the reddened eyes were still more suffused and that the mouth -under the drooping moustache twitched and trembled. He could think of -nothing to say, except to murmur something about being very glad--though -he didn’t want to say that; and he supposed, to account for Mr. Thorpe’s -emotion, that he must be a moving sight, lying there, wasted, bandaged, -and dying. - -“You don’t remember my name, I suppose,” said Mr. Thorpe after a moment, -in which he frankly got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. - -“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said Marmaduke very politely. He was glad to -say this. It was the sort of thing he did want to say. - -“Yet I know yours very, very well,” said Mr. Thorpe, with a curious -watery smile. “I lived at Channerley once. I was tutor there for some -time--to Robert, your brother, and Griselda. Yes,” Mr. Thorpe nodded, “I -know the Folletts well; and Channerley, the dear old place.” - -Now the dim something in memory pressed forward, almost with a physical -advance, and revealed itself as sundry words scratched on the schoolroom -window-panes and sundry succinct drawings in battered old Greek and -Latin grammars. Robert had always been very clever at drawing, catching -with equal facility and accuracy the swiftness of a galloping horse and -the absurdities of a human profile. What returned to Marmaduke now, and -as clearly as if he had the fly-leaf before him, was a tiny thumb-nail -sketch of such a galloping horse unseating a lank, crouching figure, of -whom the main indications were the angles of acute uncertainty taken by -the knees and elbows; and a more elaborate portrait, dashed and dotted -as if with a ruthless boyish grin--such an erect and melancholy head it -was, so dark the tossed-back locks, so classical the nose and -unclassical the moustache, and a brooding eye indicated in a triangular -sweep of shadow. Beneath was written in Robert’s clear, boyish hand, -“Mr. Guy Thorpe, Poet, Philosopher, and Friend. Vale.” Even the date -flashed before him, 1880; and with it--strange, inappropriate -association--the daffodils running out upon the lawn, as no doubt he had -seen them as he leaned from the schoolroom window, with the Greek -grammar under his elbow on the sill. - -So that was it. Mr. Guy Thorpe, placed, explained, disposed of--poor -dear! He felt suddenly quite kindly towards him, quite touched by his -act of loyalty to the old allegiance in coming; and flattered, -too,--yes, even by Mr. Thorpe,--that he should be recognized as a -Follett who had done something for the name; and smiling very -benevolently upon him, he said:-- - -“Oh, of course; I remember perfectly now--your name, and drawings of you -in old schoolbooks, you know. All tutors and governesses get those -tributes from their pupils, don’t they? But I myself couldn’t remember, -could I? for it was before I was born that you were at Channerley.” - -There was a moment of silence after this, and in it Marmaduke felt that -Mr. Thorpe did not like being so placed. He had no doubt imagined that -there would be less ambiguous tributes, and that his old pupils would -have talked of him to the younger generation. - -And something of this chagrin certainly came out in his next words as, -nodding and looking round at the daffodils, he said:-- - -"Yes, yes. Quite true. No, of course you couldn’t yourself remember. I -was more though, I think I may fairly say, than the usual tutor or -governess. I came, rather, at Sir Robert’s instance."--Sir Robert was -Marmaduke’s father.--“We had met, made friends, at Oxford; his former -tutor there was an uncle of mine, and Sir Robert, in my undergraduate -days, used to visit him sometimes. He was very keen on getting me to -come. Young Robert wanted something of a firm hand. I was the friend -rather than the mere man of books in the family.” - -"Poet, Philosopher and Friend"--Marmaduke had it almost on his lips, and -almost with a laugh, his benevolence deepened for poor Mr. Thorpe, so -self-revealed, so entirely Robert’s portrait of him. Amusing to think -that even the quite immature first-rate can so relegate the third. But -perhaps it was a little unfair to call poor Mr. Thorpe third. The -Folletts would not be likely to choose a third-rate man for a tutor; -second was kinder, and truer. He had, obviously, come down in the world. - -“I see. It’s natural I never heard, though: there’s such a chasm between -the elders and the youngers in a big family, isn’t there?” he said. -“Griselda is twelve years older than I am, and Robert ten, you remember. -She was married by the time I began my Greek. You never came back to -Channerley, did you? I hope things have gone well with you since those -days?” - -He questioned, wanting to be very kind; wanting to give something of the -genial impression of his father smiling, with his “And how goes the -world with you to-day?” But he saw that, while Mr. Thorpe’s evident -emotion deepened, it was with a sense of present grief as well as of -retrospective pathos. - -“No; I never came,--that is--. No; I passed by: I never came to stay. I -went abroad; I travelled, with a pupil, for some years before my -marriage.” Grief and confusion were oddly mingled in his drooping face. -“And after that--life had changed too much. My dear old friend Sir -Robert had died. I could not have faced it all. No, no; when some -chapters are read, it is better to close the book; better to close the -book. But I have never forgotten Channerley, nor the Folletts of -Channerley; that will always remain for me the golden page; the page,” -said Mr. Thorpe, glancing round again at the daffodils, “of friendship, -of youth, of daffodils in springtime. I saw you there,” he added -suddenly, “once, when you were a very little lad. I saw you. I was -passing by; bicycling; no time to stop. You remember the high road -skirts the woods to the north. I came and looked over the wall; and -there you were--in your holland pinafore and white socks--digging up the -daffodils and putting them into your little red-and-yellow cart. A -beautiful spring morning. The woods full of sunshine. You wouldn’t -remember.” - -But he did remember--perfectly. Not having been seen; but the day; the -woods; the daffodils. He had dug them up to plant in his own little -garden, down below. He had always been stupid with his garden; had -always failed where the other succeeded. And he had wanted to be sure of -daffodils. And they had all laughed at him for wanting the wild -daffodils like that for himself, and for going to get them in the wood. -And why had Mr. Thorpe looked over the wall and not come in? He hated to -think that he had been watched on that spring morning--hated it. And, -curiously, that sense of fear with which he had heard the approaching -footsteps returned to him. It frightened him that Mr. Thorpe had watched -him over the wall. - -His distaste and shrinking were perhaps apparent in his face, for it was -with a change of tone and hastiness of utterance, as though hurrying -away from something, that Mr. Thorpe went on:-- - -“You see,--it’s been my romance, always, Channerley--and all of you. -I’ve always followed your lives--always--from a distance--known what you -were up to. I’ve made excuses to myself--in the days when I used to go a -good deal about the country--to pass by Channerley and just have a -glimpse of you. And when I heard that you had done this noble -deed,--when I heard what you had done for England, for Channerley, for -us all,--I felt I had to come and see you. You must forgive me if I seem -a mere intruder. I can’t seem that to myself. I’ve cared too much. And -what I came for, really, was to thank you,--to thank you, my dear -boy,--and to tell you that because of you, life must be nobler, always, -for all of us.” - -His words had effaced the silly, groping fear. It was indeed, since his -colonel’s visit, the first congratulation he had had from the outer -world. The nurses, of course, had congratulated him, and the surgeons; -but no one who knew him outside; the kindly telegrams from Robert and -Sylvia did not count as congratulations. And in a way poor Mr. Thorpe -did know him, and though it was only from him, it had its sweetness. He -felt himself flush as he answered, “That’s very kind of you.” - -“Oh, no!” said Mr. Thorpe, shaking his head and swinging his -foot--Marmaduke knew that from the queer movement of his body as he sat -with very tightly folded arms. “Not kind! That’s not the word--from us -to you! Not the word at all!” - -“I’m very happy, as you may imagine,” said Marmaduke. And he was happy -again, and glad to share his happiness with poor Mr. Thorpe. “It makes -everything worth while, doesn’t it, to have brought it off at all?” - -“Everything, everything--it would; it would, to you. So heroes feel,” -said Mr. Thorpe. “To give your life for England. I know it all--in every -detail. Yes, you are happy in dying that England may live. Brave boy! -Splendid boy!” - -Now he was weeping. He had out his handkerchief and his shoulders -shook. It made Marmaduke want to cry, too, and he wondered confusedly if -the nurse would soon come back. Had not the half hour passed? - -“Really--it’s too good of you. You mustn’t, you know; you mustn’t,” he -murmured, while the word, “boy--boy,” repeated, made tangled images in -his mind, and he saw himself in the white socks and with the little -red-and-yellow cart, and then as he had been the other day, leading his -men, his revolver in his hand and the bullets flying about him. “And I’m -not a boy,” he said; "I’m thirty-four; absurdly old to be only a second -lieutenant. And there are so many of us. Why,"--the thought came -fantastically, but he seized it, because Mr. Thorpe was crying so and he -must seize something,--“we’re as common as daffodils!” - -“Ah! not for me! not for me!” Mr. Thorpe gulped quickly. Something had -given way in him--as if the word “daffodils” had pressed a spring. He -was sobbing aloud, and he had fallen on his knees by the bed and put up -his hand for Marmaduke’s. “I cannot keep it from you! Not at this last -hour! Not when you are leaving me forever!--My son! My brave son! I am -your father, Marmaduke! I am your father, my dear, dear boy!” - - -III - -It was the stillest room. The two calm bands of blue crossed the window. -In the sunlight the gulls came flying back. Marmaduke looked out at -them. Were they the same sea-gulls or another flock? Then quietly he -closed his eyes. Stillness--calm. But something else was rising to him -from them. Darkness; darkness; a darkness worse than death. Oh! death -was sweet compared to this. Compared to this all his life had been -sweet; and something far dearer than life was being taken from him. He -only knew the terrible confusion of his whole nature. - -He opened his eyes again with an instinct of escape. There were the -bands of blue, and, still passing in their multitudes, leaving him -forever, the proud, exultant sea-gulls. The man still knelt beside him. -He heard his own voice come:-- - -“What do you mean?” - -“I never meant to tell you! I never meant to tell you!” a moan answered -him. “But--seeing you lying there!--dying!--my son!--who has given his -life for England!--And how I have longed for you all these years!--My -romance, Marmaduke--How could I be silent? Forgive me! Forgive me, my -boy. Yes, mine. My known children are dear to me, but how far dearer the -unknown son, seen only by stealth, in snatched glimpses! It is true, -Marmaduke, true. We were lovers. She loved me. Do not ask. Do not -question. We were young. She was very beautiful. It was springtime; -daffodils were in the woods. She said that she had never known any one -like me. She said that her life was hollow, meaningless. I opened doors -to her, I read to her. Browning--I read Browning,” he muttered on, “in -the woods; among the daffodils. It was a new life to her--and to me. And -we were swept away. Don’t blame us, Marmaduke. If there was wrong, there -was great beauty--then. Only then; for after, she was cruel--very cruel. -She turned from me; she crushed and tore my heart. Oh!--I have -suffered! But no one knew. No one ever dreamed of it. Only she and I. -My God!--I see her in your hair and eyes!” - -It was true. It was absolutely true. Through his whole being he felt its -inevitability. Everything was clear, with a strange, black, infernal -clearness. His life lay open before him, open from beginning to end: -that beginning of tawdry sentiment and shame--with daffodils; and this -end, with daffodils again, and again with tawdry sentiment and shame. - -He was not a Follett. He had no part in the Folletts. He had no part in -Channerley. He was an interloper, a thief. He was the son of this -wretched man, in whose very grief he could detect the satisfaction--oh, -who more fitted to detect such satisfaction!--of his claim upon a status -above his own. He was all that he had always most despised, a -second-rate, a third-rate little creature; the anxious, civil, shrinking -Marmalade of Cauldwell’s office. Why (as the hideous moments led him on, -point by point, his old lucidity, sharpened to a needle fineness, seemed -to etch the truth in lines of fire upon the blackness), hadn’t he always -been a pitiful little snob? Wasn’t it of the essence of a snob to -over-value the things one hadn’t and to fear the things one was? It -hadn’t been other people, it had been himself, what he really was, of -whom he had always been afraid. He saw himself reduced to the heretofore -unrecognized, yet always operative, element in his own nature--a timid, -watchful humility. - -Oh, Channerley! Channerley! The wail rose in his heart and it filled the -world. Oh, his woods, his daffodils, his father’s smile--gone--lost -forever! Worse than that--smirched, withered, desecrated! - -A hideous gibbering of laughter seemed to rise around him, and pointing -fingers. Amy’s eyes passed with another malice in their mockery; and -Robert would never turn to him now, and Griselda would never look at -him. He saw it all, as they would never see it. He was not one of them, -and they had always felt it; and oh,--above all,--he had always felt it. -And now, quite close it seemed, softly rustling, falsely smiling, moved -his loathsome mother: not only as he remembered her in youth, but in her -elegant middle years, as he had last seen her, with hard eyes and alien -lips and air of brittle, untouched exquisiteness. - -Suddenly fury so mounted in him that he saw himself rising in bed, -rending his dressings, to seize the kneeling man by the throat and -throttle him. He could see his fingers sinking in on either side among -the clustered hair, and hear himself say, “How dare you! How dare you! -You hound! You snivelling, sneaking hound! You look for pity from me, do -you!--and tenderness! Well, take this, this! Everything, everything I am -and have that’s worth being and having, I owe to them. I’ve hated you -and all you mean, always--yes, your fear and your caution and your -admiration and your great high forehead. Oh, I see it! I see it!--it’s -my own! And though I am only that in myself, then take it from me that I -hate myself along with you and curse myself with you!” - -It came to him that he was slowly panting, and that after the fever-fury -an icy chill crept over him. And a slow, cold smile came with it, and he -saw Jephson, the wit of the office, wagging his head and saying, “Little -Marmalade take a man by the throat! Ask me another!” - -No; little Marmalade might win the V.C.; but only when he thought he was -a Follett. Was that what it all came to, really? Something broke and -stopped in his mind. - -He heard his father’s voice. How long ago it had all happened. He had -known for years, hadn’t he, that this was his father? - -“Marmaduke! Mr. Follett! What have I done? Shall I call somebody? Oh, -forgive me!” - -His father was standing now beside him and bending over him. He looked -up at him and shook his head. He did not want any one to come. - -“Oh, what have I done?” the man repeated. - -“I was dying anyway, you know,” he heard himself say. - -What a pitiful face it was, this weary, loosened, futureless old face -above him! What a frightened face! What long years of slow disgarnishing -lay behind it: youth, romance, high hopes, all dropped away. He had come -to-day with their last vestiges, still the sentimental, romancing fool, -self-centred and craving; but nothing of that was left. He was beaten, -at last, down into the very ground. It was a haggard, humiliated, -frightened face, and miserable. As he himself had been. But not even -death lay before this face. For how many years must it go on sinking -down until the earth covered it? Marmaduke seemed to understand all -about him, as well as if he had been himself. - -“Sit down,” he said. He heard that his voice was gentle, though he was -not aware of feeling anything, only of understanding. “I was rather -upset. No; I don’t want any one. Of course I forgive you. Don’t bother -about it, I beg.” - -His father sat down, keeping his swollen eyes on the motoring-cap -which, unseeingly, he turned and turned in his hands. - -“Tell me about yourself a little,” said Marmaduke, with slow, spaced -breaths. “Where do you live? How? Are you fairly happy?” - -He knew that he was not happy; but he might, like most people with whom -life had not succeeded, often imagine himself so, and Marmaduke wanted -to help him, if possible, to imagine it. - -“I live near London. I used to do a good deal of University Extension -lecturing. I’ve a clerkship in the Education Office now.” Mr. Thorpe -spoke in a dead obedient voice. “A small salary, not much hope of -advance; and I’ve a large family. It’s rather up-hill, of course. But -I’ve good children; clever children. My eldest boy’s at Oxford; he took -a scholarship at Westminster; and my eldest girl’s at Girton. The second -girl, Winnie, has a very marked gift for painting; she is our artist; -we’re going to send her to the Slade next year when she leaves the High -School. Good children. I’ve nothing to complain of.” - -“So you’re fairly happy?” Marmaduke repeated. Oddly, he felt himself -comforted in hearing about the good and happy children, in hearing about -Winnie, her father’s favourite. - -“Happy? Well, just now, with this terrible war, one can’t be that, can -one? It is a great adventure for me, however, this work of mine, -motoring about France. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything I cared so -much about since--for years,” said Mr. Thorpe. “It’s a beautiful -country, isn’t it? and the soldiers are such splendid fellows! One gets -a lot out of it. But happy? No, I don’t suppose I am. I’m pretty much of -a failure, and I started life with great imaginings about myself. One -doesn’t get over that sort of disappointment; one never really gets over -it in a way.” Mr. Thorpe was looking at him now, and it was as if there -were a kindliness between them. “Things have been rather grey and -disagreeable on the whole,” he said. - -“They can be very grey and disagreeable, can’t they?” said Marmaduke, -closing his eyes. - -He was very tired, and as he lay there quietly, having nothing further -to know or to suffer, having reached the very limits of conscious -dissolution, something else began to come to him. It seemed born of the -abolition of self and of the acceptance of the fact that he was dead to -all that had given life worth or beauty. It would have been very good to -be a Follett; though, he saw it now, he had over-prized that special -sort of goodness--with so much else from which he had been, as really, -shut out; but he was not a Follett; nor was he merely this poor, -insignificant father. He did not quite make out in what the difference -lay and he did not rejoice in it, for there was no rejoicing left in -him. But, even if the difference were only an acquired instinct (dimly, -the terms of his complacent readings in biology and sociology returned -to him), even if it were only that, not anything inherent and -transmissible, it was, all the same, his own possession; something that -he and the Folletts had made together; so that it was as true to say -that he had won the V.C. as to say that they had. The lessened self that -was left to him had still its worth. To see the truth, even if it undid -you, was worthy; to see so unwaveringly that it was good to be a Follett -even when you weren’t one, had the elements of magnanimity; and to -accept the fact of being second-rate proved, did it not?--if you still -cared to prove it; he felt himself smile as gently at the relinquished -self as he had smiled at his father,--that you were not merely -second-rate. - -There was now a sound of stumbling movement; doors opening and shutting; -nurses, surgeons in the room; and his father’s face, far away, against -the blue bands, looking at him, still so frightened and so miserable -that he tried again to smile at him and to say, “It’s all right. Quite -all right.” - -At all events he had been decent to the poor old fellow. His thoughts -came brokenly, but he was still seeing something, finding something; it -was like a soft light growing. At all events, he had behaved as a -Follett would wish to behave even when brought to such a pass. No--but -it wasn’t quite that, either; it was something new. He had behaved as -any one decent should wish to behave. And the daffodils glimmering to -his vision seemed to light him further still. “We are as common as -daffodils,” came back to him. Daffodils were for everybody. Foolish -little boy who, on the distant spring morning in the woods of -Channerley, dug them up to take them to his own garden! - -He was there among them with his little red-and-yellow cart, and the -thrush was singing high above him, in the rosy topmost branches of an -elm. - -Beautiful woods. Beautiful flowers of light and chivalry. How the -sunshine streamed among them! - -“Dear Channerley,” he thought. For again he seemed to belong there. - -Gentle hands were tending him and, as he turned his cheek on the -pillow, it was with the comfort--almost that of the little boy at -Channerley being tucked up in the warm nursery to go to sleep--of -knowing that he was dying, and that, in spite of everything, he had -given something to the name. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PANSIES - - -I - -“OF course it is a horrid little garden, but one gets so fond of one’s -own things, even when they are horrid,” said Miss Edith Glover, with her -gentle deprecatory laugh. - -She stood with her friend at the door of the conservatory that led from -the sitting-room to the oblong plot of garden--a small, middle-aged -woman, with soft brown eyes, and hair the colour of a faded leaf; her -wasted throat and transparent temples and faint yet feverish flush -marking her already with menacing symptoms. - -The conservatory was of the sort that crops out irrelevantly at the back -of the many suburban houses, like glaucous fungi; but in Miss Glover’s -little establishment, its shelves filled with neatly ranged boxes of -seedlings, with bundles of raffia, tidy baskets, and carefully garnered -labels, it was completely utilitarian, with never a fern or begonia to -recall its usual state. Miss Glover’s house was suburban, or nearly so, -for though it stood in secure detachment from other villas on the -southern slopes of a small Surrey town, the town, on its northern side, -spread into ugly patches of red brick that devoured the woods and fields -and ran long tentacles almost up to London. Acacia Road was removed -from this peril of vitality, and its upper windows looked over pleasant -stretches of untouched hill and meadow. - -The Nook had been left to Miss Glover by an aunt five years ago, and to -her it was, from its porch before to its garden behind, a paradise pure -and simple, though she described her garden now, in showing it to -Florrie Lennard, so disparagingly. If she called it horrid, however, it -was only because, with her strong sense of other people’s claims and -opinions, she recognized that to Florrie, accustomed to grand week-ends -at big country-places, it must, _qua_ garden, look very dim and meagre. -That it must also look, in its humility, very lovely, she took for -granted. - -Mrs. Lennard, however, standing with her on the conservatory step, her -robust silken arm protectingly and benevolently laid within hers, did -not contradict her, though her cheerful eyes roamed kindly over the -borders of pansies, the beds of mignonette, and the clumps of sweet peas -in the corners; but her kindness was for her friend rather than for the -garden, and she said, “You haven’t had strength, I expect, for doing -more with it.” - -“I’ve never had much strength,” said Miss Glover. “It doesn’t want much -hard work, luckily. The pansies go on from year to year and only need -dividing in the autumn, and then there are the bulbs, of course, in -spring; I have crocuses and daffodils and narcissi and some beautiful -tulips. The rest I do with penny packets. All those sweet peas and all -that mignonette came from two penny packets.” - -“You can’t expect much for a penny, can you?” said Mrs. Lennard with -her rather jovial air; and now she stepped down onto the narrow strip of -lawn that had a bird-bath sunken in the middle and a rose-bush at each -corner, of the kind now seldom seen, known as Prince Charlie or Maiden’s -Blush--dark and small of foliage, with flat flowers that would be snowy -were they not tinged with a cold pink. They always made Miss Glover -think of an old Scotch ballad. Their flowering season was over, now, -however. The old Pyrus japonica that grew against the wall was also, -long since, over, though its fresh, vigorous green embossed the dull -bricks; but on the wall opposite, a Madame Alfred Carrière was throwing -out a second blooming, dreamy, melancholy and romantic as only she could -be. Madame Alfred Carrière made Miss Glover think of a Chopin waltz, and -she hoped that Florrie might at all events remark favourably on her -abundance. But Florrie hardly glanced at her. Pausing, as they paced the -lawn, to look with tolerant interest at the bird-bath, she observed, - -"I’ve just been staying with the Isaacsons in Hertfordshire. Such a -lovely place. They’ve a broad sanded walk leading from the house to the -rose-garden, as long as--well, to the end of this road, and it’s arched -with roses all the way, a regular roof of roses, the latest climbers; I -never saw such a sight. And their herbaceous border, even now, is a -blaze of colour. I wish you could see it. It would do you good. It did -_me_ good, I know. I told Mrs. Isaacson I always feel a better woman -after a week-end in her garden. Flowers mean so much to me. I can’t get -on without them. I run down to the Isaacsons whenever, as I say to her, -I need an æsthetic cocktail. Of course they’ve half a dozen gardeners -working from dawn till dewy eve. You can do pretty much what you want in -the way of gardens when you’re as rich as the Isaacsons. What it must -have cost them to make that sunken rose-garden!--all flagged between the -beds, with a sun-dial, and a fountain in the middle and bowers of roses -all about. They terraced the lawns, too, with flights of stone steps -leading down one from the other, and great white stone vases on the -pilasters simply foaming over, my dear, with pink geraniums. Against the -blue sky it’s dazzling. - -"Such nice people they are, too, the Isaacsons. Di, the eldest girl, is -marrying Lord Haymouth next week, you know. People says it’s a _mariage -de convenance_, of course, for she’s to have £50,000 and he’s without -the proverbial penny. But I happen to know it’s a love match: love at -first sight; a regular _coup de foudre_. I was with the Isaacsons at -Ascot this spring when they met, and I saw in a moment that Di’s fate -was sealed. Do you remember the big photo of Di in court dress on the -piano in the flat? No? Well, I should have thought it couldn’t have -escaped notice. Such a splendid young creature; dark, proud, glowing -beauty. I think, when they’re young, there’s nothing to beat a beautiful -Jewess. She has a gorgeous voice, too, Di; could have made her fortune -in grand opera. I’ve given her a gold cigarette-case with her monogram -in diamonds and rubies. It nearly broke me; but they’ve always been -simply sweet to me. She’s very fond of smoking. Smokes too much, her -mother and I tell her, though I’m afraid _I’m_ not a very good example -to set before the young!" - -Mrs. Lennard’s face, while she thus spoke, expressed her contentment -with the Isaacsons, with herself, the cigarette-case, and life in -general. It was large and ruddy and masterful, with aquiline nose and -small, jocund mouth creasing to the chin in a deep line that spoke of -good nature and ingenuous sensuality; the full throat supported by a -high lace collar, well boned up behind the ears; the prominent blue eyes -at once bland and beaming. She was tall, of a fine presence, her -handsome bosom thickly decorated with turquoise ornaments, her shoes of -glittering patent leather; and from her wrist dangled a purse of fringed -and woven gold--an offering to her from the proprietor of the lady’s -paper that, for many years, she had edited with so much _flair_ and -ability. - -She had made a very good thing of her life, had Mrs. Lennard; and, -nearing the fifties as she was, she had amassed a small but secure -income and a large number of affluent friends; friends always engaged in -vigorous and costly pursuits that involved many rich toilettes, meals to -the sound of orchestras in sumptuous restaurants and constant motoring -from place to place. Among such friends poor Edie Glover had not -counted. She and Mrs. Lennard had been schoolmates in early days when -their fortunes, one as the daughter of a poor parson and one of a poor -doctor, were equally unpromising. But Florrie had married an ambitious -young journalist, typified always, in Miss Glover’s memory, from her one -rather dazed and shrinking impression of him, by extraordinarily smart -mustard-coloured spats and the weighty and imposing seal ring on his -finger; and, though early widowed, Florrie had followed along the paths -where he had set her feet with an energy and shrewdness that he could -not have bettered. - -Meanwhile, poor Edie--for so Mrs. Lennard always thought of -her--struggled through many years of waning youth to make her living, -and support her mother, as a music-teacher in London. Mrs. Lennard, even -when the tides of her own fortune ran low, never lost sight of her. She -had always been the kindest of friends, sowing the Glovers' dun-coloured -days with “complimentary” theatre or concert tickets and asking them -frequently to tea with her at her club. Even after Edie, now alone in -the world, had retired to Acacia Road and left youth and London behind -her, Mrs. Lennard, who had the air of fully possessing both, kept -constantly in touch. She had never before managed, it was true, but for -one half hour as she motored by on a winter’s day, to visit Acacia Road; -but it was to her flat in Victoria Street that Miss Glover always came -when called to London by mild necessities or pleasures. Florrie insisted -on it; and though, in some ways, Miss Glover would have preferred the -house of her cousin in Bayswater,--overflowing with children as it was, -and offering only the tiniest of back bedrooms on the top floor,--or the -villa of a school-mistress friend at Golder’s Green, it had always been -impossible to resist Florrie’s determined benevolence. - -“Nonsense, my dear Edie,” she would say. “Your cousin can’t want you. -You’ll only be in the way, with those dozens of children. And as for -Golder’s Green, what can you see of London from Golder’s Green?” -(Florrie overlooked the fact that for forty-odd years Miss Glover had -done nothing but “see” London.) “You’ll be worn out with tubes and -motor-buses if you go to Golder’s Green. Whereas with me you are ten -minutes from everywhere, be it dentist or dressmaker or concert, and -your bedroom’s waiting for you--Muriel Lestrange left me only last -Monday; and you can’t make me believe you’d not rather have your bath in -my lovely porcelain tub, with steaming hot water day and night, than in -one of those awful, antediluvian, blistered monsters, that fold you up -like a jack-knife--and the tin of tepid water hauled up four flights by -a slavey. I know my London, my dear, through _and_ through, and any -pleasure here depends upon how you start your day; upon your bath and -your breakfast. I can’t offer much, but I can offer both of those, A -number one.” - -So she could. Miss Glover could not deny it, though loyally and -unheededly murmuring that the villa at Golder’s Green had also its -bathroom. It couldn’t, however, compare with Florrie’s, all snowy tiles -and glittering taps and ranged jars and bottles of salts and scents. -Florrie’s bathroom seemed to her always to be the very centre and symbol -of Florrie’s life--modern, invigorating, rejuvenating, at once -utilitarian and decorative. It was a sort of brilliant magician’s cave -from which all the rest radiated: the compact yet so sumptuous little -drawing-room with its baby-grand and its palm, its silver-framed -photographs, frilled crétonnes, and rose-coloured carpet; the -dining-room, even more compact, yet, in its sobriety, as -sumptuous--where the breakfasts always, in spite of familiarity, broke -upon Miss Glover as revelations of what coffee and rolls and kidneys and -bacon could be in the way of strength and heat and crispness; even the -pink silk quilt beneath which she crept at night, and the little maid -who brought her early tea, looking, in her fluted caps and aprons, as -though she belonged to a theatrical troupe--all seemed emanations of -that magic centre where Florrie lay of a morning in hot, scented water -and read the paper and smoked a cigarette before emerging armed and -panoplied for the avocations and gaieties of the day. - -Yet it was not so much Florrie’s bathroom and breakfasts, or even -Florrie’s kindness, that overbore her protests as Florrie’s -determination, her way of knowing so much better than you yourself could -know what was not only good, but happy for you. There was never an -answer to be found to her; and though Florrie’s flat, with all its -sumptuousness, dazed and even tired Miss Glover a little, just as dear -Florrie herself sometimes dazed and tired her, she found herself -installed there always, feeling her own pursuits, her little -tea-parties, her concerts, her timid, bewildered shopping, to be very -humdrum and inappropriate as issuing from such a base of operations. The -only return she was able to make was to emboss Florrie’s sheets and -towels and table-linen with beautifully embroidered monograms, and she -had always a slight and pleasant sense of being, at all events, a -country mouse who had contributed its little offering of grain or honey -when she recognized these trophies of her craft on her bed and on the -table and in the bathroom. - -But the last time she had gone up that summer, only, now, three weeks -ago, she had found herself suddenly of a significance almost as great as -that of any of Florrie’s brilliant friends. To become significant to -Florrie one had either to be brilliant or piteous, and she was piteous. -Florrie had gone with her to the doctor’s, and it was Florrie, kind -Florrie, an arm about her shoulders and a breast spread to her tired -head, who had broken to her the verdict. - -She was menaced, gravely menaced.--Yes; it did not surprise her--she had -thought it might be that. She had seen her father and two sisters die of -it--And unless she could go away and spend a year in a Swiss open-air -cure, the doctor didn’t think she’d live through the winter. - -Seated on Florrie’s frilled sofa, while Florrie, all encompassing tact -and urgency, passed on the verdict, it was not of it that she first -thought. Her mind, perhaps in an instinctive recoil, fixed itself upon -the oddly insistent impression of pinkness that she was aware, suddenly, -of receiving. Florrie’s blouse, under her cheek, was a bright blur of -pink; and when she turned her eyes away from that they met, everywhere, -garlands of roses looped with knots of blue ribbon on a background of -white and pink stripes. Too much pink: this was the absurdly irrelevant -criticism that, dimly, but as if culminatingly, emerged. She must have -felt it as too pink for many years, but only now was she aware of it. -And then, with a sense of refuge, came the vision of her pansies: those -borders of white and purple pansies under the dull brick wall that she -had looked at so fondly that morning before starting for her journey. -But she would have to leave her pansies, then; not only for a season; -perhaps forever. - -It was in this form and in this roundabout way that the thought of death -became real to her; with pathos rather than poignancy and with yearning -regret rather than fear. She did not feel afraid of dying. Her quiet -little faith that, though so still, was deep enough for all her needs, -had sunken wells of wordless security in her. She was not afraid; but -the thought of leaving her flowers, her garden, the skyey view from her -bedroom window, symbolized for her all the sadness of death. There was, -indeed, nothing else to regret much. Every one she had loved most dearly -was gone; and when all was said and done, and in spite of the peace of -the last five years, she was a battered, tired little creature, with few -of the springs of desire left in her. Her life, as she looked back on -it, seemed to have been spent, for the most part, in crowded buses on -wet evenings, with not enough lunch behind and not enough dinner before -her; in those, and in going up and down steps of strangers' houses. -There had been, of course, more than that; she had never, except when -her dearest young sister died, been very unhappy, and there had been -interests and alleviations always--beautiful evening walks across the -Park and relaxations over tea with a book before the fire in her -lodging-house sitting-room; but the past, when she called it up in an -image, seemed always to crumple into that jolting, rattling, wet, and -crowded omnibus. So there was not much strength now left in her for -resistance or regret; but she would do her best to live, and that really -meant that she would do her best not yet to leave her garden. - -When she was older, too old to dig a little, divide the pansies in -autumn and sow the penny packets in spring, too old to care for the -Madame Alfred Carrière or the Pyrus japonica, would be time enough to -go. But in coming back to it that evening, she knew how deeply, how -tenaciously she loved her garden. It was the only thing she had ever -owned in her life, the only thing she had ever made: her work and -creation; its roots seemed to go down into her heart; and she could not -feel that in heaven there would be old white roses and white and purple -pansies and mignonette and sweet peas that one had sown one’s self from -penny packets. - - -II - -At first, when Florrie told her, the verdict had seemed unescapable. She -had said, after the little silence in which she received it,--the -silence in which much had happened to her,--she had said, in a very -quiet voice that had surprised herself, “I’m afraid it’s no good, then, -Florrie dear. I can’t afford to go away.” - -Aunt Kate had left her only the house and its contents. She had saved -only the tiniest sum herself--just enough to yield an income that paid -for her food and light and coal. To pay for Jane, her good old servant, -to pay for her clothes and washing, to pay for the trips to London and -the crumpets and cakes that she gave her friends at tea in Acacia Road, -she had still to depend upon the pupils that, fortunately, she had found -in the small Surrey town. On three afternoons a week she sallied forth, -peacefully indeed, with no sense of anxiety or pressure, and made her -way to the houses of the doctor, the rector, the big London -manufacturer, and instructed their young daughters in the excellent -Munich method that she had imbibed in youth. With these delightfully -convenient strings to her bow she could manage perfectly. But to give -them up and to pay for an open-air cure in Switzerland was outside the -bounds of her possibilities. - -So she explained, in the quiet voice, to Florrie; and it was then that -Florrie, revealing herself as a more wonderfully kind friend than even -in Miss Glover’s grateful eyes she had always been, said, the tears -suddenly hopping down her cheeks and making dark spots on the pink silk -blouse,-- - -"Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Edie! What do a few pounds more or less -matter at a time like this? You _shall_ go! It’s a question of life or -death. Now, not a word, my dear, and listen to me. _I’ll_ send you. -It’ll be the proudest day of my life that sees you off. What’s all my -good luck worth to me if I can’t give a friend a helping hand when she -needs it? I can sell out some investments. I’ve more than enough, and -I’ll soon fill my stocking again. And you shall go as soon as we can get -you ready; and first class, my dear, all the way, boat _and_ train. -Don’t I know the difference it makes--and getting off to sleep on the -way? Jane shall go with you to take care of you--oh, yes, she shall!--I -won’t hear of your going alone; and you’ll come back next spring a sound -woman. - -“I know all about those Swiss open-air cures,” Florrie rushed on. -“They’re magical. Poor Lady Forestalls was at death’s door three years -ago--there she is--over there on the piano--that tall, regal-looking -woman with the Pekinese: worse than you she was, by far. And she went to -Switzerland and came back in six months' time, cured; absolutely cured. -Never a touch of it since. She does everything and goes everywhere. And -such scenery, my dear, such flowers! You’ll revel in it. And Julia -Forestalls told me that the people were so interesting. She made a -number of friends--Italian, German, Russian. You shall take my -tea-basket, my dear. Jane can carry it easily. It’s a gem; everything -complete and so convenient. It makes simply all the difference on a -journey if you can get a steaming hot cup of tea at any time you like, -day _or_ night. I saved Cora Clement’s life with my tea-basket in -Venice; she says so herself. She got chilled to the bone on the lagoons. -Over there on the writing-bureau she is; American. Not a beauty, but -_jolie laide_, and dresses exquisitely--as you can see. She’s always -taken for a French-woman.” - -Miss Glover, even more than usual, felt to-day that dear Florrie dazed -and bewildered her a little; but the mere fact that Florrie’s tears had -dried so soon, that she could, so soon, be telling her about Lady -Forestalls and Cora Clement, was encouraging. Miss Glover felt that her -case was evidently but one among many to which Florrie had seen the -happiest endings--a comparatively unalarming affair; entirely -unalarming, though exceedingly engrossing, Florrie’s tone and demeanour -indicated, when taken in hand by such as she. - -And how she took it in hand! There was no use protesting against -anything. As always, Florrie made her feel that she knew better than she -herself could what was good for her. It was all arranged before they -parted that day, and Florrie had further smoothed her path by declaring -that nothing would suit her better, if Edie really felt fussed about the -money, than to take The Nook during her absence. “The very thing I -need,” said Florrie. “I’ve been thinking for some time that I must have -a little place near London to run down to for week-ends. And you’ve that -duck of a spare-room, too, I remember, where I can put up a friend; and -it’s so near town that people can motor down and have tea with me of an -afternoon. My dear, nothing could be more providential.” - -During the three weeks that followed, Florrie, in London, shopped for -her, decided on the clothes she would need and the conveniences that she -must take; and interesting parcels arrived at The Nook every morning. It -was strange and exciting to be made much of, strange and exciting to be -on a journey; she had not been out of England since that stay, in -girlhood, in Munich; and in spite of the shadow hanging over her, the -sense of haste lest she be overtaken, she felt the days of preparation -as almost happy ones. Jane, it was true, was rather gloomy about -everything, but even beneath her sombre demeanour Miss Glover felt sure -that she, too, was touched by the sense of adventure, for Jane had never -been out of England at all. - -And now the boxes were all packed and Miss Glover’s dressing-case stood -open, half filled, in her bedroom, waiting only for her sponge bag and -pin-tray and brush and comb to be added next morning, when she and Jane -and Florrie were to go up together to Victoria, and Florrie was to see -them off; and while Jane prepared her most festive tea, Miss Glover had -been showing Florrie all over her new domain on that August afternoon -when she had spoken of her garden as horrid. Florrie, in answer to her -shy request that she might, perhaps, if it wasn’t too much bother, sow -some mignonette and sweet peas for her next spring, had answered with -reassuring decision, “To be sure I will, my dear. I’ll take care of -everything and have it all waiting for you spick and span when you get -back.” And then Jane’s gong had summoned them in, and it had been -reassuring, too, to see how benignant were the glances that Florrie cast -about the little sitting-room while she stirred her tea and commended -Jane’s cakes. “Beeswax and turpentine for all the furniture once a week. -_I_ know. And dusted every morning without fail.” - -Yes, it was safe in Florrie’s competent hands, dear little room. In her -heart of hearts, though she had no faintest flicker of criticism or -comparison except for that one strangely painful memory of the rush of -pinkness,--Miss Glover very much preferred her own room, shabby and -simple as it was, to Florrie’s; just as, though so well aware of the -relative insignificance of her garden, she knew that she would prefer it -to the Isaacsons', with its arches of roses and its geraniums in white -stone vases. She liked quiet, soft, gentle things; the ever-so-faded -ancient chintzes on her aunt’s chairs and sofa, showing here and there a -ghostly bird of paradise or a knot of nearly obliterated flowers, her -aunt’s absurd, faded, old-fashioned carpet,--fortunately faded!--and her -grandmother’s Lowestoft cups ranged above the mantelpiece. Everything -was in its place; her knitting-basket between her chair and the -fireplace; her beaded footstool before the best armchair, where Florrie -sat; the little table, with a bowl of white and purple pansies on it, -where lay the daily paper and the two books from the circulating -library. All were dear to her; all spoke of continuity with the past, of -long association, of quiet, small, peaceful activities; and as she -looked about she knew that her heart would have sunk a little at the -thought of leaving them, had it not been for Florrie’s sustaining -presence. - -Florrie, while her second cup of tea was being made, drew forth and laid -beside the tea-tray, with an air of infinite sagacity, the coupons for -the reserved seats in the first-class carriage. “_I’ll_ keep my eyes on -those,” said Florrie. It was almost as if they had been tickets for some -brilliant entertainment--as if, Miss Glover felt, she and Jane were -going to be taken to the opera rather than to Switzerland. It was owing -to Florrie that she had almost come to feel that Switzerland _was_ the -opera. - -But that night, when they had gone upstairs and the house was still, the -sense of adventure deserted her. Sitting in her dressing-gown before her -mirror while, with hands that tired so easily, she brushed and braided -her hair, she felt, suddenly, very middle-aged, very lonely, ill, and -almost frightened. The look of her gaping dressing-case, as she glanced -round at it, was frightening, as was the emptiness of the mantelpiece, -from which the family photographs had all been taken to be packed, -together with the Bible and prayer-book from the table near her bed. It -was a room already deserted. It looked as it might look if she had died. -What, indeed, in spite of Florrie’s good cheer, if she were to die out -there, alone, away from everything and every one she knew? And, with a -curious impulse, rising to go and close the gaping dressing-case, she -realized that she had not said good-bye to anything. The morning had all -been spent in packing--in that and in preparations for Florrie’s -arrival; and all the afternoon Florrie had been with her, and she was to -be with her till her departure to-morrow. She would not again be alone -in her little house; she would not again be alone in her garden. The -thought of her pansies came with a pang of reproach; it was as if she -had forgotten them, like children sent to bed without a good-night kiss. - -She drew her curtain and looked out. Yes; there they were. The moon was -shining brightly and the white pansies lay below like pools of milk upon -the ground. She looked at them for some moments, while the soft -fragrance of the night mounted to her and seemed with gently -supplicating hands to draw her forth; and then, cautiously--for Florrie -slept across the way--but with decision, she put on her heavy cloak over -her dressing-gown, wrapped a shawl about her head and shoulders, and -stole downstairs. - -The drawing-room was very dark; she felt her way swiftly through it past -the familiar objects, and the conservatory door opened on a flood of -silvery light. She saw the high, shining disk of the moon, and the great -black poplar tree that grew in the neighbouring garden seemed vast -against the sky. As she stepped out, she made herself think of Diamond -in “At the Back of the North Wind.” It was like stepping into a -fairy-tale; only something more sweet and solemn than a fairy-tale, as -that book was; something, for all its beauty, a little awful. But when -she looked down from the moon, the sky, the poplar, there was only -sweetness. The fragrance that had solicited her seemed now to welcome -her, to clasp and caress her. The pansies were all looking up at her. On -the wall Madame Alfred Carrière was more beautiful than she had ever -before seen her, her pale flowers and buds making a constellation -against the darkness. - -She walked round the path, looking at it all, so glad that she had -come, smiling--a child in fairyland, or a spirit arrived in Paradise and -finding it strange yet familiar--as Paradise should be. Perhaps, she -thought, dying would be like that: a stepping out from the darkness into -something vast and solemn that would slowly gather about one into -well-known and transfigured shapes, into white pansies growing thickly -at one’s feet. She stooped in the moonlight and passed her hands over -their upturned faces. They were flowers entranced, neither sleeping nor -awake; and she felt, as her fingers touched their soft, dewy petals, as -if their dreams with their whiteness flowed into her. To leave them was -like leaving her very self, yet the parting now was all peace and -innocent acquiescence, like them, and she was still smiling as she -whispered to them, “Good-bye, darlings.” - - -III - -SWITZERLAND was like the opera, and for her first months there Miss -Glover felt as if she watched it from a box--very much at the back and -looking past many heads at the vast display. Everything that Florrie had -said was true: the scenery was more magnificent than she could have -imagined, oppressively more, and the people, again oppressively, more -interesting. They were, these people, engaged all of them in trying to -keep alive, and, when they failed in that, in dying, dying under one’s -eyes from day to day; and in the publicity of such occupations there was -something as abnormal as was the size of the mountains. Some of these -people she came to know a little--those, usually, who had given up: the -dear little Russian girl who, alas, died in December; the sulky, -affectionate French boy; and the large yet wasted German singer who made -Miss Glover think of a splendid fruit keeping still its shell of form -and colour while eaten away inside by wasps. Fraülein Schmidt liked to -have her play Schubert and Schumann songs to her, and still tried to -sing attainable passages here and there in a queer, booming, hollow -voice that made Miss Glover, again, think of the wasps imprisoned and -buzzing. But most of the people remained parts of the spectacle to her. -They engaged, when they were well enough, in winter sports; they talked -together of books she had never heard of, and of things she had never -thought of; and often, moreover, she could not understand what they -said, as her languages did not extend beyond rather simple French and -German, and Dante with a dictionary. - -The only other English person there was a young man who made her think -of the Prince Charlie roses; he was sombre and delicate and beautiful -and did not talk to anybody, sitting apart and reading all day long. -Miss Glover wondered a good deal about him, and watched him sometimes -from her place on the snow-sifted balcony when they lay there encased in -fur bags and buttressed with hot-water bottles. His name was Lord Ninian -Carstairs; and that was like the roses, too. - -Once, when they were alone on the balcony, their recumbent chairs near -one another, he lifted his eyes suddenly and found hers fixed upon him, -and perhaps their wistful and ingenuous absorption touched him, for, -flushing faintly,--he was a shy young man,--he asked if she were feeling -better. - -She said she couldn’t quite tell. It was difficult to tell what one -felt, didn’t he find? Everything was so different; so exciting in a way; -and when one was excited one felt, perhaps, better than one was. - -Lord Ninian laughed shortly at that, and said that he didn’t feel -excited; he wished he could. - -“I’m depressed, too, sometimes,” said Miss Glover; and then he sighed. - -“One gets so abominably homesick in this hole,” he said. - -She had never thought of such splendour as being, possibly, to anybody, -a hole; but she knew what it was to feel homesick. They smiled at each -other when they met after that, she and Lord Ninian, and he lent her -magazines and books. When she heard that he had died,--she had not seen -him for a week and had feared for him,--she felt very, very sad and her -thoughts turned in great longing to Acacia Road and to her garden. - -She wanted very much to live to see her garden again; but she could not -help being frightened lest she should not; for, as the winter wore on, -it became evident to her, and all the more because every one else was so -carefully unaware of it, that one of the things that Florrie had -predicted was not to come true. She was not to return cured. She was not -going to get better. At first the slow burning of fever had seemed only -part of the excitement, but she could not go on thinking it that when it -began to leave her breathless, trembling, faint. By the time that the -miracle of the Alpine flower-meadows was revealed to her and she had -watched the snow recede and the jonquils and anemones advance, she knew -that if she wished to die at home she must soon go. They would not -consent to that at once. They said that the spring months were full of -magic, and she was persuaded to stay on. They were magically beautiful -and she was glad to see them, but she longed more and more to see her -little garden. She dreamed sometimes of her pansies at night, and it -seemed to her once that as she stooped in the moonlight and touched them -she was cured; the fever fell from her; a cool white peace flowed into -her veins; and when she looked up from them, the night was gone and the -sun was rising over her Surrey hills. - -At the beginning of June they consented that she should go. They did not -tell her the truth, of course. They said that she might pass the summer -in England, since she wished so much to return there, and that she must -come back for next winter; but she knew that if her state had not been -recognized as hopeless they would not have let her go. It was hopeless, -and she summoned all her strength and resolution, that she might live -until she reached Acacia Road. - - -IV - -FLORRIE met her at Victoria. Florrie did not know that it was hopeless, -though she knew that it was not as yet, a cure; but from the way that -she controlled her features to a determined joviality Miss Glover could -infer her shock, her grief, her consternation. The glance, too, that -Jane and Florrie exchanged was revealing, had she been in need of -revelations. - -After a night in Florrie’s flat, however, she knew that she looked so -much better that poor Florrie, when she came to see her in the morning, -was quite erroneously cheered. “_You’re_ all right,” Florrie declared. -“The journey’s knocked you about a bit; but once we get you down to -Surrey, Jane and I, you’ll pick up in no time. After all, there’s no -place like home, is there?” - -Miss Glover, from her pillows, smiled. She felt very fond of kind -Florrie and sorry for her that she must, so soon, suffer sadness on her -account. - -It was difficult, in the train, to listen to Florrie’s talk. After her -fright of the day before, Florrie had cheered up so tremendously that -she talked even more than usual, of her friends, her enterprises, of how -she was going yachting that autumn with the Forestalls, and of how Di -Haymouth had just had a baby. - -“A splendid boy, and Mr. and Mrs. Isaacson are fairly off their heads -with pride and pleasure. Such a layette, my dear, you never saw! Real -lace through and through--and the cradle of a regular little prince! I -gave him a silver porringer for his christening; a lovely thing, all -heavy _repoussé_ work with his initials on a shield at one side. Di say -it’s the prettiest porringer she ever saw.” - -It was difficult to listen to Florrie and to nod and smile at the right -moment when she was thinking of her garden and wondering if Florrie had -really remembered to sow the sweet peas and mignonette. Even if she -hadn’t, the Madame Alfred Carrière and the Prince Charlie roses would be -out, and the last tulips, and the pansies, of course. And it was such a -beautiful day, just such a day as that she had risen to look at when, in -her dream, the pansies had cured her. - -The drive from the station up to Acacia Road was a short one. The dear, -foolish little porch was there, the bow-window, the laurel-bushes. Her -own home. As she saw it she felt such a lift of the heart that it seemed -to her, too, that she might be going to get better after all. Florrie -and Jane helped her out and she and Florrie went into the sitting-room. -She looked round it, smiling, while she felt her happy, fluttering -breaths like those of some wandering bird put back into its own dear -cage again, safe, secure, bewildered a little in its contentment. She -was like such a trivial little cage-bird; she was meant for Acacia Road, -and not for Swiss mountains. - -Everything was the same: even her knitting-basket stood waiting for her, -and all that caught her eye with their unfamiliarity were the flowers, -the profusion of flowers, standing in bowls and vases everywhere; -perhaps almost too many flowers,--that was like dear, exuberant -Florrie,--and all pink. - -“Oh--how lovely they are!” she said, finding the fluttering breath fail -her a little. “How dear of you, Florrie, to have it all arranged like -this!” - -“They look welcoming, don’t they?” said Florrie, who laughed with some -excitement. “Will you rest, dear, or come into the garden?” - -“Oh, the garden, please. I’m not at all tired. I can rest later.” - -Florrie still led her by the arm. They went into the conservatory and -there came to her then the strangest, dizziest sense of pink--everywhere -pink!--shining in at her through the sea-green glass, bursting in at her -through the open door. - -For a moment she thought that her mind was disordered, and looked up -with large, startled eyes at Florrie; but, beaming as she had never yet -seen her beam, all complacency and triumphant benevolence, Florrie -nodded, saying, “Now for your surprise, my dear. Now for your garden. -Just see what I’ve made of it to welcome you!” - -They stepped out. Pink. Pink everywhere, above, below, around one. The -paths were arched with swinging iron chains on which, already, the long -festoons advanced. The border, heaping itself up splendidly against the -wall, was splashed with white, yellow, blue and purple, a blaze of -colour indeed, but pink dominated, like the sound of trumpets in an -orchestra. It also made Miss Glover think, strangely, sickly, of the -sound of a gramophone. There was no lawn. The centre of the garden was -flagged, with a highly ornamental sun-dial in the middle and a white -garden seat and a wonderful white stone basin for the birds. There were -no Prince Charlie roses, no mignonette and sweet peas, there were no -pansies. Her garden had disappeared. - -“There!” said Florrie. - -She led her to the garden seat. From here Miss Glover, as she sank down -upon it, could see that the back of the house was also dappled with the -incessant colour. - -“Isn’t it a marvel!” said Florrie. “I hardly dared hope they’d grow as -they have, but Dorothy Perkins is a winner, and these latest climbers -run her close. I spared nothing, my dear, nothing--manure, bone-meal, -labour. The men were working here for a week last autumn. All the old -soil was carted away and a rich loam put in three feet deep. I put them -in big. I knew I could get them to take if I took enough pains over it. -Those chains will be covered in another month. I knew it would do you -more good than any open-air cure to find such a garden waiting for you. -I’d defy anybody to have the blues in this garden! In its little way -it’s just an epitome of joy, isn’t it? It’s done _me_ good, to begin -with! I’ve been having tea out here every day in my week-ends and every -one who’s seen it and heard about my plan says I’m a regular old fairy -with a wand. Mrs. Isaacson motored down only last Saturday and thought -it was a perfect poem. And so it is, though I say it as shouldn’t.” - -Florrie had paused on the deepest breath of purest satisfaction, and the -time had come when Miss Glover must speak. She must find words to -express gratitude and astonishment. She must not burst into tears. She -felt that if she began to cry she would at once be very ill. She did not -want to be taken ill before dear, good, kind Florrie. And it was, of -course, a beautiful garden; far more beautiful than hers had ever been, -no doubt; yet it hurt her so--to find her garden gone--that she heard -her voice come in gasps as she said, “Dear Florrie--you are a wonderful -friend--you are indeed.--I can never thank you enough. It’s a miracle.” - -Florrie patted her shoulder--she had her arm around her shoulders. “My -best thanks will be to see you happy in it, Edie dear, and getting well -and strong again in it. It’s a regular surprise-packet, this garden, let -me tell you, my dear. It’ll go on, that border, right up till November, -one thing after another: I thought it all out, pencil and paper and -catalogue in hand. I went over the whole colour-scheme with Mrs. -Isaacson--there’s no one who knows more about it. And since most of the -herbaceous things came from her garden, it didn’t cost as much as you’d -think. They’ve always heaps of plants left over when they divide in -autumn, and everything was at my disposal; and all the latest varieties, -as I needn’t say. Wait till you see the lilies--yes, my dear, I’ve found -room for everything; where there’s a will there’s a way is my motto, you -know--and the phloxes and the chrysanthemums.” - -She would never see them, though she was sure that they would all be -very beautiful; she would never see these latest varieties from Mrs. -Isaacson’s garden. And she would never see her own little garden again. -How wonderfully fortunate it was--the thought went through her mind -confusedly as she sat there, feeling herself droop against Florrie’s -shoulder--that she was not to live with Florrie’s and to go on missing -her own garden. How fortunate--but her thoughts swam more and more and -tears dazed her eyes--that she had not to say good-bye twice to her -pansies. She had died, then, really,--that was it,--on the moonlight -night when she had last seen them. And she had left the house to -Florrie, dear kind Florrie, and Florrie would go on having tea happily -under the festoons of roses. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PINK FOXGLOVES - - -THEY were only beginning to revert. Last summer they had stood, spires -of fretted snow tapering at the points to jade-coloured buds, at the -edge of the little copse where the garden path lost itself among young -larches, birches, hazels, and poplars, black and white. The sun set -behind the copse, spreading in the summer evenings a pale gold -background, and often when he went to look at his foxgloves and to -listen to the lonely song of the willow-wren, rippling, like a tiny rill -of water, from the heart of the wood, Aubrey Westmacott had felt that -there was something almost dangerous in such bliss as this. To breathe -this limpid air, to hear the willow-wren, to look at white foxgloves, -and to know himself free forever from the long oppression of London--if -he could have sung his wistful gratitude, his melancholy joy, the song -might have been like the bird’s. - -This year the change in the foxgloves had come as a complete surprise; -he was still a novice at gardening. He had left his beloved garden for a -week; regretfully, for he could not bear to lose a day of it--he was -like a lover with a bride, long pined for, who each day grows dearer and -lovelier; but he had gone, because it seemed churlish to refuse the old -don friend at Cambridge--and when he returned, at evening, and had -walked down to the copse and had seen them standing there, so delicately -yet so decisively altered, the shock of the surprise had seemed all -delight. He had intended white foxgloves to rise, always, against the -copse; but then he had not known how lovely pink foxgloves could be. He -had never seen them of such a shade, each bell of palest rose brimmed -with shadows of mauve, and finely freaked within. Regiments of the white -flowers had remained steadfast, so that there could be no sense of loss, -and he had picked an armful of the pink ones and carried them back to -the house, feeling, as he looked at them against his shoulder, that he -would have liked to kiss them. He spent the remaining hours of dusk in -arranging them. He never allowed the parlourmaid to arrange the flowers. -That she saw him, tolerantly, if with a flavour of irony, as a very -eccentric gentleman, he was aware, just as he was aware, quite -cheerfully, that many of his kind neighbours found him a rather absurd -one. But one of the deepest joys this new life afforded him, after the -paternal bliss of seeing the darlings grow, was in disposing them about -the rooms, with a loving discrimination that Ridley’s skilled but cold -and conventional hands could never have accomplished. - -This evening he put the foxgloves in the drawing-room, a tall jar on the -bureau, a taller jar on the piano, and a group in the vast white Chinese -bowl, wedged cunningly into place with stones among the stems. Here he -could look at them next morning as he worked at his history. He always -worked in the drawing-room, for there he had the morning sun, and, if -he could not see his massed and tiered herbaceous border, could look out -at the cherry tree and at the tiny squares of terraced lawns, dropping -from level to level, with their stone steps and low stone walls and -narrow jewelled bordering of flowers. - -There was a very nice little study behind the dining-room--it was from -the dining-room that one saw the herbaceous border, and he could -meditate future rearrangements and harmonies while he ate his -breakfast--but the study looked out on the stable shrubberies. He liked, -too, to feel himself encompassed by his treasures, old and new, while he -wrote of mediæval customs; his mother’s incompetent but loveable -water-colours, sketches of her old home, the grey, ancient, gabled house -among just such Cotswold slopes and uplands as his western windows -looked out upon, though his mother’s old home, passed long since to -alien hands, lay on the other side of the county; and his father’s -seafaring trophies, from China and Japan and far Pacific islands, and -all the lately acquired delightful solidities of Jacobean oak, and his -maturest choice in printed linen. Here, on their background of mullioned -window or dark wainscoting--such a gem of a little Jacobean house it -was--the pink foxgloves greeted him next morning, set among feathery -heads and sharp green spears of meadow grass, glimmering and poised on -tiptoe, like groups of softly blushing nymphs, and he stood for a long -time looking at them, his hands clasped behind his back. - -He was forty-six, a fragile little man, blanched and stooping from the -long years of imprisonment in the Government office, from which the -undreamed-of inheritance had released him only three years ago, with -faded gold hair hanging across his forehead and a gentle face of stifled -dreams, the mouth slightly puckering as if in intentness on some task. -The eyes, of a dim yet dense pastel blue that told darkly in his faded -face, were intent, too, but not acute; they dwelt; they did not -penetrate. He wore a small, short moustache, and a pair of gold -_pince-nez_ dangled at his coat button. - -Delicate as he had always been, and ineffectual, as he had always so -dejectedly been aware of being, he, too, with all his relatives, had -thought it very fortunate when, on leaving the university, he had -secured the tiny post in the Civil Service. There, he knew, he would -stay; he was not of the type that rises, and he had never during the -long years that followed rebelled consciously against his fate. He was, -he often told himself reproachfully, so very fortunate compared with men -far abler and more deserving than himself. He found that he could not -write, as he had hoped to do, after the conscientious hours at the -office. He read a great deal, and crept away to the country for every -week-end, sitting by meadow or river, like a dusty mouse let loose from -its trap and softly panting in the sunlight. He was often ill, and the -doctors always recommended a country life, but it was not on hygienic -grounds that he pined for limpid spaces and starry solitudes. There was -a soft passion in his blood, inherited from the mother whom he so much -resembled, for the sights and sounds and occupations of rurality. He -adored flowers. He often dreamed of them at night, and in waking hours -the thought of a garden of his own haunted him. Sometimes he went to -stay with friends in their gardens; but this was an ambiguous joy; it -was like seeing the pink and white babies playing about their nurses and -perambulators in the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens, and having no -claim to kiss any of them. He loved children, too. - -And now he found himself transplanted to this wonderful fairy tale by -Uncle Percy’s legacy. He still, often, could hardly realize it. There -was a haze of dizzy delight over all the memory of the last three years; -the search for a house, the securing of Meadows, the furnishing and -ordering of his household--he who had lived in rooms in Kensington for -twenty-four years, ruled over by a flawlessly honest but relentless -landlady! To think that he could have other fish for breakfast than -finnan haddock, and other vegetables in winter than cabbage! This was a -minor but an emphatic pleasure. - -But above all, around all, the garden! He had planned and planted it -all, studying books, brooding over catalogues, making lists, writing -labels ever so neatly. The vegetables were given over to the gardener; -but his flowers, except for deep trenching--and oh, how deep, how rich, -he saw to it that it was! he tended single-handed. His seed-boxes, his -cold-frames, his tools and baskets, how he adored them all, and how -happy he was in any small personal economies, so that extravagance in -manure and bone-meal and leaf-mould should be well justified. The -history of mediæval customs was also a long-cherished ideal, but it -remained of secondary interest; his heart, always, was in the garden, -meditating mulchings, waterings, or hoeings. Every dream had come true, -had more than realized itself. Was it any wonder that he should feel -himself going softly in his amazed gratitude, should sometimes, as when -he listened to the willow-wren at evening, feel that such happiness was -dangerous. - -It had not seemed to flaw the happiness, it had seemed but to add a -sweeter undertone to it, melancholy yet blissful, that into the new -Paradise there should have stolen a new longing, and that, as of old, he -should find himself haunted by an unattainable loveliness. He thought of -this as he looked at the pink foxgloves, for they made him think of the -face of Leila Pickering. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said to himself, as he -turned to the mediæval history, for he had the habit, caught from his -long loneliness, of speaking much to himself and with a quaint -repetition of words that stole into his social speech, “it is she they -are like; she they are like. Lovely, lovely, like her.” - -Later in the morning, privileged as she was to interrupt even the -history, it was Mrs. Pomfrey who informed him that the strange, delicate -beauty was transitory, an unfixed type, and that, next year, or in a -very few years, the palely rosy nymphs would be purple. - -“They’ll revert. You can get pink ones, you know, from the seedsmen; -rosy carmine they call it; but not at all this colour. I’ve never seen a -colour quite like this. Your soil must do it. I’ve always thought the -soil of Meadows had magic in it.” - -Mrs. Pomfrey was the late rector’s widow, and lived in a thicket of -roses half a mile away in the village. She was tall, black-robed, -majestic, and melancholy, with a deep voice and black eyes and a high, -hooked nose and large false teeth that shifted slightly and slightly -clashed together when she spoke. She had survived all emotions except -the grief of having to grow her roses on a clayless soil, and to this -grief she often returned. A girlhood friend of Aubrey Westmacott’s -mother, she had been his link with Windbury. His week-ends with her -there had been the very comets of his dark London sky, and for years he -had seen Meadows inadequately tenanted, with an eye of brooding love. - -“Oh! they’ll revert to purple, then,” he said, somewhat distressed; and -he repeated “purple, purple,” several times, as if to familiarize -himself with the sound and very sight of it, while Mrs. Pomfrey answered -him, “Give 'em time and they’ll all revert. You must dig 'em up and sow -again from year to year if you want to keep 'em pure.” - -“Not that I don’t care very much for the purple ones,” said Aubrey; -“they are most beautiful flowers, most beautiful; but it’s wild in -woods, that I like best to see them. It will be a business to replant; -dear me! It took me a day of hard work to establish my white ones in -that haphazard-looking little colony down there.” - -“Gardening is all hard work,” said Mrs. Pomfrey, “and all -disappointment, for the most part, too. It’s only the things you didn’t -expect to succeed that ever do, and any effect you particularly count on -is pretty sure to fail you.” She tempered her grimness by a slight, -bleak smile, however, for she and Aubrey Westmacott understood each -other and had the gardener’s soul, for which no work is too hard and no -disappointments too many. - -“It will be very wonderful to have the intervals of pink to look forward -to, though,” Aubrey found the atonement. “They are singularly lovely, -aren’t they? Will you think me very silly, now, I wonder, or sillier -than you always think me?” - -“I don’t think you silly, my dear Aubrey,” Mrs. Pomfrey interposed, -“only guileless; you are very guileless; I’ve thought that ever since -you were taken in by that dreadful cook of yours, who had red hair, and -got drunk and rubbed the whitebait through a sieve.” - -“Well,” Aubrey continued, smiling his gentle, tentative smile, “my -foxgloves, at all events, can’t take me in, and since they are so very -unusual and so lovely I thought I’d ask a few people in to-day to see -them. The Carews, you know, and Barton, and Mrs. and Miss Pickering. And -you--if you can come. I’ll put it off till to-morrow, if that will -secure you, only the foxgloves may not be quite so lovely by then.” - -“I will come with pleasure, my dear Aubrey,” said Mrs. Pomfrey, “and -though nobody will appreciate your foxgloves as you do, we shall all -enjoy your tea.” - -“Miss Pickering cares very much for flowers, you know, very much. We’ve -talked a great deal about flowers,” said Aubrey, swinging his eyeglass -and nodding as he looked at his old friend. - -“Does she? She doesn’t know much about 'em though.” - -“No; all those years in India, and in towns. She has lived so much in -towns. Such an inappropriate life it seems for such an exquisite -creature.” - -“Does it?” said Mrs. Pomfrey. She added after a moment, as if with -concession, “She is a very pretty girl.” - -Aubrey Westmacott was not acute. “Isn’t she?” he said eagerly. “A -beautiful and noble and lovely head, isn’t it? like a flower; she is -altogether like a flower, with her slenderness and height. Do you know,” -he went on, swinging his glasses more quickly, while he kept his -ingenuous eyes on his friend, “can you guess the flower she makes me -think of? In that pale pink dress, that pink dress she wore the other -day at the rectory garden party, and with that white hat lined with -pink. Can you guess?” His eyes overflowed with their suggestion. - -Mrs. Pomfrey moved hers from his face to the foxgloves. “Like those, I -suppose you mean.” - -“_Isn’t_ she?” he repeated. “Now, isn’t it quite remarkable? You see it, -too.” - -“Yes; I see it,” said Mrs. Pomfrey. She studied the flowers and again, -after a deliberating pause, went on, “Do you think Mrs. Pickering is -like purple foxgloves?” - -Aubrey’s eyeglass tumbled from his hand. He was astonished, almost -indignant. “Mrs. Pickering?” - -“She looks like her daughter,” said Mrs. Pomfrey; “as much like her, -that is, as a purple foxglove looks like a pink one.” - -“I can imagine nothing more unlike a flower than Mrs. Pickering,” said -Aubrey, with gathered repudiation. - -“No; certainly; she’s not at all like a flower. She’s more like a -sparrow--something sharp and commonplace and civic. I only intended an -analogy, for she must have been a very pretty girl.” - -“Nothing could be less sharp or commonplace or civic than Miss -Pickering.” Aubrey was now deeply flushed. - -“Oh, of course not, my dear Aubrey; she is very unusual looking,” Mrs. -Pomfrey again conceded. “And she is tall and her mother is short. Old -Colonel Pickering, too, was tall, I remember. I saw him once or twice -when they were living at Cheltenham the year before he died! a bleached, -dull, oppressed old man, a much better type than the wife; she ruled -him, I heard, with a rod of iron. One may be sure that she doesn’t rule -Miss Leila. She is a young lady with a will of her own, unless I am much -mistaken in her.” - -"A will of her own; yes, yes"--Aubrey eagerly, pathetically to Mrs. -Pomfrey’s ear, gathered up the ambiguous fragments--“and great firmness -of will; great decision of character; and the serenity, you know, the -sweet dignity that go with it, that so often go with it. You have -noticed her serenity, her dignity. And she is very silent--a great -contrast to her mother. I often wonder what brought them here. It’s very -fortunate for all of us; but Mrs. Pickering is, as you say, so civic, -yes, so commonplace, that I don’t understand what she can find in this -quiet place to please her. She certainly doesn’t care about her garden. -Those beds about The Cottage are very distressing; they distress Miss -Pickering.” - -“It’s quite clear to me why they came,” said Mrs. Pomfrey. “They can’t -afford London, and, I suppose, know nobody there if they could; and -there is more chance of a pretty girl like Miss Leila marrying well here -than there is in Cheltenham. She doesn’t hunt, it’s true; but the -hunting makes a difference, and there is a good deal going on in one -way and another. Mrs. Pickering hoped to capture Arthur Barton; she made -that very evident. But he has never looked at another woman since his -wife died, and never will, I imagine; at all events, he didn’t look at -Miss Leila.” - -Aubrey’s eyes, dwelling on her, expressed reprobation and almost horror. -“She tried to marry her daughter to Barton! That lovely child and -Barton! What a terrible woman!” - -“Miss Pickering must be a good twenty-five, my dear Aubrey, and I was -married at eighteen. No; I don’t like Mrs. Pickering, but I can see -nothing reprehensible in her determination to settle her daughter well -in life.” - -“But Barton! He is fifty! He must be fifty! He must be older than I am; -yes, very considerably older than I am.” - -“Well?” said Mrs. Pomfrey, and there was a mingled reluctance and -grimness in her smile, “and do you think of yourself as unmarriageable?” - -He ran his hand several times over his head and through his hair. He was -still flushed, but suddenly he became pale, swallowing quickly several -times. - -“Do you know--you have said something--you have made me think -something--put something before me. Yes; I must tell you, I must tell -you,” he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and fixing his eyes -on the wall above Mrs. Pomfrey’s head. “I love her; I love Miss -Pickering. You may think it absurd. I know I’m a dull old bachelor; -everything of that sort; but there it is. Ever since I saw her, a year -ago, when they first came. I never dreamed of anything else. A dull old -bachelor, nothing to offer, and twice her age. But I can’t help -wondering--it’s only a wonder--whether there might just be a chance for -me--if you don’t think my age, and all that, makes it impossible. What I -mean,” Aubrey finished, with a sort of quiet desperation, “is--could she -love me? It would have to be love with a girl like Miss Pickering. Am I -a man that a girl like that could love?” - -Tears now were in his eyes as he brought them back to Mrs. Pomfrey’s, -and seated upon the sofa, the pink foxgloves in the Chinese bowl beside -her, she looked back at him very gravely. She was so grave that for some -moments she was silent. Then, before speaking, she took out her -spectacles and polished them and put them on. She saw him quite well -without them. It was as if in emphasis of the gravity of the moment. -And, in the first place, she did not answer his question. - -“How much have you seen, my dear Aubrey, of this young lady?” she -enquired. - -He said, faltering, that he had seen a good deal of Miss Pickering -during this spring and summer. Mrs. Pickering had been very kind, had -asked him there quite often for tennis; and Miss Pickering had been far -more kind, for she had played with him and he was a wretched player, -though he was so fond of the game. “And we’ve had one or two little -walks. She came with me to the woods this spring and helped me to dig -anemone roots. Oh! I don’t pretend it’s anything at all; it’s only, I -know, her kindness; I never thought it anything else. But--if you really -don’t think me absurd for dreaming of it--?” He faltered to a long -gazing question. - -Mrs. Pomfrey now rose. She stood looking away from him, then moved -towards the door. “My dear Aubrey,” she said, “I think of you what -anybody who knows you must think--that the woman who wins your love is -one of the most fortunate of women. Whether you are the kind of man that -a girl like Miss Pickering could love, I cannot say. I’ve really seen -very little of her. All that I know of her is that she is very pretty -and has nice quiet manners. If she marries you, she is, as I say, the -most fortunate of women.” - -Mrs. Pomfrey stepped out into the little square, flagged hall. He -accompanied her to the garden gate, following her speechless, while, -lifting up her skirts, displaying large, flat-heeled shoes, she stepped -down from terrace to terrace. She paused at the last. - -“Your Alpine phlox is doing very nicely. You’ll find that by next year -it will have spread to a foot across,” she said. He had put in the -Alpine phlox the autumn before under her supervision. She added at the -gate, “By that time there may be a Mrs. Westmacott at Meadows.” - -Pale, almost tearful, he pressed her hand over the gate. “I can’t say -how I thank you,” he murmured. - -After a little while he was able to compose his thoughts and write his -notes. Thompson took them round, and before lunch he had his answers. -They could all come, except Mr. Barton, the dapper, fussy, kindly, -pepper-and-salt little squire, who lived in the beautiful big house just -over the nearest hill; he had gone up to London for the day. - -Aubrey very much enjoyed giving little tea-parties at Meadows. In London -he had not enjoyed them at all. He had given them when duty required -it, and he had sometimes been very extravagant and had taken a couple of -young girl cousins, up for the season, to a restaurant and a play. But -he had never enjoyed these occasions. He was shy and a poor talker, and -in London the demands upon one’s personality were too heavy to make his -entertaining a success. The demands upon one’s personality in the -country were so small and so easily satisfied; a garden talked for one -and entertained for one. All his neighbours, except Mrs. Pickering, -whose formal beds did not count, had gardens and were profoundly -interested in them. The mild, middle-aged Carews were authorities, and -to-day he remembered, with all the pressure of his new preoccupations, -that he must question them about that matter of mulching. - -At four-thirty he saw two parasols approaching along his box hedges--one -was black and one was rose-colour; his heart stood still when he saw it. -She would be wearing, then, the dress that made her look more than ever -like a pink foxglove. He went down the terraces to greet mother and -daughter at the gate. - -Mrs. Pickering was short and stout and blonde, her slightly rapacious -features--small aquiline nose, small smiling mouth, and small projecting -chin--embedded and muffled, as it were, in powdery expanses of cheek and -throat. She had an unsmiling, steel-blue eye, appraising, determined, -deliberate, under its level bar of dark eyebrow. She did not please -Aubrey. Her voice in especial, metallic yet glossy, as if with a careful -veneer, disturbed him. A gossiping lady of the neighbourhood had -informed him that Mrs. Pickering’s origins were quite lacking in -distinction and that in her handsome girlhood she had stalked the -stupid Colonel--of a quite good family--and had brought him down, -resistless, at the first shot. These stories, for which he had not liked -his informant the more, seemed to hover in Mrs. Pickering’s glance and -smile, and her voice to preserve the flavour of many strategies and -triumphs. But Aubrey did not look for long at Mrs. Pickering. She -rustled in, dressed in her fashionable black and white, a long chain of -steel and brilliants crossing her buttressed bosom, a crest of plumes, -black and white, waving upon her head. - -Miss Pickering followed her mother. Tall, very tall, and poised with a -lovely grace, she was, but for the arresting darkness of brows and -lashes, fair; with the infantile fairness, the wild-rose tints, that to -the ingenuous male will always seem to vouch for a spiritual -exquisiteness to match. And she, too, had small, aquiline features, and -her hair was as golden as the heart of a wild rose. She did not smile, -like her mother; she was a serene young lady, and silent, as loveliness -should be. - -“This sweet place!” said Mrs. Pickering. “How charmingly you are -improving it, Mr. Westmacott; it looks prettier every time I see it.” - -“It will take years before it looks as I mean it to look,” said Aubrey, -leading them up the terraces. “That’s the joy of gardening, isn’t it? It -gives one something to plan for one’s whole future.” He smiled with a -slight appealingness at Miss Pickering. “I am afraid I make myself -rather foolish sometimes; I talk so much about my garden.” - -“I don’t wonder that you do,” said Mrs. Pickering; “it’s quite a little -Paradise.” - -In the drawing-room it was Mrs. Pickering who continued to talk. She -renewed her laments over the water-colours. "To think that these -beautiful old places should get into the hands of common middle-class -people!"--Aubrey had again to assure her that the people who had bought -his mother’s old home were very nice indeed.--And Mrs. Pickering said -that she doted upon his room, “So old-world, so peaceful!” and -expatiated on the view of the terraced lawns and further meadows from -the window. She made no comment on his foxgloves, and it seemed like a -presage of happiness when Miss Pickering, from her chair, remarked, -looking up at them, “How lovely your pink foxgloves are!” - -“You think so? You like them? Yes, yes, are they not lovely?” He was -delighted with her commendation. - -“It’s such a pretty idea, putting them with the grasses,” said Miss -Pickering. “I do like lots of flowers in a room.” - -He did not have an opportunity of speaking with her alone till after -tea. Then, when they had all gone into the garden--how it happened he -did not know, for he would not have dared arrange it--he found himself -walking down the path towards the copse with Miss Pickering, while -behind them, quite far already behind them, Mrs. Pickering paused and -exclaimed over the herbaceous border, Mr. Carew beside her. Mrs. Carew -and Mrs. Pomfrey had sat down under the trees near the house. - -“Would you like to see the pink foxgloves growing?” he asked her. “They -are very beautiful growing--more beautiful, I think you’ll feel, than in -the house.” - -“I’d love to see them,” said Miss Pickering. - -They crossed the slip of meadow among the tall grasses and, “There,” -said Aubrey, pointing, with a faint smile, “there they are!” - -“_How_ sweet!” said Miss Pickering, with her serene emphasis. They stood -to look. - -“Do you know,” said Aubrey, wondering at himself, but he felt upborne, -“that I find they look like you--the pink ones.” - -“Really?” She smiled now, turning her calm, blue eyes upon him. “That’s -very flattering.” - -“No, no; not flattering; not at all flattering,” said Aubrey. “Not at -all, not at all,” he repeated under his breath. He could say no more -just then. They walked on, his heart in a flutter. - -“Have you ever heard a willow-wren, Miss Pickering?” he asked suddenly. - -“A willow-wren? I don’t think so. I don’t know much about birds.” - -“It is usually singing in the wood at this hour. Would you care to come -and see if we can hear it?” - -“I’d love to. I wish you’d teach me all about birds,” said Miss -Pickering. - -His heart was thumping now. They entered the copse. It seemed to him, as -they passed them, that the foxgloves were tall angels set about Paradise -and welcoming him there. It was very still among the trees. Miss -Pickering walked lightly beside him. She, too, looked like an angel. -They reached a clearing, where an old fallen log lay, and here they sat -down. “We shall hear it, I think,” said Aubrey, “if we sit here -quietly.” - -Presently, in the stillness, the little bird began to sing its song, the -descending chromatic chain of liquid notes, melancholy and happy; the -song of his very soul, Aubrey felt, and that the bird said for him all -that he could not say as, with head bent, he sat listening, the beloved -presence beside him. She was part of the song; and in it, as they -listened together, their very hearts were mingling. They knew each -other, he felt sure, very well. - -“How sweet!” she murmured, and he nodded, not able to look at her. - -There was a silence, and then the bird sang again. He raises his eyes to -hers now, and they turned to him and smiled. Her hand lay on the rough -bark of the log, and his was near it. Was it her hand that responded to -the unconscious appeal of his, or had he dared? He held it. That was the -bewildering, the transcending fact. - -“Oh, Miss Pickering! Miss Leila--Leila,” he stammered. “May I tell you? -May I ask you? Can you care for me?” - -Her eyes still smiled, if very gravely. “Do you really love me?” she -murmured. - -“Oh, Leila!” he repeated. The willow-wren still sang, but all the little -chains of sound seemed to be woven into a mist about him, trembling, -shining. He held her hand to his lips. He wished to kneel before her. -This was Paradise. - -“It’s so very sudden,” said Leila Pickering. “I never dreamed you cared -till just now.” - -“Ever since I saw you first--ever since I saw your eyes. It has been -like the fragrance of my flowers at evening, like the moon rising on my -flowers. I did not dare to hope--you so young, so lovely;--life before -you.” - -“I think we can be very happy together,” said Leila Pickering. “I knew -you were a dear from the first moment I saw you, too.” - -The willow-wren stopped singing now and flew away. In the distance, -then, he heard the liquid, dropping notes, and they sounded very sad. -His arm was around Leila Pickering, and she leaned her head on his -shoulder, so that in an ecstasy of wonder he felt the warm brightness of -her hair against his cheek. He had never heard her talk so much. She -told him that she had had such a dull, horrid life, so poor, knowing -such tiresome, second-rate people. And she did not get on at all well -with her mother. - -“Nobody has ever really understood me--till you came,” she said, sitting -upright now beside him, the lovely colour in her cheeks delicately -heightened, her eyes shining while she talked. She confided in him. She -loved him. They were betrothed--this was the blissful, culminating -thought that seemed to go in waves of music through him as he gazed at -her. He had ceased to hear the willow-wren’s melancholy little song. And -then he heard her say: - -“I don’t want to live in the country, you know. You won’t mind? Of -course I love it; but we can pay week-end visits, always;--you must know -such heaps of nice people; friends. And we’ll travel too--I long to see -the world. India doesn’t count. Only think, I’ve never been to Paris -except once--on a horrid, cheap trip, for a week. We never could afford -to do anything really amusing or buy any really nice things. My life has -been so frightfully dull, and I do want to stretch my wings and see lots -of people and entertain and go to plays, you know. I adore London. I’m -sure I shall be a good hostess.” - -It was as if a sword had transfixed him. He seemed to hear a great bell -booming--a great London bell--Big Ben; he had always heard Big Ben from -his office in Whitehall, and there had been a jangle of bells in -Kensington, too, and a roar, a ceaseless roar. And he seemed to hear the -words “Dangerous, dangerous.” He had been too happy. - -He kept his mild, kind eyes of a pastel blue upon her, and he told -himself, while he wrestled, transfixed, that she must not guess; but, as -if pressed from his anguish, he heard himself murmuring helplessly, -though the gentle, fixed smile held his lips, “You don’t care for my -little place, then? You wouldn’t care to go on living at Meadows? It’s a -nice little place, Meadows--a nice little place; we could make it very -pretty, and we could have people here, as many as you wanted.” - -Had a note of pleading, almost desperate, crept in unawares? He saw her -calm eyes harden slightly, fixed on him. And he saw, then, tears rise in -them. - -“Oh! it’s so dull, so dull, down here!” she breathed. “It’s a darling -little place, Meadows--of course, of course I love it. I wish we could -afford to keep it, just to run down to for a quiet week-end now and -then; but you couldn’t, could you? And it’s far too small for -entertaining, isn’t it? And no one really smart cares to come and stay -with one if one has no shooting, nothing to offer. One can really _live_ -in London--I’ve always felt that. You do care more for me than you do -for Meadows?” she finished with a smile, half appealing and half -challenging. - -And looking into the blue eyes, blurred and enlarged, like a child’s, -with their tears, he saw himself as mean and petty and selfish. He loved -her, and was it only as another flower to place among his flowers, -another treasure to place among his treasures, a possession of his own, -without end or purpose for itself? He loved her, and, unimaginably, she -loved him and would marry him. Love must know pain and sacrifice--"pain -and sacrifice"--he seemed to hear himself repeating. This was a young -life, with its rights to life, and it must stretch its wings. - -He smiled at her and raised her hand again to his lips, saying, “Of -course I care more for you than for Meadows, dear Leila. Of course we -will live where you choose.” - -And very radiant now, rising and smiling down upon him, Leila Pickering -said, “You _are_ a dear. I’m sure it’s best for us both; we’d get so -pokey here. I know we couldn’t afford Mayfair--I wouldn’t dream of that; -but I think a house in one of those little new streets near Cadogan -Square would be just right for us; don’t you?” - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CARNATIONS - - -I - -RUPERT WILSON came into the studio where his wife, who had been out -sketching all the morning, was washing her paint-brushes, carefully -turning and rubbing them in a pot of turpentine. She wore her painting -apron, for Marian in the midst of her artistic avocations was always -neat and spotless; and, half turned from him as she was, she did not -look round as he entered. Rupert carried his stick, a rustic, ashen -stick of which he was very fond, and his Panama hat; he was going out -and Marian probably knew that he was going out, and where; this made it -more difficult to say in a sufficiently disengaged voice, “I’m just -going down to see Mrs. Dallas for a little while.” - -“Oh! are you?” said Marian. She continued to stir her brushes, and -though her wish, also, very evidently was to appear disengaged and -indifferent, she was not able to carry it out, for she added, as if -irrepressibly, “You need hardly have taken the trouble to come and tell -me that.” - -Rupert looked at her, and since she did not look at him, it was very -intently, as if to measure to the full the difference between this -Marian and the Marian he had known and believed in. It was hard to -realize that his wife should show a trivial and unworthy jealousy and -should strike him such a blow; for that it was a blow he knew from the -heat in his cheek and the quickening of his pulse; but, as he looked at -her, standing there turned from him, her blue apron girt about her, her -black hair bound so gracefully around her head, the realization -uppermost in his mind was that Marian, since the second baby had come, -had grown very stout and matronly. He seemed to see it to-day for the -first time, as if his awareness of it came to emphasize his sudden -consciousness of her spiritual deficiency. - -When he had met and fallen so very deeply in love with Marian, she had -been, if not slender, yet of a supple and shapely form, with just -roundness and softness enough to contrast delightfully with her rather -boyish head, her air, clear, fresh, frank, of efficiency and swiftness. -He had, of course, found her a great deal more than clear and fresh and -frank; but, entangled as he had been in that wretched love-affair with -Aimée Pollard,--the pretty, untalented young actress who had so -shamefully misused him,--torn to pieces and sunken in quagmires as he -had been, these qualities in Marian had reached him first like a draught -of cold spring water, like dawn over valley hills. These were the -metaphors he had very soon used to her when she had applied her firm, -kind hands to the disentangling of his knots and her merry, steady mind -to tracing out for him the path of honourable retreat. He had found her -so wonderful and lovely and had fallen so much in love with her that his -ardour, aided by her quiet fidelity, had overborne all the opposition -of her people. Foolish, conventional people they were,--their opposition -based, it appeared, almost unimaginably to his generous young mind, on -the fact that Marian happened to have money and that he had none, except -what he might make by his books; and also, though it was nearly as -unimaginable, on the fact that a good many of these people were in the -peerage. Marian, a year before he had met her, had broken away from the -stereotyped routine of their country life and had come to London to -study painting; and it was that Marian of the past who had seemed to -share to the full all his idealisms. They had married within three -months of their meeting. - -From such a dawn, white, fresh, blissful, to this dull daylight! from -such a Marian to this narrow-minded matron! Marian still had beauty. Her -clear eyes were as blue, her wide, pale lips as sweet; but she was a -matron. Her neck had grown shorter, her chin heavier; the girlish grace -of glance and smile seemed muted, muffled by their setting; there was no -longer any poetry in her physique. And as Rupert stood looking at her -and seeing all this, his sense of grievance, though he was unaware of -this factor in it, grew deeper. - -A little while passed before he said,--and it was, he felt, with -dignity,--“I really don’t know what you mean by that, Marian.” - -She had now finished her brushes and had taken up her palette. She began -to scrape the edges as she answered,--and her voice was not schooled, it -was heavy with its irony and gloom,--“Don’t you? I’m sorry.” - -“I trust indeed that it doesn’t mean that you are jealous of my -friendship for Mrs. Dallas?” - -“Friendship? Oh, no; I’m not jealous of any friendship.” - -“Of my affection, then; of my love, if you like,” said Rupert. “You know -perfectly well what I feel about all that--and I thought you felt it, -too. It’s the very centre of my life, of my art; my books turn on it. -It’s the thing I have most of all to say to the world. Love isn’t a -measured, limited thing; its nature is to grow and give. My love for -Mrs. Dallas doesn’t touch your and my relation; it enriches it rather.” - -Marian scraped her palette and said nothing. He could see her cheek, the -cheek that ran too massively into her neck. Marian’s skin was white and -fine; a faint colour now rose to it; a faint colour was, in Marian, a -deep blush. - -To see her blush like that gave him an odd sensation. It was as if the -blush were echoed in his heart; he felt it grow and melt softly, and -there drifted through his mind a thought of Mrs. Dallas and of her -magic. - -Through the studio window, draped with its summer creepers, he could see -the two perambulators moored in the shade of the lime tree on the lawn. -The babies were having their afternoon sleep. He was very fond of his -children; and to feel, now, mingling with the strange, yearning glow, -this pause of contemplative fondness, was to feel himself justified anew -and anew aggrieved. The glow of tenderness seemed to envelope the babies -as well as Mrs. Dallas. And it shut out Marian. - -What had she to complain of? Was he not a tender husband and a loving -father? Could she suspect his love for Mrs. Dallas--it was she herself -who had forced him to use that word--of grossness or vulgarity? It was -as high and as pure as his love for her. - -His love for Marian had evolved into the perambulators, and this -recognition, flitting unseasonably, vexed him with a sense of slight -confusion that made him feel more injured than before. It was true that, -theoretically, he held views so advanced as to justify, in true, -self-dedicating passion, all manifestations. Practice and theory in his -young life had been far apart; but the thought of passion, in connection -with Mrs. Dallas, had, as it were, been made visible by Marian’s blush; -and, slightly swinging his hat, slightly knotting his brows as he looked -at the matronly Marian, he groped for some new formulation of his creed, -since it was evident that however much he might love Marian it was no -longer passion he felt for her. One must perhaps allow that passions -could not be contemporaneous; but he had always combated this shackling -view. - -He stood there, gazing, trying to think it out,--a tall young man, well -made yet slightly uncouth, with ruffled, heavy locks and large intent -eyes. Something of the look of a not quite purely bred Saint Bernard -puppy he had; confiding, young and foolish, with his knotted brow and -nose a little overlong. And as he found himself unable to think it out -and as Marian still stood silent, scraping, scraping away at the palette -in an exasperating fashion, he said,--and now in an openly aggrieved -voice,--“I thought you liked her yourself; I thought you quite loved -her. You seemed to.” - -Now that he was losing his temper, Marian was regaining hers. Her voice -had all the advantage of quiet intentions as she answered, “I did like -her; I thought her very charming. I don’t dislike her now. But I’m -sorry to see a woman of her age behaving with so little dignity.” - -“A woman of her age! Dignity!” - -“She is at least forty-five.” - -“I don’t follow your meaning. Is a woman of forty-five cut off from -human relationships?” - -“From some, certainly; if she has any regard, as I say, for her dignity. -And a woman in Mrs. Dallas’s position ought to be particularly careful.” - -“Mrs. Dallas’s position!” She really reduced him to disgusted -exclamations. - -“You know, Rupert, that there are all sorts of stories about her. You -know that Mrs. Trotter told us that her first husband divorced her on -account of Colonel Dallas.--Other stories, too.” - -"Upon my word! You astonish me, Marian! You heard all these vile tales -when we first came here,--from people, too, who you’ll observe, run to -Mrs. Dallas’s dinner-parties whenever they have the chance,--and you -didn’t seem to mind them much when you were going there almost every -day--and taking every one you knew to see her. What about your Aunt -Sophy--if you believed these stories?--An old dragon of conventionality -like your Aunt Sophy! You took her again and again, and arranged that -luncheon in London with her when you and Mrs. Dallas went up--so that -they should have another chance really to make friends. I remember you -used the expression, ‘really make friends.’ It’s odd to hear you talking -of stories at this late hour." - -“I only talk of them because Mrs. Dallas has made me remember them. I am -quite as open-minded as you are about such things. I was just as ready -to think well of her--even if they were true. Why do you call them vile? -You wouldn’t think it wrong for a woman to leave her husband if she -didn’t love him, and to go with a man she did love. If Mrs. Dallas did -that, why is it vile to say so?--Aunt Sophy, as a matter of fact, said -it was a different story. And she was charmed with Mrs. Dallas, just as -I’d determined she should be, stories or no stories. I did all I could -for her, because I counted myself her friend and thought it a shame that -any one so charming should be handicapped in any way. But I didn’t -imagine that a friend would try to take my husband from me.” Marian -spoke with severe and deliberate calm. - -“I like that! I really do like that!” said Rupert, laughing bitterly. -“It’s really funny to hear you talk as if Mrs. Dallas could owe you -anything! I wish she could hear you! I wish we could have her -dispassionate opinion of that hideous old bore of an Aunt Sophy. It was -obvious enough that she put up with her simply and solely through -friendship for you. Do all you could for her! A woman who has hordes of -friends--charming, finished, cosmopolitan people of the world! Why, my -dear girl, it’s she, let me tell you, who has given you more chances -than you ever had in your life for meeting really interesting people! -They’re not the sort you’d be likely to meet at your Aunt Sophy’s, -certainly. They’d perish in her _milieu_!” - -“Mrs. Dallas doesn’t perish in it,” Marian coldly commented. “On the -contrary, I never saw her more alert. She didn’t seem to find Aunt Sophy -in the least a bore. She was very much pleased indeed to lunch there and -she has looked her up every time she’s gone to London since; moreover, -she’s going to stay with her at Crofts this autumn. It doesn’t look -like boredom.” - -“I wish her joy of Crofts! She’s a complete woman of the world, of -course, and she knows how to put up with all sorts and conditions of -bores. She’s taken on Lady Sophy because she’s your friend. It’s -pitiful--it’s unbelievable to see her so misjudged!--Take me from you! -I’ve never gone there but she’s asked me why you didn’t come. She still -sends you flowers pretty well every day. Those are hers, I see. I’m glad -that you’ve deigned to put them in water.” - -The tall sheaf of carnations, white and rose and yellow, that stood in a -jug on a shelf in the studio must, evidently, have come from Mrs. -Dallas’s garden. No other person grew such carnations. The garden at -Ashleigh Lodge, this pleasant country house that they had taken for the -six summer months, was not its strong point, and Mrs. Dallas had kept -them reinforced from her abundance. Rupert associated the carnations, -their soft and glowing colours, their formal grace and spicy sweetness, -with the whole growth of his devotion to Mrs. Dallas. He fixed his -indignant eyes on them now. - -“Of course I put them into water. I am going to arrange them and take -them into the drawing-room presently,” said Marian with her hateful -calm. “But they give me no more pleasure. Nor does she. She is like -them. They are heartless flowers and she is a heartless woman. I see -quite plainly now what I didn’t see before. She’s that type,--the -smiling, calculating siren. She lives for admiration; she’s herself only -when she has someone at her feet, and she’s seen to it that you should -be,--though I’m bound to say that you haven’t made it difficult for her. -It fits in with all the stories.” - -Rupert, at this, turned away and went out. He thrust his hat firmly down -on his fair locks and swung his stick as he strode by the little -footpath through the woods. Bitter disappointment with Marian surged in -him, and hot anger, but above all an atoning tenderness that seemed -almost to break his heart in its longing to protect and justify the -woman so traduced by her. His head throbbed and drummed as he went. To -have it come to this! To have such hands laid on it--their love! their -silent, hidden love! That Mrs. Dallas returned his love he seemed to -see, with many other things, clearly, rapturously, if with trembling, -for the first time to-day. He saw it with Marian’s unworthiness; -Marian’s unworthiness had shown it to him; and now, exulting, he claimed -it. She loved him, veiling the depth in her vagueness, her aloofness, -her indulgent irony. His mind retraced, with yearning gratitude, the -steps of their relationship. No one had ever been to him what she was. -How she helped and lifted him! How juvenile and undiscriminating in -their happy acceptances were Marian’s appreciations of his work beside -Mrs. Dallas’s half-idle comments. He had read through to her, in -manuscript, all his last novel; and Marian had not seen it yet. He had -not wanted to read it to Marian; and she, besides, had been very busy -with her painting. - -Mrs. Dallas had listened to the novel almost every day, sitting in the -shade of her veranda, in her white dress, with the hands that, unless -she were gardening, seemed always exquisitely idle, yet that in their -idleness seemed to dream and smile;--he could see the white skin, the -delicate finger-tips, the pearls and rubies slipping down, and his heart -contracted with a pang and ecstasy as he saw himself holding her hand, -kissing it. He must kiss it, to-day, and he must tell her. For she -needed him; he was sure of it. She needed him terribly. If she lifted -him, yet how much, too, he could lift her, out of the lethargic shallows -and sullen quagmires of her life. - -She could not be happy with her husband. He felt himself shut his eyes -before the retrospect of what the disenchantments and disasters must be -that lay behind her. If she had taken great risks, with that heart of -highest courage he divined in her, if she had faced great sacrifices for -her present husband, what wonder that her loveliness was now clouded by -that irony and languor? She was not kind to Colonel Dallas; he could not -hide from himself that she was not kind to him; but, as he owned it, he -yearned over her with a deeper comprehension of tenderness, feeling his -rights the greater. How could she be kind to the selfish, complaining, -elegant old man?--for, to Rupert, Colonel Dallas’s fifty-five years -seemed old. She never said anything actually sharp or disagreeable to -him--even when he was at his most fretful and tiresome; but when he was -least so she was not any the kinder, and by her glances, by the -inflections of her cool and indolent voice in answering him, she -displayed to the full, to others and to himself, did he take the pains -to see it, how dull and how tiresome she found him. No; she was like a -weary, naughty child in this; and seeing her as a child, with a child’s -faults--and did it not prove how unblinded his love must be that he -should see it?--he felt himself fold her to his heart in a tenderness -more than a lover’s; a paternal passion was in it; he had known that it -must be in true love; he had said so in one of his books. How his books -would grow from his knowledge of her! - - -II - -He had now passed through the woods and crossed the road and entered the -footpath that ran down to Woodlands, the small house encircled by birch -and fir woods where, for now some four or five years, the Dallases had -pitched their errant tent. One could reach it, also, by the road; but -Rupert always took this short cut that brought him out at a little gate -opening on the upper lawn. There was an upper and a lower lawn at -Woodlands; on the upper Colonel Dallas had a putting-green; the lower -was a tiny square surrounded by Mrs. Dallas’s beds of carnations. -Rupert, when he emerged upon the putting-green, could look down past the -red-tiled roofs and the white rough-cast walls of the house at the -carnations, massed in their appointed colours--from deep to palest rose, -from fawn and citron to snowy white--among flagged paths. - -Mrs. Dallas had told him, in one of her infrequent moments of -communicativeness, that during years of wandering as a soldier’s -wife--her first husband, also, had been a soldier--she had come to be -known as the woman who could make things grow anywhere. She had grown -flowers in sands and marshes. She had snatched it might be but the one -season of fulfilment from the most temporary of sojournings--in China, -in India, in Africa. Sometimes only bulbs would grow; sometimes only -roses; but what she tried for, always, and had never attained in more -perfection than at Woodlands, was carnations. They were her favourite -flower and they atoned to her here, she said, for living in a house that -made her always think of an ornamental bottle of some popular -dentifrice, so red and white, so fresh and spick and span, and with such -a well-advertised air, was Woodlands. Her carnations were the only -things of which he had ever heard her speak with feeling. Rupert, as he -looked down at them from the upper lawn and descended the stone steps, -felt his heart beating violently. - -A veranda ran along the front of Woodlands, and Mrs. Dallas was sitting -on it, just outside her drawing-room windows. The shaded depths of the -room behind her glimmered here and there with the half-drowned -brightness of crystal, porcelain, lacquer,--the things, none very good -but all rather charming, that she had picked up for a song in the course -of her wanderings; and she sat there, rather like a siren indeed, at the -mouth of her cavern, its treasures seeming to shine in the translucent -darkness behind her as if through water. Rupert, remembering and -accepting the simile, saw her as a siren, a creature of poetry and -romance, though he recognized that her poetry, like her romance, was -hidden from the ordinary observer. Even to his eyes she always appeared -first and foremost as a woman of extreme fashion, and his other -perceptions of her were tinged with the half-tormenting, half-delicious -pungency of this one, for Rupert had known till now no women of -fashion. He had passed his youth, until going to Oxford, in a -provincial town, where his father, an admirable and sagacious man, was a -hard-worked doctor; and his only glimpses of society had been in his -encounters, always displeasing to him, with Marian’s tiresome and -conventional kinsfolk and the few haphazard contacts in London that came -in the way of a young writer. Mrs. Dallas might embody poetry and -romance, but she also embodied luxury and the exercised and competent -economy that made it possible. She might have to live in small, gimcrack -Woodlands and do without a motor; but she had her maid. The slices of -bacon at breakfast were carefully computed; but the coffee was of the -best and blackest. - -To-day, as always when he had seen her, she seemed ready for any -possible social emergency. She could have stepped from her veranda, with -those wonderfully cut little white shoes, into the smartest of -garden-parties, or have received in her shimmering cavern the unexpected -visit of a royal personage; and her soft white linen with its heavy -Italian embroideries clotted, like thick cream, about the hem and wrists -and breast, would have been as exquisitely appropriate as it was to this -empty afternoon of reverie. - -She was a small, very shapely woman, soft and curved and compact. Her -coiffure would have looked old-fashioned in its artifice and elegance, -and with its “royal fringe,” were it not for its air of a rightness as -unquestionable as that of some foreign princess’s, who kept and did not -follow fashions. Mrs. Dallas’s face, too, was small and colourless and -slightly faded; her hair was of a lighter brown than her arched eyebrows -and her melancholy and dissatisfied eyes; her eyelids, tinged with a -dusky mauve, drooped heavily and made her always look a little sleepy; -the smiling line of her full-lipped yet minute mouth was ironic rather -than mirthful. To have called it a bewitching or an alluring face would -have been to imply a mobility it did not possess; but it was potent -through its very passivity; it was provocative through its profound and -slumbrous indifference. - -There was certainly no hint of allurement in the glance she turned on -Rupert Wilson as he came round the corner of the veranda; it was, -indeed, even to his rapt preoccupation, a little harder in its quiet -attentiveness than usual; yet she smiled at him, and her smile was -always sweet, holding out a languid hand in silence and leaving it to -him to say, “You expected me.” - -It was hardly a question, and Mrs. Dallas gave it no answer. He had, -indeed, come to see her every day for many weeks now. But yesterday had -finished the novel, and to-day was almost the first they had had without -some definite programme of reading. - -Rupert sat down on the steps of the veranda at her feet and took off his -hat and looked out across the carnations; and since she said nothing, -he, too, was silent, and to his trembling young heart the silence was -full of new avowals. - -Colonel Dallas’s smoking-room also opened on the veranda, and as they -sat there he came out. He was a tall, heavy man, with large pale cheeks -drooping on either side of a white moustache, and a gloomy eye that -could become fretful. He cast now a glance that was only gloomy at his -wife and her companion. - -“Beastly hot day,” he said, to her rather than to Rupert. “It’s worse in -the house than out, I think.” - -“Are you going over to the Trotters' for tea and croquet?” his wife -inquired. - -“To the Trotters'? Why should I go to the Trotters'?” - -“They asked you, and you accepted.” - -“Well, I certainly don’t feel inclined to endure that broiling walk for -the sake of _les beaux yeux_ of Madame Trotter _et filles_. It’s a dull -neighbourhood, this, but the Trotters are, perhaps, when all’s done and -told, the dullest people in it.” - -“You’ve always seemed to get on particularly well with them, I’ve -thought,” said Mrs. Dallas, in the voice that when it seemed considerate -could contrive to be most disparaging. “It’s a pity not to go. You need -a walk. You can’t afford Carlsbad this year, you know.” - -“I need hardly be reminded of that,” said Colonel Dallas, and now it was -fretfully. “To run the risk of apoplexy on the road and to drink the -Trotters' foul Indian tea is hardly an equivalent. No; I shall practise -some putting shots, and perhaps, if it gets cooler towards evening, I’ll -go over to the links. The Trotters can manage without me.--What time do -the Varleys arrive?” - -“At seven-thirty. There’s no other train they could arrive by, as far as -I’m aware.” - -The colonel looked at his watch, drew his hat down over his eyes, and -went slowly away round the corner of the house. - -His wife’s eyes did not follow him, nor, it was evident, her thoughts. - -“It has been rather oppressive, hasn’t it?” said Rupert, glancing up at -her. “You haven’t been feeling it too much, I hope.” - -“Not at all. I like it. I think it’s only people who don’t know how to -be quiet who mind the heat,” said Mrs. Dallas. “This is the one time of -the year that one can sit out of doors in a thin dress, and I am very -grateful for it.” Even about small things Mrs. Dallas always seemed to -have her mind quite made up. Her likes and dislikes, for all the -inertness of her demeanour, were clear and unshifting. She sometimes -made Rupert feel himself amorphous, vague, uncertain; and this feeling, -though blissful, had yet its sting of sadness and anxiety. - -“Well, some people aren’t able to be quiet, are they?” he observed. “On -a day like this I always think of people in factories,--great, roaring, -clanking places with the sun gnawing at their iron roofs,--and the pale, -moist faces, the monotonously rapid hands.” - -“Do you?” said Mrs. Dallas. She often said that, in that tone, when he -gave expression to some enthusiasm or sympathy. She did not make him -feel snubbed, but always, when she said, “Do you?” she made him feel -young again, a little bewildered and a little sad. He imagined, to -explain it in her, that people’s thoughts did not interest her, her -woman’s intuition probing below their thoughts to their personalities. -It was he, himself, with his heart full of devotion, that interested -Mrs. Dallas. Yet it was not of him that she next spoke. “How is Marian?” -she asked. “Is she painting to-day?” - -He was aware that his face altered and that his colour rose. He had to -steady something, in his glance and in his voice, the pressure of his -new consciousness was so great, as he answered, “Yes, she’s been -painting all the morning.” - -“I haven’t seen her for some days now,” Mrs. Dallas remarked. - -“No.” The longing in him to confide in her, to pour out his grief and -his devotion, was so strong that for the moment he could find only the -simple negative. - -“I quite miss Marian,” Mrs. Dallas added. - -He looked down at the little foot placed on a cushion beside him, and he -said, “You’ve always been so kind, so charming to Marian.” He remembered -Marian’s words with a deepened wrath and tenderness. - -“Have I? I’m glad you think so. It’s been very easy,” said Mrs. Dallas. - -A silence fell. - -“May I talk to you?” Rupert jerked out suddenly. “May I tell you things -I’ve been feeling? I have been feeling so much--about you--about -myself.--I long to tell you.” - -“By all means tell me,” said Mrs. Dallas with great placidity; and one -could see that she had often made the same sort of reply to the same -sort of appeal. - -“You know what you have been to me,” said Rupert, turning on the step so -that he could look up at her. “You know how it’s all grown--beautifully, -inevitably. No one has ever been to me what you are.” - -Mrs. Dallas’s sleepy eyes rested on him, and her delicate nostrils, -slightly dilating, might have been, though without excitement, inhaling -a familiar incense. - -“I do love you so much,” said Rupert in a trembling voice, gazing at -her; “I do love you. You understand what I mean. You know me now and you -couldn’t misunderstand. I want to serve you. I want to help you. I want -you to lean on me and trust me--to let me be everything to you that I -can.” And as he spoke he stretched out his hand and laid it on her hands -folded in her lap. - -Mrs. Dallas let it lie there, and she looked back at him, not moved, -apparently, but a little grave. “No, I don’t think I misunderstand your -feeling,” she said after a moment. “Of course I’ve seen it plainly.” - -“Yes, yes, I knew you did.--And that you accepted -it,--dearest--loveliest--best.” He had drawn her hand to him now and he -pressed his lips upon it. And as he kissed Mrs. Dallas’s hand, as that -imagined happiness was consummated, he felt his mind cloud suddenly, as -if in a cloud of fragrance, and, thought sinking away from him, he knew -only an aching sweetness, the white, warm hand against his lips, the -darkness of the glimmering room near by, and the scent of the -carnations, exhaling their spices in the hot sunshine. Closing his eyes, -he breathed quickly. And above him, a little paler, Mrs. Dallas, for a -moment, as if with the conscious acceptance of a familiar ritual, also -closed her eyes and breathed in, with the scent of her carnations, the -immortal fragrance of the youth and passion that, to her, could soon no -longer come. “Dear boy!” she murmured. - -They heard the step of Colonel Dallas descending from the upper lawn. -Rupert drew back sharply; Mrs. Dallas softly replaced her hand upon the -other in her lap. Her husband appeared, and he looked very fretful. - -“The sun is quite tropical. It’s impossible to play in it. We don’t get -a breath of air down in this hole.” He took out his watch--Colonel -Dallas was always taking out his watch. “What time is tea?” he asked. - -“At five o’clock, as usual, I suppose,” said his wife. - -“It’s only just past four,” said the colonel, with the bitterly resigned -air of one who loses a wager he had hardly hoped to win. “I shall go to -the Trotters'. It’s better than being baked in this oven. Their lawn is -shaded at all events.” He spoke as if there had been some attempt to -dissuade him from the alleviations of the Trotters' lawn. - -“I don’t know why you didn’t go half an hour ago,” said his wife. -“You’ve so often discovered that the sun is tropical on the upper lawn -at this hour.” And as the colonel moved off she added, “Just tell them -that I’ll have lemon-squash instead of tea, will you?” - -It was a rather absurd little interlude; yet it had its point, its -appropriateness; it fitted in with those thoughts of succour, and Rupert -tried, now, to recover them, saying, after the gate had closed upon the -colonel and keeping still at his little distance, “Are you very -unhappy?” - -How he was to help Mrs. Dallas except by loving her and coming to see -her every day and being allowed to kiss her and hold her hand he did not -clearly know, but it seemed the moment for returning to those offers of -service. He did not attempt to regain her hand. Mingling with the -rapture, when the kiss and the scent of the carnations had blurred his -mind, there was also a sense of fear. He was different; and there was -more in his love than he had known. - -“Very unhappy? Not more than most people, I suppose. Why?” Mrs. Dallas -asked. Her tone was changed. Her moment of diffusion, of languor and -acceptance, was gone by. - -“Why?” Rupert felt the change and the question hurt him. “When that’s -your life?--This?” - -“By that, do you mean my husband?” Mrs. Dallas inquired kindly. “He’s -not my life. As for this--if you mean my situation and occupation--having -love made to me by a pleasant young man while I smell carnations, I can -assure you that there’s nothing I enjoy much more.” - -She did more than hurt him now; she astonished him. “Don’t!” he -breathed. It was as if something beautiful were being taken from him. -Instinctively he stretched out his hand for hers and again she gave it; -but now she looked clearly at him, a touch of malice in her smile, -though her smile was always sweet. - -“Don’t what?” - -“Don’t pretend to be hard--flippant. Don’t hide from me. Give yourself -to the real beauty that we have found.” - -“I have just said that I enjoy it.” - -“Enjoy is not the word,” said Rupert, in a low voice, looking down at -the hand in his. “It’s an initiation. A dedication.” - -“A dedication? To what?” Mrs. Dallas asked, and even more kindly; yet -her kindness made her more removed. - -Her words seemed to strike with soft yet bruising blows upon his heart. -“To life. To love,” he answered. - -“And what about Marian?” Mrs. Dallas inquired. And now, still gently, -she withdrew her hand and leaned her cheek on it as, her elbow on the -cushions of her chair, she bent her indolent but attentive gaze upon -him. “I should have thought that dedication lay in that direction.” - -His forehead was hot and his eyes, hurt, bewildered, indignant, -challenged hers yet supplicated, too. “Please don’t let me think that -I’m to hear mean conventionalities from you--as I have from Marian. You -know,” he said, and his voice slightly shook, “that dedication isn’t a -limiting, limited thing. You’ve read my books and cared for them, and -understood them,--better, you made me feel, that I did myself,--so that -you mustn’t pretend to forget. Love doesn’t shut out. It widens.” - -“Does it?” said Mrs. Dallas. “And what,” she added, “were the mean -conventionalities you heard from Marian? I’ve been wondering about -Marian.” - -“She is jealous,” said Rupert shortly, looking away. “I could hardly -believe it, but she made it too plain. It seemed to take the -foundation-stones of our life away to hear her. It made all our past, -all the things I believed we shared, seem illusory. It made me feel that -the Marian I’d loved and trusted was a stranger.” - -Mrs. Dallas contemplated his averted face, and as she heard him her -glance altered. It withdrew itself; it veiled itself; it became at once -less kind and more indolent. “And you really don’t think Marian has -anything to complain of?” she inquired presently. - -“No, I do not,” said Rupert. “Nothing is taken from her.” - -“Isn’t it? And if I became your mistress, would you still think she had -nothing to complain of?” Mrs. Dallas asked the question in a tone of -detached and impartial inquiry. - -How far apart in the young man’s experience were theory and practice was -manifested by the hot blush that sprang to his brow, the quick stare in -which an acute eye might have read an ingenuous and provincial dismay. -“My mistress?” he stammered. “You know that such a thought never entered -my head.” - -“Hasn’t it? Why not?” - -“You know I only asked to serve--to help--to care for you.” - -“You would think it wrong, then, to be unfaithful, technically, to your -wife?” - -“Wrong?” His brow showed the Saint-Bernard-puppy knot of perplexity. -“It’s not a question of wrong. Wrongness lies only in the sort of love. -Real love is sacred in all its expressions of itself; my ideal of love, -just because it includes that one, can do without it.” - -“But, on your theory, why should it do without it?” Mrs. Dallas, all -mildness, inquired. - -His mind was driven back to those questionings in the studio, when he -had thought of the incongruous yet allied themes of passion and -perambulators, and groped again, angrily, in the same obscurity. -“It’s--it’s--a matter of convenience,” he found, frowning; “it--it -wouldn’t work in with other beautiful things. It wouldn’t be -convenient.” - -“I’m glad to hear you find such a reasonable objection,” said Mrs. -Dallas. “There could hardly be a better one. It wouldn’t be at all -convenient. Though, I gather, if it could be made convenient, you still -think that Marian would have nothing to complain of.” - -“I don’t know why you are trying to pin me down like this.” Rupert, -stooping, gathered some flakes of stone from the path and scattered them -with a sharp gesture that expressed his exasperation. “You know what I -believe. Love is free, free as air and sunshine. How can one stop one’s -self from loving? Why should one? And if our love, yours and mine, could -mean that complete relation, then, yes, the ideal thing, the really -ideal thing, would be for Marian to feel it right and beautiful and to -be glad that there should be two perfected and complete relations -instead of one. As it is, that inclusive vision isn’t asked of her.” - -“She’s not, in fact, to be asked to be a Mormon,” Mrs. Dallas remarked. -“All that she has to put up with is that her husband should be in love, -platonically, with another woman, and should have ceased to be in love -with her. It’s hard, you know, when some one has been in love with you, -to give it up.” - -“But I have not ceased to love Marian!” Rupert cried. “Why should you -suppose it? My love for you doesn’t shut out my love for her. It’s a -vulgar old remnant of sexual savagery to think it does. A mother doesn’t -love one child the less for loving another. Why can’t people purify and -widen their minds by looking at the truth?--That jeer about Mormons is -unworthy of you. Marriage is a prison unless husband and wife are both -free to go on giving and growing. What does love mean but growth?” - -Mrs. Dallas’s eyes had drifted away to her beds of carnations and they -now rested on them for a little while. Rupert took up his hat and fanned -himself. He was hot, and very miserable. - -“It always strikes me, when I hear talk like yours,” said Mrs. Dallas -presently, “that it is so much less generous and noble than it imagines -itself to be. It’s the man, only, who frames the new code and the man, -only, who is to enlarge himself and run two or three loves abreast.” - -“Not at all. Marian is precisely as free as I am to love somebody else -as well as me.” - -“As free? Oh no,” said Mrs. Dallas, laughing softly. “Theoretically, -perhaps, but not actually. Nature has seen to that. When women have -babies and lose their figures it’s most unlikely that they’ll ever be -given an opportunity to exercise their freedom. That fact in itself -should make you reconsider your ideas about love. Own frankly that they -apply only to men and don’t pretend to generosity. The only free women -are the _femmes galantes_; and you’ll observe that they are seldom -burdened with a nursery, and that they never grow fat.” - -She touched, with an accuracy malignant in its clairvoyance, his -subconscious awareness of Marian’s physical alteration. Something in him -shrank away from her in fear and indignation. She was trying to make him -see things from a false and petty standpoint, the standpoint of a woman -of the world, a mere woman of the world--that world of shameful -tolerances and cruel stupidities. “I don’t know anything about _femmes -galantes_,” he said, “nor do I wish to. You misunderstand me if you -think that by love I mean sensuality.” - -With slightly lifted brows she looked out at the carnations; and had she -been angry with him he could have felt less angry with her. He was, -indeed, very angry with her when she remarked, tranquilly, “I don’t -think you know what you mean by love.” - -“I mean by love what Shelley meant by it,” Rupert declared. - - "True love in this differs from gold and clay, - That to divide is not to take away. - Love is like understanding that grows bright - Gazing on many truths. - -“I mean what all the true, great hearts of the world have meant by -it,--poetry, rapture, religion; and they can only be sustained, renewed, -created, by emotion, by passion, by sexual passion--if you like to call -it by a name you imagine to be derogatory.” He felt himself warmed and -sustained against the menace that emanated from her by the sound of his -own familiar eloquence. - -But Mrs. Dallas still tranquilly contemplated the carnations. - -“That’s the man’s point of view. The view of the artist, the creator. -Perhaps there’s truth in it. Perhaps he can’t write his poems and paint -his pictures without taking intoxicants. But it will never be the view -of the woman. Mary Shelley will never really like it when Shelley makes -love to Jane Clairmont; Marian will never like it when you make love to -me. They’ll try to believe it’s the ideal, to please him, when they are -the ones he is in love with; but when he is in love with other women -they won’t go on believing.” - -“That is their fault, their littleness, then. The wide, glorious outlook -is theirs, too, if they choose to open their eyes. I don’t accept your -antithesis for women,--humdrum respectability, roast mutton, milk -pudding, or dissipation. I don’t believe that when a woman marries and -becomes a mother she must turn her back on love.” - -Mrs. Dallas at this began to laugh, unkindly. “Turn her back on love? No -indeed. Why should she? Hasn’t she her husband and children, to say -nothing of her friends, her father and mother, her sisters and brothers? -You idealists seem always to forget these means of expansion. By love -you mean simply and solely the intoxicant. Call it poetry and religion, -if you like, but don’t expect other people, who merely see that you are -intoxicated, to call it that.” - -He sat, trying to think. Idly, half absently, with languid fingers, she -seemed to be breaking his idols as though they had been silly little -earthenware figures, not good enough--here was the stab, the -bewilderment--for her drawing-room. And who was she to do it, this -remote, mysterious creature, steeped in the perfume of her passionate -past? He felt as he gazed at her that it was not only himself he must -defend against her. - -“It’s curious to me to hear you talk in this way.” He armed himself, as -he spoke, with all that he could muster of wisdom and of weight. “You -are the last woman I’d have expected to hear it from. You’ve made me -your friend, so that I’d have a right to be frank, even if you hadn’t -let me love you. What right have you to turn your back on all the -beauty and romance of life--to smile at them and mock them? You haven’t -allowed yourself to be bandaged and crippled by convention, I’m sure of -it. You have followed your heart--bravely, truly--out into life. You -have loved--and loved--and loved--I know it. It breathes from you. It’s -all you’ve lived for.” - -“And you think the result so satisfactory?” said Mrs. Dallas. She looked -at him now, and if it was with irony it was with sadness. She turned -from her question. “Well, if you like, I am one of the _femmes -galantes_; they are of many types, you know; I wasn’t thinking, when I -shocked you so, of the obvious, gross type. I was thinking of the woman -who corresponds to you--the idealist, the spiritual _femme galante_. -And, I’m convinced of it, for a woman, it doesn’t work. A man, if he is -a big man, or has a big life,--it isn’t always the same thing by the -way,--may have his succession of passions, or, as you’d claim,--and I -don’t believe it,--his contemporaneities; he has a context to frame them -in; they may fall into place. But a woman’s life can’t be calculated in -those terms of dimension. It is big enough for the emotion that leads to -marriage and to the loves that grow from that, the loves you think so -little of. It is an emotion that can’t be repeated over and over again, -simply because, in a normal life, it has grown into something else, -something even better, I should say: a form of poetry and rapture and -religion quite compatible with roast mutton and respectability. But the -women who miss the normal life and who try to live on the emotions, -they--well, I can only say that to my mind they always come to look -silly. Silly is the only word for them.” - -He stared at her. “You don’t look silly.” - -“Why should I?” Mrs. Dallas asked. “I’m not of the idealist type. I -don’t confuse intoxication with religion and think I have the one when -I’ve only the other. I may have missed the real thing, but I’ve not -repeated the emotion that ought to lead to it. You are quite mistaken in -imagining that I’ve loved and loved and loved. I haven’t. I have allowed -other people to love me. That, as you’ll own, is a very different -matter. I am hard and cold and disillusioned. I am not soft and yearning -and frustrated. Why should I look silly?” - -He stared at her, and his heart was flooded with pain. What was she, -then? What was her feeling for him? What had she meant? As she spoke and -as he looked at her, the veil of romance dissolved from about her and he -saw her for the first time with her own eyes,--devoid of poetry, a hard, -cold, faded, worldly woman. Yet she was still a Sphinx, strange and -alluring, and still he struggled against her, for her, saying hotly, -though his heart was chilled, “If it’s true, you’ve hurt -yourself--you’ve hurt yourself horribly, through fear of looking silly.” - -“No, I’ve not hurt myself,” said Mrs. Dallas. “I’ve been hurt, perhaps; -but I’ve not allowed my hurts to repeat themselves too often. Some -things in life should be unique and final. The people who don’t keep -them so become shoddy. Marian, for instance, is neither hard nor cold, -nor shoddy either. You have made one of the mistakes that idealists are -always making in imagining that she was humdrum respectability and that -I was poetry and rapture and religion.--Oh, it’s no good protesting. If -I had a double chin and thin hair you’d never have wanted to help my -soul, however unhappy I was. And if Marian had sat about in carefully -chosen clothes and looked mysterious and not let you feel sure that she -cared about you, you would probably have remained in love with her. So -please own that you have been mistaken and that on the one side is love, -the love that Marian feels for you, although she knows you; because she -knows you; and on the other is illusion, intoxication, sensuality; yes, -my dear Rupert, such as you felt when I let you kiss my hand a little -while ago.” - -He sat, sullen, even sulky, half turned from her, and again he stooped -and gathered up the flakes of stone and tossed them away down the path. - -The clink and chink of ice and glass was heard approaching through the -drawing-room, and the maid stepped out bearing the tray, which she set -down on a wicker table before her mistress. The tall crystal jug, veiled -in frosty rime, showed tones of jade and chalcedony, and fillets of -lemon peel threaded it like pale, bright enamel. This gem-like beaker, -the plate of golden cakes, with the scent of the carnations, with Mrs. -Dallas’s little foot on its cushion, with her rings of pearl and ruby, -had all been part of the magic she had meant to him. The very sound of -the ice, dully yet resonantly chinking, brought a suffocating sense of -nostalgia. It was over, all over. He was disenchanted. She was cruel to -him, to him who had loved her. She had cut into him and killed bright, -ingenuous, trustful things. And, in a placid voice, she asked him if he -would have some cake, and filled his glass. - -He took it from her and drank it off in silence. The icy, aromatic -liquid seemed an antidote to that other intoxicant she had mocked. Irony -flowed through his veins; a bitter-sweet sense of vengeful maturity. -When he set down the glass, he looked up at her, and he felt himself -measuring his sword against the stiletto of an adversary. - -“Well, I’ve had my lesson,” he said. “I’ve been a generous but deluded -idealist, it seems, in imagining that men and women are equals in their -claims on life. Since I’m an artist, I have a right to my raptures, I -take it. And poor Marian must be jealous with reason. Well, well; it’s -an odd morality to hear preached.” - -Mrs. Dallas still sipped her lemonade and she quietly considered him. -She said nothing, and even after she had finished and set down her glass -she sat for still a little while in silence. - -“I’m sorry I’ve seemed to preach,” she then remarked, “and I certainly -think that Marian has every reason to be jealous. What more did I say? -That a man isn’t as ridiculous and undignified as a woman when he falls -in and out of love-affairs on the condition that he has a big life? That -was it, wasn’t it?” - -“That was it, and I’m glad to have your assurance that I am in no danger -of being ridiculous or undignified.” - -“Do you mean,” said Mrs. Dallas, looking at him, “that you think yours -such a big life?” - -It had been, before, his heart, its tenderness, its devotion and -dedication, that she had cut into; it was into something deeper now, -something more substantially and vitally at the centre of his life, -something of which his heart and all its ardours were but tributaries. -He was to learn that self-love could bleed with a fiercer, darker gush. -The blood, as if foretelling his ordeal, sprang to his forehead as he -looked back at her. - -“I have my art,” he said, and he disdained any pretended humility; he -spoke with pride and even with solemnity. “I live for my art. I don’t -think that I am an insignificant man.” - -“Don’t you?” said Mrs. Dallas. It was with an unaffected curiosity that -her eyes rested on him, and it sank into him, drop by drop, like poison. -“Not insignificant, perhaps,” she took up after a moment. “That’s not -quite the word, perhaps. You are very intelligent and appreciative and -good-hearted. I don’t suppose one can be quite insignificant if one is -that. But--do you call it art, your writing? I wonder. Oh, you are quite -right to live for it, of course, just as other men do for stock-broking -or fox-hunting or print-collecting, or anything else that employs their -energies or satisfies their tastes or brings in money; but, to count as -art, a man’s activities must mean more than just his own satisfaction in -them, mustn’t they? You write careful, intelligent, sentimental little -books; but I can’t feel that the world would be any the poorer if you -were to take to stock-broking or fox-hunting instead. No, it doesn’t -seem to me, my dear Rupert, that your life is nearly large enough for a -succession of love-affairs. It’s all right when one is young and looking -for a mate; experiments are in order then; but you’ve found your mate, -and you’ll soon be not so very young, and if on the strength of your art -you imagine yourself entitled to unseasonable intoxications, you’ll -become, in time, an emotional dram-drinker, one of those foolish old -inebriates we are all familiar with, and you’ll spoil yourself for what -you were meant to be and can be,--a devoted husband and an excellent -_père de famille_.” - -Stretched on his rack, broken, bleeding, Rupert stared at her. Who was -this woman, this cruel, ambiguous woman who watched his agony with -deliberating, drowsy eyes? There came into his mind the memory of a -picture seen in childhood, some sentimental print that had strongly -impressed his boyish sensibilities. A corner of a Roman amphitheatre, a -rising tier of seats; sham architecture, sham Romans, no doubt, and a -poor piece of claptrap, looked back on from his maturity; but the face -of the Roman woman, leaning so quietly forward under its gold tiara, to -watch, unmoved, the tormented combatants below, was it not like this -face? Yes, she was of that stony-hearted breed, unaltered by the -centuries. - -The torment of his humiliation snatched at anger for a veil. He said, -smiling, “You have been very successful till now in concealing your real -opinion of me.” - -“Have I concealed it?” - -“My work certainly seemed to be of absorbing interest to you.” - -“I listened to it; yes.” - -“I didn’t imagine you’d stoop to feign interest. I didn’t imagine you’d -take such pains to allure and flatter a commonplace young _père de -famille_.” - -“Did I take pains to allure and flatter him?” - -“From the first!--From the very first!--That day we met!--My God!” Even -now he could not help feeling himself, seeing himself, as one of his own -heroes; and, for a moment, he bent his head upon his hands--as they -would have done had a calamity as unimaginable as this befallen them. -“That first day!--The apple-blossoms framing you! You stood under your -white parasol in our orchard--and you smiled at me!” - -“I generally do at agreeable-looking young men when I see that they -admire me,” Mrs. Dallas commented. - -“Oh, don’t pretend!--Don’t hide and shift!” He lifted fierce eyes; “It -wasn’t only that. You seemed to care. You seemed to need me. You made it -easy--inevitable. You came--and came; and you asked me here again and -again.” - -“Not 'me,'--'us,'” Mrs. Dallas amended suavely. She was looking at him, -all this time, with that thoughtful, poisonous curiosity; and as he now -sat, finding for the moment no words, his fury baffled by her quiet -checkmating, she went on, “And afterwards I let you come alone because I -saw that you admired me, and that is always pleasant to me. When, at -first, as you say, I showed myself so affable, it was because I liked -Marian. I do still like her; more than I ever liked you, my dear Rupert; -if you are good-hearted and intelligent, she is more so, and she has -more sense of humour than you have, and doesn’t take herself so -seriously. And, to be quite frank, since we are talking it all out like -this, I not only liked Marian, but saw that she could be of use to me. -I’ve had, in some ways, a tiresome, tangled life, and things haven’t -always gone as I wanted them to go, so that I don’t let opportunities -for strengthening and straightening here and there pass me by. Through -Marian I met several people I wanted to meet and make sure of. People -useful to me. I think Marian quite understood and quite wanted to help. -She would. She is of my world in a sense you aren’t, you know, my dear -Rupert. And, in my idle way, I did take a good deal of trouble to be -agreeable to her. It all turned out exceedingly well and I was very -grateful to Marian. That’s one reason, you see, why I felt to-day that -our little flirtation was going too far and must be put a stop to. I -don’t want Marian to be jealous of me; it would be distinctly -inconvenient. But there is more in it than that. I wouldn’t have put -myself to this bother and talked things out like this if it hadn’t been -because of my liking for Marian. It makes me angry to see that you don’t -know how lucky you are to have such a wife. I want you to see how very -lucky you are. I want you to see yourself as others see you,--a very -unimportant young man, without position and without money, married to a -quite unusually delightful girl who has both. This isn’t the young man’s -fault, of course; one wouldn’t like him the less for it; but one does -expect him to be aware of his own felicity. One does expect him to feel -that, at present, his wife is too good for him. I don’t mean in the -conventional sense; one wouldn’t ask him to recognize that; but in the -sense of worth and charm and distinction, for those are the things he -supposes himself to care for.” - -She had, while she spoke of the “young man” thus impartially, turned her -eyes from him, and they rested again on the beds of carnations. The sun -had sunk behind the hill, and though the bright soft colours were -unshadowed, they all lay in a different light and seemed to glow coolly -in their own radiance, like jewels. - -Rupert rose. His anger had passed from him. He no longer felt Mrs. -Dallas to be an antagonist; but he felt her to be a stranger; and he -felt himself to be a stranger. A sense of fear and loneliness and -disembodiment had fallen upon him while he listened to her. He held out -his hand to her. “Good-bye,” he said. “I think I must be going.” - -She took his hand and looked up at him with the gaze so remote, so -irrevocable. “Good-bye,” she said; “I hope to see you and Marian some -day soon, perhaps.” - -The words, with their quiet relapse on convention, made him feel himself -in a new world. He had been thinking of final, fatal things, things dark -and trenchant; she showed him compromise, continuity, commonplace good -sense; and, dispossessed, bereft as he was, something in him struggled -to place itself beside her in this alien atmosphere, to make itself a -denizen of the new since he had forever lost the old world. - -“Oh yes, I’ll tell her,” he said. And as he released her hand he found, -“Thank you. I’m sure you meant it all most kindly.” - -“It’s very nice of you to say so,” said Mrs. Dallas, smiling. - -It was the world of convention; yet with all his bewildered groping for -clues and footholds, he felt, dimly, as a glimmer before his eyes or a -frail thread in his hands, that the smile was perhaps the most sincerely -sweet that he had ever had from Mrs. Dallas. It was as if she saw his -struggle and commended it. - - -III - -He walked away, up the steps, across the putting-green and out into the -woods. He went slowly as he began the gradual ascent. He felt very -tired, as though he had been beaten with rods, and there was in him a -curious mingling of confusion and lucidity, of pain and contemplation. -The present and the future were curtained with shame, uncertainty, and -dismay; but the past was vivid, and, like a singular, outgrown husk, he -seemed to look back at that Rupert on the veranda, so blind, so bland, -so fatuous, and to see him as Mrs. Dallas had seen him. - -Beyond the curtain was Marian. He knew that he went towards Marian as if -towards safety and succour; yet all was opaque before his eyes, for who -was it that Marian was to succour but that fatuous Rupert? and was it -for such as he that he could seek support? How could he go to Marian and -say, “I have been given eyes to see you as you are; help me, now, to be -blind again to what I am.” No; he could not, if he were to follow his -glimmer and hold his thread, seek succour from Marian. - -When he reached the house he went into the drawing-room and found her -sitting there in a cool dress, a book upon her knee. She did not see him -as he entered quietly and he stood for some moments in the doorway -looking at her. - -She had been crying; her cheeks were white and her eyelids heavy; but -though this perception came to him with a blow of feeling, it did not, -for the moment, move him from his contemplation of her, with all that it -brought of new and strange to the familiar. - -She was strange, though she was not a stranger, as he had become to -himself. He noted the black curves of her hair, the ample line of her -bosom, the gentle, white maternal hand laid along the book. On a -cabinet, above her head, he saw that she had very beautifully arranged -the white, rose and yellow carnations. It was like her to do this -justice to her rival’s gift; like her to place them there not only -faithfully but beautifully. And as she sat, unaware of him, in the -luminous evening air, he felt her to be full of enchantment and this -enchantment to centre in the hand laid along the book. His eyes fixed -themselves on the hand. It seemed a symbol of the Marian of grace and -girlhood whom he had loved with such ardent presage of eternal faith, -and of this Marian sitting quietly in her saddened and accepted life, -not changed except in so far as she was yet more worthy of fidelity. He -saw that she had passed through her ordeal and transcended it; he saw -that she would never again show him jealousy; and he saw that as the old -Marian he had, perhaps, forever lost her. A lover must always show -jealousy. This was a wife, maternal and aloof. - -He came into the room and she looked round at him. Her eyes, altered by -weeping, were mild and alien. They were without hostility, without -accusation; deliberating, gentle; the eyes of a wife. “Did you have a -nice afternoon?” she asked laying down her book. “It’s been delicious, -hasn’t it?” - -Quite as irrevocably as Mrs. Dallas she made the world that he must -enter. She, too, in her different way, a way founded on acceptance -rather than rejection, showed him compromise and continuity. And nothing -that Mrs. Dallas had said to him cut into him so horribly as to see -Marian show him this new world. - -An impulse came to fall on his knees beside her, bury his head in her -lap, and pour out all his griefs. But already, and for Marian’s sake, -now, he had learned a better wisdom. To fall and weep and confess would -be, again, to act like one of his own heroes; and Marian, in her heart, -knew all that there was to know of that old Rupert. He must make her now -know, and make himself know, a new Rupert. - -He sat down opposite her and, smiling a little, he said, “Mrs. Dallas -has done with me.” - -“Done with you!” Marian repeated. Her faint colour rose. - -“Quite,” said Rupert, nodding; “in any way I’d thought she had me.” - -“Do you mean,” said Marian, after a moment, “that she’s been horrid to -you?” - -“Not in the least, though it felt horrid. She merely let me see that I’d -been mistaken.” - -“Mistaken? In what way?” - -“In almost every way. In my ideas about myself, and about life, and -about her.--It wasn’t, for one thing, me she liked in particular, at -all. It was you.” - -Marian’s flush had deepened. “She seemed to like you very much indeed.” - -“Only frivolously; not seriously. She showed me to-day how silly I’d -been to think it anything but frivolous. She made me see that I’d been a -serious ass.” - -Marian sat looking at him. She was startled, and on his -behalf--wonderful maternal instinct!--she was angry; yet--he saw it all -in the sweet, subtle alteration of her face--she was happy, half -incredulously yet marvelously happy. And as he saw her happiness, tears -came to Rupert’s eyes and he felt himself, deeply and inarticulately, -blessing Mrs. Dallas. She had been right. This was something “even -better.” - -“She’s an exceedingly clever woman,” he said, smiling at Marian, though -she must see the tears. “And an exceedingly first-rate woman, too. And -I’ll always be grateful to her. The question is,”--he got up and came -and stood over his wife,--“I’ve been such an ass, darling. Can you -forgive me?” - -He had found her hand as he questioned her and he held it now up to his -cheek closing his eyes, how differently! - - -IV - -Mrs. Dallas, after her young friend had left her, sat on for quite a -long while on the veranda. The concentration of her recent enterprise -effaced itself from her eyes and lips. Her glance, steeping itself again -in indolent and melancholy retrospects, fell into a reverie. Once or -twice, putting up a languid hand, she yawned. - -When the whole garden lay in coolness, she went in and got her gardening -apron and gloves and basket of implements. It was an ideal moment for -layering her carnations. Tripping out again on her little high-heeled -shoes, she placed her kneeling-mat before a splendid plant and set to -work. She scorned complicated aids. A box of long hairpins were her -chief allies, and a sharp knife. Deftly she selected a blue-gray shoot -and stripped the narrow leaves, sharply cut a transverse slit into the -tender stalk, firmly bent and pinned the half-severed spray into the -heaped earth where it was to make new roots and establish itself in a -new life. And, as she did so, her mind reverting to thoughts of Rupert -and of her rough usage of him, a simile came to her that made her smile, -her hard and not unkindly smile. She did not regret it, though -unquestionably she had had her own moment of reluctance and of loss. It -had hurt him terribly, no doubt, as, if they had feeling, it must now -hurt her carnations to be cut and bent and pinned. But “It might be the -making of him,” Mrs. Dallas thought. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -STAKING A LARKSPUR - - -AS a matter of fact (one has often to take one’s stand on fact when -thinking about Vera), it’s I who am the gardener; it’s I, that is to -say, who draw the plans and compute the cost and give the orders and see -that the men carry them out. I often lend a hand at carrying them out, -too, for I love planting seedlings and staking plants and tweaking out -weeds here and there when I’ve the chance. That wonderful blue border -Vera had on the south terrace last summer,--it was just going over when -the war broke out,--I put in all the new blue larkspurs myself, three -hundred of them,--the larkspurs that Mrs. Thornton was to remind me -of,--and I designed and planted and with my own hands helped to lay out -the dream-garden, Vera’s special garden. It was she, certainly, who had -had the idea, standing on the site of the little, old, abandoned sunken -garden in its circle of stone wall and cypresses, and saying, “I see a -dream-garden here, Judith; a place where one can come and sit alone and -dream dreams.” She often has charming ideas, Vera, but she knows nothing -about gardening. I sound already as if I were crabbing her, I know; and -perhaps I am. Certainly I never think of her relation to her garden -without a touch of irony, and this story, which begins in the -dream-garden, isn’t to her advantage. It was there that I felt my first -definite irascibility in regard to Vera and little Mrs. Thornton, and -felt the impulse, as far as I was able, to take Mrs. Thornton under my -wing. - -It’s a rather clipped and confined wing, and yet I can do pretty much as -I choose at Compton Dally; I don’t quite know why, for Vera doesn’t -exactly like me. Still, she doesn’t dislike me, and I think she’s a -little bit afraid of me; for I am as definite and determined as a pair -of garden shears, and my silence is often only the good manners of the -dependant, and Vera knows it. - -I am her cousin, an impecunious cousin, my mother a sister of her -father’s, old Lord Charleyford, who died last year. Vera herself was -very impecunious until she married Percival Dixon; impecunious, but -always very lovely and very clever, and she was on the crest of every -wave, always, and never missed anything, except ready money and a really -good offer, even before Percival Dixon came along--he came _via_ South -Africa--and gave her all the money that even she could spend, and bought -back Compton Dally for her. Compton Dally had been in the family for -hundreds of years, and it was our grandfather, Vera’s and mine, who had -ruined us all and finally sold it. It was everything for Vera to get it -back, even if she had to take Percival Dixon with it; and I confess that -for Compton Dally I could almost have taken Percival Dixon myself; but -not quite, even for Compton Dally. - -Well, she has always been fairly decent to me; not as decent as she -might have been, certainly, but more decent than I, at all events, -expected, whatever may have been poor mother’s hopes and indignations. I -always thought mother unfair; there was no reason why Vera should go out -of her way to give me a good time, and it showed some real consideration -in her to have suggested, when mother died and while Jack was reading -for the bar, that, until he and I could set up housekeeping in London -together, I should come and be her companion and secretary and general -odd-job woman; and for people like Vera to show any consideration is -creditable to them. I am five years older than Jack, and our plan has -always been to live together. I intend, of course,--though Jack at -present doesn’t, dear lamb!--that he shall marry; but until then I’m to -live with him and take care of him and help him with his work. All this -if he ever comes back again. He is fighting at the front as I write, so -that it remains to be seen whether I’m to go on always with Vera. If -Jack doesn’t come back I shan’t find it more difficult than anything -else. We have always been all in all to each other, he and I; but that -is quite another story and one that will never be written. This one is -neither about Jack nor me, but about Vera and her garden and little Mrs. -Thornton and her husband and her clothes. - -Vera had thrown open Compton Dally to wounded Tommies and wounded -officers, and the Thorntons came in that way. He’d only been back from -the Boulogne hospital for a week, was badly crippled, and had a very -gallant record. Most of Vera’s officers before this had been colonials -who had no homes to go to. The Thorntons weren’t colonials, but they had -no home and were very poor, so that the arrangement for them to spend -six weeks or two months at Compton Dally while Captain Thornton got back -his strength--as far as he was able to get it back, poor man!--seemed an -admirable one. - -They came on a hot June afternoon both very tired, while we were all -having tea on the west terrace. The Tommies--there were over a dozen of -them, with two Red Cross nurses to take care of them--had their tea in -the billiard-room, which is made over to them for their games and meals -and almost constant gramophone, and the accurate laughter of Harry -Lauder is wafted out to us on various music-hall strains at most hours -of the day. He was laughing loudly and richly as the Thorntons arrived. -After tea Vera led them about the garden. Vera’s garden is merely a part -of her toilette, and plays almost as important a part as her clothes in -her general introduction of herself; and that she intended to introduce -herself gracefully to Captain Thornton was evident; and that I was to -pilot Mrs. Thornton, I had known after Vera’s glance at her imitation -Panama hat, her blue linen skirt, of an obsolete cut and a bad one at -that, and her white blouse, shrunken in washing. Vera placed her swiftly -as dull and dowdy, and it was my part, always, to pilot the dowdy and -the dull. - -I don’t mind that, however; even now, after three years of it, I always -enjoy going over Compton Dally and the gardens with newcomers. It’s such -a beautiful old place, so grave and so serene, its splendid Tudor front -lifted high on stone terraces, and its courts and corners behind -breaking out into all sorts of unexpected and enchanting antiquities. It -symbolizes, if you begin with the Saxon arches in the cellars, the -whole history of England, and means so much more than any person who has -ever lived there, or who ever will live there, can ever mean. It’s worth -the sacrifice of generations of younger sons and myriads of marriageable -daughters. What could they all do better than to keep it going? I always -recalled this when I wondered how Vera could have married Percival -Dixon, and felt almost as much satisfaction as she could feel in the -fact that two robust little boys, still at their preparatory school, -stood reassuringly behind her and Percival; the elder, too, a thorough -Compton, with hardly a trail of Dixon apparent on his ingenuous young -countenance. I have the whole history of Compton Dally at the tips of my -fingers, and if people give me an opening and show that they care about -it, I can talk to them for hours as I take them round, feeling, for my -little part and share in it, that, even if Vera weren’t as decent as she -is, I should put up with a great deal to stay in it and take care of it. - -We didn’t go about the house to-day. The Thorntons saw the big -herbaceous border and the rose-garden, the rock-garden, tinkling with -its little rivulet, the moat, and the lime-tree alley; and then Vera, -trailing her gossamer draperies along the flagged path between the -cypresses,--for Vera, even at this epoch of shortened petticoats, -manages always to trail,--murmured, as I’ve heard her murmur, when she’s -at Compton Dally, at least once a week, “And this is my dream-garden, -where I come and sit alone and dream dreams.” - -She led Captain Thornton down among the cypress boughs. He had a -splinted leg and an unaccustomed crutch, and found the steps a -difficulty; but Vera put a hand under his elbow and let him lean -heavily on her shoulder, and he reached the dream-garden without, I -hope, too many twinges. - -It is really very lovely. I don’t like hearing it called a dream-garden, -naturally; but I do feel always, when I come into it, that it is like -sinking into the stillness and magic of a happy dream. The gypsophila -wasn’t out yet, but it made a mist, like drowsiness; white peonies, grey -santolina, white roses and silver sea-thistle, the dreamy spires of -white foxgloves, low, purple pansies, and tall irises, white and grey -and purple--these, in their twilight colours, were massed against the -grey stone walls, and there were four bay-trees in stone urns at the -corners. The beautiful old stone seat (I found it in Brompton Road, but -it might have been made for Compton Dally three hundred years ago in -Italy) was heaped with grey and purple cushions. In the centre rose the -fluent shaft of the fountain, falling, with a musical rustle and murmur -into the stone basin where pale goldfish move among the water-lilies. - -We sat down, and Vera went on to say, as always: - -“The other gardens are for friends. I plan them for them. I see them -there. This is for loneliness, for my very self; and to me it is the -heart of the whole, as solitude should be the heart of life.” - -Vera, as a matter of fact (you see, the phrase recurs constantly), is -never alone. If she is wan and strange and wistful, it isn’t from -dreaming dreams, but from not having enough sleep and doing five times -too many things and seeing five times too many people in the day. Vera, -too, I may say it here, isn’t in the least an ass, though she may, on -occasions she finds suitable, talk like one. Occasions are often -suitable, so that, as I once told her, she’s in danger of making a habit -of it. She looked at me, when I told her this, with the pausing, -penetrating, ironic gaze she is so capable of, and finally, with a -slight grimace, said, “I’ll be careful, Judith.” - -I have moments of feeling fond of her and this was one of them. She is -careful; I’ve very rarely heard her talk like an ass when the occasion -was unsuitable; but so many people are stupid that these are rare, and I -foresee that, as she gets on and sinks by degrees into the automatism -that overtakes so many artificial people, it may become a habit, just as -the touch of rouge on her pale lips is already becoming more emphasized. - -Captain Thornton, I saw at once, as she did,--for she saw most -things,--was not stupid; but he was very simple. There was a certain -bewilderment on his handsome, sturdy face, wistfulness rather than -delight, such as a soul newly arrived in Paradise might feel, unable to -forget the passes of death and the companions left behind in suffering. -He wasn’t forgetting; I felt that as I looked at him. So many of them -forget. Vera, I am sure, hardly ever remembers what it all really -means--all these wounded heroes. Perhaps it is natural that she -shouldn’t; she has no one near in it. - -Captain Thornton gazed about him quietly, and from the garden looked -back at the angel who had led him there. Of course Vera must have looked -like an angel to him. I haven’t described Vera, and she is difficult to -describe. To say that she is pale and dark, with attenuated features and -dwelling, melancholy eyes, is only the beginning of it. Of course she -is getting on now,--she is nearing forty-five,--but she’s still lovely; -her smile makes me think of a pearl dropped in wine, and behind the -melancholy of her eyes is that well of waiting irony. She looks as soft, -as tenderly encompassing, as a summer night; but she is really sharp, -sharp, sharp. Thwart or vex her, and out leaps the stiletto; or, rather, -it would be more exact to say, out come the claws. But women of the Vera -type will always, to young men like Captain Thornton, be angels pure and -simple. I don’t suppose, for one thing, that he’d ever talked intimately -with any one quite like her. He came, I was to learn, from a remote -country rectory where the great ladies of the neighbourhood had been -unfashionable, matter of fact, and clothed for the most part in tweed -and leather, and none of them would have been likely to make much, -before the war, of a young soldier. Vera was making much of him, and a -fashionable angel is an angel doubly equipped. He would not know what it -was that made her so strange in her sweetness; but fashion of that -achieved and recondite kind is like a soft incense wafted around a -woman. She is first, everywhere, always, without an effort; and people -who are first, if they also look like angels, win hearts as easily as -they run and twist their fingers among their ropes of pearls, as Vera -was doing now. She always wore her pearls; they fell together in a milky -heap in her lap, and long earrings glimmered in the shadows of her hair. - -Vera’s way of talking, too, is like a spell. Her voice is rather like -the fountain, so low, so inarticulate, yet so expressive. She murmurs -rather than speaks, with now and then a pause that is almost a soft -gurgle. Sometimes it exasperates me to hear her, but sometimes even -cross-grained I am charmed. - -The voice purled and rippled and gurgled over Captain Thornton now. He -sat on Vera’s farther hand, and Mrs. Thornton sat between Vera and me. -Already, at tea-time, Mrs. Thornton had interested me. She had remained -silent without seeming shy. Superficially, no doubt, she was dowdy, and -superficially she looked dull, or, as I saw it, dulled; and dull and -dowdy is what at tea they all put her down for. It’s curious, how in a -group of highly civilized people, a newcomer, without a word or glance -exchanged between them, is in a moment assessed and placed and -relegated. Everybody was going to be very kind to Mrs. Thornton, that I -saw, and everybody was going to relegate her; only the highly civilized -can manage the combination. - -Mrs. Thornton, from one point of view, had a pallid, podgy little face, -with wide lips and short nose and a broad, infantile brow above eyes -singularly far apart. All the same, and the more I looked at her the -more I saw it, it was a delicious face; squared here, stubborn there, -sweet by turns and glances. And she was of the loveliest colour, with a -skin silver-white, and thick, shining, pale-gold hair, and eyes of a -deep, dense, meditative blue. All her attributes, however, were -invisible to Vera, and I was fully prepared for the glance with which, -over Mrs. Thornton’s imitation Panama, she presently said to me: - -“Darling, do take Mrs. Thornton round the water-garden. It’s so lovely -at this hour. Captain Thornton must wait for it till to-morrow. He’s too -tired to go farther now.” - -Mrs. Thornton got up at once, with her air of vague acquiescence in -anything proposed, and I led her up and out and down the lime-tree alley -and through the copse, where Vera, in spring, has her wild garden, to -the banks of the river, the clear, wandering little stream, bridged and -islanded, golden in the afternoon light under its willows and reflecting -irises and meadow-sweet. - -“Now we can sit down,” I said, and on a bench under a willow we did sit, -Mrs. Thornton with an involuntary sigh of weariness. “I expect your -husband will soon get all right here,” I said presently. “It’s such good -air. Is his leg badly damaged?” - -“Well, you see, he can already get about quite well with it,” said Mrs. -Thornton; “but I’m afraid he’ll never be able to do any of the things he -most cares for again--riding and cricket, and his soldiering, of course. -He will have to give up the army. I am afraid it’s afterwards one will -begin to feel all the things that one must give up. Just now all that I -can think about is that he has come back alive. Have you any one out -there?” she asked. - -I told her about Jack and how he had got a commission at the beginning -of the war and gone out in January. - -“It must be even more of a wrench to have them go when they aren’t -already in the army,” said Mrs. Thornton. “A soldier’s wife ought not to -feel it so much of a wrench. I’m afraid I did, though.” - -I saw already that Mrs. Thornton had taken to me. It was natural that -she should. I had taken to her quite tremendously, and she must have -felt it; and, besides, a great many women do feel confidence in me at -once. I, to be sure, look like anything but an angel, though I, like -Vera, have small, pale features and dark hair. But mine’s not a -melancholy or mysterious face. My eyebrows dip together over my nose, -and my mouth is at once placid and irascible. I look, in my straight, -austere clothes,--the silver buckles on my shoes and the fob of old -trinkets at my waist for all adornment,--like a cross between a young -priest in his soutane and a Blue-Coat boy; and I think it is the boyish -woman, curt and kind and impersonal, who gains the confidence of others -of her sex. - -“I don’t know that it was more of a wrench,” I said. “I expect that you -and I felt pretty much the same sort of thing on that Victoria platform -when we said good-bye to them. What do you and your husband intend -doing, now that he has to give up his profession?” - -“Well, we had thought of having a chicken-farm somewhere. We are both so -fond of the country, and I’ve a cousin who has a chicken-farm, and I’ve -helped her with it, and she has made it pay. Even if Clive’s leg stays -so bad, I am very strong. But we’ve had, really, no time yet to talk -things over.” - -“You don’t look very strong,” I observed, “but that may be because you -are over-tired. You look very tired. I should say that you got up at six -this morning, and raced around London shopping in the heat, and packed, -and had no lunch, and a journey on top of it all. So no wonder you are -tired.” - -“How clever of you!” Mrs. Thornton cried, laughing. “That is exactly -what I have been doing. And I’ve been in a Belgian refugee hostel ever -since Clive went, and that is tiring, though it keeps one going, too. -Don’t you find it difficult just to go on from day to day?” She was -leaning forward on her knee now to look up into my face while I knitted. -“I mean, when one wakes in the morning, for instance, to think that one -has to get up and brush one’s teeth and do one’s hair and all the rest -of it. It seems impossible when what one is feeling is that one wants to -be chloroformed till it is all over. It was then that the hostel was so -sustaining; one had to get up whether one felt like it or not.” - -“I know; yes,” I said, nodding. “I’ve work, too, though it’s not so -sustaining as a hostel. I’m my cousin’s secretary, and we have all these -Tommies now; they take up a good deal of time. It must be curious, -having it all over, all that weight of anxiety.” - -“It is, it is,” said little Mrs. Thornton, eagerly, with her look of -gratitude for finding some one with whom to talk about it. “It’s almost -like losing a limb. I feel crippled, as well as Clive. Isn’t it absurd? -But it’s almost like loss. And one is dazed with the relief of it.” - -“How long have you been married?” I asked. - -“Only a year and a half,” she told me, and that Clive’s mother and hers -had been great friends, and that she had often gone to stay with his -people in the country, so that she had always known him. Her mother had -died when she was a child and her father only two years ago. She had -lived in London with her father, who had been an artist. She was just -twenty. And after she had told me about herself, she asked me about -Jack, and I found myself telling her all about him and about those plans -of ours for living together in London if he ever comes back. - -The party at Compton Dally was small, and they were all there (except -Sir Francis who was an old family friend and who was paying a long -visit), to help Vera with her Tommies. The only other officer besides -Captain Thornton was poor Colonel Appleby, a pale, frightened, -middle-aged man invalided home with nervous shock. At dinner that night -Lady Dighton, who is the embodiment of lassitude and acquiescence, had -him, and Mrs. Travers-Cray had Sir Francis, and Vera had Captain -Thornton, so that Percival fell to the share of Mollie Thornton, and I -wondered how she liked him. If she was already feeling herself out of -it, to have Percival at dinner wouldn’t make her feel herself in; quite -the reverse. Percival’s appearance is always summed up to me by the back -of his head: the wedge of fat, red neck above his high collar, the -sleek, glittering black hair, and the rims of his red ears curving -forward on each side. The back of his head seems really as -characteristic as the front, though that is jovial and not unkindly. -Percival looks sly over his food, and looks over his wine like the sort -of man who is going to tell a story that no one else will find at all -amusing. He told Mollie several such stories that night, I inferred, -though she was evidently neither shy nor shocked; it was in the quality -of her smile that I read her kindly endurance. - -Milly, Vera’s girl, just seventeen and just promoted to late dinner, sat -on Mollie’s other hand and did not, as far as I observed, address her -once during the meal. But, then, Milly never makes efforts unless they -are plainly useful. All Vera’s beauty had been spoiled in her by the -Dixon admixture, and yet she is a most engaging-looking little minx, -with broad, bold, black, idle eyes and a blunted nose, auburn hair and a -skin of roses and carnations. Vera had seen to that. Poor Vera is quite -fond of the child, a half-vexed, half-ironic constantly rebuffed -tenderness. But Milly says to me, “Mother is such a bore, you know,” and -likes me far better, who make no claim upon her and who, she must feel, -like her very little. She will soon take flight, however, when a -sufficiently advantageous occasion presents itself. The war has been a -sad blow to her projects, and what I like in Milly is the fact that she -has never uttered a word of complaint as to the shattering of her -girlish gaieties. However, to get back to Mollie Thornton, I don’t think -she could have enjoyed her companions at dinner. - -After dinner I go and amuse the Tommies and talk to the nurses until -bedtime, but, before I went, I observed that Vera, after her wont with -the detrimental belongings of a guest, had placed Mollie in a corner -with a book and the urgent, smiling murmur: “By a friend of mine. Quite, -quite beautiful. I know you’ll love it.” It is a book called “Spiritual -Control,” with a portrait of its author, who is a stock-broker, a sleek, -stalwart, satisfied person whom Vera characterizes, why I can’t think, -except that she had him once to stay after hearing his lecture, as her -“friend.” A great many people find the book inspiring; Vera, as a matter -of fact, doesn’t, and she found Mr. Cuthbert Dawson a terrible bore. It -was plain from her giving poor Mrs. Thornton “Spiritual Control” to -read, where she placed her. - -When I came back an hour later she was still in her corner with -“Spiritual Control,” but she wasn’t reading it. She had drawn the -curtain at the window where she sat, and was looking out at the -splendid, dramatic moonlight. Sir Francis and Colonel Appleby were -reading the evening papers, Lady Dighton and Leila Travers-Cray talked -together while they knitted, Milly had disappeared, and at the farthest -end of the great room, on its farthest sofa, Vera, pale and pearly, was -talking to Captain Thornton. - -“Well,” I said, “how is your spirit? Is it more controlled?” - -Mrs. Thornton looked up at me, and after a moment her smile of -understanding merged into one of friendly enjoyment. - -“How do you manage,” she said, “to be so austere in the daytime and so -splendid at night? You make me think of a Venetian princess in that -brocade.” - -“It is nice, isn’t it?” I said. “And made by the littlest of -dressmakers. I’m clever at clothes. But tell me how you like Mr. -Cuthbert Dawson.” - -“Well, he is very cheerful and sincere,” said Mrs. Thornton, kindly; -“but I don’t seem to get much out of it. I’m really too tired and stupid -to read to-night.” - -“And it’s time your husband was in bed,” I said. “One of the nurses is -coming for him.” - -Mrs. Thornton looked down the long room at her husband. - -“If only I’d had the Red Cross training,” she said, “I could have taken -care of his leg then. I suppose I mustn’t ask to be allowed to. Isn’t it -quite early?” she added. “He’s enjoying the talk with Lady Vera.” - -“It’s half-past ten, and we are strict with our invalids. Here is nurse -now. I’ll come up with you and see that you are comfortable.” - -No one could have said that there was any creature comfort lacking in -Mrs. Thornton’s reception at Compton Dally. Captain Thornton, as the -invalid, had a larger room, but Mrs. Thornton’s room, next it, was quite -as charming a one, pink and grey, with old French prints and hangings of -_toile de Jouy_. She went up to the prints for a moment of silent -appreciation before turning to me with a sigh, half pleasure and half -wistfulness. - -“How lovely everything is here! Papa would have been in rapture over -those Cochins. I shall enjoy my sleep to-night.” And then,--it was her -only sign of awareness,--“I suppose I’m to be allowed to go and say -good-night to Clive when nurse has done with him.” - - * * * * * - -My study at Compton Dally, where I type and write and do accounts, opens -on the west terrace, and from my bureau I seemed, at most hours of the -days that followed, to have a view of Mollie Thornton’s little figure -wandering, as it were, on the outskirts, not plaintive,--there was never -a touch of plaintiveness,--but passive. With her sewing or knitting or a -book she sat a good deal under the shade of the cedar that stands at the -corner of the terrace, and she spent a good deal of time drifting up and -down the vistas of the lawns and park watching birds, a binocular in her -hand. She was certainly a most comfortable person to relegate, since she -never looked melancholy and usually contrived to seem occupied, and -Vera, when she passed behind her on the terrace on her way to the -dream-garden, Captain Thornton beside her, would pause and put her hand -on her shoulder and say, “Happy, dear?” in the most dulcet tone. And -when Mrs. Thornton, lifting those meditative eyes, answered, “Yes, thank -you,” Vera, all bland benevolence, would say, “That’s right,” and pass -on. Leila Travers-Cray and Lady Dighton sometimes exchanged a few -friendly remarks with her, and she read the morning papers to Colonel -Appleby when his eyes hurt him; but she was relegated far, far away, as -completely as any human being could be who could in any way count as a -guest. - -I was very busy and had not much time to be with her, though all the -time I had was hers; but I knew accurately what she was feeling. I -related it always with that dreadful Victoria platform, with those -moments of pain and yet of rapture which we had both known, when we had -felt ourselves, in our suffering, stand for England, lifted up in -accepting sacrifice to the august and beautiful spirit that claimed our -dearest. One would expect, after that transcendent suffering, to find as -transcending a joy; but how was joy possible to a young wife caught into -what might be to her husband a fairyland or a paradise, but to her was a -cruel and complicated machine where her only part was to turn round with -the other wheels and pretend to like it? I knew that it must not be -taken too seriously. It was only to last for six weeks, and then she -would have her Clive back again; yet while it lasted it must make the -months of suffering passed through seem happy by comparison. There had -then been nothing between them but distance and the fear of death; and -now everything was between them--everything Vera stood for; her house, -her friends, her smile, her pearls, her dream-garden. - -On morning after morning I saw Vera leading him away to it, with her -armful of books, and Chang, her Pekinese, trotting at her heels. I -perfectly understood Vera’s state of mind in regard to Captain Thornton. -There was no occasion for commonplace jealousy. He merely made her feel -cheerful and rejuvenated. Everything she had to show and tell him was -new to him. She became new to herself, poor old Vera! and gained from -the quiet regard of his sane and simple eyes--handsome eyes under -straight, dark brows--a sense of freshness and worth in everything. She -liked him better than any of the wounded heroes she had yet had. Some of -them had been merely stupid, and one or two had been gloomy, sardonic -men--men of her own world, to whom nothing she had to say would seem -new. Clive Thornton was neither stupid nor sardonic, and he was simple -enough to accept Vera’s fancy tricks--her talk of dreaming dreams and -solitude--as part of an angel’s manner, and he was just clever enough to -be able to appreciate anything she had to say. I could quite see how -endearing Vera must find his steady gaze and his considering silences. -Even with my vigorous espousal of his wife’s side I never felt angry -with him. His not seeing that she was unhappy was part of the same -innocence that made him not see that Vera was a cat. Mollie, besides, -took quite as much care to conceal her unhappiness as Vera to behave -like an angel. It never crossed his mind that his wife was relegated; it -never crossed his mind that they were separated. He did not feel -separated; they were both, as far as he knew, in fairyland together. And -yet I knew it might not all be so trivial and transient as it seemed. A -new standard was being formed for him; a new idea of what it was to be -an angel. It was possible that all unconsciously he would no longer -think of Mollie as one when he left Compton Dally; and when I took this -in I began to gather up my weapons. - -I found Mollie one afternoon sitting on the bench under the willow-tree -where we had had our first talk. She had her knitting, but her hands -were still, and she was gazing before her at the water. If she were not -a tragic figure, it was only because there are some things sadder than -tragedy. She had faced everything, been through everything, she had gone -down into the Hades where so many of us were still living, and now she -found herself baulked and menaced by commonplace daylight. Tragedy is, -in some ways, an easy thing to bear. - -“Well, what are you doing here by yourself?” I asked her, advancing. -There was a look on her face, startled and steadied, that showed me what -she had been thinking about in the fancied security of her solitude. But -she managed at once the vague smile that concealed so much, and said -that she had been, as usual, resting. “I seem to find out every day more -and more how tired I was,” she added. - -“You didn’t care to go with the others, motoring?” I took my place -beside her. “You’d have liked Marjorams. It’s a lovely old place. Some -people think it beats Compton Dally, though, naturally, I’m not one of -them.” - -“I’m sure you’re not,” said Mollie, laughing a little. “That was one of -the things that first struck me about you--how you loved it. I felt that -you were a fiercely loyal person.” - -“I think I am--narrow loyalties, but fierce ones,” I said. “But you -haven’t answered my question.” - -“About motoring? I don’t care much about it, you know. And there really -wasn’t room enough for me.” - -I knew there hadn’t been; but I was deliberately eschewing tact. - -“Has Captain Thornton gone?” I inquired, knowing, also, that he hadn’t. - -“No; Lady Vera is reading to him in the flagged garden,” said Mollie in -the voice that showed me how little she had to learn about spiritual -control. “Lady Vera is going to take him out for a run in her two-seater -before dinner. He enjoys that a great deal more than the big car.” - -“It’s far pleasanter, certainly,” I agreed. And I went on: “They are -reading, you mean, in the dream-garden. You mustn’t forget that it’s a -dream-garden--where one goes to be alone.” - -She looked round at me quickly, and after a moment I saw that she -faintly coloured. She said nothing, leaving it to me to follow up my -graceless gibe. I was quite ready to follow it up. - -“As a matter of fact,” I said, knitting the loops along the side of my -heel, “Vera hardly ever is alone there. It’s always, with Vera, a -_solitude à deux_. She’s not at all the sort of woman for real solitude. -She is the sort of woman who likes to feel, or, rather, to look lonely -and not to be alone.” - -To this, after a pause, Mollie said: - -“She is very charming; Clive finds her very charming.” And, forced to -it, apparently, by my crudity, she added, “Aren’t you fond of her, -then?” - -“No, I’m not; not particularly,” I said. “Especially not just now. Vera -is not at her best, to my mind, when she is being angelic to young -married men.” - -Mollie Thornton now blushed deeply. - -“I am perfectly contented that she should be angelic to Clive,” she -said. - -“You are very loyal,” I returned. “But you’ll own that he is getting -more out of it than you are. It’s a place, Compton Dally, for wounded -heroes rather than for a wounded hero’s wife.” - -“Do you mean,” she asked after a moment, “that I oughtn’t to have come?” -She had indeed owned to everything in the bewilderment of the question. -I laughed at it. - -“Oughtn’t to have been with your husband at a time like this! Even Vera -could hardly ask that, could she? And that’s my quarrel with her; that -it’s the time of all times that you should be together and that she -never lets you see him, practically.” - -She looked away, and after a moment I saw that her eyes had filled with -tears. - -“He hasn’t an idea of it,” she said at last. - -“That fact doesn’t make you happier, does it?” - -“He thinks I’m as happy as he is. He thinks that we are together in it -all, and that she is an angel to me, too,” said Mollie. “She always is -an angel to me when she sees me.” - -“All men are rather stupid when it comes to knowing whether their wives -are happy,” I remarked. “I think your Clive is a great dear; but I like -you best because you see things he doesn’t. You, for instance, see that -Vera isn’t an angel, though she may look like one.” - -“He has no reason to think anything else, has he?” said Mollie, and I -saw that I had brought her to the point to which I had intended to bring -her. “I don’t let him guess that I’m not happy; it would be horrid of me -if I did, for it would only mean that he’d feel at once that we must go -away, and all this loveliness would be over for him. A stuffy little -flat in Bayswater isn’t a very alluring alternative; and that’s where -we’d have to go--to my aunt’s--till Clive was better.” - -“How you’d love the stuffy flat! How glad you’d be to be there with him! -And, to do him justice, how happy he’d be there with you! He will be in -a month’s time. The only question is, the month. No, Vera isn’t an -angel. If she were an angel, she’d have seen to it that you were happy -here, too. But when it comes to being nice to other women,--really nice, -I mean,--she can be a cat. And what I’d like very much to see now is -what she’d make of it if you could show her that you could look like an -angel, too. It’s so much a matter of looks.” - -“Make of it? But I couldn’t look like an angel.” - -“You could look like a rival; that’s another way of doing it. You could -look like another woman of her own sort. You could make her see you. She -simply doesn’t see you now. I suspect that if Vera saw you and saw that -you were charming, she’d show her claws. I’d like Captain Thornton to -see her showing her claws.” - -In silent astonishment, her blue eyes fixed upon me, Mollie gazed. - -“No, I don’t hate Vera, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I said. “I -like you, that’s all, and I don’t intend that she shall go on making you -unhappy.” - -“But I don’t want Clive made unhappy,” Mollie said. “I can’t imagine -what you mean; but, whatever it is, I don’t want it. I couldn’t bear all -this to be spoiled for him. I couldn’t bear it not to be always, for -him, a paradise.” - -It was my turn to gaze at her, and I gazed penetratingly. - -“And what if it all came to mean that you yourself, because of it, were -never to be more to him than a second-rate paradise? What if she were to -spoil you for him?” - -I brought out the cruel questions deliberately, and for a moment Mollie -faced them and me. - -“Why do you say that? How cruel to say that!” she murmured, and then -suddenly she bowed her head upon her hands. “It’s been my terror. I’m -ashamed of myself for thinking it. And now--you see it!” - -I put my arm around her shoulders. - -“I’m not cruel. I only want us to see things together. I don’t really -think they’d ever come to that; and, at all events, he would never know -that they had.” - -“But I should,” Mollie said. - -“Yes, you would. And it’s horribly true that real things can be spoiled -and blighted by false things. I’ve often seen it happen. You do see the -danger, and you must take up the burden, my dear, of being cleverer than -your husband, and save him along with yourself. If Vera were what she -looks and seems to him, he might be right in feeling that he found in -her something he couldn’t find in you. You must show him that she isn’t -what she looks and seems and you must show him that you can be a -first-rate paradise, too.” - -“In a little flat in Bayswater! On a chicken-farm! No, it can’t be done. -Paradises of this sort don’t grow in such places,” poor Mollie moaned. - -“You can keep up the real paradise in them--the one he has already--when -you get there. The point is that you must show him now that you can look -like this one here. And the way to look it is to dress it. I’m sure -you’ve realized the absolutely supreme importance of dress for women of -the paradise type--the women you see here, all these sweet ministering -angels to the Tommies and the young husbands. I don’t mean to say that, -with the exception of Vera, they’re not as nice as you are in spite of -being well dressed; but I do mean that if they dressed as you do they’d -not be women of the paradise.” - -Mollie’s hands had fallen, and she was gazing again with eyes childlike, -astonished, and trusting. - -“But, Judith, what do you mean?” she asked. “Dress? Of course you all -dress beautifully. Haven’t I loved simply looking at you all, as if -you’d been the most exquisite birds? But how could I do it? I haven’t -the money; I never have had. If one has no money, one must be either -æsthetic or dowdy, and I’ve always prefered to be dowdy.” - -“Yes, I saw that; I liked you for that. There’s hope for the dowdy, but -none for the æsthetic; the one is humble, and the other is complacent. -Your clothes express renunciation simply--and the summer sales. But -though it is a question of money, some women who have masses of money -never learn how to dress. They remain mere dressmakers' formulas; and -others, with very little, can’t be passed by. They count anywhere. -You’ve noticed my clothes. I’ve hardly any money, yet I’m perfect. All -my clothes mean just what I intend them to; just as Vera’s mean what she -intends, and Mrs. Travers-Cray’s and Lady Dighton’s, and Milly’s, for -Milly already is as clever as possible at knowing her thing. But you’ve -abandoned the attempt to intend. You’ve sunk down, and you let the winds -rake over you. You’ve always made me think of a larkspur, that blue and -silver kind, all pensive grace and delicacy; but you’re a larkspur that -hasn’t been staked. Your sprays don’t count; they tumble anyhow, and no -one sees your shape or colour. Last night, for instance--that -turquoise-blue chiffon: not turquoise, and not that sort of chiffon.” - -“I know it. I hated it,” she said. - -“Of course you did, and so does any one who looks at you in it.” - -“But I couldn’t afford the better qualities,” she appealed. “And in the -cheaper ones I couldn’t get the blue I wanted, the soft Japanese blue.” - -“No, you couldn’t. And you thought it wouldn’t show if you had it made -up on sateen. It always does show. No, it needs thought and time and -computing, too much time, too much thought, to say nothing of too much -money for many women, of course; for them it wouldn’t be worth it. There -are other things to do than to live in paradise. But for you it is worth -it; to show him that you can look like an angel, and to show him that -Vera can look like a cat. No, _I’ll_ show him; mine is the -responsibility. It’s worth it, at all events, to me. I’ll put in the -stakes, and tie you and loop you and display you. You’ll see. I told you -I’d a clever little dressmaker. That’s an essential. And we’ll scrape up -the money. You shall be dressed for once as you intend.” - -She was bewildered, aghast, tempted, and, on the top of everything, -intensely amused. Her face was lighted as I’d never seen it before with -pure mirth, and it looked like still, silver water that becomes suddenly -glimmering, quivering, eddying, and sunlit. She was charming thus -lighted. It was a sort of illumination of which Vera’s face is -incapable; her gaiety is always clouded with irony. - -“It is all too kind, too astonishing, too funny for words,” Mollie said. -“Of course I should love to be well dressed for once, and I can’t see -why I shouldn’t avail myself of your little dressmaker now,--especially -now, since, as you tell me, I offend through my dowdiness. And I do -really need some new clothes. I’m wearing out my trousseau ones, you -know. Yes; wasn’t it a horrid little trousseau? But, don’t you see,” and -the sunlight faded, “I can’t be a real, not a real angel, not a real -paradise. It’s much deeper. It’s a question of roots. It’s the way they -smile, the way they walk, the way they know what they want to say and -what they don’t want to say.” - -I nodded. “You know, too, and you’d say it, if people saw you and cared -to hear what you said.” - -“That would help, of course. I’ve never felt so stupid in my life as -here. But, oh, it’s deeper!” said Mollie. “I don’t belong to it. How -they all make me feel it! I’m an outsider; and why should I pretend not -to be?” - -“It wouldn’t be pretending anything to dress as you’d like to dress. No -one who _sees_ is an outsider now a days, if they can contrive to make -themselves seen. That’s the whole point. And there’s nothing you don’t -see. You see far more than Vera does. Don’t bother about the roots. Take -care of the flowers, and the roots will take care of themselves; that’s -another modern maxim for you. Your flowers are there, and all that we -need think of now is how to show them. Wait. You’ll see. We’ll go to -London to-morrow,” I said; “and this very evening we’ll have a talk -about your hair.” - - * * * * * - -You may be sure that I was on the spot to see a week or so later my -larkspur’s début as an angel. We were all assembled in the drawing-room -before dinner, and she was a little late, as I, not she, had intended -that she should be. It was precisely the moment for a mild sensation. -The day had been hot and long. Everybody, apart from being anxious,--for -everybody was anxious, Sir Francis and Mrs. Travers-Cray with sons at -the front and Lady Dighton’s husband in the Dardanelles--apart from that -ever-present strain, everybody to-day was a little jaded, blank, and -tired of one another. There reigned, as a symptom, that silence that in -the moments before dinner falls sometimes upon people who know each -other too well for surmise or ceremony. They stood about looking at the -evening newspapers; they picked up a book; they sat side by side, -knitting without speaking. Vera, sunken in a deep chair near my sofa, -yawned wearily. No one, in fact, had anything to look to before bedtime -except the stimulant of the consommé or a possible surprise in the way -of sweets. - -I had known that I could count upon Mollie not to be self-conscious when -she appeared in her new array, but I hadn’t counted upon such complete -and pensive simplicity. Her eyes were on me as she entered, her husband -limping behind her, and they seemed to ask me, with a half-wistful -amusement, if she came up to my expectations. She far surpassed them. I -never saw a woman to whom it made more difference. “It,” on this -occasion, was blue--the blue of a night sky and the blue of a sky at -dawn, the blue, too, of my larkspurs, lapping at the edges here and -there, as delicately as filaments of cloud crossing the sky, into white. -It made one think, soft, suave triumph that it was, of breezes over the -sea at daybreak and of a crescent moon low on a horizon and of white -shores and blue Grecian hills; at least it made me think of these -things, it and Mollie together; and with it went the alteration of her -hair--bands of folded gold swathed round and round her little head. No -one but myself had ever seen before that Mollie had the poise and -lightness of a Tanagra figure nor that the shape of her face was curious -and her eyes strange and her skin like silver; but I knew, as she -advanced down the long room, that Vera, sunken in her chair, saw it all -at last, drank in every drop of it, with an astonishment that, though it -expressed itself in no gesture, I was able to gauge from her very -stillness, her concentration of stillness, as she watched the relegated -becoming visible at last. It’s not pleasant for anybody to have to own -that they’ve been blind and made a mistake, and Vera was specially fond -of discovering oddity and charm and of claiming and displaying and -discussing a discovery. And here was oddity and charm which she had not -only failed to discover, but had helped to obscure. Mollie was indeed -visible, and every eye was on her as she drifted quietly forward in the -evening light and sat down beside me. She was mine, and no one else’s; -that was quite evident, too. - -That Captain Thornton had received something of a revelation was also -evident, though it had not probably amounted to more than seeing, and -saying, that Mollie was looking awfully well; but it expressed itself in -the fact that, instead of joining Vera, as was his wont, he came and sat -down next to Mollie on my sofa. We began to talk, and, though the -watching pause was prolonged for yet another moment, the others then -began to talk, too. It was as if, not quite knowing what had happened to -them, they were all a little cheered and exhilarated; as if they’d had -their consommé and as if the sweet had been altogether a surprise. A -spectacle of any sort has this effect upon a group of jaded people. Only -Vera kept her ominous silence. - -Dinner was announced, and we all got up. Percival, with a new alacrity, -approached Mollie,--he almost always had Mollie,--the others paired off -as usual, and Vera rose to Captain Thornton’s arm. It was then that she -said, smiling thoughtfully upon Mollie: - -“Aren’t you doing your hair in a new way, dear?” - -I saw from Mollie’s answering smile that she was still ingenuous enough -to hope that she might win Vera’s approval with that of the others, the -hope, too, that while Clive might think of herself as a first-rate -angel, he should never see Vera as a cat. - -“It is new,” she said. “I’ve just learned how to; Judith showed me. Do -you like it?” - -Leaning on Captain Thornton’s arm, Vera, with gently lifted brows, -rather sadly shook her head. - -“I suppose I don’t care about fashions. It’s very fashionable, isn’t it? -But I loved so that great, girlish knot. People’s way of doing their -hair is part of their personality to me. Judith cares so much about -fashion, I know. Do you care about fashion, Captain Thornton? Do you -like this fashionable way? You know, I can’t help always thinking that -it makes women’s heads look like cheeses; in napkins, you -know--Stiltons.” - -It was the first scratch. Mollie, though with a little startled glance, -took it with all mildness, making no comment as Percival led her away, -Percival remarking that it was, he thought, a ripping way of doing her -hair; and I, as I went out manless, heard Captain Thornton, behind me, -saying, in answer to Vera’s murmurs: - -“Yes; I see; I see what you mean. But, do you know, all the same I think -it’s most awfully becoming to Mollie. It brings out the shape of her -face so.” - -“What a _dear_ little face it is!” said Vera, rapidly leaving the -cheese. - -It all worked like a stealing spell. There was nothing marked or sudden -in it. No one, I think, except Vera, was aware that his or her attitude -to little Mrs. Thornton had changed. She had become visible, that was -all, and they became aware that she was not only worth looking at, but -worth talking to. At dinner that night old Sir Francis fixed his -eye-glass to observe her more than once and after dinner he joined her -in the drawing-room and talked with her till bedtime. It turned out -then that he had known her father and actually possessed one of his -pictures; had been a great admirer. Next morning he was walking with her -on the terrace before breakfast. Mollie in a blue lawn, as sprightly as -it was demure, her casque of golden hair shining in the sunlight. Lady -Dighton asked her that afternoon to come motoring with her and the -Tommies, and in the evening I heard Mrs. Travers-Cray, while she and -Mollie wound wool together, telling her about her two boys at the front. -The only person who didn’t see more of Mollie was Captain Thornton; but -that, I felt sure, was because Vera was determined that he shouldn’t. - -It was not for a day or two that I was able to compare notes with -Mollie. - -“Well,” I said, joining her on the terrace before dinner, “_ça y est_.” - -“It’s extraordinary,” said Mollie. “Everything is different. I myself am -different. I feel, for one thing, as if I’d become clever to match my -clothes. It would be almost humiliating to have the mere clothes make so -much difference and every one change so to me unless I could really feel -that I’d changed, too.” - -“You’re staked. I told you how it would be.” - -“And I owe it all to you. It’s a wonderfully sustaining feeling to be -staked; secure, peaceful. Such a funny change, Judith, is little Milly! -Have you noticed? She came up to me when I was walking this afternoon -and linked her arm in mine, and in ten minutes was confiding in me all -about her perplexed love-affairs, as if we’d been old friends.” - -“Yes, she would. She loves to tell people about her love-affairs.” - -“But I couldn’t have imagined that she was really so ingenuous; for, in -a sense, she is ingenuous.” - -“Exceedingly ingenuous when she isn’t exceedingly sophisticated; I think -one often sees the mixture. The only thing you must be prepared for with -the Milly type is that in a week’s time she may forget that she ever -confided in you and, almost, that she ever knew you. Her ingenuousness -is a form of presumptuousness.” - -“Yes, I think I saw that. I’m beginning to see so many things--far more -things than I’ll ever have use for on a chicken-farm, Judith.” And -Mollie laughed a little. - -“And what does your husband say?” I asked. - -“Well, I’ve not seen much of him, you know. But I’m sure he likes it -awfully, the way I look.” - -“Only Vera won’t let him get at you to tell you so.” - -“Oh, he sees enough of me to tell me so,” said Mollie, smiling: “only it -takes him time to come to the point of saying things, and it’s true that -we haven’t much time.” - -“And she hasn’t given you any more scratches before him?” - -“Not before him.” Mollie flushed a little. “It _was_ a scratch, wasn’t -it? I don’t think he saw that it was.” - -“He will see in time. And it’s worth it, isn’t it, since it’s to make -him see?” - -“Yes, I can bear it. She’s rather rude to me now when he isn’t there, -you know; but it’s really less blighting to have some one see you enough -to be rude to you than to see you so little that they are affectionate. -Yet I hope she won’t be too rude.” - -“She can hardly bear it,” I said. - -It was the next morning that Vera showed me how little she was able to -bear it. She had kept me singularly busy, as if afraid that I might wave -a magic wand even more transformingly, and she came into the study where -I was writing invitations for a garden-fête in aid of the Red Cross -fund, and after giving me very dulcetly a long list of instructions, she -went to the window and looked out for some silent moments at Mollie -sauntering up and down with Sir Francis under the blue bubble of her -parasol. - -“I suppose you dressed her when you took her up to town that day,” she -then remarked. - -I had wondered how long Vera could keep under cover and I was pleased to -see her emerge. - -“Well, hardly that,” I said, marking off with my pen the names of the -people on my list who were away and not to be counted on for help with -the bazaar. “She badly needed some clothes and couldn’t afford expensive -places; so I took her to my little woman. She was able to carry out -Mollie’s ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, hasn’t she? She knows -so exactly what suits her.” - -“Carry out her ideas? She hasn’t an idea in her head. Carry out yours, -you mean, you funny creature. I can’t conceive why you took the pains to -dress up the deadly little dowd.” Vera drummed with her fingers on the -window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and -they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray, -sweet, impassive, honey-coloured woman, was one of the few people for -whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard. - -“Oh, you’re mistaken there, Vera, just as you’ve been mistaken about her -looks,” I said, all dispassionate limpidity. “She has heaps of ideas, I -can assure you, and I saw it from the beginning; just as I saw that she -was enchanting looking.” - -“Enchanting! Help! Help! That little skim-milk face, with those great -calf’s eyes! Who is the poor dear martyr thing who carries her eyes on a -plate? St. Lucia, isn’t it? She makes me think of that--as much -expression. You may have succeeded in making her less of a dowd, but -you’ll never succeed in making her less of a bore.” - -“Well, Mrs. Travers-Cray doesn’t find her a bore,” I remarked, casting a -glance of quiet, satisfied possessorship at the group outside. - -“Oh, Leila always was an angel,” said Vera, “and your little protégée -has made a very determined set at her.” - -“Sir Francis is an angel, too, then. He delights in her; that’s -evident.” It was perhaps rather indiscreet of me to goad Vera like this, -but I could not resist taking it out of her and rubbing it into her, and -I knew that Sir Francis would vex her almost as much as Mrs. -Travers-Cray. “And look at Milly,” I added. “You can’t say that Milly is -an angel. The fact is that Mrs. Thornton is a very charming young woman, -and that if you don’t see it you are the only person who doesn’t.” - -“Another person who doesn’t see it is her husband,” said Vera. She was -determined not to show that she was angry, but I could see how angry she -was. “Sir Francis, of course, old goose, thinks any one charming if they -are young and dress well and look at him with appealing eyes. It is her -husband I’m really sorry for. It’s evident that he never spoke to a -civilized woman in his life till he came here. He doesn’t show much -signs of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It’s -pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first -curate’s daughter they find round the corner. And now that she’s pushing -herself forward like this, he is done for.” Vera, I saw, was very angry -to be goaded so far. - -“Surely she is the more interesting of the two,” I blandly urged. -“Neither of them has a spark of ambition if it comes to pushing; they’ll -be quite happy on their chicken-farm. But if it were a question of -getting on and getting in with the right people, it would, I imagine, be -she rather than he who would count. This last day or two has made that -evident to my mind. In her soft, strange way little Mollie is unique, -whereas he is only an honest young soldier, and there are thousands more -just like him, thank goodness!” - -Vera at this turned her head and looked at me for a moment. After all, -even if I wasn’t angry, I, too, had given myself away. And it evidently -pleased her to recognize this--to recognize that she wasn’t being -worsted merely by Mollie’s newly revealed charm, but by my diplomacy as -well. And it is rather a good mark to Vera, I think, that I don’t -believe it ever crossed her mind for a moment that she had the simplest -method of speedy vengeance in her hands--had simply to send me packing. -Of course we should both have known that to use such a method would have -been to reveal one’s self as crude and vulgar; yet a cattish woman who -is very angry may easily become both. Vera didn’t. There are things I -always like about her. - -She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling -with cousinly good-humour: - -"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that, -Judith darling--how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he doesn’t. -You are so essentially a woman’s woman, aren’t you? I suppose it’s just -because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don’t feel -drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you, -of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their -hair and the colour of their ties. You’re a first-rate woman’s woman, I -grant you, and you’re very clever and you’ve succeeded in foisting your -little friend on silly Sir Francis and on Leila Travers-Cray, and it’s -all rather dear and funny of you, and I’ve quite loved watching it all -and seeing you at work; but you won’t succeed in foisting Mrs. Thornton -on her husband, and he’ll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out -whether he’s anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found -him,"--and Vera now spoke with a simple candour,--“quite, quite a dear; -with a great deal in him--sensitiveness, tact, flavour. So much could -have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and -started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who doesn’t -know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? No; -I’m afraid Mrs. Mollie, after she’s left your hands, Judith dear, will -tumble quite, quite flat again. _Would_ you mind, darling, getting all -the invitations off to-day? We mustn’t be slipshod about it. And don’t -forget to write to the merry-go-round man, and to Mark Hammond to see if -he’ll sing.” So, having delivered what she hoped might be a somewhat -stinging shaft at my complacency, Vera trailed away. - -If I hadn’t so goaded her I don’t believe, really, that she’d have taken -the trouble that she did take to prove herself right and me wrong. There -had been, before this, little conscious malice or intended unkindness. -But now the claws were out. During the next day or two it at once -justified and infuriated me to watch the manifold little slights and -snubs of which poor Mollie was the victim, the dexterity with which, -while seeming all sweetness, Vera essayed to belittle and discompose -her, to display her as ignorant or awkward or second-rate. Only a woman -can be aware of what another woman is accomplishing on these lines, and -though Captain Thornton once or twice showed a puzzled brow, her skill -equalled her malice, and he never really saw. I was prepared for it when -Mollie came to my study one morning and shut the door and said: - -“I’m afraid I can’t stand it any longer, Judith.” - -“It has been pretty bad,” I said. “She’s been so infernally clever, -too.” - -“Our time is really nearly up,” said Mollie, “and I’m trying to think of -some excuse for getting Clive to feel we’d better go before it comes. -Only now she’s telling him that I am jealous of her.” - -Pen in hand, I leaned back and looked up at my poor little accomplice. -This, I recognized, was indeed Vera’s trump-card, but I certainly hadn’t -foreseen that she would use it. - -“Has he told you so?” I asked. - -“Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t, could he? But I know it. Men are very -transparent, aren’t they, Judith? He is always urging me to see more of -her, and telling me that she is so kind, so clever, such a dear, and -that I’d really think so, too, if I’d try to see more of her. And when -I say that I’m sure she is, and that I hope I shall see more of her, he -thinks--I can see it--that I’m only playing up, and between us, her and -me, he is rather wretched and uncomfortable. What shall I do, Judith? -You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures, -she was really sneering at father’s, and when I tried to -answer,--because I felt I had to answer about that,--making me seem so -rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he didn’t -understand. And it’s all the time like that. I have to pretend not to -see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns -everything against me.” - -“Be patient. Give her a little more time,” I said. “She’ll run to earth -if you give her a little more time.” - -“But it is so horrid, between Clive and me, Judith: if I say what I -think to him, he will only see it as jealousy, so even with him I have -to pretend, and it makes me feel as if I were growing to be like her, -and I can’t bear it.” - -I meditated while poor Mollie dried her eyes, to which the irrepressible -tears had risen. “Ask him if he can’t arrange for you to see more of -her,” I said presently. - -She looked at me with a general trust, yet a particular scepticism. - -“But she will make that seem as if I were trying to force myself on -them; because she’s always with him, isn’t she?” - -“Only now because she keeps him, not because he wants to stay. I’m quite -sure that he wants to be more with you. I think you can manage it, -Mollie. Just say, when he next urges: 'Oh, but I’d love to, Clive. Only -you must tell me when. Perhaps sometime you’d take me to the -dream-garden when you think she’ll be there and that she’d care to have -me, and then, when you get us started, you could leave us. You could go -and take Judith for a stroll.' Something of that sort.” - -She eyed me sadly and doubtfully. - -“I’ll try whatever you tell me to try, but I feel afraid of her. I feel -as if she cared, really cared, to do me harm.” - -“She’s been proved wrong,” I said, “and I’ve rather rubbed it in; but at -the worst, Mollie, she can never harm you now as there was danger of her -doing. It’s better, far better, you’ll own, for your husband to think -you’re jealous and a naughty angel than for him to think you’re a -second-rate one.” With this aphorism, for the time being, she had to be -contented. I myself felt sure that the hour of reckoning was to come. - -It was next afternoon, after lunch, Vera being engaged in the -drawing-room with visitors, that I met Captain Thornton on the lawn with -his wife. Mollie was very large-eyed and rather pale, and I inferred -from her demeanour that she had taken a step or made a move of some -kind. - -“Do come with us, Miss Elliot,” said Captain Thornton. “I’m just taking -Mollie along to the dream-garden. She wants to have a little talk, all -to herself, with Lady Vera, and Lady Vera told me to wait for her there -till these people were gone; so it’s just the thing. And you and I can -leave them together, do you see? People never get really to know each -other unless they are alone together, do they?” - -“No, they don’t,” I replied. “Though sometimes they never get to know -each other when they are alone together,” I couldn’t resist adding; but -as I saw a slight bewilderment on his honest face I indulged in no -further subtleties, and made haste to add, “Does Vera know that you were -going to arrange a meeting?” - -“Oh, not a bit of it. That’s just the point,” said the guileless young -man. “I want her to think that it’s all Mollie’s doing, you know; -because she’s got it into her head that Mollie doesn’t really care about -her. Funny idea, isn’t it? As if Mollie could be like that to any one -who’s been as kind to us as Lady Vera has! But I’m sure that if they -have a few quiet talks it will all come right. Mollie is so -undemonstrative; I told her that. It needs time for her to get used to -anybody.” - -Mollie, her arm within her husband’s, cast across his unconscious breast -a grave, deep glance upon me as he thus quoted his defence of her. What -was she to do with Vera, the glance perhaps asked me, too, now that she -was to have her? What account of the interview would Vera serve up to -Clive? Was not her last state to be worse than her first? I tried, in my -answering glance, to reassure and sustain, yet I myself felt uncertainty -about this fulfilment of my counsel. - -We reached the dream-garden. Vera and Captain Thornton had been there -for most of the morning, and books and papers were piled on the seat -where the grey and purple cushions denoted attitudes of confident -tête-à-tête. - -Captain Thornton and I talked about the war, and I saw, with a mild, -reminiscent irony, remembering Vera’s sting, that he was perfectly -prepared to give me every opportunity for judging him. I felt, indeed, -though Vera had so absorbed him, that he had never cared to talk about -the war with her. She and the other angels were there to help one to -forget, but with me he was glad to remember. It was I who heard Vera’s -swift footfall approaching. Captain Thornton, stooping to mark out with -books and pencils the plan of a battle, had, I think, almost forgotten -the coming interview, and until Vera appeared among the cypresses, -flushed above her pearls, he remained unaware. She stood there at the -top of the steps for a moment, looking down at us, at Captain Thornton -and me, our heads so close together, and at Mollie in her blue and with -her unrevealing little face, and I saw from her expression, as she took -us all in, that she had not been succeeding so well with Captain -Thornton as Mollie and even I had feared. It was a smouldering -irritation against him that flared up with her anger against Mollie and -me. - -“Oh!” she said, a dreadfully significant monosyllable on Vera’s -competent lips. It expressed surprise and weariness and the slight -embarrassment of the civilized confronted with the barbarian. “Oh!” she -repeated, and she descended the steps, Chang trotting after her with his -countenance of quizzical superciliousness. “I’m so very, very sorry.” -She did not look at any of us now; her voice was exceedingly -inarticulate and exceedingly sweet. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. -It’s the other gardens that are for my friends. I’m charmed always to -see them there. And there are so many other gardens, aren’t there? But -this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to -be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired.” - -We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those -weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook -them into place. - -“It’s my fault,” Clive stammered. “I mean--I didn’t understand. I -thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know -you better, and I suggested this.” - -Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang -sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. “I’m very, very -sorry,” she gurgled, with oh, such vagueness! “It’s my one corner. My -one place to be alone. I don’t see people here unless I’ve asked them to -come.” She took up a review and opened it, and her eyes scanned its -pages. - -We were dismissed,--“thrown out,” as the Americans say,--and we -retreated up the steps, Mollie helping Clive, and down the flagged path -and out into the lime-tree alley. - -It was a display so complete that it left me, indeed, a little abashed -by the success of my manœuvres, while at the same time I felt that I -mustn’t let Captain Thornton discern the irrepressible smile that -quivered at the corners of my mouth. When we were out on the lawn he -turned his startled eyes on me. - -“Really, you know, I’d no idea, Miss Elliot--what?” He appealed to me. - -“That Vera could lose her temper?” I asked. - -Clive continued to stare. - -“It comes to that, doesn’t it? What else can it mean?” He looked now at -his wife. “To speak like that to you, Mollie! And when she’s been saying -she wanted so awfully to make real friends with you.” - -Mollie, I saw, was dismayed. The triumph had been too complete. She -could not keep up with it. - -“I am sure that Lady Vera is very badly overwrought about something,” -she said. “She wanted particularly to be alone and she found us there, -and it put her on edge.” Actually she was trying to patch up his fallen -angel for him. - -“But she told me to wait there for her.--Sent me off to wait for her -when those people came,” said Clive. “It seems to me that it was you she -minded finding. And yet she’s been going on about your never coming to -talk to her. She’s been going on about it like anything.” He caught -himself up, blushing, and I saw that Vera was all revealed to him. I -hardly needed to pluck another pinion from her, though I didn’t resist -the temptation to do so, saying: - -“You see, Vera is rather jealous. She can’t bear sharing things--her -friends of her dream-garden. She liked to have you there, but she didn’t -like to have Mollie there. Did she tell you she wanted to make friends -with Mollie? She’s never taken any pains to show it, has she?” - -“Oh, please, Judith!” Mollie implored. - -“But he sees it all now, Mollie, so why shouldn’t I say it?” I inquired. -“Her point has been, Captain Thornton, to keep you in and to keep Mollie -out, and she very nearly succeeded in doing it.” - -“Please, Judith! It’s not only that. She’s been such a real friend to -you, Clive! I’m sure she is overwrought about something, and it will be -all right when you next meet her.” But Mollie pleaded in vain. - -“I’m hanged if it will be all right!” said Captain Thornton. - -Vera made no attempt to reinstate herself. It was part of her strength -never to try to recover what was lost. She kept up appearances, it is -true, but that was for her own sake rather than in any hope, or even -wish, to regain his good opinion. When we all met at tea, she came -trailing in, with Chang under her arm, and as she sank into her place, -diffusing the suavest unconsciousness, she said to Mrs. Travers-Cray: - -“Charlie Carlton’s been killed, have you heard? This war is something -more than I can bear.” - -Charlie Carlton, as I knew, was a cousin of the recent callers and a -most remote friend of Vera’s; but it was the best that she could do for -the occasion, and all that she was inclined to do, though a melancholy -smile, as impersonal as it was impartial, was turned more than once on -Captain Thornton and Mollie as she inquired whether they liked sugar in -their tea or had enough cream. She had made their tea for six weeks now, -and after the first week she had never forgotten that they both liked -sugar and both disliked cream. But she thus washed her hands of intimacy -while keeping up the graces of hostess-ship. They might have arrived -that afternoon. - -Mollie and her husband rose beautifully to the situation, for their last -two days at Compton Dally; that is, Mollie rose, for the husband at such -times has only to follow and be silent. I don’t think that she could -have shown a grace and a distance as achieved as Vera’s had it not been -for those charming clothes of hers. You must have something to rise from -if you are to float serenely above people’s heads; otherwise you merely -stand on tiptoe, very uncomfortably. Mollie and Vera might have been -two silken balloons, passing and repassing suavely in the dulcet summer -air. And on the last day Vera’s sense of dramatic fitness prompted her, -evidently, to the most imperturbable _volte-face_: she showed to Mollie -a marked tenderness. To Captain Thornton she was kind, perfectly kind, -but that she found him rather dull was evident. It might have been -Mollie with whom she had spent all those hours in the dream-garden. - -“Must you really go, dear?” she asked. - -Mollie said that she was afraid they must. She had heard from her aunt, -who was waiting to take them in, and, owing to all Vera’s kindness, -Clive was now quite strong again. Vera did not insist. - -“I’ve _so_ loved getting to know you!” she said, holding Mollie’s hand -at the door of the motor on the morning of their departure. “It’s been -_such_ a pleasure. You must often, often come to Compton Dally again. -_Good_-bye, dear!” - -But Mollie knew, and Vera knew that she knew, that never again would -they be asked to Compton Dally. Meanwhile, if the war isn’t over and -Jack hasn’t come back, I’m to go and stay with them next spring on the -chicken-farm. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -EVENING PRIMROSES - - -IT had been a hot day and there seemed to be thunder in the air, but she -was afraid there would be no rain that night. The abandoned garden -needed it sadly; though, as she reflected, rain would encourage weeds -rather than the few remaining flowers. Poppies had sown themselves -everywhere, degenerates of the Shirleys which, three years ago, had -spread their silken cups in the large bed at the foot of the lawn. Their -withered stalks cracked beneath her steps in the paths and glimmered -under the unpruned branches of the cordon apple trees. There were -thistles, too, sorrel, and tall nettles, a matted carpet of bindweed and -groundsel in the little kitchen-garden, once so neat, and, of course, as -poor Charlie had predicted, the Michaelmas daisies had eaten up nearly -everything in the herbaceous border. That was one of the last questions -he had written to her: “How are my pink phloxes? Have the Michaelmas -daisies smothered them?” They had. It was the season at which the -phloxes should be in fullest flower, but not one was to be seen; the -dense, fine foliage of the daisies had advanced in a wall of green -nearly to the border’s edge. - -It was still oppressively warm. A toad hopped indolently away and -paused at the box edging, lying up against it, his front feet extended, -as if so wearied by the heat that he took his chances of discovery. She -stopped to look at the clumsy creature, in which so little of nature’s -accurate grace was expressed; and as she stood there, a sudden rustle in -the box betrayed another inhabitant--this time a baby hedgehog which, -too young for fear, moved busily about among the flat dandelion plants -that rosetted the path, and even, encountering the tips of her shoes, -stopped to examine them carefully before moving on again. The baby -hedgehog would have amused Charlie. He had always been delightful about -animals; he and the boys had always had that great interest in common. - -Yes, the bird-boxes were still there. She could see one in the big apple -tree and one fixed to the porch of the house, under the rose. How well -she remembered the frantic delight that hailed the hatching of the first -brood of tits. And the day when Charlie had deemed it prudent to -withdraw the door for a peep at the beautifully fitted mosaic of bright -little heads and bodies within, lifting up Giles in his holland pinafore -for a long, blissful gaze. Six years ago that must have been. - -The light was altering now, and when she turned at the end of the path, -a great moon had risen across the lane and seemed to hang in the -branches of the walnut tree that grew in the field beyond. A great, -shining, heavy moon, and mournful, it seemed to her; her desolate -thoughts, she was aware, lending their colour to everything. Heavy, -mournful, desolate; that was the rhythm of her own steps passing along -in the twilight, pursued by the unformulated consciousness that lay -behind all these pictures of the past; pausing at last, as if to let the -dogging sorrow overtake her, as she came to where, near the -summer-house, against the wall, the evening primroses grew. - -It was years since Charlie had first planted them there, and she had -said to herself at the time that they would never be rid of them, -tenacious, recurrent things, sowing themselves patiently, and coming up -loyally even when there was no one to wish them well. She felt touched -by their presence; for though she had always found them untidy and -uninteresting, she saw, really now for the first time, that they could -be beautiful. Homely, loyal flowers; yet--was it the invading sense of -sorrow colouring them, too?--a little uncanny, showing at this neutral -hour of mingled dusk and moonlight their pale, evident gold; becoming -conscious, as it were, becoming personal at the time when other flowers -became invisible. Not that it was a sinister uncanniness; not that of -ghosts; of fairies, rather; the very strangeness, sadness, sweetness of -the moon, to which, from them, she lifted her eyes. And they reminded -her of something, but what, she could not say. Not of Charlie. There had -never been anything strange or sad about Charlie, except the fact, -pursuing her now in his deserted garden, that he was dead and would -never see it again. - -It was a year to-day since he had been killed, and she had come down to -the country with the sense of commemoration. She wanted, alone in the -little place so full of thoughts of him, to find him, to recall him; and -she had been doing that at every turn. Yet the evening primroses shining -there brought a pang deeper than any vision of him. They, though so -homely, seemed to personify loneliness; they seemed to be missing -something; and although she was desolate because Charlie was dead, -because he would never again delight in his garden, it was, in a sense, -for him rather than for herself that she sorrowed, and, in a sense, she -did not miss him at all. - -She stood still in the path, her hands clasped behind her, her head -bent, a personification of widowhood in her thin black draperies, her -intent, memorial poise. And she could have said of herself with truth -that, during all this year, she had known only a widow’s sad -preoccupations. There had been the settling of business matters; lawyers -and bankers to interview; planning for the boys, with school-masters to -visit; and the tending of bereaved relations--Charlie’s dear old parents -clung to her. But now, on the day of his death, it was as if for the -first time she had had leisure, at last, to realize that, with it all, -she had never had the widow’s heart. She had grieved over him; she had -longed to do all for him that could be done--there was nothing new in -that; but it was far worse than not being heartbroken: it was the sorry -fact that she did not even miss him. He had left, as it were, no -emptiness behind him. - -She had lifted her head and looked round the garden, trying, in the -physical fact of absence, to summon the spiritual void. How he had -planned, dug, planted it; pruned his fruit trees; placed his anemones in -leaf-mould, his bulbs on sand. She saw his kindly, handsome figure -everywhere; his brown cheek, good grey eye, and close-cropped, tawny -hair. A manly, simple creature; the salt of the earth, as honest as the -day--oh, she saw it all; she had said it to herself a hundred times; and -there had, indeed, been nothing one could say against Charlie. But then, -as a wife, there had been nothing to say against her, either; he had -been perfectly happy with her--the happiest creature, even in the manner -of his death. He had been killed instantaneously, while walking, on a -sunny day, beside his men along a road in France. Every letter she had -had from his brother officers over there spoke of his gaiety and good -spirits. The war itself had, on the whole, meant happiness to him, for -all his gravity over certain of its tragedies. But he had been almost as -grave over mischances with his Boy Scouts, and it had all remained for -him an immense, magnificent form of boy-scouting. - -Dear, good Charlie! Yet--was it possible that something of the old -long-conquered exasperation could still, at this hour, thrust itself -into her memories? He had not been quite boyish enough to justify his -lightness and make it loveable. That had been the final fundamental -trouble in their mistaken marriage; she had not been able to mother him. -He had not been appealing, beguiling, endearing, like a child. Not like -a child; not boyish, fatherly, rather; even, playfully didactic, and -assuming always that theirs was a completely reciprocal marital -intimacy. It had not been his fault, of course. She had been too clever -ever to let him guess how stupid she found him. She felt the possessive -arm laid about her shoulders for an evening stroll; saw the wag of his -premonitory finger as he raised himself from a border to call out a -jocose reprimand; heard the chaff with which, before friends, he counted -her mistaken opinions. - -And it had been when they were alone, especially at dinner,--Charlie -across the table from her in his faultless black and white,--that the -pressure of their distance had been most difficult to protect him from. -He talked then, and she had to answer adequately. He was fond of talk, -and, while the most uncritical of Conservatives, was full of solutions -for old ills. He took Trade-Unionists, Home-Rulers, and Dissenters -playfully and held them up to kindly ridicule. “You can laugh most -people out of their nonsense,” was one of Charlie’s maxims; and if they -didn’t respond to the treatment,--he had tried it unsuccessfully on the -village cobbler who preached in the tin chapel on Sunday,--he suspected -them of being rather wicked. - -In the first year of their marriage she had paid him the compliment of -disagreement, or, at least, discrimination. She had, until her marriage, -thought of herself as a Conservative; to be counted one by Charlie -disturbed her sense of rectitude. But Charlie opposed, became puzzled, -and finally aggrieved. He bothered and bothered and argued and argued, -with the air of trying to bring an erring child to reason. “Now look at -it in this light,” he would say. Or, “Try to see the thing squarely, -Rosamund”; and would turn upon her irrelevant batteries from the -_Spectator_. She had at last the sensation of flying, battered and -breathless, from his platitudes, and found, soon, her only refuge in -duplicity. After that, through all the years of their married life, -Charlie, she knew, thought of their evening hours alone together as -exceedingly pleasant and successful. He wasn’t one of your fellows who -doze over the _Field_ with a cigar after dinner. He had a clever wife -and he appreciated her and was proud--in spite of feminine aberrations -affectionately recognized and checked--of what he called her -“intellects.” He called his father and mother his “respected -progenitors” and his stomach was never other than “Little Mary.” And -while he talked and expounded and made his unexacting jests, Rosamund -knew that her silences had no provocation, her smile no irony. - -So it had gone on--so it might have gone on for the normal span of life. -The only insecurity that had threatened her careful edifice was the -question of the boys. The boys were like herself, or, rather, like her -adored and brilliant father--proud, sensitive, ardent little creatures, -tender-hearted and frightfully intelligent. Physically, too, they were -of a different race from Charlie, with thick brown locks, passionate yet -gentle eyes, and full, small, closely closing mouths. As boys, Charlie -had fairly well understood them,--he got on well with the average -boy,--as persons, never; and though as boys, at least as little boys, -they got on beautifully with him, they had, as persons, almost at once -understood him, even when they were too young to evade or hide from him. -If they had not been so young, they would, already, then, have hurt him -often. - -And for her the boys at once complicated everything. It had been easy, -in one way, to yield in non-essentials, though she was woman enough to -cry her eyes out when Charlie had taken Philip and Giles, at the -earliest age, to have their dear Jeanne-d’Arc heads close-cropped in -pursuit of the ideal of manliness; easy, comparatively, to steel her -heart when timid little Philip, blanched with terror, was made to ride -at six. Charlie had been right about that,--how glad she had been to -own it!--for Philip had, in a week’s time, forgotten his fears. But she -and Charlie had come near quarrelling over Giles’s rag-doll Bessie. -Giles was only three and adored Bessie, and Charlie had tossed her in -the air, mocked her, and held her up by the toe while Giles sobbed -convulsively. - -“Do you really want our boys to be milksops, Rosamund?” he had asked, -as, refusing to argue, she took the doll from him, placed her in Giles’s -arms, and kept them both on her lap, pressed within her arms, her head -bent down over them so that she need not look at her husband. He had -gone away vanquished, and Giles had kept his Bessie, until, in the -course of nature, she had dropped away from him. - -Worse than this came one day when Charlie had found Philip in a corner -writing poetry. He had not been altogether pleased by the children’s -literary tastes. To grind dutifully at Latin and Greek was one thing, -and he was fond of a tag from Tennyson. But he had never cared to read -Keats and Shelley when he was a kid. He took the copy-book out of -Philip’s reluctant hands and, turning from page to page, read out, in -mock-dramatic tones, the derivative, boyish efforts, which yet, to her -ear, had every now and then their innocent, bird-like note of reality. - -“And now this--'To a Skylark,'” said Charlie, laying a restraining, -affectionate hand on Philip’s shoulder, wishing him to rise superior to -vanity and join in the fun, once it was pointed out to him. - - "‘Glad creature from the dew upspringing - And through the sky your path upwinging!’ - -Up, up, pretty creature!" - -Philip, twisting round under his father’s arm, burst into tears of rage, -tore the book from his hand and struck him. - -It had been a terrible moment, and Rosamund, reduced as she almost was -to Philip’s condition, had never more admired her husband, who, turning -only rather pale, had walked away, saying, “I think you’ll be sorry for -that when you think it over, old fellow.” That he had been astonished, -cut to the quick, she had seen, feeling it all for him at the moment of -her deepest feeling for Philip. - -“I’m not sorry! I’m not sorry!” Philip had sobbed, rushing to her arms -and burying his head on her breast. “I’m not sorry! He’s stupid! stupid! -stupid!” - -“Hush, hush,” she had said--what a horrid moment it had been! “That is -wrong and conceited of you, Philip. You must learn to take a little -chaffing. You know how your father loves you.” - -“It’s not conceited! It’s not conceited to care about what one tries to -do. You know it’s not. _You’re_ not stupid!” the boy had sobbed. - -Alas, it had been only four years ago; only a year before the war! Even -then, at nine, Philip had been old enough, when he recovered from his -weeping, to know that he had hurt her most, had made things difficult -for her; and he had been sorry about his father, too, going to him -bravely with a tremulous, “Please forgive me, father.” “That’s all -right, old boy,” Charlie had said. It _was_ all right, too, in a sense. -It left not a trace in the sweetness of Charlie’s nature. It was Philip -who had been shaken, frightened to the very core, by what his own -outburst had revealed to himself and to her. The boy would always have -felt affection for his father; but he, too, would soon have protected -him; he, too, would hardly miss him. - -The moon had now risen far up out of the walnut branches, and flooded -the garden with sorrowful brightness. Poor, poor Charlie! was that all -it came to, then, for him? this deserted garden and a wife and children -who hardly missed him? Why, was it not the very heart of his tragedy for -her to see that they would be happier without him? “And he _was_ a -dear,” she said to herself, remembering with an almost passionate -determination kind, trustful looks and the happy love of fifteen years -ago. - -She had been standing still all this while, near the evening primroses; -but now, with the great sigh that lifted her breast, she moved forward -again, and a bird, disturbed in its rest, flew out from the thick tangle -of honeysuckle at the entrance to the summer-house, startling her. As -she stopped, her eyes drawn to the spot, she saw, suddenly, that a pale -figure was sitting in the summer-house, closely shrunken to one side; -hoping in its stillness,--that was apparent,--to remain undiscovered. -Ever since she had entered the garden it must have been sitting there; -and ever since she had entered the garden it must have been watching -her. But why? How strange! - -Dispelling a momentary qualm, she stooped her head under the honeysuckle -and entered; and then, clearly visible, with her pale hair and face,--as -pale, as evident as an evening’s primrose,--the girl sitting there, -wide-eyed, revealed, with her identity, that haunting analogy of a -little while ago. Of course, it came in a flash now, that was what they -reminded her of. Long ago she had thought--conceding them their most -lovable association--that Pamela Braithwaite looked like an evening -primrose. - -“My dear Pamela,” she said, almost as gently as she would have said it -to a somnambulist; for, like the flowers, again, she was sad, even -uncanny; although Pamela’s uncanniness too,--sweet, homely -creature,--could never be sinister. She put a hand upon her arm, for the -girl had started to her feet. - -“Oh--do forgive me, Mrs. Hayward!” Pamela gasped. Sad? It was more than -that. She was broken, spent with weeping. “I didn’t know you were -coming. I sit here sometimes in the evenings. I thought you wouldn’t -mind.” - -“My dear child, why should I mind? I’m thankful to you for coming to the -sad little place. It’s much less lonely to think about, for you have -always been so much of our life here.” - -This, she knew, was an exaggeration; but she must be more than kind to -such grief as this: she must find some comfort, if that were possible. - -And to feel herself accepted, welcomed, did give comfort; for, sinking -again on the seat, bending her face on her hands, Pamela sobbed, “Oh, -how kind you are!” - -“Poor child, poor, poor child!” said Rosamund. She was only five years -older, but she felt as a mother might feel towards the stricken girl. -She put an arm around her, murmuring, “Can you tell me what it is? Don’t -cry so, dear Pamela.” - -Pamela Braithwaite had been a girl of eighteen when they had come, in -the first year of their marriage, to Crossfields. The Braithwaites lived -a mile away, near the river, a large, affectionate, desultory family, -in a large, dilapidated house. Already Pamela mothered the younger -brood, and mothered the widowed father as well--a retired tea-planter, -who had brought from Ceylon some undefined but convenient complaint that -enabled him to pass the rest of his days wrapped in a number of coats, -eating very heartily, and, as he expressed it, “sitting about.” A -peaceful, idle man, legs outstretched in sun or firelight, hat-brim -turned down over his eyes (he had a curious way, even in the house, of -almost always wearing his hat), pipe between his teeth; good-looking, -too, tall and fair, like his daughters, and with a touch in his -appearance, though not in his character, of amicable distinction. - -Pamela, except for a brother already married and in Ceylon, was the -eldest, with a long gap between her and the group of younger brothers, -of whom Rosamund thought mainly as a reservoir of Boy Scouts until they -had had to be thought of as a reservoir of volunteers. There were three -or four younger sisters, too, some of whom had married and some of whom -had gone forth into the world--always with an extreme light-heartedness -and confidence--as companions or secretaries. These again were hardly -individualized in Rosamund’s recollection, except for the fact that, -since Pamela was always making blouses or trimming hats for them, she -had become aware that it was Phyllis who wore pink and Marjory blue. - -But whoever went, Pamela always stayed; and even when the war broke upon -the world, with Frank, the Braithwaite baby, just old enough to enlist, -and Phyllis and Marjory at once enrolling themselves as V.A.D.'s, Pamela -remained rooted. Who, indeed, had she gone, would have taken care of -Mr. Braithwaite, and of the brothers and sisters home on leave, and of -the garden earnestly dedicated to potatoes, or the small family of -Ceylon nephews and nieces deposited continually in her charge by their -parents? - -Poor little Pamela! She had had a burdened life; the assiduities of -maternity and none of its initial romance. With her large, clear eyes, -very far apart, she had always a wistful look; but it was that of a -child watching a game and waiting for its turn to come in, and no -creature could have given less the impression of weariness or routine. -For she had remained, even at thirty-three, the merely bigger sister; an -atmosphere of schoolroom tea and the nurture of rabbits and guinea-pigs -still hanging about her; her resource and cheerfulness seeming concerned -always with the organizing of games, the care of pets, and the soothing -of unimportant distresses. Tall, in her scant tweed skirts, her -much-repaired white blouse, her slender feet laced into heavy boots, -gardening gloves on her hands, so Rosamund had last seen her, a year -ago, just before Charlie had been killed, when she had straightened -herself from moulding potatoes in the lawn borders and had come forward -with her pretty smile to greet her visitor and take her in to tea. Frank -had been killed since then, as well as Charlie, but at that time, for -both households, the war was splendid adventure rather than sorrow. - -Mr. Braithwaite, in the sunny, shabby drawing-room, had stumbled up -among his wrappings, to point out to her his accurate flags, advancing -or retreating on the many maps that were pinned upon the walls. Frank’s -last letter had been read to her, and Dick’s and Eustace’s; and Pamela -had come in and out, helping the maid with the tea (the Braithwaite -maids were always as cheerful and desultory as the family, and Rosamund -never remembered seeing one of them who had not her cap askew or her -cuffs untied), standing to butter the bread herself, the side of the -loaf before cutting the slice, after her old schoolroom fashion; her -discreet yet generous use of the butter--the crust covered to a nicety -and no lumps on the crumb--seeming to express her, as did the pouring -out of the excellent tea, drawn to a point and never over, and the -pleasant, capacious cups with their gilt rims and the immersed rose -which, as one drank, discovered itself at the bottom. - -A sweet, old-fashioned, homely creature; like the evening primroses; -like them, obliterated, unnoticed in daylight; and like them now, -becoming visible, becoming personal, even becoming tragic at this -nocturnal hour; for was this really Pamela, sweet, prosaic Pamela, -sobbing so broken-heartedly beside her? How meagre, intellectual, and -unsubstantial her own grief seemed to Rosamund as she listened, almost -aghast, her arm about Pamela’s shoulders; and her instinct told her: “It -is a man. It is some one she loves--not Frank, but some one she loves -far more--who is dead. It is something final and fatal that has broken -her down like this.” And aloud she repeated: “Can you tell me, Pamela -dear? Please try to tell me. It may help you to tell.” Her own heart was -shaken and tears were in her own eyes. - -Between her sobs Pamela answered, “I love him--I love him so much. He is -dead. And sometimes I can’t bear it.” - -Rosamund had never heard of a love-affair. But these years of war had -done many things, had found out even the hidden Pamelas. - -“I didn’t know.--My poor child!--I never heard. Were you engaged?” - -She had Pamela’s ringless hand in hers. - -“No! No! It wasn’t that. No--I’ve never had any one like that. No one -ever knew. He never knew.” Pamela lifted her head. Her face seemed now -only a message emerging from the darkness; shadowed light upon the -shadow, it was expression rather than form. “May I tell you?” she said. -“Can you forgive my telling you--here and now,--and to-night, when -you’ve come to be with him? It was Mr. Hayward I loved. I’ve always -loved him. He has been all my life. Ever since you first came here to -live.” - -Rosamund gazed at her, and through all her astonishment there ran an -undertone of accomplished presage. Yes, that was it, of course. Had she -not been feeling it, seeking it all the evening?--or had it not been -seeking her? Here it was, then, the lacking emptiness. Desolate voids -seemed to open upon her in Pamela’s shadowy eyes. She tightly held the -ringless hand and felt, presently, that she pressed it against her heart -where something pierced her. Was it pity for Pamela? or for Charlie? -This was his; had always been his. And Pamela, who had had nothing, had -lost everything. “My dear!” she murmured. - -“Oh, how kind you are!” said Pamela. She sat quiet, looking down at -their two hands held against Rosamund’s heart. And with all the -austerity of her grief she had never been more childlike in Rosamund’s -eyes. Like a child, once the barriers of shyness were down and trust -established, she would confide everything. - -Rosamund knew how it must help her to confide. “Tell me if you will,” -she said. “I am glad you loved him, if it has not hurt you too much. You -understand, don’t you, that I must be glad--for him?” - -“Yes, oh, yes; I understand. How beautiful of you to see it all!--Even -though it’s so little, it is his; something he did; and so you must -care. But I don’t think there’s much to tell; nothing about him that you -don’t know.” - -“About you, then. About what he was to you.” - -“That would simply be my whole life,” said Pamela. “It’s so wonderful of -you to understand and not to blame me. So many people would have thought -it wrong; but it came before I knew what it was going to be, and I never -can feel that it was wrong. He never knew. And even if he had, it -couldn’t have made any difference. It must be because of that that I can -tell you. If you hadn’t been so happy, if it hadn’t been so perfect--for -you and him--I don’t think that I could have told. I should just have -rushed away when you came in and hidden from you.” - -“Why?” asked Rosamund after a moment. She heard something in her own -voice that Pamela would not hear. - -“I don’t quite know why,” said Pamela; “but don’t you feel it too? -Perhaps if it hadn’t been so perfect, even my little outside love might -have hurt you--or troubled you--to hear about. But I see now that you -are the only person in the world who could care to hear. It is a comfort -to tell you. I am so glad you came.” Pamela turned her eyes upon her -and it was almost with her smile. “When I see you like this I can -believe that he is here, listening with you, and sorry for me, too.” - -How like an evening primrose she was! Rosamund could see her clearly -now: the candid oval of the face, the eyes, the innocent, child forehead -with thick, fair hair falling across it. - -“Yes. Go on,” she said, smiling back. - -She was not worthy of Pamela, and poor Charlie was not worthy of her; -but no human being is worthy of a flower. And though so innocent, she -was not stupid; subtlety like a fragrance was about her as she said, -“You can comfort me because you have so much to comfort with.” - -“So much grief, or so much remembered happiness?” - -“They go together, don’t they?” said Pamela. “Every sort of fulness. But -I needn’t try to get it clear. You understand. I always thought that -perhaps people who had fulness couldn’t; now I see that I was mistaken.” - -“Have you been very unhappy, dear child?” - -"Until now? While he was here? Oh, no, I have been lonely. Even before -he came, even though my life was so crowded, it was rather lonely. I -never had any one of my own, for myself. But afterwards, even if I felt -lonely, I was happy. At least, after just at first. Because, just at -first, it was miserable, for I couldn’t help longing to see him more and -to have him like me more, and that made me understand that I was in love -with him, and I was frightened. I can’t explain clearly about it, even -to myself. But I was very, very unhappy. Perhaps you remember the time -when I was twenty, and got so run down, and they sent me to Germany to -my old governess--the only time I ever went away from home, out of -England. It was a miserable time. I tried not to think of him and not to -care. But I had to come back, and he was there, and I knew I couldn’t -stop caring, and that all I could do about it was to try to be better -because of him,--you know,--and make people happier, and not think of -myself, but of him and them. And everything changed after that. I was -never frightened any more, and though perhaps it wasn’t exactly -happiness, it was, sometimes, I believe, almost better. I can’t explain -it, but what I mean is in some poetry. I never cared much about poetry -till he came. Then I seemed to understand things I’d never understood -before, and to feel everything that was beautiful. - -“You remember how dear he was to us all--to the boys and me. I always -shared in everything they did. Every bit of this country is full of him; -I could never bear to go away and leave it. I want always to stay here -till I die.--Flowers and birds--wasn’t he wonderful about them? And our -walks in the woods! He saw everything, and made us see it. I never woke -in the morning without thinking, Will he come to-day? What will he say -and do? I was never tired of watching him and listening to him. All his -little ways--you know. When I pleased him,--sometimes I saw the bird we -were watching for first, or caught my trout well,--it was a red-letter -day. And in big things--to feel I should have pleased him if he’d known. -It was he who helped me in every way, without knowing it. And I took -more and more joy in you. At first I had felt dreadfully shy with -you--and afraid of you. You were so clever, with all your books and -music and friends, and you didn’t seem to need anything. But afterwards -you were so kind, that, though I was always shy, I was not frightened -any longer. I used to think about you so much, and imagine what he felt -about you--and you about him.--You won’t mind my saying it, I know. -Perhaps you remember the way I used so often, in the evenings, to walk -past with the children, and say good-night over the wall. That was to -see you and him walking together. You were so beautiful! You are far and -far away the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. I always noticed -everything you wore, and how your hair was done. I was glad when you -took it down from the knot and had it all at the back, as you do now. -And the lovely pale blue dress, with the little flounces--do you -remember?--a summer dress of lawn. I did love that. And the white linen -coats and skirts, and the big white hat with the lemon-coloured bow. -Your very shoes--those grey ones you always had, with the low heels and -little silver buckles. No one had such lovely clothes. And the way you -poured out tea and looked across the table at one. Always like a -beautiful muse--you don’t mind my saying it?--a little above everything, -and apart, and quietly looking on.--How I understood what he felt for -you! I felt it, too, I think, with him.” - -Yes, dear flower and child, she had: offering to Charlie that last -tribute of a woman’s worship, the imaginative love of the woman he -loves; cherishing the cruelly sweet closeness of that piercing -community. How she had idealized them both. How she had idealized -Charlie’s love. Charlie had never seen her like this. Charlie had never -dreamed of her as a muse, above, apart, and quietly watching. Why, with -Pamela’s Charlie she herself could almost have been in love! - -“What did you talk about, you and he,” she asked, “when you were -together?” Their sylvan life, Pamela’s and Charlie’s, was almost as -unknown to her as that of the birds they watched. She had almost a soft -small hope that perhaps Pamela could show her something she had missed. -“Did you ever talk about poetry, for instance?” - -“No; never about things like that,” Pamela answered. “He talked more to -the boys than to me; he talked to us all together--about what we were -doing. But I used to love listening to him when he came and talked to -father. Politics, you know; and the way things ought to be done. He was -a great deal discouraged, you remember, by the way they _were_ being -done. All those unjust taxes, you know. He wanted, he used always to -say, to _give_ to the poor himself; he _loved_ taking care of them. But -he hated that his money should be taken from him like that, against his -will. And he always, always foresaw the war; always knew that Germany -was plotting, and how England swarmed with spies. He thought we ought to -have declared war upon her long ago and struck first.--I’m rather glad -we didn’t, aren’t you? because then, in a way, we should have been in -the wrong rather than they; but of course he felt it as a statesman, not -like an ignorant woman.--You think Germany plotted, too?” - -“Yes, oh, yes.” How glad Rosamund was to be able to think it, to be -able, here, with a clear conscience, to remember that, on the theme of -Germany’s craft and crime, she and Charlie had thought quite -sufficiently alike. “But I am with you about not striking first.” - -“Are you really?” There was surprise in Pamela’s voice. She did not -dwell on the slight perplexity. “Of course, he always worsted father if -he disagreed. It was rather wicked of me, but I couldn’t help enjoying -seeing father worsted. He’d never thought things out, as Mr. Hayward -had. But that’s what he talked about--things like that--and you.” - -“Me?” Rosamund’s voice was gentle, meditative--her old voice of the -encounters with Charlie. How she could hear him through all Pamela’s -candid recitative! - -"He was always thinking about you. ‘My wife says so and so. My wife -agrees with me about it. I brought my wife last night to see it as I -do.’ Oh, you were with him in everything! It was so beautiful to see and -hear! I used to imagine that the Brownings were like that--after I read -their lives. He was a sort of poet, wasn’t he? Any one so loving and so -happy is a sort of poet--even if they don’t write poetry. Down in the -meadows one day, when we were watching lapwings, he and I and the -boys,--he wanted to show us a nest; you know how difficult they are to -find,--you passed up on the hillside, with Philip and Giles. We could -see you against the larchwood, they in their holland smocks and you in -white, with the white-and-yellow hat. I shall never forget the way he -stood up and smiled, his eyes following you. 'There’s Rosamund and the -progeny,' he said.--You know the dear, funny way he had of saying -things." - -Yes--she knew it. Yet tears had risen to Rosamund’s eyes. Dear old -Charlie; dear, old, tiresome Charlie! The tears had come as she saw him -standing to look after her and his boys; but there was nothing more, -nothing that she could give to Pamela, not one crumb of enrichment from -what Pamela believed to be her great store. Pamela had seen all--and -more than all--that there was to see. - -In her own silence now she was aware of a growing oppression. She was -too silent, even for one mute from the depth and sacredness of memory. -Might not such silence seem to reprove Pamela’s flooding confidence? She -struggled with her thoughts. “The lapwings?” she heard herself -murmuring. “I remember his showing me a nest. How he loved birds and how -much he knew about them! Weren’t you with us on the day we put up all -the nesting-boxes here? Do you remember how he planned for the placing -of each one, each bird to have its own appropriate domain? It was a -lovely day, in very early spring.” - -“Oh--_do_ you remember that?” How Pamela craved the crumb was shown by -her lightened face; it was almost happy, as it turned to Rosamund, with -its sense of recovered treasures. "Very early spring--March. Snowdrops -were up over there,--and there,--and there were daffodils at the foot of -the wall. You were in blue: a frieze coat and skirt of Japanese blue, -with a grey silk scarf and a little soft grey hat with a blue wing in -it; and you said,--you were standing just over there, near the -pond,--‘We can always count on tits.’--But you did get robins, too, and -thrushes in the big boxes; and then the splendid year when the -nut-hatches came to the box down in the orchard. And you were tying up -one box, but it was too high and he came and did it for you. I can see -you both so plainly, your hands stretching up against the sky. Tall as -you are he was taller; his head seemed to tower up into the branches. -Such a blue sky it was! And afterwards we had tea in the drawing-room, -and the tea wasn’t strong enough for him, and you liked China and he -Indian tea. And you teased him and said that you had always to make him -the little brown pot all for himself. He said, ‘Tea never tastes so -right as out of a brown pot.’ There were white tulips growing in a bowl -on the tea-table. And then you played to us. And you sang--‘I need no -star in heaven to guide me.’--He was so fond of that. Oh, do you remember -it all, too?" - -All--all. Rosamund, though her tears fell, felt her cheek flushing in -the darkness. How often he had asked for "I need no star in heaven to -guide me"! How often she had sung it to him, rejoicing so soon, while -she threw the proper tumultuous fervour that Charlie loved into the -foolish air, in the atoning thought that already Philip’s favourite was -“Der Nussbaum” and that even little Giles asked for “the sheep song,” -the bleak, beautiful old Scottish strain: “Ca' the yowes to the knowes,” -with its sweetest drop to “my bonnie dearie.” “Oh--give us something -cheerful!” Charlie would exclaim after it. - -“I remember it all, dear,” she answered; and there was silence for a -while. - -“How do you bear it?” Pamela whispered suddenly. - -The hour, the stillness, the hands that held her, drew her past the last -barrier. Her broken heart yearned for the comfort that the greater loss -alone could give. What was the strength that enabled his wife to sit -there so quietly, so gently, so full of peace and pity? - -Rosamund felt herself faltering, stumbling, as she heard the inevitable -question, and knew, as it came, that even Pamela’s heavenly blindness -might not protect her, unless she could be very careful, from horrid -loss or suspicion. To touch with a breath of her daylight reality that -silver world of recollection would be to desecrate. Could she hold her -breath and tread softly while she answered? Yes, surely. Surely she, who -had hidden through all the years from Charlie, could hide from Pamela, -although Pamela already was nearer than Charlie and knew her better than -he had ever done. All the old strength and resource welled up in her, -protecting this lovely thing, as, after the long moment, not looking at -Pamela, but into Charlie’s garden, she found the right answer. - -“You see, dear, it is so different with me. You have only your memories. -I have the boys--his boys--to live for.” - -It was right. It was the only answer. She heard Pamela’s long, soft -breaths, full of a gentle awe, and felt her hand more tightly clasped. -Once the right step was taken, it was easier to go on: - -"I want to tell you why I am so glad to have found you here, Pamela -dear. You’ll understand, I think, when I say that motherhood lives in -the present and future, and is almost cruel, cruel to everything not -itself, for it forgets the past in the present. Do you see,"--she found -the beautiful untruth,--“he is so much in them for me, that I might -almost forget him in them--forget to mourn him, as one would if they -were not there. So do you see why it comforts me to know that, while I -must go on into the future with them, you will be keeping him here and -remembering?” - -She could look at Pamela now, in safety, and she turned to her, finding -rapt eyes upon her. - -“Come here often, won’t you, when I’m away as well as when I’m here. We -must make it all look again as it did when he was with us--flowers and -trees and bird-boxes. You will help me in it all and you will think of -him here and love him. I know what happiness you meant to him--more than -he was aware of. You were a beautiful part of his life. You say you were -always, for him, only together, with the boys. That is only partly true. -He used often to speak of you to me, the little passing things people -say of any one they are very fond of and take for granted. He -appreciated you and counted upon you. I came here so sad, Pamela, so -burdened. I’ve never been sadder in my life than I was to-night as I -walked here. And you have lifted it all. It makes all the difference to -know that you are here, in his garden, remembering him. More difference -than I can say.” - -It was an unutterable gratitude that, with her tears, with love and pity -and reverence, welled up in her, seeing what Pamela had done. The garden -was no longer empty, and Charlie not forgotten. In the night of his -death and disappearance this flower had become visible. Always, when she -thought of him, she would think of evening primroses and of Pamela, so -that it would be with tenderness, with the understanding, homely, -unexacting, consecrating, that Pamela gave; Pamela herself becoming a -gift from Charlie; emerging from the darkness, evident and -beautiful,--almost another child whose future she must carry in her -heart; though the only gift she could give her now, in return for all -that she had given, was the full and free possession of the past, -where, outside the garden wall, she had been a wistful onlooker. She -felt that she opened the gate, drew Pamela in, and put into her keeping -all the keys that had weighed so heavily in her unfitted hands. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -AUTUMN CROCUSES - - -I - -“WHAT you need is a complete change, and quiet,” said his cousin -Dorothy. - -Guy, indeed, in spite of his efforts to keep up appearances, was a -dismal figure. He had been passing the teacups and the bread and butter, -enduring all the jests about sugar-rations and margarine, and enduring, -which was so much worse, the complacencies over the approaching end of -the war. His haggard face, narrow-jawed and high-foreheaded, expressed -this endurance rather than any social amenity, and he was aware that -Aunt Emily could hardly feel that the presence of her poet and soldier -nephew added much to her tea-party. Indeed, the chattering, cheerful -women affected his nerves almost as painfully as did the sound of the -motor-buses when--every day it happened--he stopped on the curb, after -leaving his office in Whitehall, and wondered how long it would take him -to summon courage to cross the street. He felt, then, like breaking down -and crying; and he felt like it now when they said, “Isn’t it all _too_ -splendid!” - -Cousin Dorothy was as chattering and as cheerful as the rest of them, -and she had every reason to be, he remembered, with Tom, her _fiancé_, -ensconced in Paris, safe after all his perils. Dorothy, though like -everybody else she had worked hard during the war, had seen nothing and -lost nothing. And she had never had any imagination. All the same, he -was thankful when she rescued him from the woman who would talk to him -idiotically about his poetry (she evidently hadn’t understood a word of -it), and took him into a quiet nook near the piano. - -It might, then, have been mere consanguinity, for he had never before -found intimacy possible where Dorothy was concerned; or it might have -been a symptom of his state (his being at Aunt Emily’s tea-party at all -was that!); but, at all events after admitting that Mrs. Dickson had -been boring him, he found himself presently confessing his terrors about -the motor-buses, his terror of the dark, his sleeplessness and general -disintegration. His nervous laugh was a concession to Dorothy’s possible -misunderstanding; but as he went on, he felt himself almost loving her -for the matter-of-factness she infused into her sympathy. After all, -even good old Dorothy wasn’t stupid enough to suspect him of cowardice; -and although, from a military point of view, he had made such a mess of -it (invalided home again and again on account of digestive complaints, -and finally, last spring, transferred to his small official post in -London), to any one, really, who had at all followed his career, it -would be apparent that no one could have stuck harder to the loathly -job. He had felt it that, and only that, even while, prompted by pride, -he had made his effort to enlist, in the first months of the war. It had -been with a deep relief that he had found himself at once rejected and -free to stay behind, free to serve humanity with his gift rather than -with his inefficiency; for he took his poetic vocation with a youthful -seriousness. And when, later on, through one of the blunders of medical -examinations, he was drawn into the net of conscription, no one could -have denied that he marched off to the shambles with unflinching -readiness. - -Dorothy, he saw, took courage all along for granted: “It’s simply a case -of shell-shock,” she said, as if it were her daily fare; “you’re queer -and jumpy, and you can’t stand noise. It’s quite like Tommy.” - -He couldn’t associate Tommy, short-nosed, round-headed, red-eared Tommy, -with anything of the sort, and said so in some resentment. But Dorothy -assured him that for some months--just a year ago--Tommy had been at -home on sick leave, and really bad enough for anything. “He suffered in -every way just as you do.” - -Guy was quite sure he hadn’t, but he did not want to argue about it. For -nothing in the world would he have defined to Dorothy what he really -suffered. - -“It’s country air you need; country food and country quiet,” Dorothy -went on. “You _can_ get away?” - -“Oh, yes; I can get away all right. Old Forsyth is most decent about it. -He was telling me this morning that I ought to take a month.” - -“I wonder if Mrs. Baldwin could have you at Thatches,” Dorothy mused. -“Tommy got well directly.” - -“Mrs. Baldwin?” His voice, he knew, expressed an unflattering -scepticism, but he couldn’t help it. “Is she at home--an institution?” -He saw Mrs. Baldwin, hatefully tactful, in a Red Cross uniform. “No, -thank you, my dear.” - -“Of course not. What do you take me for?” Dorothy kept her competent -eyes upon him. “It’s not even a P.G. place--at all events, not a regular -one, though of course you do pay for your keep. She has very narrow -means and takes friends sometimes, and, since the war, it’s just -happened--by people telling each other, as I’m telling you--to be -shell-shock cases rather particularly. It’s a lovely country, and a -dear, quaint little cottage, and she does you most awfully well, Tommy -said.” - -“I don’t like the idea of settling down like that on a stranger.” - -"But she wouldn’t be a stranger. You’d go through me, and I feel as if I -knew her already through Tommy. He said he was at home at once. ‘Cosy,’ - was how he expressed it. And you get honey on your bread at tea and -cream in your coffee at breakfast, and all sorts of delightful things -_en casserole_, that she cooks with her own hands, quite equal, Tommy -said, to the French. And, Tommy knows, _now_, you see." - -“It’s Mrs. Baldwin herself who frightens me. She frightens me more than -the motor-buses in Whitehall.” - -“That’s just what she won’t do. She’s perfectly sweet. Cosy. -Middle-aged. A widow. Her nice old father lives with her, and Tommy -liked him so much, too. You help her to garden, and with the bees, you -know. And the old father plays chess with you in the evenings. There’s a -stream near by where you can fish if you want to. It’s late for that, -of course; but Tommy got some quite good sport; he was there at just -this time of year. And he said that it was most awfully jolly country, -and that the meadows all about were full of autumn crocuses.” - -“Autumn crocuses? In the fields? I’ve never seen them wild.” - -“They do grow wild, though, in some parts of England. They are wild -there. Tommy particularly wrote about them. He said one walked down to -the stream among the autumn crocuses.” - -Dorothy was baiting her hook very prettily, and he gloomily smiled his -recognition of it. “They do sound attractive,” he owned. He hadn’t -imagined Tom a man to notice crocuses, and he was the more inclined to -trust his good impressions further. After all, apart from Mrs. Baldwin -and her father, the country, with honey, cream, and autumn crocuses, was -a happy combination, if he had been in condition for feeling anything -happy. - -What would Dorothy have thought of him, could she have known that, while -they talked, her rosy, bonnie face kept constantly, before his haunted -eyes, dissolving into a skull? Faces had a way of doing this with him -since his last encounter with the war in the spring. And all the people -talking in the room squeaked and gibbered. How could they go on talking? -How could they go on living--after what had happened? How could he? The -familiar nausea rose in him even as he forced himself to smile and say, -“Well, could she have me--Mrs. Baldwin?” - -He could not have made an effort to find a place for himself. Such -efforts, he felt sure, would have landed him at some God-forsaken -farmhouse miles from the station, where the beds were damp and the meat -tough; or, even worse, at a Bournemouth hotel, amid orchestras and -people who made a point of dressing for dinner. But, if some one found -it for him, he would let himself be pushed off. - -“I’m sure she could,” said Dorothy with conviction. “I have her address -and I’ll write to-night and tell her all about you: that you’re a rising -poet, and that your friends and relations will be _so_ grateful if -she’ll do for you what she did for Tommy.” - -He had an ironic glance for her “rising.” His relations--and Aunt Emily -and her brood were the nearest left to him--had never in the least taken -in his standing or realized that he was, among people who knew, looked -upon as completely risen. At the same time, sunken was what he felt -himself; drowned deep; too deep, he sometimes thought, for recovery. His -last little volume had been like a final fight for breath. He had -written most of it over there, after Ronnie’s death and before his own -decisive breakdown, and he knew it a result as much of his malady as of -his war experience. - -He wondered now, anew, whether these people had really read the poems. -If they had, it only showed how impervious to reality they must remain. -And there had actually been one, written after one of his leaves, called -“Eating Bread-and-Butter,” that should indeed have embarrassed them, had -they remembered it, inviting them to eat it with him in a trench with -unburied comrades lying in No-Man’s Land before them. His head, as he -thought of that,--from unburied comrades passing to unburied -friends,--gave a nervous, backward jerk, for he had told himself before -that he _must_ stop thinking in certain directions; and indeed the poems -had helped to exorcise the obsession at the time when they had been -written. - -All the same, it was very strange--such a poet at such a tea-party. He -had plunged into Aunt Emily’s tea-party as he plunged nowadays into -anything that presented itself as offering distraction. And now, as he -said, “Well, if you’ll put it through, I’ll go, and be very grateful to -you,” he felt that he was making another plunge into Mrs. Baldwin’s -cottage. - - -II - -It was a pretty cottage he found, as, on the September evening, his -station fly drew up at the wicket-gate. They had come a long way from -the station, and, after leaving a small village, the winding lane, too, -had seemed long. He saw, nevertheless, as he alighted, that the rustic -building, old stones below and modern thatch above, could not be far -from the central group of which it formed an adjunct; for it had been -contrived, by devices dear to the heart of the week-ender, from two or -three labourers' cottages thrown into one and covered all over with the -capacious and brooding thatch. “Quaint,” Dorothy’s really inevitable -word, altogether expressed it, from the box hedges that ran on either -side of the flagged path, to the pale yellow hollyhocks beside the door. - -A round-cheeked country girl, neatly capped and aproned, opened the door -on a square, rush-matted hall; and beyond that he saw a room full of the -sunset, where a table was being laid and from which Mrs. Baldwin came -out to greet him. - -She was not tall, and had thick, closely bound braids. He had dreaded -finding himself at once dealt with as a case; but Mrs. Baldwin’s manner -was not even that of one accustomed to paying guests. Her murmur of -welcome, her questions about his journey, her mild directions as she led -him up to his room, "Be careful at this landing, the level of the floor -goes up and the beam comes down so low,"--were rather those of a shy and -entirely unprofessional hostess. - -He thought, as soon as he took in his room, with its _voile-de-Gènes_ -hangings and dear old furniture, that he pleased her by saying, “What a -delicious room!” and even more when, on going to the wide, low, -mullioned window, its panes open to the west, he added, “And what a -delicious view!” There were meadows and tall hedgerow elms, and, running -in a tranquil band of brightness, the stream that reflected the sky. - -She did not say that she was glad he liked it, but her very gentle smile -at the welcome it all made for him was part of the welcome. What she did -say was, with the little air of shy preoccupation, while she wrung her -finger-tips together, those of one hand in those of the other, “I think -the water’s very hot. I have a rather young little maid. You’ll tell me -if you want anything. Are three blankets and the down quilt enough? The -nights are rather cold already.” - -He said that three would be perfect, secure, from his glance at the -deep, comely bed, that they would be beautifully thick and fleecy. - -“Then you’ll come down to us when you are ready.” She stood in the door -to look round again. “Matches here, you see; biscuits in the little -earthenware box; and the spirit-lamp is in case you should wake in the -night--you could make yourself a cup of cocoa? Everything is -there--cocoa, milk, and sugar. It usually sends one off again directly.” - -It was all the slightly shy hostess rather than the businesslike soother -and sustainer; and, no, it wasn’t a bit cosy. He repudiated that word -indignantly, while he washed--the water _was_ very hot, admirably hot; -there was a complacency about cosy, and Mrs. Baldwin had no complacency, -though she was, for all her shyness and the unconscious gestures of -physical nervousness, composed. Her hands, he remembered, recalling -their little trick,--he had noticed it in the hall,--were like a -child’s; not the hands of a practical housewife. Yet, from the look of -that bed (yes, thank heaven, a box-spring mattress!), from the heat of -the water, and, above all, the deft and accessible grouping of the -spirit-lamp and its adjuncts, she proved that she knew how to make one -comfortable. - -There were the meadows and--going again to the window, he wondered -leaning out,--could he see the autumn crocuses? Yes, surely; even at -this evening hour his eyes distinguished the pale yet delicately -purpling tint that streaked the pastoral verdure. What a delicious -place, indeed! He stood, absorbed in looking out, until the maid came to -say that supper would be ready in five minutes. - -The long room, the living-room,--for it combined, he saw, all social -functions,--also faced the meadows at the back of the house, and the -primrose coloured sunset still filled it as he entered. Mrs. Baldwin was -busying herself with the table, and an old gentleman with a very long -white beard rose, with much dignity, from the grandfather’s chair near -a window-seat. Mr. Haseltine, so his daughter named him, had more the -air of seeing the visitor as a P.G., perhaps even as a shell-shock -patient; but he was a nice old man, Guy felt, although his beard was too -long. He wore a brown velveteen jacket, and Guy surmised that he might -have been a writer or scholar of some not very significant sort. - -“Yes, we think ours a very favored nook indeed,” he said, as Guy again -praised the prospect. “Yes; three cottages. Very happily contrived, is -it not? There is a clever builder in the next town. He kept the old -fireplace, you see; that end was a kitchen and the beams are all the old -ones. Three gardens, too, thrown into one; but that is entirely my -daughter’s creation. Pig-styes used to be in that corner.” - -Guy looked out at the squares of colour, the low beds of mignonette, the -phloxes, larkspurs, and the late sweet-peas a screen of stained-glass -tints against the sky. Where the pig-styes had been was a little -thatched summer-house with rustic seat and table. The bee-hives were -just outside the hedge, at an angle of the meadow. Mr. Haseltine -continued to talk while Mrs. Baldwin and the maid came in and out, -carrying tea and eggs and covered dishes. - -“I hope you don’t mind high tea,” she said. “It seems to go with our -life here.” - -He felt that high tea was his favourite meal. There was a big white -earthenware bowl on the table, filled with sweet-peas. “Where do you get -the old-fashioned colours?” he asked her. “I thought the growers had -extirpated them; one sees only the long-stemmed ones nowadays, with the -tiresome artistic shades.” - -He pleased her again, he felt sure, and she told him that she always -saved the seed, liking the old bright colours better, too. - -He was glad that he had come, although Mr. Haseltine’s beard was too -long and he feared that he would prove talkative in the worst way, the -deliberate and retaining way. He liked the smell of everything,--a -mingling of sweet-peas, rush-matting, and China tea,--and the look of -everything; good, unpretentious old oak furniture, fresh, if faded, -chintzes, and book-lined walls; and he presently liked the taste of -everything too. - -“I feel already as if I should sleep to-night,” he said to Mrs. Baldwin. - -She sat behind the tea-urn a little distracted, if anything so mild -could be called distraction, by the plunging movements of the little -maid as she moved about the table. “That will do nicely, Cathy,” she -said. “We can manage now. You can bring in some more hot water if I -ring.--Oh, I do hope you’ll sleep. People usually sleep here.” - -She was hardly middle-aged, though, after Dorothy’s bright browns and -pinks, Tommy might well have thought her so. Many years older than -Dorothy, of course, yet how many he could not in the least compute. -There was an agelessness, with something tough and solid, about her; she -was as little slender as she was stout; she might, with her neutral -tints,--hair, skin, dress,--have looked almost the same at sixty as she -did now. She wasn’t pale, or sallow, or sunburned; yet her complexion -seemed so to go with her hair that the whole head might have been carved -in some pleasantly tinted stone. Only her eyes gave any depth of -difference; gentle eyes, like a grey-blue breadth of evening. She had a -broad, short face and broad, beautifully drawn lips, and looked almost -mysteriously innocent. - -Guy took her in to this extent, swift as he was at taking people in, and -sensitive as he was to what he found. He felt sure--and the depth of -comfort it gave him made him aware of all the reluctances Dorothy’s -decision had overborne--that she hadn’t the ghost of a method or of a -theory. Shell-shock people had merely happened to come and had happened -to get well quickly. He even gathered, as the peaceful evening wore -on,--Cathy clearing, placid lamps lighted, the windows still left open -to the twilight--that she didn’t really think very much about her cases, -in so far as they were cases and not guests. Having done her best in the -way of blankets, hot water, and spirit-kettles, and seen them settled -down into the life she had made for herself,--and not at all for -them,--she went her own way, irresponsible and unpreoccupied. - -To-night she didn’t attempt to entertain him. It was Mr. Haseltine, at -supper, who kept up the conversation, and with the air of always keeping -it up, with even the air, Guy imagined once or twice, of feeling it -specially his part to make amends, in that sort of resource, for his -dear daughter’s deficiency. She was, Guy saw, very much his dear -daughter; but he felt sure that it had never entered the old gentleman’s -head that any one would find her interesting when he himself was there. - -After supper she was occupied for a little while at her desk, adding up -figures, it appeared, in house-books; for she came to her father and -asked him if he would do a column for her. “It has come out differently -three times with me,” she confessed, but without ruefulness. “I’m so -dull at my accounts!” - -Guy, as Mr. Haseltine fumbled for his large tortoise-shell eyeglasses, -offered to help her, and then came over and sat beside the desk and did -the rest of the sums for her. She was tidying up for the month, she told -him, and always found it rather confusing. “It’s having to put the -pennies, which are twelves, into pounds, which are twenties, isn’t it?” -she said, and thanked him so much. - -But this could hardly be called entertaining him, nor could it, when he -accompanied her across the lane in the now deepening dusk, to shut up -her fowls. After that, there was the game of chess, during which Mrs. -Baldwin absented herself a good deal, helping Cathy, Guy imagined, with -the beds and hot-water bottles; and at nine-thirty they all lighted -their candles and went upstairs. - -Bedtime had been, for many months, his most dreaded moment. The door -shut him in and shut away the last chance of alleviation. There was -nothing for it but to stretch himself haggardly on his couch and cling -to every detail in the day’s events, or in the morrow’s prospects, that -might preserve him from the past. To fight _not_ to remember was a -losing game, and filled one’s brain with the white flame of insomnia. He -had found that it was when, exhausted by the fruitless effort, he -suffered the waiting vultures to settle upon him, abandoned himself to -the beaks and talons, that, through the sheer passivity of anguish, -oblivion most often came. - -To-night, from the habit of it, his mind braced itself as he came into -the room, and he was aware, as he had been for nearly a year now, that -Ronnie’s face was waiting, as it were, on the outskirts of -consciousness, to seize upon him. But, after he had lighted the candles -on his dressing-table and the candles on the mantelpiece, taken off his -coat, and started undressing, he found that his thoughts, quite -effortlessly, were engaged with his new surroundings, old Mr. -Haseltine’s beard and eyeglasses occupying them, and the clucking noise -he made in drinking the glass of hot ginger and water that had been -brought to them on a tray while they played; Mrs. Baldwin’s accounts, -her fowls, and the colour of her eyes. He decided that the colour was -Wedgwood, or perhaps periwinkle blue--some very dense, quiet colour. - -As he moved about the room, this protective interest came to him from -the little objects he made acquaintance with: the round Venetian box, -dim gilt and blue and red, on the chest of drawers in which he found a -handful of tiny shells--shells, no doubt, that Mrs. Baldwin had picked -up during a seaside outing; the faded old blue leather blotter on the -writing-table, marked E. H., which had probably been hers since maiden -days (and did E stand for Ethel or Edith or Ellen?); the pretty -lettering in fine black script of the writing-paper so pleasantly -stacked; the dear old Dutch coffee-pot and jug on the mantelpiece, and -the bowl of mignonette that she, of course, had arranged. He sank his -face into its fragrance, and peace seemed breathed upon him from the -flowers. - -He was wondering, as he got into bed, with a glance, before he blew out -the candle, at the birds and branches, the whites and blacks and roses -of the _voile-de-Gènes_, whether he would find the autumn crocuses open -in the meadows next morning; it had looked like the evening of another -fine day. Then, the candle out, his thoughts, for a little while, were -tangled in the magical dreamland of the _voile-de-Gènes_, and the breath -of the mignonette seemed to lie upon his eyelids with a soft compulsion -to peace, until, all thought sliding suddenly away, he dropped into -delicious slumber. - - -III - -He found the crocuses open, before breakfast. Only Cathy was in the -living-room, sweeping, when he crossed it, though he thought he heard -Mrs. Baldwin in the kitchen. A robin was singing on a spray over the -summer-house. The sky arched pale and high; and though there was no mist -in the air, its softness made him think of milk. - -From the garden he passed into the meadows, and, almost at once, saw, -everywhere, the fragile, purple flowers about him, if purple were not -too rich a word for their clear, cold tint. Lower down, near the stream, -they made him think of the silver bobbins set playing by great rain -drops when they fall heavily upon wide, shallow pools of water; and they -seemed to grow even more thickly in the farther meadow beyond the wooden -bridge. A sense of bliss was upon him as he walked among the flowers. He -had never seen anything more lovely, and all but the darker buds were -open, showing pale golden hearts to the sun. - -Yet, by the time that he had crossed the bridge, leaning on the high -rail to look down into the limpid, sliding water, he knew that it could -never stay at that or mean that for him. He had seen fields of flowers -in France, and, while the horrors there had been enacted, these fields -of crocuses, year after year, had bloomed. What they meant for his mind -was the unbridged chasm between nature and the sufferings of man. Only -when one ceased to be a man, ceased to remember and to think, could such -a day, such sights, bring the unreasoning joy. - -Walking back, he saw, as he approached the house, that Mrs. Baldwin was -standing at the garden-gate, and, bare-headed, in the linen dress of -pale lavender, she made him at once think of the crocuses, or they of -her. Their gentleness was like her, their simplicity, and something, -too,--for he felt this in her,--of unearthliness. More perhaps, than any -other flower they seemed to belong to the air rather than to the ground, -and, with their faint, pale stalks, their fragile petals unconfined by -leaf or calyx, to be rising like emanations from the sod and ready to -dissolve in mist into the sunlight. - -“You’ve had a little walk?” Mrs. Baldwin asked him as they met. - -He said he had been looking at the crocuses. “Are they really crocuses?” -he questioned. “I’ve never seen them wild before.” - -“They’re not real crocuses,” she said, “though those grow wild, too, in -a few places in England. These flowers are always called autumn crocuses -hereabouts; but they are really, botanically, meadow saffron; and they -grow wild in a great many places. You see they are not so dark a purple -as the wild crocus, and they are much taller, and the petals are more -pointed. Much more beautiful flowers, I think.” - -“Meadow saffron. That’s a pretty name, too. But I think I’ll go on -calling them autumn crocuses. They were one of the reasons that made me -want to come here,” he told her. - -They were leaning on the little garden-gate looking over the meadows. - -“Really? Did you hear about them?” - -He told her what Dorothy had said, passed on from the appreciative -Tommy, and she said again, “Really!” and with surprise, so that, -laughing a little, he said that he believed she would never have thought -of Mr. Barnet as an appreciator of crocuses. She laughed a little, too, -confessing to a community of perception where Tommy was concerned, and -remarked that it was very nice of him to have cared. “What he talked -about,” she said, “was the food. He was never done praising my coffee. -It’s time for coffee now,” she added. - -Guy, as they went in, said that, after all, if that was what Tommy -talked about, he wondered that his caring for the crocuses should have -surprised her, for he was sure that the one was almost as poetical as -the others. It was poetical, indeed, as she made it, in a delightful and -complicated apparatus, glass and brass and premonitory scented steam; -and the milk was as hot as the water had been, and there was cream. “How -do you manage it, in these days?” he asked. But she said that it wasn’t -wickedness and bribery, really: she and Cathy skimmed it from the milk -that was brought from the nearest farm. - -He realized that he was himself talking about the food just as Tommy had -done; just as the chattering women at Aunt Emily’s tea-party had done; -just as everybody, of course, had been doing in England ever since food -became such an important matter. But it was Mrs. Baldwin who made him do -it; for though unearthly, she was deliciously prosaic. He felt that anew -when he heard her going about the house in her low-heeled little shoes, -with Cathy. They did, evidently, all the work, and how fresh, composed, -and shining everything was. The living-room, with its happy southern -windows, its tempting writing-tables, its flowers and books, was an -embodiment of the poetry that only such prose can secure. - -Guy, while Mr. Haseltine sat behind his rustling _Times_, strolled -before the shelves, surprised, presently, at their range of subject. -Surely not Mrs. Baldwin’s, such reading; hardly, he thought, Mr. -Haseltine’s. He took down a volume of Plotinus and found, on the -fly-leaf, “Oliver Baldwin,” written in a small, scholarly hand. That -explained it, then. Her husband’s. The Charles d’Orleans, too, the -Fustel de Coulanges, the Croce, and the Dante, with marginal notes. He -had been a man of letters, perhaps. Of the dozen books he took down to -examine, only one was initialled “E. H.,” and that, suitably, was -_Dominique_. But it had been given her by “O. B.” - -As in the garden, presently, he and the old gentleman walked up and -down, smoking, Guy asked him, with the diffidence natural to the -question, whether his son-in-law, Mrs. Baldwin’s husband, had been -killed in the war; though he couldn’t imagine her a war-widow. One -didn’t indeed think of her in connection with marrying and giving in -marriage--that was part of the unearthliness; yet widowhood, permanent -widowhood, seemed a suitable state. She was not girlish, nor was she -wifely. She was widowed, and it had happened, he felt sure, in spite of -his question, long ago. - -As he had expected, his companion replied, “Ah, no; he died eight, nine -years since.” And Mr. Haseltine then went on to tell, taking the war as -the obvious interest, and not without the satisfaction that Guy had so -often met and so often loathed, that he had lost dear ones. “Children of -my eldest son. Fine lads. Brave boys. One in the first month--at the -Marne; the other only last year, flying. Yes; I’ve done my bit,” said -Mr. Haseltine, with the fatuity that he was so plentifully companioned -in displaying. - -“Bit.” Odious word. His “bit.” Why his? Had any one written a poem on -the formula coming from the lips of those for whom others had died? A -scattered, flagellating line or two floated through Guy’s mind. -Something about barbed wire came in. He wondered how old Mr. Haseltine -would have felt about his “bit,” hung up on that and unable to die. He -wondered where the fine lads now lay. No more coffee for them, with -cream in it; no more robins singing; no more strolling smokes among -mignonette in the sunlight. How they were forgotten, already, except for -trophies, for self-glorification to display! How pleased, how smug this -rescued, comfortable world! Something of his distaste attached itself -even to Mrs. Baldwin when she next appeared. Something irritating him in -her peacefulness. She, too, had seen nothing and lost nothing. But, at -all events, she wouldn’t, he knew that, take any stand on the two -nephews to claim her “bit.” There was nothing fatuous about Mrs. -Baldwin. The slight distaste still lingered, however, and he found -himself wondering once or twice, during the day that passed, in spite of -it, so pleasantly, whether she wasn’t, for all his idealizing similes, a -stupid as well as a sweet woman. It was not because of filial -self-effacement that she let her father do all the talking at meals: it -was simply because she had nothing to say, and the good old boy was -quite right in taking his responsibility for granted. The person who -could talk was the responsible person. Her mind, though so occupied, was -quite singularly inactive and, he was sure, completely uncritical. She -didn’t find her father in the least a bore, or suspect that anybody else -might find him so. She did find, Guy felt sure, satisfaction in all her -occupations. He heard her laughing--a quiet little laugh--with Cathy in -the kitchen; and in the afternoon, when he helped her to prick out -seedlings, her attentive profile--as, after he had dug each hole, she -dropped in the little plant, pressed the earth about its roots, and -fixed it in its place--made him think of the profile of a child putting -its dolls to bed. They planted three beautiful long rows, and Guy was -quite tired by tea-time, for though they had high tea at half-past six, -they were not deprived of the precious afternoon pause, taking place as -it did at the unaccustomed but pleasing hour of four. - -After tea she went to see some people in the village, Mr. Haseltine -dozed in his chair, and Guy took a long walk. - -So the days went on, and at the end of a week he was able to write to -Dorothy and tell her that he was sleeping wonderfully and that Mrs. -Baldwin’s cottage was all that she had pictured it. By the end of the -week he had even grown rather attached to Mr. Haseltine, and he enjoyed -playing chess with him every evening; and sometimes they had a game in -the afternoon when tea was over. The undercurrent of irritation still -flowed, but he had learned to put up with the old gentleman and to -circumvent his communicativeness, and in the case of Mrs. Baldwin he -more and more felt that she was the sort of person to whom one would, -probably, forgive anything. It had become evident to him that what might -be dulness might also be unawareness. That was a certain kind of -dulness, it was true, but it didn’t preclude capacity for response if -the proper stimulus were applied. It amused him to note that if none of -the nearly inevitable jars of shared life seemed ever to occur between -her and her father, it was simply because, when a difference arose, she -remained unconscious of it unless it were put before her. Nothing could -have been less in the line of selfishness; it was she who thought of -him, of his comfort and happiness, and who ordered her life to further -them; he, in this respect, was passive; but Guy felt that the poor old -boy often brooded in some disconsolateness over small trials and -perplexities that a companion more alert to symptoms would have -discerned and dispelled at once. Mr. Haseltine even, sometimes, confided -such grievances to the P.G. - -“I don’t want to bother Effie about it,” he said;--E. had stood for -Effie--“she’s a dreamy creature and very forgetful. But it’s quite -evident to me that the rector and his wife have been expecting to be -asked to tea to meet you. I’ve just been talking to them in the lane, -and I saw it plainly. They had asked us to bring you before you arrived, -hearing we were to have another guest,--they’ve always been most kind -and neighbourly in helping us to entertain our new friends,--and I -really don’t know why Effie should have got out of it. I usually have to -remind her, it’s true. But I sometimes get tired of always having to. -She doesn’t care for them herself; but that’s no reason why you might -not. We have few enough interests to offer visitors.” - -Guy was glad to have escaped the rectory tea, though he did not say this -in assuring Mr. Haseltine that the entertainment offered at Thatches was -absolutely to his taste. He was completely out of place at any rectory; -he could imagine no rector who would not find his poems pernicious; but -he felt that there was justice in Mr. Haseltine’s contention. He _might_ -have cared for them. As it was, Mr. Haseltine was brought once again to -reminding her. It was evident then that she was ready to please anybody -or everybody. - -“Ask them? Ought I to ask them?” - -“My dear, it’s ten days since they sent their invitation. They spoke -again--and it’s the second time--of having been so sorry not to see us, -when I met them yesterday, in the lane. I don’t know why you did not -go.” - -“I thought it would bore Mr. Norris, father. He came here for quiet, you -know. But would it bore you?” she asked Guy. “They are very nice. I -don’t mean that.” - -“It’s certainly very pleasant being quiet,” said Guy; “but if Mr. -Haseltine likes having them, I assure you that people don’t frighten me -in the least.” - -“Oh, not on my account,” Mr. Haseltine protested. “I see our good -friends continually. It is of them I am thinking, as well as of Mr. -Norris. He might find them more interesting than you do, Effie, and they -will, I fear, be hurt.” - -Now that it was put before her, Mrs. Baldwin did it every justice, -rising from the breakfast-table, where she had just finished, to go to -her desk, and murmuring as she went, “I hadn’t thought of that. They -might be hurt. So, if it _won’t_ bore you, Mr. Norris.” - -And the Laycocks were asked, and did indeed bore Guy sadly. - -It was on the night after their visit--Mr. Laycock had questioned him -earnestly about his personal impressions of the war and to evade him had -been wearying--that Guy, for the first time, really, since he had come, -found sleep difficult and even menaced. It was because of that, he felt -sure, looking back on it, that the curious occurrence of the next day -took place--curious, and, had it taken place in the presence of any one -else, embarrassing. But what made it most curious was just that; he had -not felt it embarrassing to break down and sob before Mrs. Baldwin. - -The morning had begun badly. The breakfast-table papers had been full of -the approaching victory. Mr. Haseltine read out passages from the -_Times_ as he broke his toast and drank his coffee. He had reiterated -the triumph of his long conviction, and Mrs. Baldwin had murmured -assent. “All’s well with the world,” was the suffocating assurance that -seemed to breathe from them both. “All’s blue.” Was hell forgotten like -that? What if the war were won? Of course, it had to be won--that was an -unquestioned premise that had underlain his rebellions as well as Mr. -Haseltine’s complacencies since the beginning. But what of it? No -victory could redeem what had been done. - -He went out into the garden, to be away from Mr. Haseltine, as soon as -he could, and took a book into the summer-house; and it was here, a -little later, that Mrs. Baldwin, seeing him as she passed, her -garden-basket on her arm, paused to ask him, with her smile of the shy -hostess, if he were all right. She didn’t often ask him that, and he saw -at once that his recent recalcitrancy to rejoicing had pierced even her -vagueness. He knew that he still looked recalcitrant, and he was -determined not to soften the overt opposition rising in him; so he -raised his eyes to her over his book and said that he was not, perhaps, -feeling very fit that morning. - -Mrs. Baldwin hesitated at the entrance to the summer-house. She looked -behind her at the garden and up at the roses clustering over the lintel -under the thatch; she even took out her scissors, in the uncertainty -that, evidently, beset her, and snipped off a dead rose, and she said -presently, “It was all that talk about the war, wasn’t it--when what you -must ask is to forget it.” - -“Oh, I don’t ask that at all,” said Guy. “I should scorn myself for -forgetting it.” She glanced in again at him, mildly. “I want to forget -what’s irrelevant, like victory,” he said; “but not what is relevant, -like irremediable wrong.” - -Her awareness had not, of course, gone nearly as far as this. She kept -her eyes on him, and he was glad to feel that he could probably shock -her. “You see,” he found himself saying, “I saw the wrong. I saw the -war--at the closest quarters.” - -“Yes--oh, yes,” Mrs. Baldwin murmured. - -“For me, tragedy doesn’t cease to exist when it’s shovelled underground. -If one goes down into hell, one doesn’t want to forget the fact--though -one may hope to forget the torments and horrors; one wants, rather, to -remember that hell exists--and to try and square life with that -actuality.” - -There was silence after this for a moment, and he imagined that she was -very much at a loss. Her next words seemed indeed to express nothing so -much as her failure to follow--that and a silliness really rather -adorable, had he been in a mood to find it anything but exasperating. -“But, still--hell doesn’t exist, does it?” she offered him for his -appeasement. - -Guy laughed. “Doesn’t it? When things like this war can happen? How -could it ever have existed but in men’s hearts? It’s there that it -smoulders and, when its moment comes, leaps out to blast the world.” - -He could talk to her like this because she was too simple to suspect in -him a poetical attitudinizing; any one else would of course suspect it. -Guy was even aware that to any one else that was what it would have -been. She looked kind and troubled and as much as ever at a loss. She -didn’t know at all how to deal with the patient, and she was evidently -uncertain what to do, since it might seem heartless to go away and leave -him to his black thoughts, yet intrudingly intimate to come and sit down -beside him. Nothing could be less intimate than Mrs. Baldwin. It was he, -of course, who was tasteless in talking to her in a vein appropriate -only to intimacy. - -“Don’t bother over me,” he said, offering her the patent artifice of a -smile. “I’m simply a bad case. You mustn’t let me trouble you. You must -just turn your back on me when I’m like this.” - -It was not poetic attitudinizing now; there was in his voice a quaver of -grief and she responded to it at once. - -“Oh, but I don’t like to do that. I do wish I could be of some help. I -see you haven’t slept, for you look so tired, as you did when you first -came. And Mr. Laycock did bore you. It’s wrong of people to talk to you -about the war.” - -For the first time he saw in the eyes fixed upon him, pity, evident pity -and solicitude. And before it he felt himself crumble suddenly. He saw -all the reasons she had for pitying him, did she but know. He saw -Ronnie’s face again; he saw his own haunted night and his own grief. He -wanted her to see it. “Oh--one can’t be guarded like that,” he murmured; -“I must try to get used to it. But--I didn’t sleep; that’s true. I’m so -horribly afraid of not sleeping. You can’t imagine what it is. I’ve the -most awful visions.” And leaning his elbows on the table, he put his -hands before his face and began to cry. - -She stood there; he did not hear her move at first; and then she entered -and sat down on the seat beside him. But she said nothing and did not -touch him. He had had in all the tumult of his disintegration, a swift -passage of surmise; would she not draw his head upon her shoulder, like -a mother, and comfort him? But that would have broken him down heaven -knew how much further. - -He cried frankly, articulating presently, “It’s my nerves, you know; -they have all gone to pieces. I lost my friend; my dearest friend. For -months I didn’t sleep.” - -Mrs. Baldwin’s silence was not oppressive, or repressive either. He -heard her hands move slightly on the basket she held on her knees and -the soft chafing in the folds of her linen bodice that her breathing -made. It was an accepting stillness and it presently quieted him; more -than that, it enabled him at last to lift his head and look at her -without feeling ashamed of himself. Oddly enough, he knew that he, -perhaps, ought to be. He _could_ have helped himself. There had been an -element of wilfulness in his breakdown; he had wanted her to see; but, -even had she known this about him, he would not have felt ashamed. She -was so curiously a person with whom one could not associate blames and -judgments. She was an accepting person. - -She wasn’t looking at him, but out at the sweet, bright, autumnal little -garden; and as her eyes came to him, he felt them full of thought; felt, -for the first time, sure that, whatever she might be, she was not dull. - -He could not remember, looking back at the little scene, that she had -said a single further word. He did not think that he had said anything -further. He was helping her, a little while after, to prune the Aimée -Vibert rose that had grown with great unruliness over the little -tool-house near the kitchen door. “It will really pull it down unless we -cut out some of these great branches,” she had said, as, equipped with -stout gloves, they had worked away together, unfastening the tangled -trails and stretching them out on the ground. So displayed, the Aimée -Vibert was drastically dealt with, and it was midday before they -finished fastening the thinned and shortened shoots into place. - -She had said nothing further; but he believed that, for the first time, -her thought really included him. He had been put before her. She was -different afterwards. He had become an individual to her, and had ceased -to be merely the paying guest. - - -IV - -The third week came. There was rain, rather sad September rain, for a -day or two. They sat in the evenings before the wide fireplace where -logs blazed. Mrs. Baldwin, at his suggestion, read aloud to them Fabre’s -_Souvenirs Entomologiques_. She read French prettily, better than he did -himself, and he was a little chagrined once or twice to find that she -knew it better, priding himself on his French as he did. He had lived -for a year in Paris, with Ronnie, before the war. - -The horrors of the grim, complicated underworld revealed by the French -seer distressed him. Mrs. Baldwin did not feel them as he did, feeling -the marvels rather than the horrors, perhaps. She laughed a little, -rather callously, at the ladies who devoured their husbands, and seemed -pleased by the odious forethought of the egg-laying mothers. She shared -Fabre’s humorous dispassionateness, if not the fond partiality which, -while it made him the more charming, didn’t, Guy insisted, make his -horrid wasps and beetles a bit more so. As usual, she vexed him a -little, even while, more and more, he felt her intelligent; perhaps she -vexed him all the more for that. - -“She’s so devilishly contented with the world,” he said to himself -sometimes, even while he smiled, remembering her laughter. - -Old Mr. Haseltine fell asleep one night while she read, and to be -together there before the fire, the old man sleeping beside them, made -them nearer than they had ever been before. Guy was aware of this -nearness while he listened and while he watched her hand, short, like a -child’s (and her face was so short) support the book, and her eyelashes -dropping down the page or raised to a fresh one. - -When he went to his room that night, he stood still for a long time, his -candle in his hand, listening to the soft beat of the rain against the -window. He was hardly ever now afraid of being alone, or of the dark, -and he stood there musing and listening, while he still seemed to see -Mrs. Baldwin’s hand as it held the book, and her reading profile. Her -life seemed to breathe upon him and he rested in it. He slept -deliciously. - -“Did you know that I write?” he asked her next day. He had wondered -about this once or twice before. - -“Oh, yes; your cousin, in her letter, you know, told me that you wrote,” -said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They were in the living-room after midday dinner, and alone. She looked -up at him very kindly from the papers and letters she was sorting at her -desk. - -“You’ve never heard of my effusions otherwise, though?” He put on a -rueful air. “Such is fame!” - -“Are you famous?” Her smile was a little troubled. “I don’t follow -things, you know, living here as I do.” - -“You read the papers. I _have_ had reviews: good ones.” - -“I don’t read them very regularly,” she admitted. “And I so often don’t -remember the names of people in reviews, even when I’ve liked what is -said of them. Have you any of your poems here? Perhaps you’ll let me -read them.” - -He felt, with the familiar chagrin, that she would never, of herself, -have thought of asking him. - -“Yes, my last volume. It’s just out.” - -He was going for a walk in the rain with Mr. Haseltine that afternoon. -There was an old church in the neighbouring village that his friend -wanted him to see. Mrs. Baldwin had letters to write. “Will you have -time to look at it while we are out?” he asked. - -Although she had shown so little interest in him, he was eager, -pathetically so, he felt, that she should read and care about his poems. -She said that it was just the time: her letters would not take long. And -so he ran up to his room and got the little book for her: _Burnt -Offerings_. - -All the time that he was walking with Mr. Haseltine and seeing the -church, and the old manor house that took them a half mile further, he -wondered what she was thinking about his poems. - -By the time they had returned the rain had ceased. A warm September -sunlight diffused itself. Veils lifted from the stream and trailed upon -the lower meadows. The sky grew clear and the leaves all sparkled. They -found that Mrs. Baldwin had had her cup of tea, for it was past four; -but all had been left in readiness for them, the kettle boiling; and -after Guy had swallowed his, he went out and saw her walking down among -the crocuses. - -“Oh, you are back?” she said when he joined her. “I wanted to be there -to give you your tea. Was it all right?” - -“Perfectly,” he said. “We put in just your number of spoonfuls.” - -Mrs. Baldwin wore her little knitted jacket and had put on her white, -rubber-soled canvas shoes against the wet; but her head, with its thick, -close braids, was bare to the sunlight. - -“I had to come out as soon as it stopped raining,” she said; “and I’m -afraid I simply forgot to look out for you and father.” - -Her gentleness had always seemed contentment; this afternoon it seemed -happiness, and he had never seen her look so young. He wondered if she -were going to take him so dreadfully aback as not even to mention his -poems; if she had simply forgotten them, too. Already her demeanour, -unclouded, almost radiant, inflicted a wound; she had either forgotten, -or she had cared little indeed, since she could look like that. But, -after he had commented, consentingly, on the lovely hour, she went on -with a change of tone, a voice a little shy, “I’ve read the poems. Thank -you so much for letting me see them.” - -“You read all of them?” - -“Yes. I didn’t write my letters.” - -“I hope you read them, then, because you cared for them.” - -She didn’t answer for a moment, walking along and placing the small -white feet carefully among the crocuses. “They are very sad,” she then -said. - -He was aware, after an instant of adjustment to the blow, that she made -him very angry. Terrible, his poems, searing, scorching; wicked, if one -would; but not sad. - -“Oh!” he murmured; and he wondered if the divided feeling she had from -the first roused in him had been this hatred, not perhaps of her, but of -her unvarying acquiescence, her untroubled inadequacy. - -“They interested me very much,” she said, feeling, no doubt, that, -whatever he was, he was not pleased. “They made me see, I mean, all the -things you have been through.” - -“Sad things, you call them. You know, I rather feel as if I’d heard you -call hell sad.” - -She looked up at him quickly, and it was now she who was taken aback -and, as she had been the other day, at a loss. And, as on the other day, -she found the same answer, though she offered it deprecatingly, feeling -his displeasure. “But hell doesn’t exist.” - -“Don’t you think anything horrible exists?” - -They turned at the end of the meadow. It seemed to him, although he felt -as if he hated her, that they were suddenly intimate in their -antagonism. He would force that antagonism, and its intimacy, upon -her--to its last implication. - -“Horrible? Oh, yes, yes!” she said, startled, and that was, he reflected -grimly, to the good. “But it would have to be irretrievable, wouldn’t -it, to be hell?” she urged. - -“Do you suggest that it’s not irretrievable? You own it’s horrible. -Irretrievably horrible, I call it. And that’s what I call hell. Yet all -that you can find to say of my poems is that they are sad.” - -She hesitated, feeling her way, hearing in the recurrent word how it had -rankled. “I meant sad, I think, because of you; because you had suffered -so much.” - -“You seem always to imply that one might _not_ have suffered!” And -thrusting aside her quickly murmured, “Oh, no, no!” he went on: “I can’t -understand your attitude of mind. Do you realize at all, I sometimes -wonder, what it has all meant, this nightmare we are living in--we, that -is, to whom it came? Can you imagine what it was to me to see boys, dead -boys, buried stealthily, at night, under fire? Boys so mangled, so -disfigured--you read that poem, 'Half a Corpse'?--that their mothers -wouldn’t have known them; featureless, dismembered boys, heaped one upon -the other in the mud. Has your mind ever dwelt upon the community of -corruption in which they lie, as their mothers' minds must dwell? I do -not understand you. I do not understand how you can dare to call such -things sad.” - -His own wrath shook and yet sustained him, though he knew a fear lest he -had gone too far; but in her silence--they had reached the other end of -the meadow and turned again in their walk--he felt that there was no -resentment. It was as if she realized that those who have returned from -hell cannot be asked to stop and pick their words with courtesy, and -accepted his vehemence, if not his blame; and again, when she spoke at -last, he felt that her bewilderment had settled into thought. - -“Yes, I can imagine,” she said. “But no, I don’t think that my mind has -dwelt on those things. If I were their mothers, I don’t think that my -mind would dwell, as you say. Something would burn through. There are -other kinds of suffering--better kinds; they help, I believe. And, for -that kind, it is worse, but is it so much worse than in ordinary life? -That is what happens all the time when there is no war; dreadful changes -in the dead; and burials. They are not quite so near each other in a -churchyard, and their graves are named; but do you think that makes it -easier to bear?” - -He felt now as if it were insult she was offering him. - -"You deny all tragedy to war, then? It’s all to you on a level with an -Elegy in a Country Churchyard, with curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths? You read 'His Eyes,'"--Guy’s voice had a hoarser -note, but, mingled with the sincerity of what, at last, he knew he was -to tell her, the very centre of his sick heart, went a surface -appreciation of what he had just said and of how curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths would go into a bitter poem one day,--"you read that -poem of mine at the end of the book. ‘His Eyes’ is about myself and my -friend Ronnie Barlow, the artist; you never heard of him, I know. He -hung, with shattered legs, dying, just in front of us, on the barbed -wire, for three days and nights. When he could speak, it was to beg to -be shot. We tried to get to him, four, five times; it was no good. There -was barbed wire between, and the Germans spotted us every time. He died -during the third night, and next morning I found him looking at me--as -he had looked during these three days--his torment and his reproach. And -so he went on looking until the rats came and he had no more eyes to -look with. Will you tell me that that is no worse than the deaths died -in the parishes of England? Will you tell me that it’s the sort of death -died by the cheery, mature gentlemen who ate their dinners and slept -warm and dropped a tear--while they did their ‘bit’ in their Government -offices--over the brave lads saving England?" - -He had taken refuge from Ronnie in hatred of those whom, in the poem, he -called his murderers, and his voice was weighted with its fierce -indictment. In the pause that followed he had time to wonder if she -found him, at last, intolerable. She walked beside him, still looking -down, and it might well have been in a chill withdrawal. He almost -expected to hear her, in another moment, find the conventional phrase -with which to leave him. But no,--and in his own long sigh he recognized -the depth of his relief,--she was not going to punish him with -convention; she was not going to leave him. And what she said at last -was, “I’m so sorry! Please believe that I’m so very, very sorry! -Only--why do you speak, and write, as though it were some one’s fault?” - -Ah, here then, at last, they had come to it, the barrier, on one side of -which he stood with his hell and she on the other in her artificial -paradise. - -“I write it and speak it because it is the truth,” he said. “Millions of -innocent creatures, of gifted, beautiful creatures, like my friend, have -been slaughtered, tortured, driven mad, because of greasy, greedy -wire-pullers in their leather chairs at home.” - -“In this war, too?” - -“In this war preëminently.” - -“You don’t feel that the crime was Germany’s?” - -“Oh, of course!” his laugh sneered the facile acquiescence. “Let us put -it on Germany, by all means. We’ll sleep the sounder! Certainly, I grant -it to you freely--Germany struck the match and lighted the fuse.” - -“And weren’t we all responsible for the fuse--you and I, I mean, as much -as the people in the leather chairs?” There was no irony in her -repetition. “The people who fought, as much as the people who didn’t -fight? Wasn’t the fuse simply our conception of our national safety? of -our national honour? That is what I feel so sad about your -poems,--though I should never have wanted to explain it,--that you are -so wrong, so ungenerous, so vindictive.” - -In all his life it had rarely been his lot to know such astonishment. -Astonishment came first; and then the deep, deep hurt that rose, wave -after wave, within him. Was this, then, what she felt for him--only -this? Hadn’t he told her about Ronnie--her alone of all the world? -Should not that have made her reverent of him, and pitiful? Should a man -who had endured such griefs receive such blows? Waves of colour, too, -flooded his face and tears rushed to his eyes. He thought, when he was -able at last to gather thoughts together, that it should now be for him -to find the conventional phrase and leave her. But, glancing again at -her profile, finding it, though singularly pale, so much more gentle -than severe, the impulse dropped. He was not strong enough for -convention. He was shaken, shattered; too weak even for -self-preservation. - -He walked, miserable, and his mind full of a whirling darkness, beside -her, determining only that she should be the first to speak again. She -was. She had quite come out of her shyness,--if it had ever been -that,--and though it was with something faltering, something that was, -he made out, sorry for them both in the predicament to which, after all, -he, and not she, had brought them, it was more than all with resolution -that she said,-- - -“I am so sorry if I seem presumptuous. But you asked me. And your poems -aren’t the first I’ve read. So many young men, who have been so brave, -like you, and who have been through it all so that they have the right -to speak, seem to feel more than anything that hatred, not against -war,--we all hate war,--but against people, some groups of people, they -make responsible. There are bad and selfish people everywhere,--among -poets, I feel sure, just as much as among statesmen; but hasn’t this war -proved--since everybody has gone--that no one group is bad and selfish; -that there are men in every group who have been glad to die for their -country? I know I have no weight with young men like you; I am not a -person of any importance for opinion; but how I wish that I could make -you believe that you ought not to write like that--with hatred in your -heart. Can great poetry be written out of hatred? And it’s not only -yourself it hurts: it hurts other people; harms them, I mean. It spreads -a mood of darkness and fever just when they are so in need of light and -calm. And for the mothers, for people who have lost, cruelly, those whom -they loved as much, perhaps even more, than you loved your friend--do -you not see how your poems must sicken them? Do you not see that it all -becomes just that--a community of corruption? You imprison them, force -them back into their helpless suffering; when what they pray for is -strength to rise above it and to feel all the goodness and love that has -been given for them; to feel what is beautiful, not what is horrible; so -as to be worthy of their dead.” - -As he listened to her,--and with a slow revulsion of all his nature, as -if, against his very will and mind, she moved his heart to breaking with -something passionate that spoke in her words,--an overwhelming -experience befell him. - -The crocuses beneath their feet, her sunlit shape beside him, her voice, -as she spoke to him thus, with her very soul, blended together in a -rising wave of light, or music, piercing, sweeping him, lifting him up -to some new capacity, leaving the old inert and dangling, lifting and -still lifting him, until at last, as if with a great, emerging breath, -he came into a region bright and fair, whence, looking down on the dark -and tattered past, he saw all life differently, even Ronnie’s death, -even Ronnie’s eyes. Ronnie was with him, with Mrs. Baldwin, in the -bright stillness. - -Upborne, sustained, like a swimmer in some strange, new element, he -seemed to gaze down through its golden spaces at the inert, alien -darkness that had been himself. “Rubbish! Rubbish!” he seemed to hear -himself say. Yet all was not left behind; all was not rubbish; else how -could he be here, with her, with Ronnie? It was bliss to see himself as -he had been, since something else was so immeasurably secure. Oh--could -one stay always like this! This was to taste of everlasting life. His -longing, as if with a cry, a grasp from the swimmer, marked the soft -turning of the tide. He sank, but it was sweetly, if with a strange, an -infinite sadness, a sadness recorded, accepted, while he sank, as making -forever the portion of the temporal consciousness. And the bliss still -stayed in the acceptance, and purple ripples seemed to glide back -rhythmically as the crocuses swam before his eyes. It had all been only -an instant then, for her last words came to him as if she had but spoken -them and he heard his own voice murmuring, as if from very far away, -“Perhaps you are right.” - -The ripples stayed themselves. He looked down at the crocuses and saw -Mrs. Baldwin’s white shoes standing still among them. Lifting his eyes, -which felt heavy, he found her looking at him with attention, with -anxiety. - -“It’s nothing,” he tried to smile. “Nothing at all. I mean--you’ve done -me good.” He saw that she hadn’t an idea of how she had done it. - -“Do take my arm,” she said. “I ought to have remembered that you are not -strong yet.” - -He took her arm. Perhaps he needed it. His normal consciousness was -gathering about him once again, but no longer with the old close -texture. It was all more permeable to light--that was how he tried to -put it. And he heard his voice go on, “You see--what it all amounts -to--oh, I’m not thinking about the poems, I know that you must be -right--it’s not what you say, is it? It’s something far more right than -what you say. But I love you. That’s why you can do it to me. I wonder I -didn’t see it before. You made me angry with your peacefulness. I didn’t -understand. I needed your peace. You, you were what I needed. You will -forgive my speaking? Surely you’ll understand. Perhaps you feel you -hardly know me, while you are like my life. Is it possible that some day -you might love me back and marry me?” - -He had used the words that came. They were the words of the normal -consciousness. How else could he ask her to keep him always near her so -that he might never lose that sense of paradise? - -But she had stopped still and had drawn her arm from his. Was it -possible that after what she had done to him, for him, she could see him -only thus? “Oh, no,” she said. “No. No.” Never had he seen a human face -express with such ineffable gentleness such repudiation. And she -repeated it, as if he had given her too much to bear; as if for her own -reassurance; as if to efface even the memory of his words: “No; no; -no!” She began again to walk towards the house. - -Had it not been for the initiation that had passed he knew so clearly -now, in all unawareness from her spirit to his, he would have felt to -the full the shame of his rejection, the deserved shame. For he was a -stranger and she had given him no right to believe that she even liked -him. But he could feel no shame. Had he really thought that she could -love him? Had it not been only that he wanted to tell her that he loved -her, and had wanted her, as it were, to keep him safe? He found himself -trying to explain this to her,--not pleading,--only so that she should -not be angry. “I had to tell you. You’d done me so much good. Everything -came different. Really, I’m not so presumptuous. I never meant to ask -anything.” - -But she was not angry. “Forgive me,” she said. “I hardly know what I am -saying. You so astonished me. Forgive me. But I don’t feel as if I knew -you at all. Please don’t think me reproaching you. I begin to -understand. You are not at all strong. It was like the other day when -you cried, I mean--I feel sure you think you care for me; but you -couldn’t have said it, when we know each other so little, if you had -been well.” - -She was putting it aside, for his sake, as an aberration, and he really -smiled a little as he shook his head. “No; really, really, it’s not -that; not because I’ve been on edge and ill. It was something that came -to me from what you are; something that’s been coming ever since I saw -you. I know that I am nothing to you; but for a moment, just now, it -seemed, when I had received so much, that you must know what you had -given; it seemed that a person to whom so much could be given, could -not be so far away. But even then I saw quite clearly what you saw in -me; a vain, pretentious, emotional creature; insincere, too, and proud -of my suffering. I am that. But I had never seen it before. And when it -came to me from you and, instead of crushing me, lifted me up, I knew -that I loved you.--No; I won’t try to explain. Only you do forgive me? -You will let me go on as if it hadn’t happened? I promise you that I’ll -never trouble you again.” - -Oh, the gentleness, the heavenly gentleness! It breathed through him -like the colour of the crocuses, although she was as impersonal, as -untouched, and as mysterious as they. He was nothing to her--nothing; -but she stood before him, looking at him, and though she gave nothing -but the gentleness, he knew that he received all that he needed. It was -enough that she was there. - -“But it’s _I_ to be forgiven--_I_,” she repeated. “Of course we will go -on. Oh, you look very tired. Please take my arm again. I spoke so -strangely to you. But--but--” She had flushed: for the first time he saw -the colour darken her face as if with a veil of pain, and in her voice -was the passion, deeper, stiller, that he had heard a little while ago -and that had enfranchised him. “I am married--I mean, my husband is -dead, but I am married. Perhaps you don’t understand. Perhaps you will -some day, if you should lose some one you love and feel them still your -very life. We were like that. He is always with me.” - -They had said nothing more as they walked up the meadow to the house, -his arm in hers. He had no sense of loss; rather, from her last words -to him, came a sense of further gain. She would be like that. He saw now -that her peace, against which he had pressed and protested, was -something won, was depth, not emptiness. She, too, had lost and -suffered. She was made dearer to him, more sacred. As for his love, it -did not belong--he had seen this even before she told him why--to this -everyday world to which he had returned. But it was everything to have -found it, with that other world, and to know that there it had its -being, its reality, forever. What was it that had enlarged, transformed -his life, but that very certitude of an eternity where all good was -secure? He could not explain it to himself in any words. Words were the -keys of temporality. But he had seen, if only for the few shining -moments, that Ronnie was not lost; that nothing had been in vain. - -If he found no difficulty, it was evident to him that Mrs. Baldwin felt -none, and he was glad to believe that this might be because he showed -her so completely, in his candid contentment, that he would never -trouble her again. She was not more kind to him; but she took, perhaps, -even more care, as if feeling that she had miscalculated something in -his recovery. She inaugurated a glass of hot milk, instead of spiced hot -water, at bedtime, and a rest on the sofa, with a rug, before the midday -dinner. “You will look so much better when you go back than when you -came,” she said. - -For the time of going back drew near, and he did not dread it, though -loving Thatches and all it meant more and more with every day. But of -course, even in the temporal world, he was not to lose Thatches. That -was quite understood between them. The P.G. would be welcome whenever -he cared to come. - - -V - -He was playing chess on the afternoon before his departure. Tea was over -and Mrs. Baldwin had gone out. Guy had noticed that she had been perhaps -a little stiller than usual that day, when he had seen her, and that he -had seen her little. The game did not go very well; they were neither of -them keen on it; and when the old gentleman had won an easy victory, he -leaned back in his chair, the board still on its little table between -them, and said, “Poor Effie! She’s still in the church, or in the -churchyard, I expect.” - -Guy felt the shock of a great surprise. Strangely enough, though Mrs. -Baldwin had spoken of her husband and of his death, and though his books -were there, he did not associate him with Thatches, nor with the -churchyard. And with the word, “churchyard,” a painful anxiety rose in -him. - -“Is it an anniversary?” he asked. - -“Yes,” Mr. Haseltine nodded, sighing and rubbing his hand over his head. -“September twenty-ninth. I’d forgotten myself till just a little while -ago. Oliver died on this day. Her husband. Poor Effie!” - -“They lived here?” Guy asked. He had imagined that it had been after her -bereavement that she and her father had found and made a home of -Thatches. - -“Oh, yes. They lived here. All their married life,” said Mr. Haseltine. -“Ten years or so. It was a great love-match. They were very happy. I -never saw a happier couple--until the end.” - -“Did anything part them?” - -Mr. Haseltine had put his hands into his pockets and was gazing at the -board as if with a painful concentration, and though he shook his head -he answered, “It was the malady. Cancer, you know. Cancer of the face. -Such a handsome fellow, too: beautiful, bright, smiling eyes; beautiful -mouth. All gone. All disfigured, cruelly disfigured, and with horrible -suffering.” - -Guy felt his breath coming thickly. “Was it long?” he asked. - -“Yes. Long. Eighteen months, I think. Morphia did little good at last. -He couldn’t swallow; could hardly speak; begged to be killed and put out -of his torment. She was with him in it all. She never left him, day or -night; nor could he have borne it if she had. Nothing quieted him except -her hand in his. But at the end,” said Mr. Haseltine, pushing away the -table and rising, “at the end, it attacked his brain and then he raved -at her. She couldn’t go into the room at the last.” - -The old man, with step lagging, as if weighted, walked away to the -window and stood looking out, while Guy, at the table, felt his heart -turn to stone. - -“Poor Effie!” Mr. Haseltine repeated after a little while. He came back -into the room and moved up and down, pausing to look at the books and -pictures. “She has never been the same since. For a long while we were -afraid she couldn’t live. She hardly slept for months; and when she did -sleep, she used to wake crying, crying, always for him. When she became -stronger, she used to walk up and down those meadows, sometimes for -hours at a time. Very gentle; no complaint; always ready to talk to -people, to go on with things as best she could; but changed; completely -changed. We speak very little of him; but when we do, it’s quite -naturally. She goes to the church sometimes, and there are always -flowers on his grave; but I don’t think she has any orthodox beliefs; I -don’t know that she has any beliefs at all. Still, she seems helped. She -is a very dear, unselfish woman; a dreamer, she was always a dreamer; -but always meaning well; and she does good in her quiet way. And I think -she likes this plan of having people come and stay and seeing after -them; especially now that they are so often people who have had a bad -time. Dear me, dear me!” Mr. Haseltine again shook his head, stationed -again at the window and looking out. “You would hardly have recognized -her had you seen her ten years ago. She had bright hair and a charming -colour; and full of gaiety and mischief. You’d hardly believe it now.” - -“I’m so sorry,” Guy heard himself saying. He remembered that those were -the words Mrs. Baldwin had used to him about Ronnie. - -“Yes, it’s very sad,” said Mr. Haseltine. “Life is certainly very -difficult for some of us, and Effie has had her share. Somehow one -doesn’t remember it when one is with her. I only recalled the day by -chance.” - -Guy was walking in the meadows when Mrs. Baldwin returned. He saw her in -the garden, reading the letters that the evening post had brought, and -his first impulse was to remove himself as speedily as might be from her -sight, to cross the bridge and the farther meadow, and turn into the -lane that led away from it. But then he saw, as he stood irresolute, -that she was coming down to him, and he stood there, helpless, watching -her approach in the soft radiance of the late afternoon. She wore one -of the lavender-coloured dresses and the little knitted jacket. In her -hand were the opened letters. Her face was tranquil. She was, of course, -unaware of what had happened to him. - -She joined him. “You are having your last look at the crocuses?” - -It was their last look together. That, of course, was why she had come, -full of care and of kindness. - -“Yes. Yes. My last look for the year.” He heard that his voice was -strange. And his heart seemed to lie like a cold hard block in his side. - -“Aren’t you feeling well?” she asked. - -He walked beside her in silence. What could he say? But how was it -possible not to tell her? - -They had turned towards the sunset and came now to the bridge. She was -looking at him, with solicitude. He stopped before they crossed. - -“I must say something to you,” broke from him. “I must. I can’t go away -without your knowing--my shame--my unutterable remorse.” - -She looked at him with the look he knew so well. Kindly, firmly, if with -anxiety, she prepared to hear him thrust some new torment upon her. - -“Shame? Remorse?” she murmured. - -“About my poems. About my griefs. What I’ve said to you. What I’ve given -you to bear. I thought I’d borne so much. I thought you unfeeling, -without experience. I thought I’d been set apart--that all of us had -been set apart, who suffered in the war. Stop me at once if you won’t -hear it from me. But your father told me, just now, about your husband’s -death.” - -She became very pale. She looked away from him, but she said nothing. - -“That’s all,” said Guy after a long silence. He saw that there was -nothing more to tell her. She had understood. - -“Let us walk up and down,” said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They crossed the bridge. He saw the stream sliding brightly below them -between the old, black planks. In the farther meadows the crocuses grew -more thickly and opened widely their pale purple chalices. - -“We have all suffered,” said Mrs. Baldwin. “You mustn’t have remorse or -shame. Nothing is harmed between us.” - -The horrible stricture around his heart relaxed, and as they went very -slowly up and down he felt his throat tighten and tears rising, rising -to his eyes. He could not keep them back. He wasn’t really quite strong -enough for this. They fell and fell, and from time to time he put up his -hand to brush them away. - -“We have all suffered,” Mrs. Baldwin repeated gently. - -“Some, more! some, more!” he said brokenly. “Some, most of all!” - -They came back to the bridge, but though they crossed over, they did not -pass out through the high gate that barred the other end. The gate was -closed, and Guy stopped at it and leaned on it and put his face on his -hands. Mrs. Baldwin stood at the gatepost beside him, her hand holding -it and her head leaned against her hand. - -“He would have liked you,” she said. “He was so interested in young men, -young poets. He was not old himself; and he wrote, too, did you know? -All those books in the living-room are his. He used to work there. I -will give you his two books if you care to have them. They were thought -very good; I think you will like them.--It was because of the crocuses -we came here,” she went on. “We found them one September, just like -this, and the three little ruined cottages, and we knew at once that we -must live here. He so loved them. When he was very ill--but before the -very end when nothing could come to him any longer, when he was quite -shut away--he used to lie at the window and look out at them--that big -window above the living-room.” - -Divinely she was helping him. It was as if, taking him by the hand, she -led him again away from his darkness and into her own light. - -Yes, brokenly it came to him, it was there, secure; how won, he knew -not. Through her he had found it; but that was because her feet had -passed before him up the calvary. She had gone through everything; and -she knew everything. - -And, to his new hearing, something of the infinite weariness of that -ascent was in her voice when she next spoke, although it was a voice as -peaceful as the evening air around them. “Are they not beautiful?” she -said. - -He raised his head and looked at the flowers through his tears. They had -never been so beautiful. “They make me think of you,” he told her. - -“Do they?” Mrs. Baldwin still leaned her head against her hand, still -looked out over the meadows. “But there are so many of them,” she said. -“So many. That is what I feel first of all about them. I could not think -of them as like one person. Multitudes. Multitudes.--And so silent! They -make me think always of the souls of the happy dead.” - -_The Riverside Press_ - -CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS - -U. S. A. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -embody the spendour=> embody the splendour {pg 105} - -in spite of Florre’s good cheer=> in spite of Florrie’s good cheer {pg -136} - - * * * * * - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - -***** This file should be named 40650-0.txt or 40650-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/6/5/40650/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/40650-0.zip b/old/40650-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index f3aefd6..0000000 --- a/old/40650-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/40650-8.txt b/old/40650-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e7f9e9e..0000000 --- a/old/40650-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9858 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -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/license - - -Title: Christmas Roses and Other Stories - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: September 2, 2012 [EBook #40650] -[Last updated: December 20, 2012] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -CHRISTMAS ROSES -AND OTHER STORIES - -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Slincourt) -_Author of "Tante," "The Third Window," etc._ - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge -1920 - -COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SLINCOURT - -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - - - -CONTENTS - -CHRISTMAS ROSES 1 - -HEPATICAS 63 - -DAFFODILS 92 - -PANSIES 121 - -PINK FOXGLOVES 147 - -CARNATIONS 168 - -STAKING A LARKSPUR 208 - -EVENING PRIMROSES 253 - -AUTUMN CROCUSES 279 - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -Christmas Roses - - -I - -THEY were coming up everywhere in their sheltered corner on the -wall-border, between the laurustinus and the yew hedge. She had always -loved to watch their manner of emerging from the wintry ground: neck -first, arched and stubborn; heads bent down as if with held breath and -thrusting effort; the pale, bowed, folded flower, when finally it rose, -still earthy, still part, as it were, of the cold and dark from which it -came; so that to find them, as on this morning, clear, white, -triumphant, all open to the wind and snow, was to renew the sense of the -miraculous that, more than any other flower, they always gave her. More -than any other flower, they seemed to _mean_ to come, to will and -compass it by the force of their own mysterious life. More than any -other flower, winter piled upon their heads, unallured by spring and the -promise of sunlight, they seemed to come from the pressure of a gift to -bring rather than a life to seek. She thought always, when she saw them, -of Christmas bells over snowy fields, in bygone centuries; of the Star -in the East, and of the manger at Bethlehem. They were as ancient as -that tradition, austere and immaculate witnesses in an unresponsive -world; yet they were young and new, always; always a surprise, and even -to her, old as she was, bereft and sorrowful, a reminder that life was -forever a thing of births, of gifts, of miracles. - -They did not fail her this morning when she came out to them, and she -thought, as she stopped to look at them, that one was not really old -when, in the shock of sheer happiness, one knew childhood again and its -wonder. Yet, as she worked among them, cutting away dead leaves and -adjusting sprays of evergreen so that the rains should not splash them -with mud, it was a new analogy they brought; and, for the first time, -measuring her resource after the appeal Tim's letter had made upon it, -she reflected that the Christmas roses were rather like herself. She, -too, in this wintry season of her life, was still determined and -indomitable. Widowed and childless, with many mournings in her heart, -griefs and devastations in her memory, she, too, was a force, silent and -patient; and it was this that people still found in her. For the appeal -always brought the answer. She had felt herself, so often, benumbed into -lethargy, and, yielding to the mere mute instinct of self-preservation, -had so often folded herself up and lapsed into the blank darkness of her -grief (her husband's death, so many years ago; and Miles's, and little -Hugh's, and her dear, dear Peggy's). But it had always been to hear -herself, as if in a dream, called to from the outside world, and to feel -herself, in answer, coming up again, rising, if only to snows and -tempests, in a renewal of life which brought with it, always, a renewal -of joy in life. - -For months now, since August, she had been sunken in the last grief--it -must be--that could come to her; for Miles was the last, of her own, who -had remained--Peggy's youngest boy. The oldest, already a soldier, had -been killed in the first months of the war, and, after all his years of -peril, it had seemed as if Miles was to escape. But, cruelly, just at -the turning of the tide, when victory had become assured, he had been -shot down, and in his crashing fall through the air she had felt the end -of everything, Peggy dying again with him; for Peggy, too, had died like -that, crashing and falling and dragged, in a horrible hunting accident. -There seemed, now, nothing more left to suffer, and nothing more to live -for, either, unless it were her poor Tim; and it had, exactly, been -Tim's letter that had driven her out to wrestle with the elements, after -her wont in any disturbance or perplexity, so that she could think over -what he told her while she wielded her trowel and fork on the convenient -wall-border. - -She had, on rising from the breakfast-table, sent Tim a wire: "I shall -expect her. Writing later," and had then called to Parton to bring her -old warm coat, her hood with its satin lining, and her buckled galoshes. - -Parton was accustomed to her mistress's vagaries in regard to gardening, -and made no comment on the enterprise except to express the hope that it -would not snow again. Parton, in spite of her youth a most efficient -combination of parlourmaid and lady's-maid, was devoted to her mistress; -the little pat and tweak she gave to the bow of the hood, and the -gentleness with which she adjusted the galoshes, expressed a close yet -almost reverential relationship. - -It was not freezing, and under the light fall of snow the ground was -soft. Mrs. Delafield found herself enjoying the morning freshness as she -tidied and weeded, and had her usual affectionate eye for the -bullfinches nipping away at her plum-buds and the tits and robins at the -little table spread with scraps for them near the house; while all the -time Tim's letter weighed on her, and the problem it presented; and as -she pondered on it, and on Rhoda, her niece, Tim's only child, her firm, -square, handsome, old, white face was not devoid of a certain grimness. - -Mrs. Delafield was very handsome, perhaps more handsome now than she had -been in youth. Her brow, with the peak of thick white hair descending -upon it, her thick black eyebrows and her rather thick, projecting nose, -were commanding--almost alarmingly so to those who in her presence had -cause for alarm. The merely shy were swiftly reassured by something -merry in her gaze and by the benevolent grace still lingering on her -firm, small lips. She had square eyes clearly drawn, and with an oddity -in their mountain-brook colouring, for one was brown and one was freaked -with grey. Her form was ample and upright, and in all her gestures there -was swiftness and decision. - -It was of Tim she thought at first, rather than of Rhoda, the cause of -all their distresses. But she was not seeing Tim as he now existed, -bleached, after his years of India, invalided, fretted by family cares, -plaintive and pitiful. She saw him as a very little boy in their distant -Northern nursery of sixty years ago, with bright curls, ruddy cheeks, -and the blue eyes, candid and trusting, that he still kept; standing -there, bare-armed and bare-legged, in his stiff, funny little dress of -plaid, before the fire-guard, while nurse, irate, benevolent figure, cut -bread and butter for breakfast. Dear little Tim! still her younger -brother; still turning to her, as he had always done, for counsel or -succour in any stress or anxiety. It was nothing new that the anxiety -should be about Rhoda; there was nothing, even, that had surprised her -in Tim's letter; yet she knew from the sense of urgency and even -breathlessness within her that the blow which had been dealt him could -not leave her unaffected. She could, after all, still suffer in Tim's -suffering. And even before she had let her thoughts dwell decisively on -Rhoda, she had found herself thinking, while the grimness settled on her -face, "I shall know how to talk to her." - -She had always known how to talk to the moody young beauty; that was why -Tim had sent off this letter of desperate appeal. She never quite saw -why Rhoda had not, from the first, felt in her merely an echo of her -father's commonplace conventionality and discounted her as that. Rhoda -had never, she felt sure, guessed how far from conventional she was; how -much at heart, in spite of a life that had never left appointed paths, -she knew herself to be a rebel and a sceptic; no one had ever guessed -it. But there had always been between her and Rhoda an intuitive -understanding; and that Rhoda from the first had listened and, from the -first, had sometimes yielded, proved that she was intelligent. - -Mrs. Delafield saw herself so accurately as Rhoda must see her. The -terse, old-fashioned aunt in the country residence--yes, dear Fernleigh, -square and mid-Victorian, with its name, and its creepers, its -conservatory, and its shrubberies, was so eminently a residence; and she -had never wanted to alter it into anything else, for it was so that she -had found it when, on her mother-in-law's death, she and the young -husband of so many years ago had first gone there to live. Rhoda must -see her, her hair so smooth under its cap of snowy net, her black -gowns--stuff for morning wear, silk for evening--so invariable, with the -frills at neck and wrists, thick gold chains and the dim old brooches -that went with them, as belonging almost to an epoch of albums on -centre-tables, of Mendelssohn's sacred songs, and archery tournaments; -an epoch of morning family-prayers and moral categories, where some -people still believed in hell and everybody believed in sin. She didn't -think that Rhoda had ever seen through all these alienating appearances -to the reality she herself knew to be so different; but it had always -been evident that she felt it through them; that she was at ease with -her aunt, candid, even if angry, and willing, even when most silent and -recalcitrant, to come down to Fernleigh, when her distracted parents -could deal with her no longer, and to "think things over," as they put -it to her, imploringly. - -Mrs. Delafield could see Rhoda thinking things over from a very early -age, from the earliest age at which recalcitrancy could count as -practically alarming. She could see her walking slowly past this very -border at the time that she had determined to go on the stage,--she had -only just left the hands of her devastated governesses,--pausing now and -then to examine unseeingly a plant, her hands clasped behind her, her -dark, gloomy, lovely, young head brooding on the sense of wrong, and, -even more, no doubt, on plots and stratagems. Her aunt had always -watched her, while seeming, in the most comfortable manner possible, to -give her no attention; noting everything about her,--and everything -counted against poor Tim's and Frances's peace of mind,--from the -slender, silken ankles to the tall column of the proud young throat; all -of it, every bit of Rhoda, so determined by an insatiable vanity, which -was the worst of her, and by a sardonic pride, which was the best. - -Rhoda, to do her further justice, was even more wonderful in the eyes of -her admirers than in her own. Her consciousness was not occupied so much -with her own significance as with all the things due to it; and it was -upon these things, and the methods of obtaining them, that she brooded -as she walked. "Naughty girl," had been her aunt's unexpressed comment; -and perhaps one reason why Rhoda had found it comfortable, or, at least, -composing, to be with her, was that it was a relief to be seen as a -naughty girl rather than as a terrifying portent. - -Mrs. Delafield had determined at once that Rhoda should not go on the -stage, though not, really, because Tim and Frances had begged her to -dissuade the child. She could perfectly imagine having wished to go on -the stage herself in her young days; and it was this consciousness, -perhaps, that made her so fair to Rhoda's desire. She had taken her -stand on no conventional objection; she had not even argued with Rhoda; -she had simply been able to make her feel, bit by bit, that she hadn't -one little atom of talent. - -It had been the same thing, really, when Rhoda had announced her -intention of marrying a dreadful young man, a bad young man,--Mrs. -Delafield knew where to apply her categories,--who had a large studio -where he gave teas and painted small, disagreeable pictures. They were -clever pictures; Mrs. Delafield was aware of this, though Tim and -Frances saw them only as disagreeable; and the young man, if bad, was -clever. Mrs. Delafield had travelled up to town several times in this -emergency, and had even accompanied Rhoda to the studio, where a young -lady with bare legs and feet was dancing, with more concentration than -spontaneity, before a cigaretted audience. Oddly enough, after this -visit, it had been much easier to make Rhoda give up Mr. Austin Dell -than it had been to make her give up the stage. Mrs. Delafield had -merely talked him over, very mildly, him and his friends, asking here -and there a kindly question about one or a slightly perplexed question -about another. It had been Rhoda herself who had expressed awareness of -the second-rate flavour that had brooded so heavily over dancer and -audience, not leaving Mr. Dell himself untouched. On the point of Mr. -Dell's income Mrs. Delafield soon felt that Rhoda knew -misgivings--misgivings as to her own fitness to be a needy artist's -wife. She made no overt recantation, but over her tea, presently, agreed -with her aunt that it was a pity to dance with bare feet unless the feet -were flawlessly well-shaped. "She is such a little fool, that Miss -Matthews!" Rhoda had remarked. And after this there was no more talk of -Mr. Dell. - - -II - -When, in the second year of the war, poor Tim and Frances, dusty, jaded, -nearly shattered, but appeased at last, were able to announce the -engagement of their daughter Rhoda to the unexceptionable Niel Quentyn, -Mrs. Delafield's special function seemed ended; but, looking back over -her long intercourse with her niece, she knew that Rhoda had felt her a -relief rather than an influence; that she had made things easier rather -than more difficult to her; that, in short, she had always successfully -appealed to the girl's intelligence rather than to what poor Tim and -Frances called her better self; and it was of Rhoda's intelligence, and -of what possible pressure she might be able to bring to bear upon it, -that she thought finally, as she worked at her border and waited for the -fly that was to bring Rhoda's baby and its nurse from the station. - -She had not been able to rejoice with her brother and his wife over -Rhoda's match. She who had measured, during her years of -acquaintanceship with her, her niece's force, had measured accurately, -in her first glance at him, Niel's insignificance. He was good-looking, -good-tempered, and very much in love; but caste, clothes, code, and the -emotion of his age and situation summed him up. He had money, too, and -could give Rhoda, together with a little handle to her name, the dim, -rich, startling drawing-room in which her taste at once expressed -itself, and a pleasant country house, where, as he confided to Mrs. -Delafield, he hoped to inspire her, when the war was over, with his own -ardour for hunting. - -Rhoda was far too clever to quarrel with such excellent bread and -butter; but what could he give her more? for Rhoda would want more than -bread and butter; what food for excitement and adventure could he offer -her indolent yet eager mind and her nature, at once so greedy and so -fastidious? Mrs. Delafield asked herself the question, even while she -watched Rhoda's wonderful white form move up the nave at her splendid, -martial wedding; even while poor Frances wept for joy and "The Voice -that breathed o'er Eden" surged from the organ; and she feared that Niel -was getting far more than he had bargained for and Rhoda far less. - -The first year, it was true, passed successfully. Poor Frances, who had, -fortunately, died at the end of it, had known no reason for abated -rejoicing. She lived long enough to see the baby, little Jane Amoret, as -Rhoda persisted in calling the child; and she had welcomed Niel home -once on leave--Niel as much infatuated as ever and trying to take an -intelligent interest in Picasso. It was since then, during the past -year, that Tim's letters had expressed a growing presage and appeal. -Moved by the latter, and only a short time before her own grief had -overtaken her, she had gone up to London and stayed with him for a few -days, and had taken tea with Rhoda. - -At Rhoda's it had been exactly as she expected. The drawing-room was -worthy of its fame; so worthy that Mrs. Delafield wondered how Niel -afforded it--and in war-time, too. Rhoda, as she often announced, was -clever at picking up things, and many of the objects with which she had -surrounded herself were undoubted trophies of her resource and -knowledge. But all the taste and skill in the world didn't give one that -air of pervading splendour, as of the setting for a Russian ballet, in -which the red lacquer and the Chinese screens, the blacks and golds and -rich, dim whites were, like Rhoda herself, sunken with her customary air -of gloomy mirth in the deepest cushions and surpassingly dressed, merged -in the soft, unstressed, yet magnificent atmosphere. It was the -practical side of matters--the depth of good, dull Niel's purse measured -against the depth of Rhoda's atmosphere--that alarmed Mrs. Delafield, -rather than Rhoda herself and Rhoda's friends, of whom poor Tim had so -distressingly written. - -There were many suave and merry young men, mainly in khaki, and various -ladies, acute or languorous, who had the air of being as carefully -selected as the chairs and china. There were tea and cigarettes, and an -abundance of wonderful talk that showed no sign of mitigation on account -of her mid-Victorian presence; though, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, -musing on the young people about her, no one could say, except their -clever selves, how much mitigation there might not be. Like Rhoda, no -doubt, they felt her reality through her mid-Victorianism. Her small -black bonnet with its velvet strings, and her long, loose jacket trimmed -with fringe, would not restrain them beyond a certain point. Yet she -suspected that they had a point, and she wondered, though the question -did not alarm her, where it could be placed. - -They talked, at all events, and she listened; at times she even smiled; -and since by no possibility could her smiles be taken as complicities, -she was willing that they should be taken as comprehensions. Rhoda's -friends, though so young, were chill and arid, and the enthusiasms they -allowed themselves had the ring of provocation rather than of ardour. -Yet she did not dislike them; they were none of them like Mr. Dell; -and, though so withered by sophistication, they had at moments flashes -of an uncanny, almost an ingenuous wisdom. - -The occasion had not alarmed her, and she had found but one moment -oppressive, that of the appearance--the displayal, as of a Chinese idol, -indeed, or a Pekinese spaniel (Rhoda had three of these)--of poor little -Jane Amoret. She rarely disliked her niece, even when feeling her most -naughty; but she found herself disliking her calculated maternity, with -its kisses, embraces and reiterated "darlings." Jane Amoret had eyed her -gravely and, as gravely, had held out her arms to her nurse to be taken -back when the spectacle was over. Jane Amoret's attire was quite as -strange as her mother's drawing-room, and Rhoda had contrived to make -her look like a cross between an Aubrey Beardsley and a gorgeous, -dressed-up doll Madonna in a Spanish cathedral. - -On returning to Tim, Mrs. Delafield found that she could not completely -reassure him, but she laid stress, knowing it would be, comparatively, a -comfort, on Rhoda's extravagance, eliciting from him a groan of "I -know!--I know!--Poor Niel's been writing to me about it!--Dances; -dinners; gowns. One would say she had no conscience at all--and at a -time like this!" But he went on, "That's nothing, though. That can be -managed when Niel gets back--if he ever does, poor fellow!--and can put -his foot down on the spot. You didn't see him, then? He wasn't -there--the young man?" - -Tim had never before spoken definitely of a young man. - -"The young man?" she questioned. "There were a dozen of them. Of -course, she'll have a special one: that's part of the convention. Rhoda -may cultivate--like all the rest of them--every appearance of lawless -attachment; but you may be sure, dear Tim, that it's only a pose, a -formula, like the painted lips and dyed hair, which doesn't in the least -mean they are demi-mondaines." - -"Painted lips? Dyed hair? Demi-mondaines?" Tim had wanly echoed. "Do you -really mean, Isabel, that Rhoda paints and dyes?" - -"Not her hair. It's too lovely to be dyed. But her lips,--why, haven't -you seen it?--ever since she was eighteen. It is all, as I say, a pose; -a formula. They are all afraid of nothing so much as of seeming -respectable. I imagine that there's just as much marital virtue at large -in the world nowadays as when we were young.--Who is the young man?" she -had, nevertheless, ended. - -"My dear, don't ask me!" Tim had moaned, blanched and battered in his -invalid's chair. (Why wouldn't he come down and live with her? Why, -indeed, except that, since Frances's death, he had felt that he must -stand by, in London, and watch over Rhoda.) "I only know what I've -heard. Amy has talked and talked. And everybody else is talking, -according to her." Amy was Frances's sister, a well-meaning, but -disturbing woman, with a large family of well-conducted, well-married, -unpainted, and unfashionable daughters. "She is here every day about it. -They are always together. He is always there. The poet--the new young -poet. He has a heart or a chest or a stomach--something that has sent -him home and that keeps him safe at Whitehall, while poor Niel fights in -France. Surely, Isabel, you've heard of Christopher Darley? Wasn't he -there? Young. Younger than Rhoda. Black hair. Big eyes. Silent." - -Silent.--Yes, there had been, beside Jane Amoret, one silent person in -Rhoda's drawing-room. And she had been aware of him constantly, though, -till now, unconsciously. Very young; very pale; aloof, near a window, -with an uncalculated aloofness. She reconstructed an impression that -became deeper the further she went into it. Thick backward locks that -had given his forehead a wind-blown look, and a gaze now and then -directed on herself, a gaze grave, withdrawing, yet scrutinizing, too. - -"Yes; I think, now that you describe him, I must have seen him," she -murmured; while a curious alarm mounted in her, an alarm that none of -Rhoda's more characteristic circle had aroused. "He wasn't living by a -formula of freedom," she reflected. "And he wasn't arid." Aloud she -said, "He looked a nice young creature, I remember." - -"He writes horrible poems, Amy says; blasphemous. There they are. I -can't understand them. He casts down everything; has no beliefs of any -kind. Nice? I should think that's the last adjective that would describe -him." - -She had picked up the unobtrusive volume and found herself arrested; not -as she had been by the memory of the young man's gaze, nor yet in the -manner that Tim's account indicated; but still arrested. Very young--but -austere, dignified, and strange, genuinely and effortlessly strange. So -a young priest might have written, seeking in close-pressed metaphysical -analogies to find expression for spiritual passion. She stood, puzzled -and absorbed. - -"No, it isn't blasphemous," she said presently. "And he has beliefs. -But surely, Tim dear, surely this young man can't care for Rhoda." - -How could a young man who wrote like that about the mystic vision care -for Rhoda? - -"Not care for Rhoda!" Tim's voice had now the quaintest ring of paternal -resentment. "The most beautiful young woman in London! Why, he's head -over heels in love with her. And the worst of it is that, from what Amy -sees and hears, she cares for him." - -"It's curious," Mrs. Delafield said, laying down the book. "I shouldn't -have thought he'd care about beautiful young women." - -And now Tim's letter, on this December morning, announced that Rhoda had -gone off with Christopher Darley; and Mrs. Delafield could find it in -her heart, as she worked and pondered, to wish that her dear Tim had -followed Frances before this catastrophe overtook him. - -"Good heavens!" she heard herself muttering, "if only she'd been meaner, -more cowardly, and stayed and lied--as women of her kind are supposed to -do. If only she'd let him die in peace; he can't have many years." - -But no: it had been done with _le beau geste_. Tim had known nothing, -and poor Niel, home for his first peace leave, had come to him, -bewildered and aghast, with the news. He had found a letter waiting for -him, sent from the country. Tim copied the letter for her:-- - - DEAR NIEL: - - I'm sure you felt, too, that our life couldn't go on. It had become - too unsatisfactory for both of us. Luckily we are sensible people - nowadays, and such mistakes can be remedied. You must mend your - life as I am mending mine. I am leaving you, with Christopher - Darley. I am so sorry if it seems sudden; but I felt it better that - we should not meet again. - - Yours affectionately - - RHODA - -"If only the poet hadn't had money, too!" Mrs. Delafield had thought. -For this fact she had learned about Mr. Darley in London. Rhoda would -never have abandoned that drawing-room had she not been secure of -another as good. - -Tim wrote that nothing could have been manlier, more generous, than -Niel's behaviour. He was willing, for the sake of the child, to take -Rhoda back, reinstate her, and protect her from the consequences of her -act; and what Tim now begged of his sister was that she should see -Rhoda, see if, confronting her, she could not induce her to return to -her husband. Meanwhile Jane Amoret would be dispatched at once with her -nurse to Fernleigh. Tim had written to his child in her retreat, and had -implored her to go to her aunt. "I told her that you would receive her, -Isabel," so Tim's letter ended; "and I trust you now to save us--as far -as we can be saved. Tell her that her husband will forgive, and that I -forgive, if she will return. Let her see the child. Let that be your -appeal." - -Poor, darling Tim! Very mid-Victorian. "Forgive." Would "receive" her. -The words had an antediluvian ring. With what battledore and -shuttle-cock of mirth and repartee they would be sent sailing and -spinning in Rhoda's world. All the same, she, who was mid-Victorian in -seeming rather than in reality, would make other appeals, if Rhoda -came. Already she could almost count the steady heads of her intentions -thrusting up as if through the ground. Even in Rhoda's world repartee -and mirth might be displayed rather than acted upon, and Rhoda might -find herself, as a result of _le beau geste_, less favourably placed for -the creation of another drawing-room than she imagined. That, of course, -was the line to take with Rhoda; and as she reflected, carefully now, on -what she would say to her,--as she determined that Rhoda should not -leave her until she had turned her face firmly homeward,--the sound of -wheels came up the road, and outside the high walls she heard the -station fly drawing up at her gates. In another moment she was welcoming -Jane Amoret and her nurse. - - -III - -SHE had not seen the child for five months now, and her first glance at -her, for all its sweetness, brought something of a shock, revealing as -it did how deeply she cared for the little creature. She was not a -child-lover, not undiscriminatingly fond of all examples of the -undeveloped, though her kind solicitude might have given her that -appearance. Children had always affected her, from the cradle, as -personalities; and some, like the mature, were lovable and some the -reverse. Jane Amoret had already paid her more than one visit--she had -been more than willing that Rhoda should find her a convenience in this -respect; and she had, from the first, found her lovable. But the five -months had brought much more to the mere charm of babyhood. She was now -potent and arresting in her appeal and dignity. She sat in her nurse's -arms, her eyes fixed on her great-aunt, and, as Mrs. Delafield held out -her hands to her, she unhesitatingly, if unsmilingly, answered, leaning -forward to be taken. - -She was a pale, delicate baby, her narrow little face framed in -straightly cut dark hair, her mournful little lips only tinted with a -rosy mauve; and, under long, fine brows, her great eyes were full of -meditativeness. Rhoda, though now so richly a brunette, had, as a baby, -been ruddy-haired and rosy-cheeked, with eyes of a velvety, submerging -darkness. Jane Amoret's grey iris rayed out from the expanded pupil like -the corolla of a flower. There was no likeness between the child and her -mother. Nor was there anything of Niel's sleepy young countenance, with -its air of still waters running shallow. - -Mrs. Delafield, something of a student of heredity, saw in the little -face an almost uncanny modern replica of her own paternal grandmother, -whose pensive gaze, under high-dressed powdered hair, had followed her -down the drawing-room in the home of her childhood. In Jane Amoret she -recovered the sense of that forgotten romance of her youth--the -wonderful, beautiful great-grandmother with the following eyes. Had they -not, even then, been asking something of her? - -"It isn't everyone she'll go to, ma'am," said the nurse, as they went up -the path to the house, Mrs. Delafield carrying Jane Amoret. - -Nurse was a highly efficient example of her type--crisp, cheerful, a -little glib. Mrs. Delafield had never warmly liked her, and felt -convinced now, that in spite of her decorous veneer of reticence, the -servants' hall would be enlightened as to the whole story before many -hours were over. Well, it could not be helped. - -They went up to the big nursery overlooking the walled garden at the -back of the house, where, since the morning's post and its -announcements, a great fire of logs had been blazing. Nurse made but one -respectful, passing reference to Rhoda. The country air would do Lady -Quentyn good. She had, nurse thought, over-tired herself of late. What -else she thought, Parton and the others were soon to hear hinted. And as -Rhoda's calculated maternity had chilled her aunt on that day five -months ago, so she was chilled now to think that Rhoda should have had -more taste in the choice of her drawing-room than in that of her baby's -nurse. - -While, in the next room, the unpleasing woman was unpacking her own and -Jane Amoret's effects, Mrs. Delafield was left alone with the child. She -had found, on a shelf, a box of well-worn blocks, and seating herself in -the low, chintz-covered wicker chair beside the fire, she placed them, -one by one, before Jane Amoret, who, on her white wool rug, gave them a -gentle attention. She had been too young for blocks on her last visit. - -The old chair, as Mrs. Delafield moved in it, leaning down, creaked -softly, and she remembered, a curious excitement stirring under all -these recoveries of the past, that it had been condemned as really too -decrepit when Peggy had been a baby. Yet the threat had never been -carried out. It had gone on through Peggy's babyhood and through the -babyhood of Peggy's children, and, unused for all these years, here it -gave forth again just the plaintive yet comfortable sounds which, even -more, it seemed, than another baby's presence, evoked Peggy and her own -young maternity. - -The chair, the blocks, the firelight playing on the happy walls, with -their framed Caldecotts and Cherry Ripes and Bubbles, all evoked that -past, filling her with the mingled acquiescence and yearning of old age. -And Jane Amoret evoked a past far, far more distant. Peggy had not been -like the great-grandmother. None of them had ever reincarnated that -vanished loveliness. But here, mysterious and appealing, it was before -her; and it seemed to brush across her very heartstrings every time -that, from the blocks, the child lifted the meditative grey of her eyes -to her great-aunt's face. - -Far too mysterious, far too lovely, far too gentle, this frail -potentiality, for any uses ever to be made of it by Rhoda, by Niel, or -by nurse. And the yearning became a yearning over Jane Amoret. - -Yes, there the edifice rose, block by block--her deft, deliberate -fingers placed them one after the other, under Jane Amoret's eyes, -absorbed in this towering achievement. The miniature Alhambra finished, -she sat and gazed, and her little chest lifted in a great sigh of wonder -and appeasement. Then, her baby interest dropping, she looked round at -the flames, and, for a little time, gazed at them, while her -great-aunt's hand moved softly to rest upon her head. It seemed then, as -if in answer to the rapt and tender look bent above her, that Jane -Amoret's eyes were again raised and that she stretched up her arms to be -taken. - -"She really loves me," said Mrs. Delafield, as touched and trembling as -a young lover. She lifted her, pressing the little body against her -breast; and, as Jane Amoret gave herself to the enfolding, a thought -that was as sharp and as sudden as a pang flashed through her -great-aunt's mind. "I can never give her up." - -What came to her first, as she sat there, Jane Amoret's head leaning -against her, was the thought of Christmas roses. It was a gift, a -miracle. And to what depths of loneliness the gift had been given; with -what depths of life she answered it! But she was breathless while she -tried to think, knowing something terrible in her own swift acceptance; -seeing for the first time something lawless and perilous in her own -nature. Never in her life had she betrayed a trust; never broken a law. -Yet often, through the years, she had paused, contemplative and -questioning, to gaze at something her mirror showed her, an implication -that only she could see, a capacity never realized. And what she saw -sometimes, with discomfort and shrinking, in those freaked eyes, those -firm lips, was an untamed wildness that had come to her from much -further back than a great-grandmother; something predatory and reckless, -perhaps from the days of border robbers, and Highland chiefs whose only -law was their own will. - -She knew now what were the faces waiting to seize upon her accusingly. -Not Rhoda's. She swept Rhoda and her forfeited claim aside. Let her stay -with her poet, since that was what she had chosen. It was Niel and poor -Tim who looked at her aghast. But another face hovered softly and -effacingly before them; a pale young face with rosy-mauve lips and -following eyes that said, "They will never understand me. This is what I -was trying to tell you, always. I knew that I was coming back. This is -what I was asking you to do." - -It was superstition; it did not deceive her for a moment. Desire -dressing itself in a supernatural appeal. Absurd and discreditable. But, -in all truth and honour, wasn't there something in it? Wasn't there a -time, once in a blue moon, for lawlessness, when it came as a miracle? -Whom would she harm, really? What could his paternity mean, really, to -drowsy young Niel? And could she not salve Tim's wounds? - -The only thing that could count,--she came to that at last, feeling the -child, with sleeping, drooping head and little hands held within her -hand, already so profoundly her own,--the only thing was Jane Amoret -herself. Had she a right to keep her from what was, perhaps, her chance -of the normal, even if the defective, life? Wasn't even a bad and -foolish mother better than no mother at all, and an untarnished name -supremely desirable? She struggled, her eyes fixed on the fire, her hand -unconsciously closing fast on the little intertwined hands within it. -And with the face of the great-grandmother came again the thought of the -Christmas roses, of the gift, the miracle. - -She had not sought anything. She had not even chosen. It was rather as -if Jane Amoret had chosen her. She need not make an effort to keep the -gift. She need merely make no effort to give it back. If Rhoda came (oh, -she could but pray that Rhoda would not come!), she need not find the -right words for her. She had only to remain the passive spectator of -Rhoda's enterprise and not put out a hand to withdraw her from it. And, -thrusting, feverishly, final decisions from her, her mind sprang out -into far projects and promises. She could, with a will, live for twenty -more years yet and fill them full for Jane Amoret. Niel must not lose -his child, evidently. She would arrange with Niel. He had always liked -her and turned to her. Let this be his home, and welcome. But of course, -he would marry again. She could persuade him not to take Jane Amoret -from her to give to a step-mother. Niel would be easy. - -And Tim, now, must come, of course. Tim should, with her, enjoy Jane -Amoret to the full. What a happy childhood she could make it! It was, to -begin with, quite the happiest nursery she knew, this long-empty nursery -of hers. In a few years' time Jane Amoret would be old enough to have -her own little plot in the garden--Peggy's plot; and a pony like Peggy's -should come to the empty stables. She saw already the merry, instructed -girl she would choose as Jane Amoret's governess: some one young enough -to play out of lesson hours; some one who would teach her to know birds -and flowers as well as history and Latin. She would keep Jane Amoret's -hair cut like this,--it was the only point in the child's array in which -her taste was Rhoda's,--straight across the forehead and straight across -the neck, until she was fifteen, and she should wear smocked blue linen -for morning and white for afternoon, as her own children had done. With -good luck, she might even see Jane Amoret married. - -Actually, she was thinking about Jane Amoret's marriage, actually -wondering about the nice little eldest boy at the manor,--while her arms -tightened in instinctive maternal anxiety around the sleeping -baby,--when Parton, doing her best not to look round-eyed, announced -Lady Quentyn. - - -IV - -SHE knew, as she waited for Rhoda to come up, that something she had -forgotten during this last half-hour--perhaps it was her -conscience--steeled her suddenly to the endurance of a test. Tim had -worded it, "Let her see the child. Let that be your appeal." Would it -not appease her conscience to stand or fall by that? It should be her -appeal. But the only one. - -Jane Amoret had waked, and now, dazed but unfretful, suffered herself to -be placed again on the rug among the blocks, one of which Mrs. Delafield -put into her hands, bidding her build a beautiful big house, as -great-aunt had done. The anguish of her own suspense was made manifest -to her in the restless gesture with which, after that, and while she -waited, she bent to put another log on the fire. - -Rhoda's soft, deliberate rustle was outside. In another moment she had -entered, and the effect that Mrs. Delafield dreaded seemed produced on -the spot; for, arrested at the very threshold, almost before her eyes -had sought her aunt's, Rhoda stared down at the child with knotted, with -even incredulous brows. - -"Oh! He's sent her already, then!" she exclaimed. - -What did the stare, the exclamation, portend? - -"Yes. He sent her, of course, as soon as he came back." - -"But why?--until our interview is over?" - -"Why not? She'd been alone for a week." Mrs. Delafield spoke with the -mildness which, she determined, should not leave her. "Niel, of course, -wanted to have her cared for." - -Rhoda, during this little interchange, had remained near the door; but -now, perceiving, perhaps, that she had come near to giving herself away, -she cleared her brows of their perplexity and moved forward to the fire, -where, leaning her velvet elbow on the mantelpiece, she answered, drily -laughing; "Oh! Niel's care! He wouldn't know whether the child were fed -on suet-pudding or cold ham! She's not alone, with nurse. There's no one -who can take such care of her as nurse. I knew that." And she went on -immediately, putting the question of Jane Amoret's presence behind her -with decision, "Well, poor Aunt Isabel, what have you to say to me? -Father wrote that you would consent to be the go-between. He absolutely -implored me to come, and it's to satisfy him I'm here, for I really -can't imagine what good it can do." - -No; Mrs. Delafield had grasped her own security and her own danger. It -had not been in remorse or tenderness that Rhoda's eyes had fixed -themselves upon her child, it had been in anxiety, lest Jane Amoret's -presence should be the signal of some final verdict against her. She had -come because she hoped to be taken back; and if there was all the needed -justification in Rhoda's callousness, there was an undreamed-of danger -in her expectation. - -"Well, we must see," Mrs. Delafield remarked; and already she was -measuring the necessities of Rhoda's pride against the urgencies of -Rhoda's disenchantment. It was Rhoda's pride that she must hold to. -Rhoda, even if she had come, had only come to make her own terms. - -"Did you motor over?" she asked. "You are not very far from here, are -you?" - -No train could have brought her at that hour. - -"Twenty miles or so away," said Rhoda. "I was able to hire a motor, a -horrible, open affair with torn flaps that let in all the air, so that -I'm frozen." - -Her loveliness did, indeed, look a little pinched and sharpened, and -there was more than the cold drive to account for it. But she was still -surpassingly lovely, with the loveliness that, once you were confronted -with it, seemed to explain everything that might need explanation. That -was Rhoda's strongest card. She left her appearance to speak for her and -made no explanations, as now, when, indeed, she had all the air of -expecting other people to make them. But her aunt only said, while Jane -Amoret, from her rug, kept her grave gaze upon her mother, "Won't you -have some hot milk?" - -"Thanks, yes, I should be glad of it," said Rhoda. "How lucky you are to -have it. We are given only condensed for our coffee at the hotel. It's -quite revolting." And after Mrs. Delafield had rung, and since no -initiative came from her, she was, in a manner, forced to open the -conversation. "Niel has only himself to thank," she said. "He's been -making himself too impossible for a long time." - -"Really? In what way? Perhaps the hard life over there has affected his -temper." - -Mrs. Delafield allowed herself the irony. Rhoda, indeed, must expect -that special flavour from her. - -"Something has certainly affected it," said Rhoda, drawing a chair to -the fire and spreading her beautiful hands before it. "I'm quite tired, -I confess,--horrid as I'm perfectly aware it sounds to say it,--of -hearing about the hard life. Life's hard enough for all of us just now, -heaven knows; and I think they haven't had half a bad time over there, -numbers of them--men like Niel, I mean, who've travelled comfortably -about the world and never had the least little wound, nor been, ever, in -any real danger, as far as I can make out; at least, not since he's had -the staff work. It's very different from my poor Christopher, who rotted -in the cold and mud until it nearly killed him. There would be some -point in his talking of a hard life." - -This was all very illuminating, and the bold advance of Christopher won -Mrs. Delafield's admiration for its manner; but she passed it over to -inquire again, "In what way has Niel been making himself impossible?" -The more impossible Rhoda depicted him, the easier to leave her there, -shut out by his impossibility. - -"Why, his meanness," said Rhoda, her cold, dark eyes, as she turned them -upon her aunt, expressing, indeed, quite a righteous depth of -reprobation. "For months and months it's been the same wearisome cry. -He's written about nothing but economy, fussing, fuming, and preaching. -It's so ugly, at his time of life." - -"Have you been a little extravagant, perhaps? Everything is so much more -costly, isn't it? He may well have been anxious about your future, and -the child's." - -It was perfectly mild, and the irony Rhoda would expect from her. - -"Oh, no he wasn't," said Rhoda, now with her gloomy laugh. "He was -anxious about his hunting. I don't happen to care for that primitive -form of amusement, and Niel doesn't happen to care about anything else; -certainly he doesn't care about beauty, and that's all I do care about. -So in his view, since, precisely, life has become so costly, beauty had -to go to the wall and I mustn't dress decently or have a decently -ordered house. I haven't been in the least extravagant," said Rhoda. -"I've known what it is to be cold; I've known what it is to be hungry; -it's been, at times, literally impossible to get food and coal in -London. Oh, you don't know anything about it, Aunt Isabel, tucked away -comfortably down here with logs and milk. And if Niel had had any -appreciation of the position and had realized at all that I prefer being -hungry to being ill-dressed, he would have turned his mind to cutting -down his own extravagances and offered to allow me"--and now, for an -instant, if velvet can show sharpness, Mrs. Delafield caught in the -sliding velvet eye an evident edge of cogitation, even, of -calculation--"at least two thousand a year for myself. Money buys -absolutely nothing nowadays." - -So there it was, and it amounted to an offer. Or, rather, it amounted to -saying that it was the sum for which she would be willing to consider -any offer of Niel's. Mrs. Delafield, measuring still Rhoda's pride -against Rhoda's urgency, mused on her velvet garments, the fur that -broadly bordered her skirts, slipped from her shoulders, and framed her -hands. Poor Tim had been able to give his daughter only a few hundred a -year, and Niel's hunting must indeed have been in danger. Rhoda's pride, -she knew, stood, as yet, between herself and any pressure from the -urgency; she could safely leave the offer to lie and go on presently to -question, "And you'll be better off now?" - -Inevitably unsuspecting as she was, Rhoda, all the same, must feel an -unexpectedness in her attitude, and at this it was with a full, frank -sombreness that she turned her gaze upon her. Anything but a fool she -had always been, and she answered, after the moment of gloomy scrutiny, -"Don't imagine, please, Aunt Isabel, that because I speak openly of -practical matters I left Niel to get a better establishment. I left him -because I didn't love him. I was willing to sacrifice anything rather -than stay. Because it is a sacrifice. I took the step I've taken under -no illusion. We are too uncivilized yet for things to be anything but -difficult for a woman who takes the step, and the brave people have to -pay for the cowards and hypocrites." - -This, somehow, was not at all Rhoda's own note. Mrs. Delafield felt sure -she caught an echo of Mr. Darley's ministrations. She was glad that -Rhoda should receive them: they would sustain her; and since she was -determined--or almost--that Rhoda should stay with Mr. Darley, it was -well that she should receive all the sustainment possible. - -"It certainly must require great love and great courage," she assented. - -Rhoda's eyes still sombrely scrutinized her. "I didn't expect you to see -it, I confess, Aunt, Isabel." - -"Oh, but I do," said Mrs. Delafield. - -The milk was now brought and Rhoda began to sip it. - -"As for my being better off, since you are kind enough to take an -interest in that aspect of my situation," she went back, "Christopher -hasn't, it's true, as much money as Niel. But our tastes are the same, -so that I shall certainly be very much better off. We shall live in -London--after Niel sets me free." And here again she just glanced at her -aunt, who bowed assent, murmuring, "Yes; yes; he is quite willing to set -you free; at once."--"And until then," Rhoda went on, as if she hadn't -needed the assurance,--second-rate assurance as, Mrs. Delafield felt -sure, she found it,--"and until then I shall stay in the country. -Christopher has his post still at the Censor's office, and won't, I'm -afraid, get his demobilization for some time. He translates things, you -know. So we are going to find a little old house, for me,--we are -looking for one now,--and I shall see a few friends there, quite -quietly, and Christopher can come up and down, until everything is -settled. I think that's the best plan." - -Rhoda spoke with a dignity that had even a savour of conscious -sweetness, and, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, was running herself very -completely into her corner. - -There was silence now for a little while. Rhoda finished her milk, and -Jane Amoret, gently and unobtrusively moving among her blocks, -succeeded, at length, in balancing the last one on her edifice and -looked up at her great-aunt for approbation. - -"Very good, darling. A beautiful house," said Mrs. Delafield, leaning -over her, but with a guarded tenderness. What a serpent she had become! -There was Rhoda's jealousy to look out for. She might imagine herself -fond of Jane Amoret, if she saw that some one else adored her. - -"She's quite used to you already, isn't she?" said Rhoda, watching them. -"I wonder what you'll make of her. She strikes me as rather a dull -little thing, though she's certainly very pretty. She's rather like -Niel, isn't she? Though she certainly isn't as dull as Niel!" She -laughed slightly. "All the same,"--and Mrs. Delafield now, in Rhoda's -voice, scented the close approach of danger, and was aware, though she -did not look up to meet it, that Rhoda's eyes took on a new -watchfulness,--"All the same I must consider the poor little thing's -future. That is, of course, my one real difficulty." - -"Was it? In going away? In having left her, you mean?" Mrs Delafield -prayed that her mildness might gloss, to Rhoda's ear, the transition to -conscious combat that her instinctive change of tense revealed to her -own. "Oh, but you need not do that. Don't let that trouble you for a -moment, Rhoda. I will take charge of her--complete charge. I can do it -easily. My house is empty, and the child will be a companion to me. I -don't find her dull. She is a dear little thing, so good and gentle. You -need really have no anxiety." - -"Oh, I see." Rhoda was gazing at her earnestly. "Thanks. That's -certainly a relief. Though all the same I don't suppose you'd claim that -you could replace the child's mother." - -"Yes. I think so, Rhoda. A mother who had left her for a lover." - -Mrs. Delafield kept her eyes fixed on the fire. Rhoda stood up and -leaned her back against the mantelpiece. She could no longer control the -manifestations of her impatience and her perplexity. - -"That would be your view, of course; and father's; and Niel's. It's not -mine. I consider the responsibility to be Niel's." - -"Well, whosesoever the responsibility, the deed is done, isn't it?" -Mrs. Delafield observed. "I'm not arraigning you, you know. I'm merely -stating the fact. You have left her." - -Rhoda's impatience now visibly brushed past these definitions. "You say -that Niel is ready to set me free. I took that for granted, of course. -It's only common decency. But that's hardly what father could have meant -in imploring me to come to--you. He told me nothing--only implored, and -lamented. And, since I am here, I'd like some information, I confess." - -It was the first step away from pride, and it was a long one. And Mrs. -Delafield knew that with it came her own final turning-point. Here, at -this moment, she must be true to Tim and Niel, or betray their trust. -And here no less--for so it seemed to her--she might, in betraying them, -take the law into her own hands and promise herself, and them, that, in -breaking it, she would make something better. Yet she did not feel these -alternatives, now, at war within her mind. She knew that they were -there, implicit, but she knew them already answered. Rhoda had answered -for her; and Jane Amoret had answered. It took her, however, a moment to -find her own answer, the verbal one, and while she looked for it, she -kept her eyes on the fire. - -"Your father wants you to go back," she said at last. "Niel is willing -to take you back. That is the information I had for you. Not for a -moment because he would accept your interpretation of responsibility, -and not for a moment because of any personal feeling for you; which must -be a relief to you. Merely for your sake, and the child's. But I don't -know how to plead such a cause with you, Rhoda. I understand you, I -think, better than your father does. I've always seen your point of view -as he could never see it, and I see it even now. So that I should feel -that I asked you something outrageous in asking you to go back to your -husband when you love another man. If you should want to go back, that -would be a very different matter--if, by chance, you feel you've made a -mistake and are tired, already, of Mr. Darley." - -She had time, in the pause that followed, the scales pulsing almost -evenly--it was as if she saw them--between Rhoda's pride and Rhoda's -urgency, to wonder at herself. And most of all to wonder that she -regretted nothing. She kept her eyes on the fire, but she knew that -Rhoda, very still, scrutinized her intently. The sharply drawn tension -of the moment had resolved itself, to her imagination, into a series of -tiny ticks, as if of the scales settling down to the choice, before -Rhoda spoke. Then what she found to say was, "That's hardly likely, is -it?" - -"I felt it impossible, you will be glad to hear," said Mrs. Delafield. -"No one who understands you could suspect you, whatever your faults, of -two infidelities in the space of a fortnight." - -And now again there was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of -the flames up the chimney and the soft movements of Jane Amoret among -her blocks. - -Rhoda turned away at last, facing the fire and looking down at it, her -hands on the edge of the mantelpiece, her foot on the fender; and she -presently lifted the foot and dealt the logs a kick. - -It was all clear to Mrs. Delafield. She was tired of her poet, or, at -all events, did not, in the new life, find compensations enough. She -had come, hoping to have her way made clear for a rentry, dignified, if -not triumphant, into the old life. And here she was, in her corner, her -head fairly fixed to the wall. - -Meanwhile, what had become of the mid-Victorian conscience? What had, -indeed, become of any conscience at all, since she continued to regret -nothing? She even found excuses, perfidious, no doubt, yet satisfactory. -It had been the truth she had given Rhoda--the real truth, her own, if -not the truth she owed her, not the truth as Tim and Niel had placed it, -all confidently, in her hands. But since it was preminently not the -truth that Rhoda had come to seize, she was willing, now that she had -fixed her so firmly, to give her something else, and she really rejoiced -to find it ready, going on presently and with a note of relief that -Rhoda's ear could not fail to catch:-- - -"Not only from the point of view of dignity one couldn't suspect it of -you, Rhoda, but--I want to say it to you, having had my glimpse of Mr. -Darley--from the point of view of taste. If you were going to do -anything of this sort,--and I don't need to tell you how deeply I -deplore it nor how wrong I think you,--but if you were going to do it, -you couldn't have chosen better. He is gifted; he is charming; he is -good. I saw it all at once." - -There was her further truth, and really it was due to Rhoda. Rhoda, at -this, faced her again and, highly civilized creature that she was, it -was with her genuine grim mirth. - -"Upon my word, Aunt Isabel!" she commented. "You are astonishing." - -"Am I? Why?" asked Mrs. Delafield, though she knew quite well. - -"Why, my dear? Because you are over sixty years old and you wear caps. I -expected to find dismay, reproach, and lamentations--all the strains of -poor old father's harmonium; to have you down on your knees begging me -to return to the paths of virtue. And here you are, cool and unperturbed -and, positively, patting us on the back; positively giving us your -blessing. Well, well, wonders will never cease! Yes, he is charming, no -one can deny that; and good and gifted, too. But to think of your having -spotted it so quickly! Why, you only saw him once, if I remember, and I -don't remember that you talked at all." - -"We didn't. I only saw him once." - -"And it was enough! To make you understand! To make you condone!--Come, -out with it, Aunt Isabel, you wicked old lady! I see now why I've always -got on so well with you. You _are_ wicked." - -"To make me understand. I won't say condone." - -"You needn't say it. You've said enough. And certainly it is a feather -in Christopher's cap. But he is the sort of person one falls in love -with at first sight." - -"So I see." - -"And so do I," said Rhoda, still laughing. But her slightly avenging -gaiety dropped from her after the last sally, and turning again to the -fire, and again kicking her log, she said, almost sombrely, "He -absolutely worships me." - -Was not this everybody's justification? Mrs. Delafield seized it, -rising, as on a satisfying close. - -"Will you stay to lunch?" she asked. - -"Dear me, no!" Rhoda laughed. "I must get back to Christopher. And the -motor is there waiting. So you'll write to father and tell him that I -came here and that you advised me to stick to Christopher." - -"Advised? Have I seemed to advise, Rhoda? Do you mean"--it was, Mrs. -Delafield knew, the final peril--"that you had considered not sticking -to him?" - -Rhoda continued to laugh a little, drawing up her furs. - -"Rather not! It couldn't have entered my head, could it, either from the -point of view of dignity or of taste--as you've been telling me? You -have been very wonderful, you know! Tell father, then, if you like, that -you gave us your blessing." - -"I'll tell him," said Mrs. Delafield, "that I'm convinced you ought not -to go back to Niel." - -"I see,"--Rhoda nodded, and their eyes sounded each other, -curiously,--"though father thinks I ought." - -"Of course. That's why you're here." - -"Father would have gone down on his knees to beg me." - -"Yes. Down on his knees. Poor Tim!" - -She was horribly frightened, but she faced Rhoda's grim mirth deliberate -with gravity. And Rhoda, whatever she might have seen or guessed, -accepted her defeat; accepted the dignity and taste thrust upon her. - -"Father, in other words, isn't a wicked old gentleman as you are a -wicked old lady. I see it all, and it's all a feather in Christopher's -cap. Well, Aunt Isabel, good-bye. Shall I see you again? Will you come -and call when I'm Mrs. Darley? I don't see how, with a clear conscience, -you can chuck us, you know." - -"Nor do I," Mrs. Delafield conceded, after only a pause. "I don't often -go to London, but, when I do, I shall look in upon you, if you want me -to." - -"Rather!" Rhoda, now gloved and muffled, had fallen back on her normal -rich economy of speech. "You'll be useful as well as pleasant. And -Christopher will adore you, I'm sure. I'll tell him that you think him -charming." - -"Do," said Mrs. Delafield, following her to the door. - -She had forgotten even to kiss Jane Amoret good-bye. - - -V - -Still Mrs. Delafield knew no remorse. Rather, a wine-like elation filled -her. She thought of her state of consciousness in terms of wine, and -ordered up from her modest cellar a special old port, hardly tasted -since her husband's death, and, all alone, drank at lunch a little glass -in honour of Jane Amoret's advent. Also, though elated, she was -conscious of needing a stimulant. The scene with Rhoda had cost her more -than could, at the moment, be quite computed. - -What it had won for her she was able to compute when, after lunch, she -went upstairs to look at Jane Amoret asleep in her white cot. She did -not feel like a robber brooding in guilty joy over ill-gotten booty. She -could not feel herself that, nor Jane Amoret booty. Jane Amoret was -treasure, pure heaven-sent treasure, her flower of miracle. Christmas -roses had been in her mind since morning, and the darkness, the -whiteness of the child, as well as her beautiful unexpectedness, made -her think of them anew; her gravity, too; something of melancholy that -the flowers embodied; for they were not smiling flowers--gazing rather -at the wintry sky in earnest meditation. - -Jane Amoret's black lashes lay upon her cheek, ever so slightly turned -up at the tips, and her great-aunt, leaning over her, felt herself -doting upon them and upon the little softly breathing profile embedded -in the pillow, a bud-like, folded hand beside it. - -"Little darling, we will make each other happy," she whispered. - -Rhoda had passed from their lives like a storm-cloud. - -Jane Amoret was still sleeping, and she had gone downstairs to the -little morning-room where, since the war, she had really lived, to -settle with herself what she must say to Tim, when there came a ringing -at the front-door bell. The morning-room, at the back of the house, like -the nursery, overlooked the southern lawn and the walls of the -kitchen-garden; but she could usually hear if a motor drove up, and, in -her still concentration upon the empty sheet lying before her on the -desk, she was aware that there had been no sound. It was too early for a -visitor, too early for the post, and she looked up with some curiosity -as Parton came in. - -"It's a gentleman, ma'am, to see you," said Parton; and her young, -trained visage showed signs of a discomfiture deeper than that Rhoda's -coming had evoked. "Mr. Darley, ma'am; and he hopes very much you are -disengaged." - -Mrs. Delafield had, as a first sensation, that of sympathy with Parton. -Parton evidently knew all about it and was evidently in distress lest -her face betrayed her knowledge. In her effort to maintain her own -standards of impassivity she suddenly blushed crimson, and Mrs. -Delafield then felt that she was very old and Parton very young, and -that in that fact alone was a bond, even if there had been no other. She -had many bonds with Parton, and now, seeing her so soft, uncertain, and -dismayed, she would have liked to pat her on the shoulder and say, -"There, my dear, it doesn't make any difference. I assure you I'm not -disturbed." And since she could not say it, she looked it, replying with -the utmost equability, "Mr. Darley? By all means. Show him in at once, -Parton." - -There was, after Parton had gone, a short interval, while Mr. Darley -doubtless was taking off his coat, and during which she felt herself -mainly engaged in maintaining her equability. But, after her encounter -with Rhoda, wasn't she equable enough for any situation? Besides, Mr. -Darley could in no fashion menace Jane Amoret, and under all her -conjectures and amazements there lay a certain satisfaction. She knew, -from her encounter with Parton, that she was interested in all young -creatures when they were nice, and she was not sorry to have another -look at Mr. Darley. - -When he entered and she saw him,--not in khaki as that first time, but -in a gray tweed suit,--when Parton had softly and securely closed the -door and left them together, she found herself borne along on a curious -deepening of the current of sympathy for mere youth. She had not -remembered how young he was; she had not had that as her dominant -impression at Rhoda's tea, as she had it now. He must be several years -younger than Rhoda; hardly more than twenty-two or three, she thought; -and it must have been as a mere child that the war had swept him out -into maturing initiations. Something of an experience, shattering yet -solidifying, was in his face, fragile, wasted, yet more final and -finished than one would have expected at his time of life; and also, in -curious contrast to his boyish, beardless look, a deep line was engraved -across his forehead; whether by suffering or by the trick she soon -discovered in him of raising his eyebrows in an effort of intense -concentration, she could not tell. - -She gave him her hand simply, and said, "Do sit down." - -But Mr. Darley, though he looked at the chair she indicated, did not -take it. He remained standing on the hearthrug, facing the windows, his -hands clasped behind him, and she then became aware that he was enduring -a veritable agony of shyness. It did not take the form of -blushes,--though his was a girlish skin that would display them -instantly,--or of awkward gestures or faltering speech. It was a shyness -wild, still, and bereft of all appeal, like that of a bird,--the simile -came sharply to her,--a bird that had followed some swift impulse and -that now, caught in a sudden hand, relapsed into utter immobility. His -large eyes were on hers--fixed. His expression was like a throbbing -heart. She knew that all she wanted, for the moment, was to show him -that the hand was gentle. - -"I'm afraid you came hoping to find Rhoda," she said, looking away from -him and giving her chair, as a pretext, sundry little adjustments before -drawing it to the fire. "But she left this morning, after seeing me, and -you must have crossed her on the road. At least--have you motored?" - -The large eyes, she found, were still fixed on her as, with the -question, she glanced up at him; but he answered immediately--rather as -if with a croaking cry from the blackbird when one pressed it,-- - -"No; I came by train. I left a little after Rhoda did." - -"By train?" she marvelled kindly. "But we are four miles from the -station here. Aren't you, at your end, as far? And such roads!" She saw -now that his boots and upturned trousers were, indeed, deeply mired. - -"Oh--I didn't mind the walk," said Mr. Darley. "It wasn't far." - -She was sure he hadn't found it far. His whole demeanour expressed the -overmastering impulse that had, till then, sustained him. - -"Have you had any lunch?" she went on. "I can't think where you can have -lunched. There's nothing at the station. Do let me send for something. -I've only just finished." - -It seemed strangely indicated that she should, to-day, feed Rhoda and -her lover. - -But the caught blackbird was in no state for feeding. More wildly, yet -more faintly than before he gave forth the croaking cry with, "Oh, no. -Thanks so much. Yes. At our station. I found something at our station. -Sandwiches; no, a bun. I had a cup of Bovril." - -And now, curiously, poignantly to her, he began to blush as though -suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of himself and of how idiotically he -must be behaving. Poor child! How young he was! And how ill he had been -in the trenches; and how beautiful it was to remember--as she did -suddenly, and not irrelevantly, she knew, though she could not trace the -relevance--that, in the little volume, written since his return, there -had not been a shadow of the ugly rancour, revengeful and provocative, -one met in some other soldier-poets whom one might have fancied to be of -his kind. For how he must have hated it! And, at the same time,--memory -brought back a line, a stanza here and there, from her snatched -reading--how holy he had found it; seeing so much more than error, -death, and suffering. - -Her eyes dwelt on him with something beyond the kindly wish to spare him -as she said, "Please sit down. You must be very tired and you are not -strong, Rhoda told me. Don't be afraid of me. I am an old lady who can -listen to anything and, I think, understand a great deal. I've already -heard a great deal from Rhoda. I'm anything but unfriendly to you, I -assure you." - -It was--she was aware of it when it had crossed her lips--a curious -thing to say to her niece's lover, to the man who had destroyed Tim's -happiness and wrecked Niel's home; but it was too true not to be said. -And she was perfectly sure now that it was not Mr. Darley who had -wrecked and destroyed. It was Rhoda who had taken him, of course; not he -Rhoda. He would never take anybody. He would stand and gaze at them as -he now gazed at her, and only when they threw out appealing arms would -he move towards them. Rhoda had thrown out appealing arms--after she -discovered that alluring arms had no effect. Mrs. Delafield's -impressions and intuitions tumbled forth in positive clusters as she -took in her companion. Allurements, Russian-ballet back-grounds, snowy -throats and velvet eyes, would have no effect upon him at all; he cared -as little about them at one end of the scale of sensations as about rats -and corpses at the other. He would not even see them. It was something -else he had seen in Rhoda; something she had found herself driven to -display. And if she were getting tired of him already, it was simply -because, having trapped him with the artifice, she now found herself -shut up with him in a cage, which, while it was of her own making, was -extremely uncongenial to her. - -Mr. Darley was far too absorbed in what she had just said to him to -think of taking the chair. It had helped him incalculably--that was -quite apparent; for though the blush stayed, and though he was still -wild and shy, they had already, indubitably, begun to understand each -other. - -"Do you mean," he asked, "not unfriendly to me or not unfriendly to -Rhoda?" - -This was an unexpected question, and for a moment, not knowing what it -portended, she hardly knew how to meet it. But the understanding that -seemed to deepen with every moment made truth the most essential thing, -and she replied after only a hesitation, "To you." - -Mr. Darley looked all his astonishment. "But why? Do you feel that you -like me, too? Because, of course, I've never forgotten you. That's why I -felt it possible to come to-day." - -And since truth was essential, it was she, now, who looked, with her -surprise, something that she felt to be a recognition, as she replied, -"I suppose it must be that. I suppose we liked each other at first -sight. I certainly didn't know the feeling was reciprocal." - -"Nor did I!" Mr. Darley exclaimed. He took the chair at the other end of -the hearthrug, facing her, his knees crossed, his arms clutched tightly -across his chest; and now he was able to reach his journey's goal. As -all, on Rhoda's side, had been made clear to her that morning, so on -his, all was clear, as he said, with a solemnity so young, so genuine -that it almost brought tears to her eyes, "Then since you do like me, -please don't let her leave me!" - -The situation was before her, definite and overpowering; but how it -could have come about remained veiled like the misty approaches to a -mountain. - -"Does Rhoda want to leave you?" she questioned. - -"Why--didn't you know?" Mr. Darley's face flashed with a sort of stupor. -"Didn't she come for that?" - -"You answer my questions first," Mrs. Delafield said after a moment. - -He was obedient and full of trust. "It's because of the child, you know, -that lovely little creature in London. From the first--you can't think -how long ago it already seems, though we have hardly been a week -together--I've seen it growing, that feeling in her that she couldn't -bear it. Other things, too; but that more than all. At least," he was -truthful to the last point of scruple, "I think so. And though she did -not tell me that she was saying good-bye this morning, I knew--I -knew--that she was coming to you because she wanted her child, and would -accept anything, endure anything, to be with it again." - -"What do you think Rhoda had to endure?" Mrs. Delafield inquired. - -"Oh--you can't ask me that! I saw you in it and you saw me!" Mr. Darley -exclaimed. "You _will_ be straight with me? You saw that soulless life -of hers, with that selfish figurehead of a husband for all guide. She -was suffocating in it. She didn't need to tell me. I saw it in her face -before she told me. How can a woman live with a man she doesn't love? -When you said not unfriendly to me, did you mean to make a difference? -Did you mean that you don't care for Rhoda? Yet she's always loved and -trusted you, she told me, more than any one. You were the one reality -she clung to. That's why _she_ could come to you to-day." - -"What I mean is that I'm on your side, not on Rhoda's," said Mrs. -Delafield, and at the moment her charming old white face expressed, -perhaps as never before in her life, the quality of decisiveness. "I am -on your side. But I have to see what that is." - -He was feeling her face even more than her words. He was gazing at her -with a rapt scrutiny which, she reflected, exonerating Rhoda to that -extent, would make it difficult for a woman receiving such a tribute not -to wish to retain it permanently. It enriched and sustained one -and--although it was strange that she should feel this--troubled and -moved one, too. A sense of pain stirred in her, and of wonder about -herself and her fitness to receive such gazes. One really couldn't, at -sixty-three, have growing pains; yet Mr. Darley's gaze filled her with -that troubled consciousness of expanding life. He wanted Rhoda. She -wanted Jane Amoret. So, wasn't it all right? Wasn't she all right? His -side was her side. They wanted the same thing. But the troubled sap of -the new consciousness was rising in her. - -"My side is really Rhoda's side," said Mr. Darley, as if answering her -thought. He held his knee in gripped hands and spoke with rapid -security. He was still shy, but he now knew exactly what he wished to -say, and how to say it. "It's Rhoda's side, if only she'd see it. That's -why I was not disloyal in asking my question when you said you weren't -unfriendly. Really--really--you _will_ believe me--it's for her, too. I -wouldn't have let her come with me if it hadn't been. I'm not so selfish -as I seem. I know it's dreadful about the child. But--this is my secret; -Rhoda does not guess it and I could never tell her--she doesn't love the -child as she thinks she does. Not really. In spite of her longing. She -longs to love it, of course; but she isn't a mother; not to that child. -That's another reason. It was all false. The whole thing. The whole of -her life. The real truth is," said Christopher Darley, gazing large-eyed -at her, "that Rhoda is frightened and wants to go back. She's not as -brave as she thought she was. Not quite as brave as I thought. But if -she yields to her fear and leaves me,--she hasn't yet, I know, I see -that in your face--but if she goes back to her old life, it will mean -dust, humiliation, imprisonment forever." - -"That's what I told her," Mrs. Delafield said, her eyes on his. - -"I knew! I knew!" cried the young man. "I knew you'd done something -beautiful for me--for us. Because you see the truth. And you were able -to succeed where I failed! You were able to convince her! You've saved -us both! Oh, how I thank you!" - -"It wasn't quite like that," said Mrs. Delafield. "It wasn't to save -either of you. I don't think it right for a woman to leave her husband -with another man because she has ceased to love her husband. But I made -her go back. I wouldn't even let her tell me that she wanted to leave -you. I didn't convince her. I merely made it impossible for her. She -left me reluctant and bewildered. You haven't found out yet,"--Mrs. -Delafield leaned forward and picked up the little poker; the fire needed -no poking and the movement expressed only her inner restlessness,--"you -haven't found out that Rhoda, at all events, _is_ very selfish?" - -Christopher Darley at that stopped short. "Oh, yes, I have," he answered -then; but the frightened croak was in his voice as he said it. - -"And have you found out, too," said Mrs. Delafield, eyeing her poker, -sparing him, giving him time, "that she's unscrupulous and cold-hearted? -Do you see the sort of life she'll make for you, if she is faithful to -you and stays with you, not because she's faithful, not because she -wants to stay, but gagged and baulked by me? Haven't you -already--yourself, been a little frightened sometimes?" she finished. - -She kept her eyes on her poker and gave Mr. Darley his time, and indeed -he needed it. - -"If you've been so wonderful," he said at last, with the slow care of -one who threads his way among swords; "if, though you think we're -lawbreakers, you think, too, that we've made ourselves another law and -are bound to stand by it; if you've sent her back to me--why do you ask -me that? But no," he went on, "I'm not frightened. You see--I love her." - -"She doesn't love you," said Mrs. Delafield. - -"She will! She will!"--It made Mrs. Delafield think of the shaking -heart-throbs of the blackbird.--"All that you see,--yes, yes, I won't -pretend to you, because I trust you as I've never before trusted any -human being, because you are truer than any one I've ever met,--it's all -true. She is all that. But don't you see further? Don't you see it's the -life? She's never known anything else. She's never had a chance." - -"She's known me. She's had me." - -Mrs. Delafield's eyes did not leave the poker. But under the quiet -statement the struggle in her reached its bitter close. She had lost -Jane Amoret. She must give her up. Not for her sake; nor for -Rhoda's,--oh, in no sense for Rhoda's,--but for his. She could not let -him pay the price. She must save him from Rhoda. - -"What do you mean?" he asked; and it was as if crumbling before her -secure strength, almost with tears. - -"I mean that you'll never make anything different of her. I never have, -and I've known her since she was born. You won't make her, and she'll -unmake you. She is disintegrating. She has always been like that. -Nothing has spoiled her. From the first she's been selfish and untender. -I don't mean to say that she hasn't good points. She has a sense of -humour; and she's honest with herself: she knows what she wants and why -she wants it--although she may take care that you don't. She isn't petty -or spiteful or revengeful. No,"--Mrs. Delafield moved her poker slowly -up and down as she carved it out for him, and it seemed to be into her -own heart she was cutting,--"there is a largeness and a dignity about -Rhoda. But she feels no beauty and no tragedy in life, only irony and -opportunity. You'll no more change her than you'll change a flower, a -fish, or a stone." - -Holding his knee in the strained grasp, Christopher Darley kept his eyes -on her, breathing quickly. - -"Why did she come with me, then?" he asked, after the silence between -them had grown long. (Strange, she thought, so near they were, that he -could not know her heart was breaking, too. All the time it was Jane -Amoret's sleeping eyelashes she saw.) "Why did she love me? I am not -irony or opportunity." - -"Do you think she ever loved you?" said Mrs. Delafield. "Was it not only -that she wanted you to love her? Wasn't it because you were different, -and difficult, and new? I think so. I think you found her at a bored, -antagonistic moment; money-quarrels with her husband,--he is a good -young fellow, Niel, and he used to worship her,--the war over and life -to take up again on terms already stale. She is calculating; but she is -adventurous and reckless, too. So she went. And of course she was in -love with you then. That goes without saying, and you'll know what I -mean by it. But Rhoda gets through things quickly. She has no soil in -her in which roots can grow; perhaps that's what I mean by saying she -can't change. One can't, if one can't grow roots. But now you are no -longer new or difficult. You are easy and old--already old; and she's -tired of you. You bore her. You constrain and baffle her--if she's to -keep up appearances with you at all; and she'd like to do that, because -she admires you exceedingly. So she wants to go back to Niel. I know," -said Mrs. Delafield, slightly shaking her poker, "that if I'd given her -a loophole this morning, she'd be on her way to London now." - -"And why didn't you?" asked Christopher Darley. - -Ah, why? Again she brooded over the softly breathing little profile, -again met the upward gaze of Jane Amoret's grey eyes. Well might he ask -why. But there was the one truth she could not give him. There was -another that she could, and she had it ready. "I hadn't seen you," she -said. - -"You thought it right for her to come back to me, until you saw me?" - -"I thought it beneath her dignity--as I said to her--to be unfaithful to -two men within a fortnight." - -"But why should you care for her dignity?" Mr. Darley strangely pressed. -"Why shouldn't you care more for your brother's dignity, and her -husband's, and her child's--all the things she said you'd care for?" - -He had brought her eyes to his now, and, for the first time since they -met, it was he who had the advantage. Frowning, yet clear, he bent his -great young eyes upon her and she knew, dismayingly, that her thoughts -were scattered. - -"I have always cared for Rhoda." She seized the first one. - -"Is it a future for Rhoda to disintegrate the life of the man who loves -her and to get no good of him? Isn't it better for a woman like Rhoda to -go back to the apparent dignity, since she has no feeling for the real? -Isn't that what you would have felt, if you'd been feeling for Rhoda? It -wasn't because you felt for her," said Christopher Darley. "You had some -other reason. You are keeping another reason from me. You know," he -urged upon her with a strange, still austerity, "you know you can't do -that. You know we must say the truth to each other. You know that we -simply belong to each other, you and I." - -"My dear Mr. Darley--my dear young man!" - -She was, indeed, bereft of all resource. She laid down her poker and, as -she did so, felt herself disarming before him. His eyes, following her -retreat, challenged her, almost with fierceness. - -"I know--I know that you are giving up something because of me," he -said. "You want her to go back to her husband now, so that I may be -free. It wasn't of me you thought this morning; nor of your brother, nor -of Rhoda. Everything changed for you after you saw me. What is it? What -is it that made you send Rhoda back to me and that makes you now want to -free me? You are beautiful--but you are terrible. You do beautiful and -terrible things. And you must let me share. You must let me decide, too, -if you do them for me!" - -He had started up, but not to come nearer in his appeal and his demand. -Cut to the heart as he was,--for she knew how she had pierced,--it was -rather the probing of some more intolerable pain that moved him. And -looking down at her with eyes intolerant of her mercy, he embodied to -her her sense of a new life and a new conscience. Absurd though his -words might seem, they were true. Though never, perhaps, again to meet, -she and Christopher Darley recognized in each other some final affinity -and owed each other final truth. - -She no longer felt old and wise, but young and helpless before the -compulsion of the kindred soul. She owed him the truth, and in giving it -she must risk his freedom and his happiness. Looking up at him, that -sense of compulsion upon her, she said, "It was because of Jane Amoret. -It was because I loved her and wanted to keep her." - -Christopher Darley grew paler than before. "She is here?" - -"Yes. She came this morning. She is upstairs, sleeping." - -"Rhoda saw her?" - -"Yes." - -"And left her? To you?" - -"Yes. Left her to me." - -He raised his head with a backward jerk and stared out of the window -before him. She kept her eyes on his face, measuring its strength -against hers. He was not measuring. He seemed to be seeing the beautiful -and terrible things of which, he had told her, she was capable. She -felt, when his eyes came back to her, that he had judged her. - -"You see you can't," he said gently. - -"Can't what? Can't keep her, you mean, of course." - -"Anything but that. You can't abandon her--even for my sake." - -So that had been the judgment. He saw only beauty. - -"I shan't abandon her. I shall always be able to see as much of her as I -did of Rhoda, and more. And she is different from Rhoda. I shan't have -the special joy of her, but I shall have the good." - -"Moreover," he went on, with perfect gentleness, putting her words -aside, "I can't abandon Rhoda. All that you have said is true. But it -doesn't go far enough. You yourself, you know, see life too much in -terms of irony, of fact rather than faith. You've owned that Rhoda is -adventurous and honest; you've owned that she doesn't lie to herself. -Then she has growth in her. No human being can be like a flower or a -fish or a stone. It was mere literature, your saying that. Every human -being has futures and futures within it. You know it really. Why you -yourself, though you are so old and fixed, are different now from what -you were an hour ago. I am different, of course. And Rhoda will be -different, too. She won't disintegrate me. She'll make me very -miserable, doubtless; she has already. And I shall make her angry. But I -shall hold her, and she'll change. You shall see. I promise you. And you -will keep Jane Amoret, and she will be eternally different because of -you." - -Mrs. Delafield, while he spoke, had risen. She stood before him, -grasping her gold chain on either side, her eyes very nearly level with -his, and she summoned all her will, her strength, her wisdom to meet -him. Yes, they had come to that, she and this boy. - -"I accept all your faith," she said. "Only you must help me to make my -world, and not yours, with it. Don't be afraid for Jane Amoret. I shall -be firmly in her life. Rhoda shan't keep me out. She won't want to keep -me out. Rhoda has far more chance of changing, of learning something -from this experience, as a disconcerted and forgiven wife than as a -sullen adventuress; and you--you will not be miserable; not with Rhoda, -at all events; and you will be free. I am going to send a wire to Rhoda, -at once, and tell her that I have reconsidered my advice to her. That, -in itself, will show her how I managed her this morning. I shall tell -her that she must go to London to-night, to her father. And to-morrow -I'll take Jane Amoret up and bring Rhoda and Niel together." - -He took it all in, wide-eyed, he too now measuring the threat. - -"You can't," he said; "I won't let you!" - -"You'll have to let me. I have the fact on my side as well as the faith. -She wants to leave you. She wants only the excuse of being asked. You -can't stop my giving her the excuse." Yes, after all, her fact against -his faith, she must have her way. What could his love for Rhoda and his -feeling for herself do against the ironic fact that Rhoda, simply, was -tired of him? "You must see that you can't force her to stay," she said. -"You couldn't even prevent her coming to me this morning." - -She looked at him with all the force of her advantage and saw that -before the cruel fact, and her determination, he knew his helplessness. -It was, again, the bird arrested in its impulse; and a veil seemed to -fall across his face, a shyness, almost a wildness to shut them out from -each other. He dropped his eyes before her. - -"Dear Mr. Darley, my dear young friend, see that it's best. See that -it's best all round. See it with me," she begged. "I was wrong this -morning; wrong from the very first. Let it come to that only. Count -yourself out. It was of myself, of my own delight in the child that I -was thinking. No, not even thinking; I tried to think it was for her; -but it was my own feeling that decided. If you had never come, it would -still have been right to give her up--though I should never have seen it -unless you'd come. It was almost a crime that I committed. They had -asked me to implore her to go back; they trusted me. And I prevented the -message coming to her. I did not believe the things I said to her--not -as she thought I believed them. I did not care a rap about her dignity; -you saw the falsity at once. I cared only about keeping Jane Amoret." - -He stood there before her, remote, unmoved, with downcast, unanswering -eyes. - -"Are you angry? Don't you see it, too?" she pleaded. - -"No." He shook his head. "You had a right to keep the child." - -"Against all those other reasons? Against my own conscience?" - -"Yes. Because you were strong enough. You were right, because you were -strong enough. I believe in law, too, you see--unless one is strong -enough to break it for something better. You were. It was a beautiful -thing to do." - -"But then, if you think me so strong, why not trust me now? This, now, -is the thing I want to do." - -"Because of me. It isn't against the law you are acting now; it's -against your own life. I am not angry. But it crushes me." - -They stood there then, she deeply meditating, he fixed in his unyielding -grief, for how long she could not have said. Parton's step outside broke -in upon their mute opposition. - - -VI - -She and Mr. Darley, Mrs. Delafield was aware, presented precisely the -abstracted, alienated air that Parton would expect. The young man moved -away to the window while she took from the salver the note Parton -presented. Then, her hand arrested in the very act by a recognition, - -"Is there an answer?" she asked. - -"No answer, ma'am." - -"Who brought it?" - -"A man from the station, ma'am." - -"Very well, Parton." - -Parton was gone. Mr. Darley kept his back turned. She held the note in -her hand and stared at it. The writing was Rhoda's; the envelope one of -the station-master's. She had been at the station, then, when she wrote, -four miles away. The London train, for which she had been waiting, had -gone long since; it had gone before the arrival of Mr. Darley's. - -An almost overpowering presage rose in her mind; she could hardly, for a -moment, summon the decision with which to open the envelope. Then, -reading as she stood, she felt the blood flow up to her face. - -For it was almost too much, although it was, through Rhoda's act, she -who had won finally. Even she, then, had not yet correctly measured -Rhoda's irony or Rhoda's sardonic assurance. Rhoda, after all, did not -care to keep up appearances with her, and, after all, why should she? -Here was fact, and it had been fact all through. She wanted most to go -back. She wanted it more than to be dignified in her aunt's eyes, or, -really, in anybody else's. Once back Rhoda would take care of her -dignity. In a flash Mrs. Delafield saw how little, when all was said and -done, Rhoda would pay. - - DEAR AUNT ISABEL [she wrote, in her ample, tranquil hand]: I've - been thinking over all you said and have come to the conclusion - that you are considering me too much. I feel that I must consider - my child. I have made a grave mistake and am not too proud to own - it. Christopher and I are not at all fitted to make each other - happy. So I have wired to father that I arrive this afternoon, and - to Niel that I will see him to-morrow. I have written too, of - course, to my poor Christopher. But he will understand me. Thank - you so much, dear Aunt Isabel, for your kindness and helpfulness. - -Your affectionate RHODA - - P.S. Will you send nurse up with Jane Amoret within the week? Not - at once, please; that would look rather foolish. - -With the accumulated weight of absurdity, relief, dismay, she had sunk -down into her chair, still gazing at the letter, and it was dismay that -grew. As if with a violent jolt back to earth, Rhoda seemed to show her -that life was not docile to nobilities. She hated to think that he must -feel with her that shattering fall. There was nothing for them to do now -for each other; no contest and no sacrifice. Rhoda had settled -everything. - -She spoke to him at last, and, as he came to her, not looking around at -him, she held out the note. He stood behind her to read it; and after -that he did not speak. - -She heard him move presently, vaguely, and then, vaguely, he drifted to -and fro. He walked here and there; he paused, no doubt to feel his bones -and to count how many had been broken, and then, with a start, he went -on again. - -"Please come where I can see you," she said at last. - -He came at once, obediently, standing as he had stood a little while ago -before the fire, his hands locked behind him, but now with face bent -down, fixed in its effort to see clearly what had happened to them. - -"You see, it was over. You see, you couldn't have made anything of it." -It was almost with tears that she besought him not to suffer too much. -"You have nothing to regret, except having believed in her. Tell me that -you are not too unhappy." - -"I don't know what I am," Christopher said. "But I know I've more to -regret than having believed in her. I've all the folly and mischief I've -made." He had thought it out and she could not deny what he had seen, -not even when he went on, "If it could have been in our way,--yours and -mine, or, at least, what was yours this morning, when you thought you -had kept her with me,--everything might have been atoned for. It might -have meant a certain kind of beauty, and a certain kind of happiness, -even, perhaps. But in this way, the way she's chosen, it only means just -that--folly, mischief,"--he turned to the fire and looked down into -it,--"sin," he finished. - -She could not deny it, even to give him comfort; but she could find -something else. "It was Rhoda who chose. You, whatever your mistakes, -chose very differently. I'm not trying to shift responsibility; to make -mistakes is to be foolish and mischievous. But can't even sin be atoned -for? Doesn't it all now depend on you? That you should make yourself -worth it. You are the only one of us who can do that." - -He turned to her and his eyes studied her with an unaccepting -gentleness. - -"You mean because I'm a poet? It isn't like you, really, to say that. -You don't believe in poets and their mission in that sense. It's too -facile." - -"Not only because you are a poet. I wasn't thinking so much of that, -although your gift helps. But simply because you are young and good." - -"I'm not good enough," said Christopher. "And I'm too young. You've -shown me that. I am afraid of myself. I see what one can do while -meaning the best." - -She watched him with grave tenderness, feeling again, in his -dispassionate capacity for accepted experience, his strange maturity. -And knowing all that might be difficult, yet knowing that it would be, -after all, to a decision like her own, the merest gossamers of -convention that she must brave, she said,--and as she looked up at him -his face seemed to blend with the face of her little, sleeping, lost -Jane Amoret,--"Don't you think I, perhaps, could be of help, while you -are so young?" - -He did not understand her at all. He, too, was absorbed in his inner -image of loss, yet he, too, was almost as aware of her as she of him, -and his eyes, with their austere gentleness, dwelt on her, as if -treasuring, of this last encounter, his completed vision of her. - -"Yes, you will be. I shall never forget you and what you've been to me. -I'll do my best," he promised her. "But I seem to have lost everything. -I could be strong for her; I don't know that I can be strong enough for -myself." - -"That's what I mean," said Mrs. Delafield. "It takes years to be strong -enough for one's self, and even when one's old one hasn't sometimes -learned how to be. I'm not sure, after this morning, that I've learned -yet. But I know that I could be strong for you. Will you let me try? -Will you let me take care of you a little and guard you from the Rhodas -until the right person comes?" - -"What do you mean?" he asked; and, answering the look in her face, tears -sprang to his eyes. - -"We belong to each other. Didn't you say it?" she smiled. "We are -friends. We ought not to lose each other now." - -"Oh! But--" He gazed at her. "How could you! After what I've done!" - -"You've done nothing that makes me like you less." - -"Oh--I can't! I can't!" said Christopher Darley. "How could I accept it -from you? Already you've been unbelievably beautiful to me. It's not as -if you were a Bohemian sort of creature, like me. Appearances must count -for you. And the appearance of being friends with your niece's discarded -lover--no--I can't see it for you. I can imagine you being above the -law, but I can't imagine you being above appearances. I don't think that -I should want you to be. I care about appearances, too, when they are -yours." - -It crossed her mind, with almost a mirthful sense of the sort of -appearances she would have to deal with, that Parton's face would be -worth watching. Poor Tim's hovered more grievously in the background. -But, after all, it would be a Tim with wounds well salved. - -"It's just because mine are so secure and recognized, don't you see, -that I can do what I like with them," she said. "It's not for me a -question of appearances, but of realities. After all, my dear young man, -what am I going to get out of it all? My roots have been torn up too, -you know." - -"Because of me! Because of me!" Christopher groaned. "Do you think you -need remind me of that? Shall I ever forgive myself for it? Get out of -it? You'll get nothing. You've been tormented between us all, and you -lose Jane Amoret." - -"Then don't let me lose you too," said Mrs. Delafield. - -Again, with the tears, his blush sprang to his face, and he stood there -incredulous, looking down at her, almost as helpless in the shyness the -unexpected gift brought upon him as he had been when he first came in to -her. - -"Really you mean it?" he murmured. "Really I can do something for you, -too? Because, unless I can, I couldn't accept it." - -"You can make me much less lonely, when she's gone," said Mrs. -Delafield. - -She knew that this was to give the gift in such a way as to ensure its -acceptance; but he murmured, stung again intolerably by the thought of -Jane Amoret, "Oh--I can't bear it for you!" - -"You can help me to bear it." - -Still he pressed upon her what he saw as her sacrifice. - -"You mean that I may see you when I like? I may always write and you'll -always answer? I can sometimes, even, come and stay, like any other -friend? Please realize that if you let me come down on you like that, I -may come hard. I'm frightfully lonely, too." - -"As hard as you like. I want you to come hard. Like any friend. Yes." - -She was smiling up at the young man, and, as she had promised herself -years for Jane Amoret, she promised herself now years--though not so -many would be needed--for Christopher Darley. It was in the thought of -what she could do for Christopher Darley that she saw Rhoda's -punishment. Not for having left him, but for having taken him; for not -having known what to do with him without taking him. And Rhoda would see -it with her, if no one else did. - -"Come, you must quite believe in me," she said. "Give me your hand, dear -Christopher, and tell me that you take this meddling, commanding old -woman to be your friend." - -He had no words as he took the hand she gave him, but from his look it -might have been as if he at last received into his keeping the great -gift, the precious casket of the future; and his eyes, like those of a -devout young knight, dedicated themselves to her service. - -It was again gift and miracle; and though in her mind was the thought of -all her mournings, and of the lost Jane Amoret, she felt, rooting itself -in the darkness and sorrow, yet another flower. - -"And now," she said, for they must not both begin to cry, "please ring -the bell for me. The time has not quite come for your first visit; but, -before you go, we will have our first tea together." - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -HEPATICAS - - -I - -OTHER people's sons were coming home for the three or four days' leave. -The first gigantic struggle--furious onslaught and grim resistance--was -over. Paris, pale, and slightly shuddering still, stood safe. Calais was -not taken, and, dug into their trenches, it was evident that the -opposing armies would lie face to face with no decisive encounter -possible until the spring. - -There was, with all their beauty and terror, an element of the facetious -in these unexpected holidays, of the matter-of-factness, the freedom -from strain or sentiment that was the English oddity and the English -strength. Men who had known the horrors of the retreat from Mons or the -carnage of Ypres, who had not taken off their clothes for ten days at a -stretch or slept for four nights, came home from trenches knee-deep in -mud, from battlefields heaped with unburied dead, and appeared -immaculate and cheerful at breakfast; a little sober and preoccupied, -perhaps; touched, perhaps, with strangeness; but ready for the valorous -family jest, and alluding to the war as if, while something too solemn -for adequate comment, it were yet something that lent itself to -laughter. One did such funny things, and saw them; of the other things -one did not speak; and there was the huge standing joke of an enemy who -actually hated one. These grave and cheerful young men hated nobody; but -they were very eager to go back again; and they were all ready, not only -to die but to die good-humouredly. From the demeanour of mothers and -wives and sisters it was evident that nothing would be said or done to -make this readiness difficult; but Mrs. Bradley, who showed serenity to -the world and did not even when alone allow herself to cry, suspected -that the others, beneath their smiles, carried hearts as heavy with -dread as her own. - -It had been heavy, with hope now as well as with dread, for the past -week. It was a week since she had last heard from Jack. Mrs. Crawley -over the hill, had had a wire, and her husband was now with her; and -Lady Wrexham expected her boy to-morrow. There was no certainty at all -as regarded herself; yet at any moment she might have her wire; and -feeling to-day the stress of waiting too great to be borne in passivity, -she left her books and letters and put on her gardening shoes and gloves -and went out to her borders. - -For weeks now the incessant rain had made the relief and solace of -gardening almost an impossibility; but to-day was mild and clear. There -was no radiance in the air; curtains of pearly mist shut out the sky; -yet here and there a soft opening in the white showed a pale, far blue, -gentle and remote as the gaze of a wandering goddess, and the hills -seemed to smile quietly up at the unseen sun. Mrs. Bradley, as she went -along the river-path, could look across at the hills; the river-path and -the hills were the great feature of Dorrington,--the placid, comely red -brick house to which she and Jack had come fifteen years ago, after the -death of her husband in India. Enclosed by woods, and almost catching -sight of the road,--from its upper windows and over its old brick -wall,--the house would have seemed to her too commonplace and almost -suburban, in spite of the indubitably old oak-panelling of the -drawing-room, had it not been for the river and the hills. Stepping out -on to the lawn from the windows of the drawing-room, she and Jack, on -that April day, had found themselves confronting both--the limpid, rapid -little stream, spanned near the house by its mossy bridge, and the -hills, beyond the meadows, streaked with purple woodlands and rising, -above the woods, to slopes russet, fawn, and azure. Jack, holding her by -the hand, had pointed at once with an eager "Isn't it pretty, -mummy!"--even at eight he had cared almost as much as she, and -extraordinarily in the same way, for the sights of the country; and if -the hills hadn't settled the question, it was settled, quite finally, -ten minutes later, by the white hepaticas. - -They had come upon them suddenly, after their tour of the walled kitchen -garden and their survey of the lawn with its ugly shrubberies,--now long -forgotten,--penetrating a thicket of hazels and finding themselves in an -opening under trees where neighbouring woods looked at them over an old -stone wall, and where, from an old stone bench, one could see the river. -The ground was soft with the fallen leaves of many an autumn; a narrow -path ran, half obliterated, down to the river; and among the faded -brown, everywhere, rose the thick clusters, the dark leaves, and the -snowy flowers,--poignant, amazing in their beauty. - -She and Jack had stopped short to gaze. She had never before seen such -white hepaticas, or so many, or so placed. And Jack, presently, lifting -his dear nut-brown head and nut-brown eyes, had said, gazing up at her -as he had gazed at the flowers, "They are just like you, mummy." - -She had felt at once that they were like her; more like than the little -boy's instinct could grasp. He had thought of the darkness and -whiteness; her widow's weeds and pale face had suggested that; but he -could not know the sorrow, the longing, the earthly sense of irreparable -loss, the heavenly sense of a possession unalterably hers, that the -dark, melancholy leaves and celestial whiteness of the flowers expressed -to her. Tears had risen to her eyes and she had stooped and kissed her -child,--how like her husband's that little face!--and had said, after a -moment, "We must never leave them, Jack." - -They had never left them. Dorrington had been their home for fifteen -years, and the hepaticas the heart of it. It had always seemed to them -both the loveliest ritual of the year, that early spring one when, in -the hazel copse, they would find the white hepaticas again in flower. -And of all the garden labours none were sweeter than those that -cherished and divided and protected the beloved flowers. - -Mrs. Bradley, to-day, worked in her long border, weeding, forking, -placing belated labels. She was dressed in black, her straw hat bound -beneath her chin by a ribbon and her soft gardening gloves rolling back -from her firm, white wrists. Her gestures expressed a calm energy, an -accurate grace. She was tall, and when she raised herself to look over -the meadows at the hills, she showed small, decisive features, all -marked, in the pallor of her face, as if with the delicate, neutral -emphasis of an etching: the grey, scrutinizing eyes, the charming yet -ugly nose, the tranquil mouth that had, at the corners, a little fall, -half sweet, half bitter, as if with tears repressed or a summoned smile. -Squared at brow and chin, it would, but for the mildness of the gaze, -have been an imperious face; and her head, its whitened hair drawn back -and looped in wide braids behind, had an air at once majestic and -unworldly. - -She had worked for over an hour and the last label was set beside a -precious clump of iris. The hazel copse lay near by; and gathering up -her tools, drawing off her wet gloves, she followed the path under the -leafless branches and among the hepatica leaves to the stone bench, -where, sinking down, she knew that she was very tired. She could see, -below the bank, the dark, quick stream; a pale, diffused light in the -sky showed where the sun was dropping toward the hills. - -Where was Jack at this moment, this quiet moment of a monotonous English -winter day?--so like the days of all the other years that it was -impossible to think of what was happening a few hours' journey away -across the Channel. Impossible to think of it; yet the thick throb of -her heart spoke to the full of its significance. She had told herself -from the beginning--passionate, rebellious creature as, at bottom, she -knew herself to be, always in need of discipline and only in these later -years schooled to a control and submission that, in her youth, she would -have believed impossible to her--she had told herself, when he had gone -from her, that, as a soldier's widow, she must see her soldier son go -to death. She must give him to that; be ready for it; and if he came -back to her it would be as if he were born again, a gift, a grace, -unexpected and unclaimed. She must feel, for herself as well as for her -country, that these days of dread were also days of a splendour and -beauty unmatched by any in England's history, and that a soldier's widow -must ask for no more glorious fate for her son than death in such a -cause. She had told herself all this many times; yet, as she sat there, -her hands folded on her lap, her eyes on the stream below, she felt that -she was now merely motherhood, tense, huddled, throbbing and longing, -longing for its child. - -Then, suddenly, she heard Jack's footsteps. They came, quick and light, -along the garden path; they entered the wood; they were near, but -softened by the fallen leaves. And, half rising, afraid of her own joy, -she hardly knew that she saw him before she was in his arms; and it was -better to meet thus, in the blindness and darkness of their embrace, her -cheek pressed against his hair, his head buried close between her neck -and shoulder. - -"Jack!--Jack!" she heard herself say. - -He said nothing, holding her tightly to him, with quick breaths; and -even after she had opened her eyes and could look down at him,--her own, -her dear, beautiful Jack,--could see the nut-brown head, the smooth -brown cheek, the firm brown hand which grasped her, he did not for a -long time raise his head and look at her. When, at last, he did look up, -she could not tell, through her tears, whether, like herself, he was -trying to smile. - -They sat down together on the bench. She did not ask him why he had not -wired. That question pressed too sharply on her heart; to ask might -seem to reproach. - -"Darling--you are so thin,--so much older,--but you look--strong and -well." - -"We're all of us extraordinarily fit, mummy. It's wholesome, living in -mud." - -"And wholesome living among bursting shells? I had your last letter -telling of that miraculous escape." - -"There have been a lot more since then. Every day seems a miracle--that -one's alive at the end of it." - -"But you get used to it?" - -"All except the noise. That always seems to daze me still. Some of our -fellows are deaf from it.--You heard of Toppie, mother?" Jack asked. - -Toppie was Alan Graham, Jack's nearest friend. He had been killed ten -days before. - -"I heard it, Jack. Were you with him?" - -"Yes. It was in a bayonet charge. He didn't suffer. A bullet went right -through him. He just gave a little cry and fell." Jack's voice had the -mildness of a sorrow that has passed beyond the capacity for emotion. -"We found him afterwards. He is buried out there." - -"You must tell Frances about it, Jack. I went to her at once." Frances -was Toppie's sister. "She is bearing it so bravely." - -"I must write to her. She would be sure to be plucky." - -He answered all her questions, sitting closely against her, his arm -around her; looking down, while he spoke, and twisting, as had always -been his boyish way, a button on her coat. He was at that enchanting -moment of young manhood when the child is still apparent in the man. -His glance was shy yet candid; his small, firm lips had a child's -gravity. With his splendid shoulders, long legs, and noble little head, -he was yet as endearing as he was impressive. His mother's heart ached -with love and pride and fear as she gazed at him. - -And a question came, near the sharp one, yet hoping to evade it:-- - -"Jack, dearest, how long will you be with me? How long is the leave?" - -He raised his eyes then and looked at her; a curious look. Something in -it blurred her mind with a sense of some other sort of fear. - -"Only till to-night," he said. - -It seemed confusion rather than pain that she felt. "Only till to-night, -Jack? But Richard Crawley has been back for three days already. I -thought they gave you longer?" - -"I know, mummy." His eyes were dropped again and his hand at the -button--did it tremble?--twisted and untwisted. "I've been back for -three days already.--I've been in London." - -"In London?" Her breath failed her. The sense of alien fear became a -fog, horrible, suffocating. "But--Jack--why?" - -"I didn't wire, mummy, because I knew I'd have to be there for most of -my time. I felt I couldn't wire and tell you. I felt I had to see you -when I told you. Mother--I'm married.--I came back to get married.--I -was married this morning.--Oh, mother, can you ever forgive me?" - -His shaking hands held her and his eyes could not meet hers. - -She felt the blood rush, as if her heart had been divided with a sword, -to her throat, to her eyes, choking her, burning her; and as if from -far away she heard her own voice saying, after a little time had passed, -"There's nothing I couldn't forgive you, Jack. Tell me. Don't be afraid -of hurting me." - -He held her tightly, still looking down as he said, "She is a dancer, -mother, a little dancer. It was in London, last summer. A lot of us came -up from Aldershot together. She was in the chorus of one of those -musical comedies. Mother, you can never understand. But it wasn't just -low and vulgar. She was so lovely,--so very young,--with the most -wonderful golden hair and the sweetest eyes.--I don't know.--I simply -went off my head when I saw her. We all had supper together afterwards. -Toppie knew one of the other girls, and Dollie was there. That's her -name--Dollie Vaughan--her stage name. Her real name was Watson. Her -people, I think, were little tradespeople, and she'd lost her father and -mother, and an aunt had been very unkind. She told me all about it that -night. Mother, please believe just this: it wasn't only the obvious -thing.--I know I can't explain. But you remember, when we read _War and -Peace_"--his broken voice groped for the analogy--"You remember Natacha, -when she falls in love with Anatole, and nothing that was real before -seems real, and she is ready for anything.--It was like that. It was all -fairyland, like that. No one thought it wrong. It didn't seem wrong. -Everything went together." - -She had gathered his hand closely in hers and she sat there, quiet, -looking at her hopes lying slain before her. Her Jack. The wife who was, -perhaps, to have been his. The children that she, perhaps, should have -seen. All dead. The future blotted out. Only this wraith-like present; -only this moment of decision; Jack and his desperate need the only real -things left. - -And after a moment, for his labouring breath had failed, she said, "Yes, -dear?" and smiled at him. - -He covered his face with his hands. "Mother, I've ruined your life." - -He had, of course, in ruining his own; yet even at that moment of -wreckage she was able to remember, if not to feel, that life could mend -from terrible wounds, could marvellously grow from compromises and -defeats. "No, dearest, no," she said. "While I have you, nothing is -ruined. We shall see what can be done. Go on. Tell me the rest." - -He put out his hand to hers again and sat now a little turned away from -her, speaking on in his deadened, bitter voice. - -"There wasn't any glamour after that first time. I only saw her once or -twice again. I was awfully sorry and ashamed over the whole thing. Her -company left London, on tour, and then the war came, and I simply forgot -all about her. And the other day, over there, I had a letter from her. -She was in terrible trouble. She was ill and had no money, and no work. -And she was going to have a child--my child; and she begged me to send -her a little money to help her through, or she didn't know what would -become of her." - -The fog, the horrible confusion, even the despair, had passed now. The -sense of ruin, of wreckage almost irreparable, was there; yet with it, -too, was the strangest sense of gladness. He was her own Jack, -completely hers, for she saw now why he had done it; she could be glad -that he had done it. "Go on, dear," she said. "I understand; I -understand perfectly." - -"O mother, bless you!" He put her hand to his lips, bowing his head upon -it for a moment. "I was afraid you couldn't. I was afraid you couldn't -forgive me. But I had to do it. I thought it all over--out there. -Everything had become so different after what one had been through. One -saw everything differently. Some things didn't matter at all, and other -things mattered tremendously. This was one of them. I knew I couldn't -just send her money. I knew I couldn't bear to have the poor child born -without a name and with only that foolish little mother to take care of -it. And when I found I could get this leave, I knew I must marry her. -That was why I didn't wire. I thought I might not have time to come to -you at all." - -"Where is she, Jack?" Her voice, her eyes, her smile at him, showed him -that, indeed, she understood perfectly. - -"In lodgings that I found for her; nice and quiet, with a kind landlady. -She was in such an awful place in Ealing. She is so changed, poor little -thing. I should hardly have known her. Mother, darling, I wonder, could -you just go and see her once or twice? She's frightfully lonely; and so -very young.--If you could.--If you would just help things along a little -till the baby comes, I should be so grateful. And, then, if I don't come -back, will you, for my sake, see that they are safe?" - -"But, Jack," she said, smiling at him, "she is coming here, of course. I -shall go and get her to-morrow." - -He stared at her and his colour rose. "Get her? Bring her here, to -stay?" - -"Of course, darling. And if you don't come back, I will take care of -them, always." - -"But, mother," said Jack, and there were tears in his eyes, "you don't -know, you don't realize. I mean--she's; a dear little thing--but you -couldn't be happy with her. She'd get most frightfully on your nerves. -She's just--just a silly little dancer who has got into trouble." - -Jack was clear-sighted. Every vestige of fairyland had vanished. And she -was deeply thankful that they should see alike, while she answered, -"It's not exactly a time for considering one's nerves, is it, Jack? I -hope I shan't get on hers. I must just try and make her as happy as I -can." - -She made it all seem natural and almost sweet. The tears were in his -eyes, yet he had to smile back at her when she said, "You know that I am -good at managing people. I'll manage her. And perhaps when you come -back, my darling, she won't be a silly little dancer." - -They sat now for a little while in silence. While they had talked, a -golden sunset, slowly, had illuminated the western sky. The river below -them was golden, and the wintry woodlands bathed in light. Jack held her -hands and gazed at her. Love could say no more than his eyes, in their -trust and sorrow, said to her; she could never more completely possess -her son. Sitting there with him, hand in hand, while the light slowly -ebbed and twilight fell about them, she felt it to be, in its accepted -sorrow, the culminating and transfiguring moment of her maternity. - -When they at last rose to go it was the hour for Jack's departure, and -it had become almost dark. Far away, through the trees, they could see -the lighted windows of the house that waited for them, but to which she -must return alone. With his arms around her shoulders, Jack paused a -moment, looking about him. "Do you remember that day--when we first came -here, mummy?" he asked. - -She felt in him suddenly a sadness deeper than any he had yet shown her. -The burden of the past she had lifted from him; but he must bear now the -burden of what he had done to her, to their life, to all the future. -And, protesting against his pain, her mother's heart strove still to -shelter him while she answered, as if she did not feel his sadness, -"Yes, dear, and do you remember the hepaticas on that day?" - -"Like you," said Jack in a gentle voice. "I can hardly see the plants. -Are they all right?" - -"They are doing beautifully." - -"I wish the flowers were out," said Jack. "I wish it were the time for -the flowers to be out, so that I could have seen you and them together, -like that first day." And then, putting his head down on her shoulder, -he murmured, "It will never be the same again. I've spoiled everything -for you." - -But he was not to go from her uncomforted. She found the firmest voice -in which to answer him, stroking his hair and pressing him to her with -the full reassurance of her resolution. "Nothing is spoiled, Jack, -nothing. You have never been so near me--so how can anything be spoiled? -And when you come back, darling, you'll find your son, perhaps; and the -hepaticas may be in flower, waiting for you." - - -II - -Mrs. Bradley and her daughter-in-law sat together in the drawing-room. -They sat opposite each other on the two chintz chesterfields placed at -right angles to the pleasantly blazing fire, the chintz curtains drawn -against a rainy evening. It was a long, low room, with panelled walls; -and, like Mrs. Bradley's head, it had an air at once majestic, -decorated, and old-fashioned. It was a rather crowded room, with many -deep chairs and large couches, many tables with lamps and books and -photographs upon them, many porcelains, prints, and pots of growing -flowers. Mrs. Bradley, her tea-table before her, was in her evening -black silk; lace ruffles rose about her throat; she wore her accustomed -necklace of old enamel, blue, black, and white, set with small diamonds, -and the enamel locket that had within it Jack's face on one side and his -father's on the other; her white hands, moving gently among the teacups, -showed an ancient cluster of diamonds above the slender wedding-ring. -From time to time she lifted her eyes and smiled quietly over at her -daughter-in-law. It was the first time that she had really seen Dollie, -that is, in any sense that meant contemplative observation. Dollie had -spent her first week at Dorrington in bed, sodden with fatigue rather -than ill. "What you need," Mrs. Bradley had said, "is to go to sleep for -a fortnight"; and Dollie had almost literally carried out the -prescription. - -Stealing carefully into the darkened room, with its flowers and open -windows and steadily glowing fire, Mrs. Bradley had stood and looked for -long moments at all that she could see of her daughter-in-law,--a -flushed, almost babyish face lying on the pillow between thick golden -braids, sleeping so deeply, so unconsciously,--her sleep making her -mother-in-law think of a little boat gliding slowly yet steadily on and -on, between new shores; so that, when she was to awake and look about -her, it would be as if, with no bewilderment or readjustment, she found -herself transformed, a denizen of an altered world. That was what Mrs. -Bradley wanted, that Dollie should become an inmate of Dorrington with -as little effort or consciousness for any of them as possible, and the -drowsy days and nights of infantine slumbers seemed indeed to have -brought her very near. - -She and Pickering, the admirable woman who filled so skilfully the -combined positions of lady's maid and parlourmaid in her little -establishment, had braided Dollie's thick tresses, one on either -side,--Mrs. Bradley laughing a little and both older women touched, -almost happy in their sense of something so young and helpless to take -care of. Pickering understood, nearly as well as Jack's mother, that -Master Jack, as he had remained to her, had married very much beneath -him; but at this time of tragic issues and primitive values, she, nearly -as much as Jack's mother, felt only the claim, the pathos of youth and -helplessness. It was as if they had a singularly appealing case of a -refugee to take care of; social and even moral appraisals were -inapplicable to such a case, and Mrs. Bradley felt that she had never so -admired Pickering as when seeing that for her, too, they were in -abeyance. It was a comfort to feel so fond of Pickering at a time when -one was in need of any comfort one could get; and to feel that, -creature of codes and discriminations as she was, to a degree that had -made her mistress sometimes think of her as a sort of Samurai of -service, a function rather than a person, she was even more -fundamentally a kind and Christian woman. Between them, cook -intelligently sustaining them from below and the housemaids helpful in -their degree, they fed and tended and nursed Dollie, and by that eighth -day she was more than ready to get up and go down and investigate her -new surroundings. - -She sat there now, in the pretty tea-gown her mother-in-law had bought -for her, leaning back against her cushions, one arm lying along the back -of the couch and one foot in its patent-leather shoe, with its sparkling -buckle and alarming heel, thrusting forward a carefully arched instep. -The attitude made one realize, however completely tenderer -preoccupations held the foreground of one's consciousness, how often and -successfully she must have sat to theatrical photographers. Her way of -smiling, too, very softly, yet with the effect of a calculated and -dazzling display of pearly teeth, was impersonal, and directed, as it -were, to the public _via_ the camera rather than to any individual -interlocutor. Mrs. Bradley even imagined, unversed as she was in the -methods of Dollie's world, that of allurement in its conscious and -determined sense she was almost innocent. She placed herself, she -adjusted her arm and her foot, and she smiled gently; intention hardly -went further than that wish to look her best. - -Pink and white and gold as she was, and draped there on the chesterfield -in a profusion of youth and a frivolity that was yet all passivity, she -made her mother-in-law think, and with a certain sinking of the heart, -of a Dorothy Perkins rose, a flower she had never cared for; and Dollie -carried on the analogy in the sense she gave that there were such -myriads more just like her. On almost every page of every illustrated -weekly paper, one saw the ingenuous, limpid eyes, the display of -eyelash, the lips, their outline emphasized by just that touch of rouge, -those copious waves of hair. Like the Dorothy Perkins roses on their -pergolas, so these pretty faces seemed--looped, draped, festooned--to -climb over all the available spaces of the modern press. - -But this, Mrs. Bradley told herself, was to see Dollie with a dry, hard -eye, was to see her superficially, from the social rather than from the -human point of view. Under the photographic creature must lie the young, -young girl,--so young, so harmless that it would be very possible to -mould her, with all discretion, all tenderness, into some suitability as -Jack's wife. Dollie, from the moment that she had found her, a sodden, -battered rose indeed, in the London lodging-house, had shown herself -grateful, even humble, and endlessly acquiescent. She had not shown -herself at all abashed or apologetic, and that had been a relief; had -counted for her, indeed, in her mother-in-law's eyes, as a sort of -innocence, a sort of dignity. But if Dollie were contented with her new -mother-in-law, and very grateful to her, she was also contented with -herself; Mrs. Bradley had been aware of this at once; and she knew now -that if she were being carefully and commendingly watched while she -poured out the tea, this concentration did not imply unqualified -approval. Dollie was the type of young woman to whom she herself stood -as the type of the "perfect lady"; but with the appreciation went the -proviso of the sharp little London mind,--versed in the whole ritual of -smartness as it displayed itself at theatre or restaurant,--that she was -a rather dowdy one. She was a lady, perfect but not smart, while, at the -same time, the quality of her defect was, she imagined, a little -bewildering and therefore a little impressive. Actually to awe Dollie -and to make her shy, it would be necessary to be smart; but it was far -more pleasant and perhaps as efficacious merely to impress her, and it -was as well that Dollie should be impressed; for anything in the nature -of an advantage that she could recognize would make it easier to direct, -protect, and mould her. - -She asked her a good many leisurely and unstressed questions on this -first evening, and drew Dollie to ask her others in return; and she saw -herself stooping thoughtfully over a flourishing young plant that yet -needed transplanting, softly moving the soil about its roots, softly -finding out if there were any very deep tap-root that would have to be -dealt with. But Dollie, so far as tastes and ideas went, hardly seemed -to have any roots at all; so few that it was a question if any change of -soil could affect a creature so shallow. She smiled, she was at ease; -she showed her complete assurance that a young lady so lavishly endowed -with all the most significant gifts, need not occupy herself with mental -adornments. - -"You're a great one for books, I see," she commented, looking about the -room; "I suppose you do a great deal of reading down here to keep from -feeling too dull"; and she added that she herself, if there was -"nothing doing," liked a good novel, especially if she had a box of -sweets to eat while she read it. - -"You shall have a box of sweets to-morrow," Mrs. Bradley told her, "with -or without the novel, as you like." - -And Dollie thanked her, watching her cut the cake, and, as the rain -lashed against the windows, remarking on the bad weather and cheerfully -hoping that "poor old Jack" wasn't in those horrid trenches. "I think -war's a wicked thing, don't you, Mrs. Bradley?" she added. - -When Dollie talked in this conventionally solicitous tone of Jack, her -mother-in-law could but wish her upstairs again, merely young, merely -the tired and battered refugee. She had not much tenderness for Jack, -that was evident, nor much imaginativeness in regard to the feelings of -Jack's mother. But she soon passed from the theme of Jack and his -danger. Her tea was finished and she got up and went to the piano, -remarking that there was one thing she _could_ do. "Poor mother used to -always say I was made of music. From the time I was a mere tot I could -pick out anything on the piano." And placing herself, pressing down the -patent-leather shoe on the loud pedal, she surged into a waltz as -foolish and as conventionally alluring as her own eyes. Her inaccuracy -was equalled only by her facility. Smiling, swaying over the keys with -alternate speed and languor, she addressed her audience with altogether -the easy mastery of a music-hall _artiste_: "It's a lovely thing--one of -my favourites. I'll often play, Mrs. Bradley, and cheer us up. There is -nothing like music for that, is there? it speaks so to the heart." And, -whole-heartedly, indeed, she accompanied the melody by a passionate -humming. - -The piano was Jack's and it was poor Jack who was made of music. How was -he to bear it, his mother asked herself, as she sat listening. Dollie, -after that initiation, spent many hours at the piano every day,--so many -and such noisy hours, that her mother-in-law, unnoticed, could shut -herself in the little morning-room that overlooked the brick wall at the -front of the house and had the morning sun. - -It was difficult to devise other occupations for Dollie. She earnestly -disclaimed any wish to have proper music lessons, and when her -mother-in-law, patiently persistent, arranged for a skilful mistress to -come down twice a week from London, Dollie showed such apathy and -dulness that any hope of developing such musical ability as she -possessed had to be abandoned. She did not like walking, and the sober -pageant of the winter days was a blank book to her. Sewing, she said, -had always given her frightful fidgets; and it was with the strangest -sense of a privilege, a joy, unhoped-for and now thrust upon her, that -Mrs. Bradley sat alone working at the little garments that meant all her -future and all Jack's. The baby seemed already more hers than Dollie's. - -Sometimes, on a warm afternoon, Dollie, wrapped in her fur cloak, would -emerge for a little while and watch her mother-in-law at work in her -borders. The sight amused and surprised but hardly interested her, and -she soon went tottering back to the house on the preposterous heels that -Mrs. Bradley had, as yet, found no means of tactfully banishing. And -sometimes, when the piano again resounded, Mrs. Bradley would leave her -borders and retreat to the hazel-copse, where, as she sat on the stone -bench, she could hear, through the soft sound of the running water, -hardly more than the distant beat and hum of Dollie's waltzes; and -where, with more and more the sense of escape and safety, she could find -a refuge from the sight and sound and scent of Dollie,--the thick, -sweet, penetrating scent that was always to be indelibly associated in -her mind with this winter of foreboding, of hope, and of growing -hopelessness. - -In her letters to Jack, she found herself, involuntarily at first, and -then deliberately, altering, suppressing, even falsifying. While Dollie -had been in bed, when so much hope had been possible of a creature so -unrevealed, she had written very tenderly, and she continued, now, to -write tenderly, and it was not false to do that; she could feel no -hardness or antagonism against poor Dollie. But she continued to write -hopefully, as every day hope grew less. - -Jack, himself, did not say much of Dollie, though there was always the -affectionate message and the affectionate inquiry. But what was -difficult to deal with were the hints of his anxiety and fear that stole -among the terse, cheerful descriptions of his precarious days. What was -she doing with herself? How were she and Dollie getting on? Did Dollie -care about any of the things she cared about? - -She told him that they got on excellently well, that Dollie spent a good -deal of time at the piano, and that when they went out to tea people -were perfectly nice and understanding. She knew, indeed, that she could -depend on her friends to be that. They accepted Dollie on the terms she -asked for her. From friends so near as Mrs. Crawley and Lady Wrexham -she had not concealed the fact that Dollie was a misfortune; but if -others thought so they were not to show it. She still hoped, by degrees, -to make Dollie a figure easier to deal with at such neighbourly -gatherings. She had abandoned any hope that Dollie would grow; anything -so feeble and so foolish could not grow; there was no other girl under -the little dancer; she was simply no more and no less than she showed -herself to be; but, at this later stage of their relationship, Mrs. -Bradley essayed, now and then, a deliberate if kindly severity,--as to -heels, as to scents, as to touches of rouge. - -"Oh, but I'm as careful, just as careful, Mrs. Bradley!" Dollie -protested. "I can't walk in lower heels. They hurt my instep. I've a -very high instep and it needs support." She was genuinely amazed that -any one could dislike her scent and that any one could think the rouge -unbecoming. She seemed to acquiesce, but the acquiescence was followed -by moods of mournfulness and even by tears. There was no capacity in her -for temper or rebellion, and she was all unconscious of giving a warning -as she sobbed, "It's nothing--really nothing, Mrs. Bradley. I'm sure you -mean to be kind. Only--it's rather quiet and lonely here. I've always -been used to so many people,--to having everything so bright and jolly." - -She was not rapacious; she was not dissolute; she could be kept -respectable and even contented if she were not made too aware of the -contrast between her past existence and her present lot. With an air -only of pensive pride she would sometimes point out to Mrs. Bradley, in -the pages of those same illustrated weeklies with which her -mother-in-law associated her, the face of some former companion. One of -these young ladies had recently married the son of a peer. "She _is_ in -luck, Floss," said Dollie. "We always thought it would come to that. -He's been gone on her for ages, but his people were horrid." - -Mrs. Bradley felt that, at all events, Dollie had no ground for thinking -her "horrid"; yet she imagined that there lay drowsing at the back of -her mind a plaintive little sense of being caught and imprisoned. Floss -had stepped, triumphant, from the footlights to the registrar's office, -and apparently had succeeded in uniting the radiance of her past and -present status. No, Dollie could be kept respectable and contented only -if the pressure were of the lightest. She could not change, she could -only shift; and although Mrs. Bradley felt that for herself, her life -behind her, her story told, she could manage to put up with a merely -shifted Dollie, she could not see how Jack was to manage it. What was -Jack to do with her? was the thought that pressed with a growing weight -on her heart. She could never be of Jack's life; yet here she was, in -it, planted there by his own generous yet inevitable act, and by -hers,--in its very centre, and not to be evaded or forgotten. - -And the contrast between what Jack's life might have been and what it -now must be was made more poignantly apparent to her when Frances Graham -came down to stay from a Saturday to Monday; Frances in her black, tired -and thin from Red-Cross work in London; bereaved in more, her old friend -knew, than dear Toppie's death; yet with her leisurely, unstressed -cheerfulness almost unaltered, the lightness that went with so much -tenderness, the drollery that went with so much depth. Dearest, most -charming of girls--but for Jack's wretched stumble into "fairyland" last -summer, destined obviously to be his wife,--could any presence have -shown more disastrously, in its contrast with poor Dollie, how Jack had -done for himself? She watched the two together that evening, Frances -with her thick crinkled hair and clearly curved brow and her merry, -steady eyes, leaning, elbow on knee, to talk and listen to Dollie; and -Dollie, poor Dollie, flushed, touched with an unbecoming sulkiness, -aware, swiftly and unerringly, of a rival type. Frances was of the type -that young men married when they did not "do for themselves." There was -now no gulf of age or habit to veil from Dollie her disadvantage. She -answered shortly, with now and then a dry, ironic little laugh; and, -getting up at last, she went to the piano and loudly played. - -"He couldn't have done differently. It was the only thing he could do," -Frances said that night before her bedroom fire. She did not hide her -recognition of Jack's plight, but she was staunch. - -"I wouldn't have had him do differently. But it will ruin his life," -said the mother. "If he comes back it will ruin his life." - -"No, no," said Frances, looking at the flames. "Why should it? A man -doesn't depend on his marriage like that. He has his career." - -"Yes. He has his career. A career isn't a life." - -"Isn't it?" The girl gazed down. "But it's what so many people have to -put up with. And so many haven't even a career." Something came into her -voice and she turned from it quickly. "He's crippled, in a sense, of -course. But you are here. He will have you to come back to always." - -"I shall soon be old, dear, and she will always be here. That's -inevitable. Some day I shall have to leave her to Jack to bear with -alone." - -"She may become more of a companion." - -"No; no, she won't." The bitterness of the mother's heart expressed -itself in the dry, light utterance. It was a comfort to express -bitterness, for once, to somebody. - -"She is a harmless little thing," Frances offered after a moment. - -"Harmless?" Mrs. Bradley turned it over drily and lightly. "I can't feel -her that. I feel her blameless if you like. And it will be easy to keep -her contented. That is really the best that one can say of poor Dollie. -And then there will be the child. I am pinning all my hopes to the -child, Frances." - -Frances understood that. - -Dollie, as the winter wore on, kept remarkably well. She had felt it the -proper thing to allude to Jack and his danger; and so, now, she more and -more frequently felt it the proper thing to allude, humorously if with a -touch of melancholy, to "baby." Her main interest in baby, Mrs. Bradley -felt, was an alarmed one. She was a good deal frightened, poor little -soul, and in need of constant reassurances; and it was when one need -only pet and pity Dollie that she was easier to deal with. Mrs. Bradley -tried to interest her in plans for the baby; what it should be named, -and how its hair should be done if it were a little girl,--for only on -this assumption could Dollie's interest be at all vividly roused; and -Mrs. Bradley more than ever hoped for a boy when she found Dollie's -idle yet stubborn thoughts fixed on the name of Gloria. - -She was able to evade discussion of this point, and when the baby came, -fortunately and robustly, into the world on a fine March morning, she -could feel it as a minor but very real cause for thanksgiving that -Dollie need now never know what she thought of Gloria as a name. The -baby was a boy, and now that he was here Dollie seemed as well pleased -that he should be a commonplace Jack, and that there should be no -question of tying his hair with cockades of ribbon over each ear. -Smiling and rosy and languid, she lay in her charming room, not at all -more maternal--though she showed a bland satisfaction in her child and -noted that his eyes were just like Jack's--yet subtly more wifely. Baby, -she no doubt felt, with the dim instinct that did duty for thought with -her, placed and rooted her and gave her final rights. She referred now -to Jack with the pensive but open affection of their shared complacency, -and made her mother-in-law think, as she lay there, of a soft and sleepy -and tenacious creeper, fixing tentacle after tentacle in the walls of -Jack's house of life. - -If only one could feel that she had furnished it with a treasure! -Gravely, with a sad fondness, the grandmother studied the little face, -so unfamiliar, for signs of Jack. She was a helplessly clear-sighted -woman, and remembrance was poignantly vivid in her of Jack's face at a -week old. Already she loved the baby since its eyes, indubitably, were -his; but she could find no other trace of him. It was not a Bradley -baby; and in the dreamy, foreboding flickers of individuality that pass -uncannily across an infant's features, her melancholy and steady -discernment could see only the Watson ancestry. - -She was to do all she could for the baby; to save him, so far as might -be, from his Watson ancestry and to keep him, so far as might be, Jack's -and hers. That was to be her task. But with all the moulding that could, -mercifully, be applied from the very beginning, she could not bring -herself to believe that this was ever to be a very significant human -being. - -She sent Jack his wire: "A son. Dollie doing splendidly." And she had -his answer: "Best thanks. Love to Dollie." It was curious, indeed, this -strange new fact they had now, always, to deal with; this light little -"Dollie" that must be passed between them. The baby might have made Jack -happy, but it had not solved the problem of his future. - - -III - -A week later the telegram was brought to her telling her that he had -been killed in action. - -It was a beautiful spring day, just such a day as that on which she and -Jack had first seen Dorrington, and she had been working in the garden. -When she had read, she turned and walked down the path that led to the -hazel-copse. She hardly knew what had happened to her; there was only an -instinct for flight, concealment, secrecy; but, as she walked, there -rose in her, without sound, as if in a nightmare, the terrible cry of -her loneliness. The dark wet earth that covered him seemed heaped upon -her heart. - -The hazel-copse was tasselled thickly with golden-green, and as she -entered it she saw that the hepaticas were in flower. They seemed to -shine with their own celestial whiteness, set in their melancholy green -among the fallen leaves. She had never seen them look so beautiful. - -She followed the path, looking down at them, and she seemed to feel -Jack's little hand in hers and to see, at her side, his nut-brown head. -It had been on just such a morning. She came to the stone bench; but the -impulse that had led her here was altered. She did not sink down and -cover her face, but stood looking around her at the flowers, the -telegram still open in her hand; and slowly, with stealing calm, the -sense of sanctuary fell about her. - -She had lost him, and with him went all her life. He was dead, his youth -and strength and beauty. Yet what was this strange up-welling of relief, -deep, deep relief, for Jack; this gladness, poignant and celestial, like -that of the hepaticas? He was dead and the dark earth covered him; yet -he was here, with her, safe in his youth and strength and beauty, -forever. He had died the glorious death, and no future, tangled, -perplexed, fretful with its foolish burden, lay before him. There was no -loss for Jack; no fading, no waste. The burden was for her and he was -free. - -Later when pain should have dissolved thought her agony would come to -her unalleviated; but this hour was hers and his. She heard the river -and the soft whisperings of spring. A bird dropped lightly unafraid from -branch to branch of a tree near by. From the woods came the rapid -insistent tapping of a woodpecker; and as in so many springs she seemed -to hear Jack say, "Hark, mummy," and his little hand was always held in -hers. And everywhere telling of irreparable loss, of a possession -unalterable, the tragic, the celestial hepaticas. - -She sat down on the stone bench now and closed her eyes for a little -while so holding them more closely--Jack and the hepaticas--together. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -DAFFODILS - - -I - -THOUGH he knew that he was going to die, Marmaduke Follett as he lay in -the hospital on the French coast had never in his life been so happy. -Until these last days he had not been able to feel it in its -completeness. Of the great engagement where he had fallen he remembered -only the overwhelming uproar, the blood and mud; and after that, -torments, apathies, dim awakenings to the smell of ether and relapses to -acquiescent sleep. Now the last operation had failed--or rather, he had -failed to recover from it--and there was no more hope for him; but he -hardly suffered and his thoughts were emerging into a world of -cleanliness, kindness, and repose. - -The hospital before the war had been a big hotel, and his was one of the -bedrooms on the second floor, its windows crossed by two broad blue -bands of sea and sky. As an officer he had a room to himself. The men -were in the wards downstairs. - -One of his nurses--both were pleasant girls but this was the one who -with a wing of black hair curving under her cap reminded him of his -cousin Victoria--had put a glass of daffodils beside his bed, not -garden daffodils, but the wild ones that grow in woods; and if she made -him think of Victoria how much more they made him think of the woods in -spring at Channerley! - -He was dying after a gallant deed. It was a fitting death for a Follett -and so little in his life had been at all fitted to that initial -privilege: it was only in the manner of his death that his life matched -at all those thoughts of Victoria and Channerley. - -He did not remember much of the manner; it still remained cloaked in the -overwhelming uproar; but as he lay there he seemed to read in the -columns of the London papers what all the Folletts were so soon to -read--because of him:-- - -"His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to award the Victoria -Cross to the under-mentioned officers, non-commissioned officers and -men:-- - -"Sec. Lt. Marmaduke Everard Follett. For most conspicuous bravery. - -"He was directed with 50 men to drive the enemy from their trench and -under intense shell-and machine-gun fire he personally led three -separate parties of bombers against a captured 325 yards of trench; -attacking the machine gun, shooting the firer with his revolver, and -destroying gun and _personnel_ with bombs. This very brave act saved -many lives and ensured the success of the attack. In carrying one of his -men back to safety Sec. Lt. Follett was mortally wounded." - -He felt himself smile, as he soberly spaced it out, to remember that the -youths at the office used to call him Marmalade. It was curious that he -most felt his present and his present transfigured self, when he thought -of Cauldwell's office, where so many years of his past had been spent. -When he thought of that, of the jocund youths, of the weary hours and -wasted years, it was to feel himself transfigured; when he thought of -the Folletts and of Channerley, to feel that he matched them; to feel at -last as if he had come home. What to the grimy, everyday world counted -as transfiguration, counted as the normal, the expected, to the world of -Channerley. - -He wondered, lying there and looking out past the daffodils, where -Victoria was; he had heard that she was nursing, too, somewhere in -France; and again, as he had smiled over the contrast of "Sec. Lt. -Marmaduke Everard Follett" and the "Marmalade" of Cauldwell's office, he -smiled in thinking of the difference between Victoria and the nice young -nurse who, for all her resembling curve of hair, was also second-rate. -It would have been very wonderful to have been nursed by Victoria, and -yet his thought turned from that. There had never been any sweetness, -never even any kindness for him, in Victoria's clear young gaze; when it -came to nursing, he could imagine her being kind to a Tommy, but not to -him, the dull, submerged cousin; and the nice though second-rate nurse -was very kind. He would rather die under her eyes than under Victoria's. - -And he would rather think of Victoria as he had last seen her at the big -London dance to which, most unexpectedly, he had found himself asked -last spring--the spring before the war. He had decided, as with nervous -fingers he tied his white cravat,--how rarely disturbed had been that -neat sheaf lying in his upper drawer!--that he must have been confused -with some other Follett, for he was so seldom asked anywhere, where he -would be likely to meet Victoria. However, it was a delight to see her -in her snowy dress, her beautiful hair bound with silver, and to feel, -as he watched her dancing, that she belonged, in a sense, to him; for -he, too, was a Follett. - -How much more did she belong to him now! And not only Victoria, but all -of them, these Folletts of his and the Folletts of past generations; and -Channerley, centre of all his aching, wistful memories. It had been for -him, always, part of the very structure of his nature, that beautiful -old house where he had spent his boyhood. Perhaps it was because he had -been turned out of the nest so early that he never ceased to miss it. -His thought, like a maimed fledgling, had fluttered round and round it, -longing, exiled, helpless. - -If, now, he could have survived, his eldest brother, he felt sure, must -have asked him oftener to stay at Channerley. It still gave him a pang, -or, rather, the memory of many pangs, to recall that Robert had not -asked him for two years, and had seemed to forget all about him after -that. They had all seemed to forget about him,--that was the trouble of -it,--and almost from the very beginning: Robert, who had Channerley; -Austin, who had gone into the army and was now in Mesopotamia; Griselda, -married so splendidly up in her northern estate; and Amy, the artistic -bachelor-girl of the family, whom he associated with irony and -cigarette-smoke and prolonged absences in Paris. Even cheerful Sylvia, -of South Kensington, with her many babies and K.C. husband, whom he -always thought of, for all her well-being, as very nearly as submerged -as himself,--even Sylvia saw little of him and asked him only to family -dinners,--Mr. Shillington's family, not hers,--at depressingly punctual -intervals. - -But Sylvia, the one nearest him in years, was the one who had forgotten -least, and she had, after her fashion, done her best for him. Confused -at study, clumsy at games, shy and tongue-tied, he had not in any way -distinguished himself at a rather second-rate public school; and to -distinguish himself had been the only hope for him. The Folletts had -never had any money to spare, and Eton and Oxford for Robert and -Sandhurst for Austin fulfilled a tradition that became detached and -terse where younger sons who could not distinguish themselves were -concerned. Still, he had always felt that, had his father lived, -something better would have been found for him than to be bundled, -through the instrumentality of Mr. Shillington, into a solicitor's -office. There he had been bundled, and there he had stuck for all these -years, as clumsy, as confused as ever; a pallid, insignificant little -fellow (oh, he had no illusions about himself!) with the yellow hair and -small yellow moustache which, together with his name, had earned for him -his sobriquet. - -They had not disliked him, those direfully facetious companions of his. -_Noblesse oblige_ was an integral part of his conception of himself, -however little they might be aware of his unvarying courtesy towards -them as its exercise. He suspected that they thought of him as merely -inoffensive and rather piteous; but shyness might give that impression; -they could not guess at the quiet aversion that it covered. He was aware -sometimes, suddenly, that in the aloofness and contemplative disdain of -his pale sidelong glance at them, he most felt himself a Follett. If -his mind, for most practical purposes, was slow and clumsy, it was sharp -and swift in its perceptions. He judged the young men in Cauldwell's -office as a Follett must judge them. In the accurate applying of that -standard he was as instinctively gifted as any of his race; and if he -knew, from his first look at her, that the nice young nurse was -second-rate, how coldly and calmly, all these years, he had known that -the young men who called him Marmalade were third-rate. And yet they -none of them disliked him, and he wondered whether it was because, when -he most felt disdain, he most looked merely timid, or because they -recognized in him, all dimly as it might be, the first-rateness that was -his inherently and inalienably. - -Just as the third-rate young men might recognize the first-rate but -dimly, he was aware that to the world the Folletts, too, were not -important. It was not one of the names, in spite of centuries of local -lustre, to conjure with; and he liked it all the better because of that. -They had never, it was true, distinguished themselves; but they were -people of distinction, and that was, to his quiet, reflective, -savouring, an even higher state. He sometimes wondered if, in any of -them, the centring of family consciousness was as intense as in himself. -If they were aloof about third-rate people, it was not because they were -really very conscious about themselves. They took themselves for -granted, as they took Channerley and the family history; and only Amy -was aware that some of the family portraits were good. - -The history--it was not of course accurate to call it that, yet it -seemed more spacious and significant than mere annals--pored over -during long evenings, in faded parchments, deeds, and letters, was known -in every least detail to him. How the Folletts had begun, very soberly -but very decorously, in the fifteenth century, and how they had gone on: -rooting more deeply into their pleasant woodlands and meadows; -flowering, down the centuries, now in a type of grace--that charming -Antonia who had married so well at James the First's court; and of -gallantry--a Follett had fallen at Naseby, and a Follett had fought at -Waterloo; or of good-humoured efficiency, as in the eighteenth-century -judge and the nineteenth-century bishop. And he, who was neither -graceful nor gallant nor good-humoured (sour and sad he felt himself), -never could resist the warming, revivifying influence of these -recognitions, stretching himself, sighing, smiling happily before his -Bloomsbury fire on a winter's evening, as he laid down the thick pile of -yellowed manuscripts to think it all over and feel himself, in spite of -everything, a link with it all. - -Robert had always been very decent about letting him have and keep the -documents for as long as he liked. - -It was strange to think that he was never to see his Bloomsbury lodgings -again, and stranger, really, that a certain tinge of regret was in the -thought; for how, for years, he had hated them, place of exile, of -relegation, as he had always felt them! Yet he had come to be fond of -his little sitting-room, just because, to his eye, with its mingled -comfort and austerity, it was so significant of exile. If a Follett -couldn't have what he wanted, that was all he would have--his rack of -pipes, his shelves of books, his little collection of mostly marginless -mezzotints ranged along the dark, green walls. The room was a refuge and -did not pretend to be an achievement, and in that very fact might, to an -eye as sharp as his for such significance, suggest the tastes that it -relinquished. He had indeed all the tastes and none of the satisfactions -of Channerley. - -There it was; he had come back to it again, as, indeed, he had, in -spirit, never left it--never for a moment. He felt himself, lying there -in the hospital on the French coast, with the soft spring sea lapping -upon the beach under his window--he felt himself drop, drop, softly, -sweetly, deeply, back to his childhood. From his high nursery-window he -saw the dewy tree-tops,--the old hawthorn that grew so near the house, -and the old mulberry,--and the rooks wheeling on a spring sky so many -years ago. The dogs, at that early hour, just released, might be racing -over the lawns: idle, jovial Peter, the spaniel, and Jack, the plucky, -hot-tempered little Dandy-Dinmont. - -Below the lawns were the high grey garden walls, and above, rising a -little from the flagged rose-garden, were the woods where the daffodils -grew, daffodils like those beside him now, tall and small, their pale, -bright pennons set among warrior spears of green. Little bands of them -ran out upon the lawn from under the great trees, and one saw their gold -glimmering far, far along the woodlands. Oh, the beauty of it, and the -stillness; the age and youth; the smile and the security! How he had -always loved it, shambling about the woods and gardens; creeping -rather--he always saw himself as creeping somehow--about the dear, gay, -faded house! Always such an awkward, insignificant little boy; even his -dear old Nanna had felt dissatisfied with his appearance, and he had -always known it, when she sent him down with the others to the -drawing-room; and his mother, she had made it very apparent, had found -him only that. - -He shrank from the thought of his mother; perhaps it was because of her, -of her vexed and averted eyes, her silken rustle of indifference as she -passed him by, that he saw himself as creeping anywhere where she might -come. He only remembered her in glimpses: languidly and ironically -smiling at her tea-table (Amy had her smile), the artificial tone of her -voice had even then struck his boyish ear; reading on a summer -afternoon, with bored brows and dissatisfied lips, as she lay on a -garden chair in the shade of the mulberry tree; querulously arguing with -his father, who, good-humoured and very indifferent, strolled about the -hall in his pink coat on a winter morning, waiting for the horses to be -brought round; his mother's yellow braids shining under her neatly -tilted riding-hat, her booted foot held to the blaze of the great -log-fire. A hard, selfish, sentimental woman; and--wasn't it really the -only word for what he felt in her?--just a little shoddy. He -distinguished it from the second-rate nicely: it was a more personal -matter; for his mother, though certainly not a Follett, was of good -stock; he knew, of course, all about her stock. It always grieved him to -think that it was from her he had his yellow hair and the pale grey of -his eyes; his stature, too, for she had been a small woman; all the -other Folletts were tall; but she had given him nothing more: not a -trace of her beauty was his, and he was glad of it. - -It was curious, since he had really had so little to do with him, as -little, almost, as with his mother, how blissfully his sense of his -father's presence pervaded his childish memories. He was so kind. The -kindest thing he remembered at Channerley, except his dear old Nanna and -Peter the spaniel. It used to give him a thrill of purest joy when, -meeting him, his father, his hands clasped behind his back after his -strolling wont, would stop and bend amused and affectionate eyes upon -him; rather the eyes, to be sure, that he bent upon his dogs; but -Marmaduke always felt of him that he looked upon his children, and upon -himself, too, as parts of the pack; and it was delightful to be one of -the pack, with him. - -"Well, old fellow, and how goes the world with you to-day?" his father -would say. - -And after that question the world would go in sunshine. - -He had always believed that, had his father lived, he would never have -been so forgotten; just as he had always believed that his father would -never have allowed one of his pack to be bundled into the solicitor's -office. For that he had to thank, he felt sure, not only Sylvia's -negative solicitude, but his mother's active indifference. Between them -both they had done it to him. - -And he never felt so to the full his dispossession as in thinking of -Robert. He had always intensely feared and admired Robert. He did not -know what he feared, for Robert was never unkind. But Robert was -everything that he was not: tall and gay and competent, and possessing -everything needful, from the very beginning, for the perfect fulfilment -of his type. The difference between them had been far more than the ten -years that had made of Robert a man when he was still only a little boy. -There had been, after all, a time when they had been a very big and a -very little boy together, with Austin in between; yet the link had -seemed always to break down after Austin. Robert, in this retrospect, -had always the air of strolling away from him--for Robert, too, was a -stroller. Not that he himself had had the air of pursuit; he had never, -he felt sure, from the earliest age, lacked tact; tact and reticence and -self-effacement had been bred into him. But his relationship with Robert -had seemed always to consist in standing there, hiding ruefulness, and -gazing at Robert's strolling back. - -The difference from Austin had perhaps been as great, but it had never -hurt so much, for Austin, though with his share of the Follett charm, -had never had the charm of Robert. A clear-voiced and clear-eyed, -masterful boy, Austin's main contact with others was in doing things -with them, and that sort of contact did not mean congeniality. Austin -had made use of him; had let him hold his ferrets and field for him at -cricket; and a person whom you found useful did not, for the time being, -bore you. - -But he had bored Robert always--that was apparent; and beautiful -Griselda, who was older than either of them, and Amy, who was younger. -Griselda had gazed rather sadly over his head; and Amy had smiled and -teased him so that he had seldom ventured on a remark in her presence. -Even fat little Sylvia, the baby, had always preferred any of the others -to him as she grew up; had only not been bored because, while she was -good-humoured, she was also rather dull. And at the bottom of his -heart, rueful always, sore, and still patiently surprised, he knew that, -while he found them all a little brutal, he could not admire them the -less because of it. It was part of the Follett inheritance to be able to -be brutal, unconsciously, and therefore with no loss of bloom. - -And now, at last, he was not to bore them any longer; at last, he was -not to be forgotten. How could he not be happy,--it brought back every -blissful thrill of boyhood, his father's smile, the daffodil woods in -spring, heightened to ecstasy,--when he had at last made of himself one -of the Folletts who were remembered? He would have his place in the -history beside the Follett who fell at Naseby. No family but is glad of -a V.C. in its annals. They could no longer stroll away. They would be -proud of him; he had done something for all the Folletts forever. - - -II - -The nice young nurse came in. She closed the door gently, and, with her -smile, calm before accustomed death, and always, as it were, a little -proud of him,--that was because they were both English,--she took his -wrist and felt his pulse, holding her watch in the other hand, and asked -him, presently, how he felt. Only after that did she say, contemplating -him for a moment,--Marmaduke wondered how many hours--or was it perhaps -days?--she was giving him to live,-- - -"A gentleman has come to see you. You may see him if you like. But I've -told him that he is only to stay for half an hour." - -The blood flowed up to Marmaduke's forehead. He felt it beating hard in -his neck and behind his ears, and his heart thumped down there under the -neatly drawn bed-clothes. - -"A gentleman? What's his name?" - -Was it Robert? - -"Here is his card," said the nurse. - -She drew it from her pocket and gave it to him. It couldn't have been -Robert, of course. Robert would only have had to come up. Yet he was -dizzy with the disappointment. It was as if he saw Robert strolling away -for the last time. He would never see Robert again. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe was the name. The address was a London club that -Marmaduke placed at once as second-rate, and "The Beeches, Arlington -Road," in a London suburb. On the card was written in a neat scholarly -hand: "May I see you? We are friends." - -It was difficult for a moment to feel anything but the receding tide of -his hope. The next thing that came was a sense of dislike for Mr. Guy -Thorpe and for the words that he had written. Friends? By what right -since he did not know his name? - -"Is he a soldier?" he asked. "How did he come? I don't know him." - -"You needn't see him unless you want to," said the nurse. "No; he's not -a soldier. An elderly man. He's driving a motor for the French Wounded -Emergency Fund, and came on from the Alliance because he heard that you -were here. Perhaps he's some old family friend. He spoke as if he were." - -Marmaduke smiled a little. "That's hardly likely. But I'll see him, yes; -since he came for that." - -When she had gone, he lay looking again at the blue bands across the -window. A flock of sea-gulls flew past--proud, swift, and leisurely, -glittering in the sun. They seemed to embody the splendour and -exultation of his thoughts, and, when they had disappeared, he was -sorry, almost desolate. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe. He took up the card again in his feeble hand and looked -at it. And now, dimly, it seemed to remind him of something. - -Steps approached along the passage, the nurse's light footfall and the -heavier, careful tread of a man. An oddly polite, almost a deprecating -tread. He had gone about a great many hospitals and was cautious not to -disturb wounded men. Yet Marmaduke felt again that he did not like Mr. -Guy Thorpe, and, as they came in, he was conscious of feeling a little -frightened. - -There was nothing to frighten one in Mr. Thorpe's appearance. He was a -tall, thin, ageing man, travel-worn, in civilian clothes, with a dingy -Red-Cross badge on the sleeve of his waterproof overcoat. Baldish and -apparently near-sighted, he seemed to blink towards the bed, and, as if -with motoring in the wind, his eyelids were moist and reddened. He sat -down, murmuring some words of thanks to the nurse. - -A very insignificant man, for all his height and his big forehead. -Altogether of The Beeches, Arlington Road. Had he turned grey, he might -have looked less shabby, but dark thin locks still clustered above his -high crown and behind his long-lobed ears. His eyes were dark, his -moustache drooped, and he had a small, straight nose. Marmaduke saw that -he was the sort of man who, in youth, might have been considered very -handsome. He looked like a seedy poet and some sort of minor civil -servant mingled, the civil servant having got the better of the poet. -Marmaduke also imagined that he would have a large family and a harassed -but ambitious wife, with a genteel accent--a wife a little below -himself. His tie was of a dull red silk. Marmaduke did not like him. - -Mr. Thorpe glanced round, as if cautiously, to see if the nurse had -closed the door, and then, it was really as if more cautiously still, -looked at Marmaduke, slightly moving back his chair. - -"I'm very grateful to you, very grateful indeed," he said in a low -voice, "for seeing me." - -"You've come a long way," said Marmaduke. - -"Yes. A long way. I had heard of your being here. I hoped to get here. I -felt that I must see you. We are all proud of you; more proud than I can -say." - -He looked down now at the motoring-cap he held, and Marmaduke became -aware that the reddened eyes were still more suffused and that the mouth -under the drooping moustache twitched and trembled. He could think of -nothing to say, except to murmur something about being very glad--though -he didn't want to say that; and he supposed, to account for Mr. Thorpe's -emotion, that he must be a moving sight, lying there, wasted, bandaged, -and dying. - -"You don't remember my name, I suppose," said Mr. Thorpe after a moment, -in which he frankly got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. - -"No, I'm afraid I don't," said Marmaduke very politely. He was glad to -say this. It was the sort of thing he did want to say. - -"Yet I know yours very, very well," said Mr. Thorpe, with a curious -watery smile. "I lived at Channerley once. I was tutor there for some -time--to Robert, your brother, and Griselda. Yes," Mr. Thorpe nodded, "I -know the Folletts well; and Channerley, the dear old place." - -Now the dim something in memory pressed forward, almost with a physical -advance, and revealed itself as sundry words scratched on the schoolroom -window-panes and sundry succinct drawings in battered old Greek and -Latin grammars. Robert had always been very clever at drawing, catching -with equal facility and accuracy the swiftness of a galloping horse and -the absurdities of a human profile. What returned to Marmaduke now, and -as clearly as if he had the fly-leaf before him, was a tiny thumb-nail -sketch of such a galloping horse unseating a lank, crouching figure, of -whom the main indications were the angles of acute uncertainty taken by -the knees and elbows; and a more elaborate portrait, dashed and dotted -as if with a ruthless boyish grin--such an erect and melancholy head it -was, so dark the tossed-back locks, so classical the nose and -unclassical the moustache, and a brooding eye indicated in a triangular -sweep of shadow. Beneath was written in Robert's clear, boyish hand, -"Mr. Guy Thorpe, Poet, Philosopher, and Friend. Vale." Even the date -flashed before him, 1880; and with it--strange, inappropriate -association--the daffodils running out upon the lawn, as no doubt he had -seen them as he leaned from the schoolroom window, with the Greek -grammar under his elbow on the sill. - -So that was it. Mr. Guy Thorpe, placed, explained, disposed of--poor -dear! He felt suddenly quite kindly towards him, quite touched by his -act of loyalty to the old allegiance in coming; and flattered, -too,--yes, even by Mr. Thorpe,--that he should be recognized as a -Follett who had done something for the name; and smiling very -benevolently upon him, he said:-- - -"Oh, of course; I remember perfectly now--your name, and drawings of you -in old schoolbooks, you know. All tutors and governesses get those -tributes from their pupils, don't they? But I myself couldn't remember, -could I? for it was before I was born that you were at Channerley." - -There was a moment of silence after this, and in it Marmaduke felt that -Mr. Thorpe did not like being so placed. He had no doubt imagined that -there would be less ambiguous tributes, and that his old pupils would -have talked of him to the younger generation. - -And something of this chagrin certainly came out in his next words as, -nodding and looking round at the daffodils, he said:-- - -"Yes, yes. Quite true. No, of course you couldn't yourself remember. I -was more though, I think I may fairly say, than the usual tutor or -governess. I came, rather, at Sir Robert's instance."--Sir Robert was -Marmaduke's father.--"We had met, made friends, at Oxford; his former -tutor there was an uncle of mine, and Sir Robert, in my undergraduate -days, used to visit him sometimes. He was very keen on getting me to -come. Young Robert wanted something of a firm hand. I was the friend -rather than the mere man of books in the family." - -"Poet, Philosopher and Friend"--Marmaduke had it almost on his lips, and -almost with a laugh, his benevolence deepened for poor Mr. Thorpe, so -self-revealed, so entirely Robert's portrait of him. Amusing to think -that even the quite immature first-rate can so relegate the third. But -perhaps it was a little unfair to call poor Mr. Thorpe third. The -Folletts would not be likely to choose a third-rate man for a tutor; -second was kinder, and truer. He had, obviously, come down in the world. - -"I see. It's natural I never heard, though: there's such a chasm between -the elders and the youngers in a big family, isn't there?" he said. -"Griselda is twelve years older than I am, and Robert ten, you remember. -She was married by the time I began my Greek. You never came back to -Channerley, did you? I hope things have gone well with you since those -days?" - -He questioned, wanting to be very kind; wanting to give something of the -genial impression of his father smiling, with his "And how goes the -world with you to-day?" But he saw that, while Mr. Thorpe's evident -emotion deepened, it was with a sense of present grief as well as of -retrospective pathos. - -"No; I never came,--that is--. No; I passed by: I never came to stay. I -went abroad; I travelled, with a pupil, for some years before my -marriage." Grief and confusion were oddly mingled in his drooping face. -"And after that--life had changed too much. My dear old friend Sir -Robert had died. I could not have faced it all. No, no; when some -chapters are read, it is better to close the book; better to close the -book. But I have never forgotten Channerley, nor the Folletts of -Channerley; that will always remain for me the golden page; the page," -said Mr. Thorpe, glancing round again at the daffodils, "of friendship, -of youth, of daffodils in springtime. I saw you there," he added -suddenly, "once, when you were a very little lad. I saw you. I was -passing by; bicycling; no time to stop. You remember the high road -skirts the woods to the north. I came and looked over the wall; and -there you were--in your holland pinafore and white socks--digging up the -daffodils and putting them into your little red-and-yellow cart. A -beautiful spring morning. The woods full of sunshine. You wouldn't -remember." - -But he did remember--perfectly. Not having been seen; but the day; the -woods; the daffodils. He had dug them up to plant in his own little -garden, down below. He had always been stupid with his garden; had -always failed where the other succeeded. And he had wanted to be sure of -daffodils. And they had all laughed at him for wanting the wild -daffodils like that for himself, and for going to get them in the wood. -And why had Mr. Thorpe looked over the wall and not come in? He hated to -think that he had been watched on that spring morning--hated it. And, -curiously, that sense of fear with which he had heard the approaching -footsteps returned to him. It frightened him that Mr. Thorpe had watched -him over the wall. - -His distaste and shrinking were perhaps apparent in his face, for it was -with a change of tone and hastiness of utterance, as though hurrying -away from something, that Mr. Thorpe went on:-- - -"You see,--it's been my romance, always, Channerley--and all of you. -I've always followed your lives--always--from a distance--known what you -were up to. I've made excuses to myself--in the days when I used to go a -good deal about the country--to pass by Channerley and just have a -glimpse of you. And when I heard that you had done this noble -deed,--when I heard what you had done for England, for Channerley, for -us all,--I felt I had to come and see you. You must forgive me if I seem -a mere intruder. I can't seem that to myself. I've cared too much. And -what I came for, really, was to thank you,--to thank you, my dear -boy,--and to tell you that because of you, life must be nobler, always, -for all of us." - -His words had effaced the silly, groping fear. It was indeed, since his -colonel's visit, the first congratulation he had had from the outer -world. The nurses, of course, had congratulated him, and the surgeons; -but no one who knew him outside; the kindly telegrams from Robert and -Sylvia did not count as congratulations. And in a way poor Mr. Thorpe -did know him, and though it was only from him, it had its sweetness. He -felt himself flush as he answered, "That's very kind of you." - -"Oh, no!" said Mr. Thorpe, shaking his head and swinging his -foot--Marmaduke knew that from the queer movement of his body as he sat -with very tightly folded arms. "Not kind! That's not the word--from us -to you! Not the word at all!" - -"I'm very happy, as you may imagine," said Marmaduke. And he was happy -again, and glad to share his happiness with poor Mr. Thorpe. "It makes -everything worth while, doesn't it, to have brought it off at all?" - -"Everything, everything--it would; it would, to you. So heroes feel," -said Mr. Thorpe. "To give your life for England. I know it all--in every -detail. Yes, you are happy in dying that England may live. Brave boy! -Splendid boy!" - -Now he was weeping. He had out his handkerchief and his shoulders -shook. It made Marmaduke want to cry, too, and he wondered confusedly if -the nurse would soon come back. Had not the half hour passed? - -"Really--it's too good of you. You mustn't, you know; you mustn't," he -murmured, while the word, "boy--boy," repeated, made tangled images in -his mind, and he saw himself in the white socks and with the little -red-and-yellow cart, and then as he had been the other day, leading his -men, his revolver in his hand and the bullets flying about him. "And I'm -not a boy," he said; "I'm thirty-four; absurdly old to be only a second -lieutenant. And there are so many of us. Why,"--the thought came -fantastically, but he seized it, because Mr. Thorpe was crying so and he -must seize something,--"we're as common as daffodils!" - -"Ah! not for me! not for me!" Mr. Thorpe gulped quickly. Something had -given way in him--as if the word "daffodils" had pressed a spring. He -was sobbing aloud, and he had fallen on his knees by the bed and put up -his hand for Marmaduke's. "I cannot keep it from you! Not at this last -hour! Not when you are leaving me forever!--My son! My brave son! I am -your father, Marmaduke! I am your father, my dear, dear boy!" - - -III - -It was the stillest room. The two calm bands of blue crossed the window. -In the sunlight the gulls came flying back. Marmaduke looked out at -them. Were they the same sea-gulls or another flock? Then quietly he -closed his eyes. Stillness--calm. But something else was rising to him -from them. Darkness; darkness; a darkness worse than death. Oh! death -was sweet compared to this. Compared to this all his life had been -sweet; and something far dearer than life was being taken from him. He -only knew the terrible confusion of his whole nature. - -He opened his eyes again with an instinct of escape. There were the -bands of blue, and, still passing in their multitudes, leaving him -forever, the proud, exultant sea-gulls. The man still knelt beside him. -He heard his own voice come:-- - -"What do you mean?" - -"I never meant to tell you! I never meant to tell you!" a moan answered -him. "But--seeing you lying there!--dying!--my son!--who has given his -life for England!--And how I have longed for you all these years!--My -romance, Marmaduke--How could I be silent? Forgive me! Forgive me, my -boy. Yes, mine. My known children are dear to me, but how far dearer the -unknown son, seen only by stealth, in snatched glimpses! It is true, -Marmaduke, true. We were lovers. She loved me. Do not ask. Do not -question. We were young. She was very beautiful. It was springtime; -daffodils were in the woods. She said that she had never known any one -like me. She said that her life was hollow, meaningless. I opened doors -to her, I read to her. Browning--I read Browning," he muttered on, "in -the woods; among the daffodils. It was a new life to her--and to me. And -we were swept away. Don't blame us, Marmaduke. If there was wrong, there -was great beauty--then. Only then; for after, she was cruel--very cruel. -She turned from me; she crushed and tore my heart. Oh!--I have -suffered! But no one knew. No one ever dreamed of it. Only she and I. -My God!--I see her in your hair and eyes!" - -It was true. It was absolutely true. Through his whole being he felt its -inevitability. Everything was clear, with a strange, black, infernal -clearness. His life lay open before him, open from beginning to end: -that beginning of tawdry sentiment and shame--with daffodils; and this -end, with daffodils again, and again with tawdry sentiment and shame. - -He was not a Follett. He had no part in the Folletts. He had no part in -Channerley. He was an interloper, a thief. He was the son of this -wretched man, in whose very grief he could detect the satisfaction--oh, -who more fitted to detect such satisfaction!--of his claim upon a status -above his own. He was all that he had always most despised, a -second-rate, a third-rate little creature; the anxious, civil, shrinking -Marmalade of Cauldwell's office. Why (as the hideous moments led him on, -point by point, his old lucidity, sharpened to a needle fineness, seemed -to etch the truth in lines of fire upon the blackness), hadn't he always -been a pitiful little snob? Wasn't it of the essence of a snob to -over-value the things one hadn't and to fear the things one was? It -hadn't been other people, it had been himself, what he really was, of -whom he had always been afraid. He saw himself reduced to the heretofore -unrecognized, yet always operative, element in his own nature--a timid, -watchful humility. - -Oh, Channerley! Channerley! The wail rose in his heart and it filled the -world. Oh, his woods, his daffodils, his father's smile--gone--lost -forever! Worse than that--smirched, withered, desecrated! - -A hideous gibbering of laughter seemed to rise around him, and pointing -fingers. Amy's eyes passed with another malice in their mockery; and -Robert would never turn to him now, and Griselda would never look at -him. He saw it all, as they would never see it. He was not one of them, -and they had always felt it; and oh,--above all,--he had always felt it. -And now, quite close it seemed, softly rustling, falsely smiling, moved -his loathsome mother: not only as he remembered her in youth, but in her -elegant middle years, as he had last seen her, with hard eyes and alien -lips and air of brittle, untouched exquisiteness. - -Suddenly fury so mounted in him that he saw himself rising in bed, -rending his dressings, to seize the kneeling man by the throat and -throttle him. He could see his fingers sinking in on either side among -the clustered hair, and hear himself say, "How dare you! How dare you! -You hound! You snivelling, sneaking hound! You look for pity from me, do -you!--and tenderness! Well, take this, this! Everything, everything I am -and have that's worth being and having, I owe to them. I've hated you -and all you mean, always--yes, your fear and your caution and your -admiration and your great high forehead. Oh, I see it! I see it!--it's -my own! And though I am only that in myself, then take it from me that I -hate myself along with you and curse myself with you!" - -It came to him that he was slowly panting, and that after the fever-fury -an icy chill crept over him. And a slow, cold smile came with it, and he -saw Jephson, the wit of the office, wagging his head and saying, "Little -Marmalade take a man by the throat! Ask me another!" - -No; little Marmalade might win the V.C.; but only when he thought he was -a Follett. Was that what it all came to, really? Something broke and -stopped in his mind. - -He heard his father's voice. How long ago it had all happened. He had -known for years, hadn't he, that this was his father? - -"Marmaduke! Mr. Follett! What have I done? Shall I call somebody? Oh, -forgive me!" - -His father was standing now beside him and bending over him. He looked -up at him and shook his head. He did not want any one to come. - -"Oh, what have I done?" the man repeated. - -"I was dying anyway, you know," he heard himself say. - -What a pitiful face it was, this weary, loosened, futureless old face -above him! What a frightened face! What long years of slow disgarnishing -lay behind it: youth, romance, high hopes, all dropped away. He had come -to-day with their last vestiges, still the sentimental, romancing fool, -self-centred and craving; but nothing of that was left. He was beaten, -at last, down into the very ground. It was a haggard, humiliated, -frightened face, and miserable. As he himself had been. But not even -death lay before this face. For how many years must it go on sinking -down until the earth covered it? Marmaduke seemed to understand all -about him, as well as if he had been himself. - -"Sit down," he said. He heard that his voice was gentle, though he was -not aware of feeling anything, only of understanding. "I was rather -upset. No; I don't want any one. Of course I forgive you. Don't bother -about it, I beg." - -His father sat down, keeping his swollen eyes on the motoring-cap -which, unseeingly, he turned and turned in his hands. - -"Tell me about yourself a little," said Marmaduke, with slow, spaced -breaths. "Where do you live? How? Are you fairly happy?" - -He knew that he was not happy; but he might, like most people with whom -life had not succeeded, often imagine himself so, and Marmaduke wanted -to help him, if possible, to imagine it. - -"I live near London. I used to do a good deal of University Extension -lecturing. I've a clerkship in the Education Office now." Mr. Thorpe -spoke in a dead obedient voice. "A small salary, not much hope of -advance; and I've a large family. It's rather up-hill, of course. But -I've good children; clever children. My eldest boy's at Oxford; he took -a scholarship at Westminster; and my eldest girl's at Girton. The second -girl, Winnie, has a very marked gift for painting; she is our artist; -we're going to send her to the Slade next year when she leaves the High -School. Good children. I've nothing to complain of." - -"So you're fairly happy?" Marmaduke repeated. Oddly, he felt himself -comforted in hearing about the good and happy children, in hearing about -Winnie, her father's favourite. - -"Happy? Well, just now, with this terrible war, one can't be that, can -one? It is a great adventure for me, however, this work of mine, -motoring about France. I don't think I've ever done anything I cared so -much about since--for years," said Mr. Thorpe. "It's a beautiful -country, isn't it? and the soldiers are such splendid fellows! One gets -a lot out of it. But happy? No, I don't suppose I am. I'm pretty much of -a failure, and I started life with great imaginings about myself. One -doesn't get over that sort of disappointment; one never really gets over -it in a way." Mr. Thorpe was looking at him now, and it was as if there -were a kindliness between them. "Things have been rather grey and -disagreeable on the whole," he said. - -"They can be very grey and disagreeable, can't they?" said Marmaduke, -closing his eyes. - -He was very tired, and as he lay there quietly, having nothing further -to know or to suffer, having reached the very limits of conscious -dissolution, something else began to come to him. It seemed born of the -abolition of self and of the acceptance of the fact that he was dead to -all that had given life worth or beauty. It would have been very good to -be a Follett; though, he saw it now, he had over-prized that special -sort of goodness--with so much else from which he had been, as really, -shut out; but he was not a Follett; nor was he merely this poor, -insignificant father. He did not quite make out in what the difference -lay and he did not rejoice in it, for there was no rejoicing left in -him. But, even if the difference were only an acquired instinct (dimly, -the terms of his complacent readings in biology and sociology returned -to him), even if it were only that, not anything inherent and -transmissible, it was, all the same, his own possession; something that -he and the Folletts had made together; so that it was as true to say -that he had won the V.C. as to say that they had. The lessened self that -was left to him had still its worth. To see the truth, even if it undid -you, was worthy; to see so unwaveringly that it was good to be a Follett -even when you weren't one, had the elements of magnanimity; and to -accept the fact of being second-rate proved, did it not?--if you still -cared to prove it; he felt himself smile as gently at the relinquished -self as he had smiled at his father,--that you were not merely -second-rate. - -There was now a sound of stumbling movement; doors opening and shutting; -nurses, surgeons in the room; and his father's face, far away, against -the blue bands, looking at him, still so frightened and so miserable -that he tried again to smile at him and to say, "It's all right. Quite -all right." - -At all events he had been decent to the poor old fellow. His thoughts -came brokenly, but he was still seeing something, finding something; it -was like a soft light growing. At all events, he had behaved as a -Follett would wish to behave even when brought to such a pass. No--but -it wasn't quite that, either; it was something new. He had behaved as -any one decent should wish to behave. And the daffodils glimmering to -his vision seemed to light him further still. "We are as common as -daffodils," came back to him. Daffodils were for everybody. Foolish -little boy who, on the distant spring morning in the woods of -Channerley, dug them up to take them to his own garden! - -He was there among them with his little red-and-yellow cart, and the -thrush was singing high above him, in the rosy topmost branches of an -elm. - -Beautiful woods. Beautiful flowers of light and chivalry. How the -sunshine streamed among them! - -"Dear Channerley," he thought. For again he seemed to belong there. - -Gentle hands were tending him and, as he turned his cheek on the -pillow, it was with the comfort--almost that of the little boy at -Channerley being tucked up in the warm nursery to go to sleep--of -knowing that he was dying, and that, in spite of everything, he had -given something to the name. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PANSIES - - -I - -"OF course it is a horrid little garden, but one gets so fond of one's -own things, even when they are horrid," said Miss Edith Glover, with her -gentle deprecatory laugh. - -She stood with her friend at the door of the conservatory that led from -the sitting-room to the oblong plot of garden--a small, middle-aged -woman, with soft brown eyes, and hair the colour of a faded leaf; her -wasted throat and transparent temples and faint yet feverish flush -marking her already with menacing symptoms. - -The conservatory was of the sort that crops out irrelevantly at the back -of the many suburban houses, like glaucous fungi; but in Miss Glover's -little establishment, its shelves filled with neatly ranged boxes of -seedlings, with bundles of raffia, tidy baskets, and carefully garnered -labels, it was completely utilitarian, with never a fern or begonia to -recall its usual state. Miss Glover's house was suburban, or nearly so, -for though it stood in secure detachment from other villas on the -southern slopes of a small Surrey town, the town, on its northern side, -spread into ugly patches of red brick that devoured the woods and fields -and ran long tentacles almost up to London. Acacia Road was removed -from this peril of vitality, and its upper windows looked over pleasant -stretches of untouched hill and meadow. - -The Nook had been left to Miss Glover by an aunt five years ago, and to -her it was, from its porch before to its garden behind, a paradise pure -and simple, though she described her garden now, in showing it to -Florrie Lennard, so disparagingly. If she called it horrid, however, it -was only because, with her strong sense of other people's claims and -opinions, she recognized that to Florrie, accustomed to grand week-ends -at big country-places, it must, _qua_ garden, look very dim and meagre. -That it must also look, in its humility, very lovely, she took for -granted. - -Mrs. Lennard, however, standing with her on the conservatory step, her -robust silken arm protectingly and benevolently laid within hers, did -not contradict her, though her cheerful eyes roamed kindly over the -borders of pansies, the beds of mignonette, and the clumps of sweet peas -in the corners; but her kindness was for her friend rather than for the -garden, and she said, "You haven't had strength, I expect, for doing -more with it." - -"I've never had much strength," said Miss Glover. "It doesn't want much -hard work, luckily. The pansies go on from year to year and only need -dividing in the autumn, and then there are the bulbs, of course, in -spring; I have crocuses and daffodils and narcissi and some beautiful -tulips. The rest I do with penny packets. All those sweet peas and all -that mignonette came from two penny packets." - -"You can't expect much for a penny, can you?" said Mrs. Lennard with -her rather jovial air; and now she stepped down onto the narrow strip of -lawn that had a bird-bath sunken in the middle and a rose-bush at each -corner, of the kind now seldom seen, known as Prince Charlie or Maiden's -Blush--dark and small of foliage, with flat flowers that would be snowy -were they not tinged with a cold pink. They always made Miss Glover -think of an old Scotch ballad. Their flowering season was over, now, -however. The old Pyrus japonica that grew against the wall was also, -long since, over, though its fresh, vigorous green embossed the dull -bricks; but on the wall opposite, a Madame Alfred Carrire was throwing -out a second blooming, dreamy, melancholy and romantic as only she could -be. Madame Alfred Carrire made Miss Glover think of a Chopin waltz, and -she hoped that Florrie might at all events remark favourably on her -abundance. But Florrie hardly glanced at her. Pausing, as they paced the -lawn, to look with tolerant interest at the bird-bath, she observed, - -"I've just been staying with the Isaacsons in Hertfordshire. Such a -lovely place. They've a broad sanded walk leading from the house to the -rose-garden, as long as--well, to the end of this road, and it's arched -with roses all the way, a regular roof of roses, the latest climbers; I -never saw such a sight. And their herbaceous border, even now, is a -blaze of colour. I wish you could see it. It would do you good. It did -_me_ good, I know. I told Mrs. Isaacson I always feel a better woman -after a week-end in her garden. Flowers mean so much to me. I can't get -on without them. I run down to the Isaacsons whenever, as I say to her, -I need an sthetic cocktail. Of course they've half a dozen gardeners -working from dawn till dewy eve. You can do pretty much what you want in -the way of gardens when you're as rich as the Isaacsons. What it must -have cost them to make that sunken rose-garden!--all flagged between the -beds, with a sun-dial, and a fountain in the middle and bowers of roses -all about. They terraced the lawns, too, with flights of stone steps -leading down one from the other, and great white stone vases on the -pilasters simply foaming over, my dear, with pink geraniums. Against the -blue sky it's dazzling. - -"Such nice people they are, too, the Isaacsons. Di, the eldest girl, is -marrying Lord Haymouth next week, you know. People says it's a _mariage -de convenance_, of course, for she's to have 50,000 and he's without -the proverbial penny. But I happen to know it's a love match: love at -first sight; a regular _coup de foudre_. I was with the Isaacsons at -Ascot this spring when they met, and I saw in a moment that Di's fate -was sealed. Do you remember the big photo of Di in court dress on the -piano in the flat? No? Well, I should have thought it couldn't have -escaped notice. Such a splendid young creature; dark, proud, glowing -beauty. I think, when they're young, there's nothing to beat a beautiful -Jewess. She has a gorgeous voice, too, Di; could have made her fortune -in grand opera. I've given her a gold cigarette-case with her monogram -in diamonds and rubies. It nearly broke me; but they've always been -simply sweet to me. She's very fond of smoking. Smokes too much, her -mother and I tell her, though I'm afraid _I'm_ not a very good example -to set before the young!" - -Mrs. Lennard's face, while she thus spoke, expressed her contentment -with the Isaacsons, with herself, the cigarette-case, and life in -general. It was large and ruddy and masterful, with aquiline nose and -small, jocund mouth creasing to the chin in a deep line that spoke of -good nature and ingenuous sensuality; the full throat supported by a -high lace collar, well boned up behind the ears; the prominent blue eyes -at once bland and beaming. She was tall, of a fine presence, her -handsome bosom thickly decorated with turquoise ornaments, her shoes of -glittering patent leather; and from her wrist dangled a purse of fringed -and woven gold--an offering to her from the proprietor of the lady's -paper that, for many years, she had edited with so much _flair_ and -ability. - -She had made a very good thing of her life, had Mrs. Lennard; and, -nearing the fifties as she was, she had amassed a small but secure -income and a large number of affluent friends; friends always engaged in -vigorous and costly pursuits that involved many rich toilettes, meals to -the sound of orchestras in sumptuous restaurants and constant motoring -from place to place. Among such friends poor Edie Glover had not -counted. She and Mrs. Lennard had been schoolmates in early days when -their fortunes, one as the daughter of a poor parson and one of a poor -doctor, were equally unpromising. But Florrie had married an ambitious -young journalist, typified always, in Miss Glover's memory, from her one -rather dazed and shrinking impression of him, by extraordinarily smart -mustard-coloured spats and the weighty and imposing seal ring on his -finger; and, though early widowed, Florrie had followed along the paths -where he had set her feet with an energy and shrewdness that he could -not have bettered. - -Meanwhile, poor Edie--for so Mrs. Lennard always thought of -her--struggled through many years of waning youth to make her living, -and support her mother, as a music-teacher in London. Mrs. Lennard, even -when the tides of her own fortune ran low, never lost sight of her. She -had always been the kindest of friends, sowing the Glovers' dun-coloured -days with "complimentary" theatre or concert tickets and asking them -frequently to tea with her at her club. Even after Edie, now alone in -the world, had retired to Acacia Road and left youth and London behind -her, Mrs. Lennard, who had the air of fully possessing both, kept -constantly in touch. She had never before managed, it was true, but for -one half hour as she motored by on a winter's day, to visit Acacia Road; -but it was to her flat in Victoria Street that Miss Glover always came -when called to London by mild necessities or pleasures. Florrie insisted -on it; and though, in some ways, Miss Glover would have preferred the -house of her cousin in Bayswater,--overflowing with children as it was, -and offering only the tiniest of back bedrooms on the top floor,--or the -villa of a school-mistress friend at Golder's Green, it had always been -impossible to resist Florrie's determined benevolence. - -"Nonsense, my dear Edie," she would say. "Your cousin can't want you. -You'll only be in the way, with those dozens of children. And as for -Golder's Green, what can you see of London from Golder's Green?" -(Florrie overlooked the fact that for forty-odd years Miss Glover had -done nothing but "see" London.) "You'll be worn out with tubes and -motor-buses if you go to Golder's Green. Whereas with me you are ten -minutes from everywhere, be it dentist or dressmaker or concert, and -your bedroom's waiting for you--Muriel Lestrange left me only last -Monday; and you can't make me believe you'd not rather have your bath in -my lovely porcelain tub, with steaming hot water day and night, than in -one of those awful, antediluvian, blistered monsters, that fold you up -like a jack-knife--and the tin of tepid water hauled up four flights by -a slavey. I know my London, my dear, through _and_ through, and any -pleasure here depends upon how you start your day; upon your bath and -your breakfast. I can't offer much, but I can offer both of those, A -number one." - -So she could. Miss Glover could not deny it, though loyally and -unheededly murmuring that the villa at Golder's Green had also its -bathroom. It couldn't, however, compare with Florrie's, all snowy tiles -and glittering taps and ranged jars and bottles of salts and scents. -Florrie's bathroom seemed to her always to be the very centre and symbol -of Florrie's life--modern, invigorating, rejuvenating, at once -utilitarian and decorative. It was a sort of brilliant magician's cave -from which all the rest radiated: the compact yet so sumptuous little -drawing-room with its baby-grand and its palm, its silver-framed -photographs, frilled crtonnes, and rose-coloured carpet; the -dining-room, even more compact, yet, in its sobriety, as -sumptuous--where the breakfasts always, in spite of familiarity, broke -upon Miss Glover as revelations of what coffee and rolls and kidneys and -bacon could be in the way of strength and heat and crispness; even the -pink silk quilt beneath which she crept at night, and the little maid -who brought her early tea, looking, in her fluted caps and aprons, as -though she belonged to a theatrical troupe--all seemed emanations of -that magic centre where Florrie lay of a morning in hot, scented water -and read the paper and smoked a cigarette before emerging armed and -panoplied for the avocations and gaieties of the day. - -Yet it was not so much Florrie's bathroom and breakfasts, or even -Florrie's kindness, that overbore her protests as Florrie's -determination, her way of knowing so much better than you yourself could -know what was not only good, but happy for you. There was never an -answer to be found to her; and though Florrie's flat, with all its -sumptuousness, dazed and even tired Miss Glover a little, just as dear -Florrie herself sometimes dazed and tired her, she found herself -installed there always, feeling her own pursuits, her little -tea-parties, her concerts, her timid, bewildered shopping, to be very -humdrum and inappropriate as issuing from such a base of operations. The -only return she was able to make was to emboss Florrie's sheets and -towels and table-linen with beautifully embroidered monograms, and she -had always a slight and pleasant sense of being, at all events, a -country mouse who had contributed its little offering of grain or honey -when she recognized these trophies of her craft on her bed and on the -table and in the bathroom. - -But the last time she had gone up that summer, only, now, three weeks -ago, she had found herself suddenly of a significance almost as great as -that of any of Florrie's brilliant friends. To become significant to -Florrie one had either to be brilliant or piteous, and she was piteous. -Florrie had gone with her to the doctor's, and it was Florrie, kind -Florrie, an arm about her shoulders and a breast spread to her tired -head, who had broken to her the verdict. - -She was menaced, gravely menaced.--Yes; it did not surprise her--she had -thought it might be that. She had seen her father and two sisters die of -it--And unless she could go away and spend a year in a Swiss open-air -cure, the doctor didn't think she'd live through the winter. - -Seated on Florrie's frilled sofa, while Florrie, all encompassing tact -and urgency, passed on the verdict, it was not of it that she first -thought. Her mind, perhaps in an instinctive recoil, fixed itself upon -the oddly insistent impression of pinkness that she was aware, suddenly, -of receiving. Florrie's blouse, under her cheek, was a bright blur of -pink; and when she turned her eyes away from that they met, everywhere, -garlands of roses looped with knots of blue ribbon on a background of -white and pink stripes. Too much pink: this was the absurdly irrelevant -criticism that, dimly, but as if culminatingly, emerged. She must have -felt it as too pink for many years, but only now was she aware of it. -And then, with a sense of refuge, came the vision of her pansies: those -borders of white and purple pansies under the dull brick wall that she -had looked at so fondly that morning before starting for her journey. -But she would have to leave her pansies, then; not only for a season; -perhaps forever. - -It was in this form and in this roundabout way that the thought of death -became real to her; with pathos rather than poignancy and with yearning -regret rather than fear. She did not feel afraid of dying. Her quiet -little faith that, though so still, was deep enough for all her needs, -had sunken wells of wordless security in her. She was not afraid; but -the thought of leaving her flowers, her garden, the skyey view from her -bedroom window, symbolized for her all the sadness of death. There was, -indeed, nothing else to regret much. Every one she had loved most dearly -was gone; and when all was said and done, and in spite of the peace of -the last five years, she was a battered, tired little creature, with few -of the springs of desire left in her. Her life, as she looked back on -it, seemed to have been spent, for the most part, in crowded buses on -wet evenings, with not enough lunch behind and not enough dinner before -her; in those, and in going up and down steps of strangers' houses. -There had been, of course, more than that; she had never, except when -her dearest young sister died, been very unhappy, and there had been -interests and alleviations always--beautiful evening walks across the -Park and relaxations over tea with a book before the fire in her -lodging-house sitting-room; but the past, when she called it up in an -image, seemed always to crumple into that jolting, rattling, wet, and -crowded omnibus. So there was not much strength now left in her for -resistance or regret; but she would do her best to live, and that really -meant that she would do her best not yet to leave her garden. - -When she was older, too old to dig a little, divide the pansies in -autumn and sow the penny packets in spring, too old to care for the -Madame Alfred Carrire or the Pyrus japonica, would be time enough to -go. But in coming back to it that evening, she knew how deeply, how -tenaciously she loved her garden. It was the only thing she had ever -owned in her life, the only thing she had ever made: her work and -creation; its roots seemed to go down into her heart; and she could not -feel that in heaven there would be old white roses and white and purple -pansies and mignonette and sweet peas that one had sown one's self from -penny packets. - - -II - -At first, when Florrie told her, the verdict had seemed unescapable. She -had said, after the little silence in which she received it,--the -silence in which much had happened to her,--she had said, in a very -quiet voice that had surprised herself, "I'm afraid it's no good, then, -Florrie dear. I can't afford to go away." - -Aunt Kate had left her only the house and its contents. She had saved -only the tiniest sum herself--just enough to yield an income that paid -for her food and light and coal. To pay for Jane, her good old servant, -to pay for her clothes and washing, to pay for the trips to London and -the crumpets and cakes that she gave her friends at tea in Acacia Road, -she had still to depend upon the pupils that, fortunately, she had found -in the small Surrey town. On three afternoons a week she sallied forth, -peacefully indeed, with no sense of anxiety or pressure, and made her -way to the houses of the doctor, the rector, the big London -manufacturer, and instructed their young daughters in the excellent -Munich method that she had imbibed in youth. With these delightfully -convenient strings to her bow she could manage perfectly. But to give -them up and to pay for an open-air cure in Switzerland was outside the -bounds of her possibilities. - -So she explained, in the quiet voice, to Florrie; and it was then that -Florrie, revealing herself as a more wonderfully kind friend than even -in Miss Glover's grateful eyes she had always been, said, the tears -suddenly hopping down her cheeks and making dark spots on the pink silk -blouse,-- - -"Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Edie! What do a few pounds more or less -matter at a time like this? You _shall_ go! It's a question of life or -death. Now, not a word, my dear, and listen to me. _I'll_ send you. -It'll be the proudest day of my life that sees you off. What's all my -good luck worth to me if I can't give a friend a helping hand when she -needs it? I can sell out some investments. I've more than enough, and -I'll soon fill my stocking again. And you shall go as soon as we can get -you ready; and first class, my dear, all the way, boat _and_ train. -Don't I know the difference it makes--and getting off to sleep on the -way? Jane shall go with you to take care of you--oh, yes, she shall!--I -won't hear of your going alone; and you'll come back next spring a sound -woman. - -"I know all about those Swiss open-air cures," Florrie rushed on. -"They're magical. Poor Lady Forestalls was at death's door three years -ago--there she is--over there on the piano--that tall, regal-looking -woman with the Pekinese: worse than you she was, by far. And she went to -Switzerland and came back in six months' time, cured; absolutely cured. -Never a touch of it since. She does everything and goes everywhere. And -such scenery, my dear, such flowers! You'll revel in it. And Julia -Forestalls told me that the people were so interesting. She made a -number of friends--Italian, German, Russian. You shall take my -tea-basket, my dear. Jane can carry it easily. It's a gem; everything -complete and so convenient. It makes simply all the difference on a -journey if you can get a steaming hot cup of tea at any time you like, -day _or_ night. I saved Cora Clement's life with my tea-basket in -Venice; she says so herself. She got chilled to the bone on the lagoons. -Over there on the writing-bureau she is; American. Not a beauty, but -_jolie laide_, and dresses exquisitely--as you can see. She's always -taken for a French-woman." - -Miss Glover, even more than usual, felt to-day that dear Florrie dazed -and bewildered her a little; but the mere fact that Florrie's tears had -dried so soon, that she could, so soon, be telling her about Lady -Forestalls and Cora Clement, was encouraging. Miss Glover felt that her -case was evidently but one among many to which Florrie had seen the -happiest endings--a comparatively unalarming affair; entirely -unalarming, though exceedingly engrossing, Florrie's tone and demeanour -indicated, when taken in hand by such as she. - -And how she took it in hand! There was no use protesting against -anything. As always, Florrie made her feel that she knew better than she -herself could what was good for her. It was all arranged before they -parted that day, and Florrie had further smoothed her path by declaring -that nothing would suit her better, if Edie really felt fussed about the -money, than to take The Nook during her absence. "The very thing I -need," said Florrie. "I've been thinking for some time that I must have -a little place near London to run down to for week-ends. And you've that -duck of a spare-room, too, I remember, where I can put up a friend; and -it's so near town that people can motor down and have tea with me of an -afternoon. My dear, nothing could be more providential." - -During the three weeks that followed, Florrie, in London, shopped for -her, decided on the clothes she would need and the conveniences that she -must take; and interesting parcels arrived at The Nook every morning. It -was strange and exciting to be made much of, strange and exciting to be -on a journey; she had not been out of England since that stay, in -girlhood, in Munich; and in spite of the shadow hanging over her, the -sense of haste lest she be overtaken, she felt the days of preparation -as almost happy ones. Jane, it was true, was rather gloomy about -everything, but even beneath her sombre demeanour Miss Glover felt sure -that she, too, was touched by the sense of adventure, for Jane had never -been out of England at all. - -And now the boxes were all packed and Miss Glover's dressing-case stood -open, half filled, in her bedroom, waiting only for her sponge bag and -pin-tray and brush and comb to be added next morning, when she and Jane -and Florrie were to go up together to Victoria, and Florrie was to see -them off; and while Jane prepared her most festive tea, Miss Glover had -been showing Florrie all over her new domain on that August afternoon -when she had spoken of her garden as horrid. Florrie, in answer to her -shy request that she might, perhaps, if it wasn't too much bother, sow -some mignonette and sweet peas for her next spring, had answered with -reassuring decision, "To be sure I will, my dear. I'll take care of -everything and have it all waiting for you spick and span when you get -back." And then Jane's gong had summoned them in, and it had been -reassuring, too, to see how benignant were the glances that Florrie cast -about the little sitting-room while she stirred her tea and commended -Jane's cakes. "Beeswax and turpentine for all the furniture once a week. -_I_ know. And dusted every morning without fail." - -Yes, it was safe in Florrie's competent hands, dear little room. In her -heart of hearts, though she had no faintest flicker of criticism or -comparison except for that one strangely painful memory of the rush of -pinkness,--Miss Glover very much preferred her own room, shabby and -simple as it was, to Florrie's; just as, though so well aware of the -relative insignificance of her garden, she knew that she would prefer it -to the Isaacsons', with its arches of roses and its geraniums in white -stone vases. She liked quiet, soft, gentle things; the ever-so-faded -ancient chintzes on her aunt's chairs and sofa, showing here and there a -ghostly bird of paradise or a knot of nearly obliterated flowers, her -aunt's absurd, faded, old-fashioned carpet,--fortunately faded!--and her -grandmother's Lowestoft cups ranged above the mantelpiece. Everything -was in its place; her knitting-basket between her chair and the -fireplace; her beaded footstool before the best armchair, where Florrie -sat; the little table, with a bowl of white and purple pansies on it, -where lay the daily paper and the two books from the circulating -library. All were dear to her; all spoke of continuity with the past, of -long association, of quiet, small, peaceful activities; and as she -looked about she knew that her heart would have sunk a little at the -thought of leaving them, had it not been for Florrie's sustaining -presence. - -Florrie, while her second cup of tea was being made, drew forth and laid -beside the tea-tray, with an air of infinite sagacity, the coupons for -the reserved seats in the first-class carriage. "_I'll_ keep my eyes on -those," said Florrie. It was almost as if they had been tickets for some -brilliant entertainment--as if, Miss Glover felt, she and Jane were -going to be taken to the opera rather than to Switzerland. It was owing -to Florrie that she had almost come to feel that Switzerland _was_ the -opera. - -But that night, when they had gone upstairs and the house was still, the -sense of adventure deserted her. Sitting in her dressing-gown before her -mirror while, with hands that tired so easily, she brushed and braided -her hair, she felt, suddenly, very middle-aged, very lonely, ill, and -almost frightened. The look of her gaping dressing-case, as she glanced -round at it, was frightening, as was the emptiness of the mantelpiece, -from which the family photographs had all been taken to be packed, -together with the Bible and prayer-book from the table near her bed. It -was a room already deserted. It looked as it might look if she had died. -What, indeed, in spite of Florrie's good cheer, if she were to die out -there, alone, away from everything and every one she knew? And, with a -curious impulse, rising to go and close the gaping dressing-case, she -realized that she had not said good-bye to anything. The morning had all -been spent in packing--in that and in preparations for Florrie's -arrival; and all the afternoon Florrie had been with her, and she was to -be with her till her departure to-morrow. She would not again be alone -in her little house; she would not again be alone in her garden. The -thought of her pansies came with a pang of reproach; it was as if she -had forgotten them, like children sent to bed without a good-night kiss. - -She drew her curtain and looked out. Yes; there they were. The moon was -shining brightly and the white pansies lay below like pools of milk upon -the ground. She looked at them for some moments, while the soft -fragrance of the night mounted to her and seemed with gently -supplicating hands to draw her forth; and then, cautiously--for Florrie -slept across the way--but with decision, she put on her heavy cloak over -her dressing-gown, wrapped a shawl about her head and shoulders, and -stole downstairs. - -The drawing-room was very dark; she felt her way swiftly through it past -the familiar objects, and the conservatory door opened on a flood of -silvery light. She saw the high, shining disk of the moon, and the great -black poplar tree that grew in the neighbouring garden seemed vast -against the sky. As she stepped out, she made herself think of Diamond -in "At the Back of the North Wind." It was like stepping into a -fairy-tale; only something more sweet and solemn than a fairy-tale, as -that book was; something, for all its beauty, a little awful. But when -she looked down from the moon, the sky, the poplar, there was only -sweetness. The fragrance that had solicited her seemed now to welcome -her, to clasp and caress her. The pansies were all looking up at her. On -the wall Madame Alfred Carrire was more beautiful than she had ever -before seen her, her pale flowers and buds making a constellation -against the darkness. - -She walked round the path, looking at it all, so glad that she had -come, smiling--a child in fairyland, or a spirit arrived in Paradise and -finding it strange yet familiar--as Paradise should be. Perhaps, she -thought, dying would be like that: a stepping out from the darkness into -something vast and solemn that would slowly gather about one into -well-known and transfigured shapes, into white pansies growing thickly -at one's feet. She stooped in the moonlight and passed her hands over -their upturned faces. They were flowers entranced, neither sleeping nor -awake; and she felt, as her fingers touched their soft, dewy petals, as -if their dreams with their whiteness flowed into her. To leave them was -like leaving her very self, yet the parting now was all peace and -innocent acquiescence, like them, and she was still smiling as she -whispered to them, "Good-bye, darlings." - - -III - -SWITZERLAND was like the opera, and for her first months there Miss -Glover felt as if she watched it from a box--very much at the back and -looking past many heads at the vast display. Everything that Florrie had -said was true: the scenery was more magnificent than she could have -imagined, oppressively more, and the people, again oppressively, more -interesting. They were, these people, engaged all of them in trying to -keep alive, and, when they failed in that, in dying, dying under one's -eyes from day to day; and in the publicity of such occupations there was -something as abnormal as was the size of the mountains. Some of these -people she came to know a little--those, usually, who had given up: the -dear little Russian girl who, alas, died in December; the sulky, -affectionate French boy; and the large yet wasted German singer who made -Miss Glover think of a splendid fruit keeping still its shell of form -and colour while eaten away inside by wasps. Fralein Schmidt liked to -have her play Schubert and Schumann songs to her, and still tried to -sing attainable passages here and there in a queer, booming, hollow -voice that made Miss Glover, again, think of the wasps imprisoned and -buzzing. But most of the people remained parts of the spectacle to her. -They engaged, when they were well enough, in winter sports; they talked -together of books she had never heard of, and of things she had never -thought of; and often, moreover, she could not understand what they -said, as her languages did not extend beyond rather simple French and -German, and Dante with a dictionary. - -The only other English person there was a young man who made her think -of the Prince Charlie roses; he was sombre and delicate and beautiful -and did not talk to anybody, sitting apart and reading all day long. -Miss Glover wondered a good deal about him, and watched him sometimes -from her place on the snow-sifted balcony when they lay there encased in -fur bags and buttressed with hot-water bottles. His name was Lord Ninian -Carstairs; and that was like the roses, too. - -Once, when they were alone on the balcony, their recumbent chairs near -one another, he lifted his eyes suddenly and found hers fixed upon him, -and perhaps their wistful and ingenuous absorption touched him, for, -flushing faintly,--he was a shy young man,--he asked if she were feeling -better. - -She said she couldn't quite tell. It was difficult to tell what one -felt, didn't he find? Everything was so different; so exciting in a way; -and when one was excited one felt, perhaps, better than one was. - -Lord Ninian laughed shortly at that, and said that he didn't feel -excited; he wished he could. - -"I'm depressed, too, sometimes," said Miss Glover; and then he sighed. - -"One gets so abominably homesick in this hole," he said. - -She had never thought of such splendour as being, possibly, to anybody, -a hole; but she knew what it was to feel homesick. They smiled at each -other when they met after that, she and Lord Ninian, and he lent her -magazines and books. When she heard that he had died,--she had not seen -him for a week and had feared for him,--she felt very, very sad and her -thoughts turned in great longing to Acacia Road and to her garden. - -She wanted very much to live to see her garden again; but she could not -help being frightened lest she should not; for, as the winter wore on, -it became evident to her, and all the more because every one else was so -carefully unaware of it, that one of the things that Florrie had -predicted was not to come true. She was not to return cured. She was not -going to get better. At first the slow burning of fever had seemed only -part of the excitement, but she could not go on thinking it that when it -began to leave her breathless, trembling, faint. By the time that the -miracle of the Alpine flower-meadows was revealed to her and she had -watched the snow recede and the jonquils and anemones advance, she knew -that if she wished to die at home she must soon go. They would not -consent to that at once. They said that the spring months were full of -magic, and she was persuaded to stay on. They were magically beautiful -and she was glad to see them, but she longed more and more to see her -little garden. She dreamed sometimes of her pansies at night, and it -seemed to her once that as she stooped in the moonlight and touched them -she was cured; the fever fell from her; a cool white peace flowed into -her veins; and when she looked up from them, the night was gone and the -sun was rising over her Surrey hills. - -At the beginning of June they consented that she should go. They did not -tell her the truth, of course. They said that she might pass the summer -in England, since she wished so much to return there, and that she must -come back for next winter; but she knew that if her state had not been -recognized as hopeless they would not have let her go. It was hopeless, -and she summoned all her strength and resolution, that she might live -until she reached Acacia Road. - - -IV - -FLORRIE met her at Victoria. Florrie did not know that it was hopeless, -though she knew that it was not as yet, a cure; but from the way that -she controlled her features to a determined joviality Miss Glover could -infer her shock, her grief, her consternation. The glance, too, that -Jane and Florrie exchanged was revealing, had she been in need of -revelations. - -After a night in Florrie's flat, however, she knew that she looked so -much better that poor Florrie, when she came to see her in the morning, -was quite erroneously cheered. "_You're_ all right," Florrie declared. -"The journey's knocked you about a bit; but once we get you down to -Surrey, Jane and I, you'll pick up in no time. After all, there's no -place like home, is there?" - -Miss Glover, from her pillows, smiled. She felt very fond of kind -Florrie and sorry for her that she must, so soon, suffer sadness on her -account. - -It was difficult, in the train, to listen to Florrie's talk. After her -fright of the day before, Florrie had cheered up so tremendously that -she talked even more than usual, of her friends, her enterprises, of how -she was going yachting that autumn with the Forestalls, and of how Di -Haymouth had just had a baby. - -"A splendid boy, and Mr. and Mrs. Isaacson are fairly off their heads -with pride and pleasure. Such a layette, my dear, you never saw! Real -lace through and through--and the cradle of a regular little prince! I -gave him a silver porringer for his christening; a lovely thing, all -heavy _repouss_ work with his initials on a shield at one side. Di say -it's the prettiest porringer she ever saw." - -It was difficult to listen to Florrie and to nod and smile at the right -moment when she was thinking of her garden and wondering if Florrie had -really remembered to sow the sweet peas and mignonette. Even if she -hadn't, the Madame Alfred Carrire and the Prince Charlie roses would be -out, and the last tulips, and the pansies, of course. And it was such a -beautiful day, just such a day as that she had risen to look at when, in -her dream, the pansies had cured her. - -The drive from the station up to Acacia Road was a short one. The dear, -foolish little porch was there, the bow-window, the laurel-bushes. Her -own home. As she saw it she felt such a lift of the heart that it seemed -to her, too, that she might be going to get better after all. Florrie -and Jane helped her out and she and Florrie went into the sitting-room. -She looked round it, smiling, while she felt her happy, fluttering -breaths like those of some wandering bird put back into its own dear -cage again, safe, secure, bewildered a little in its contentment. She -was like such a trivial little cage-bird; she was meant for Acacia Road, -and not for Swiss mountains. - -Everything was the same: even her knitting-basket stood waiting for her, -and all that caught her eye with their unfamiliarity were the flowers, -the profusion of flowers, standing in bowls and vases everywhere; -perhaps almost too many flowers,--that was like dear, exuberant -Florrie,--and all pink. - -"Oh--how lovely they are!" she said, finding the fluttering breath fail -her a little. "How dear of you, Florrie, to have it all arranged like -this!" - -"They look welcoming, don't they?" said Florrie, who laughed with some -excitement. "Will you rest, dear, or come into the garden?" - -"Oh, the garden, please. I'm not at all tired. I can rest later." - -Florrie still led her by the arm. They went into the conservatory and -there came to her then the strangest, dizziest sense of pink--everywhere -pink!--shining in at her through the sea-green glass, bursting in at her -through the open door. - -For a moment she thought that her mind was disordered, and looked up -with large, startled eyes at Florrie; but, beaming as she had never yet -seen her beam, all complacency and triumphant benevolence, Florrie -nodded, saying, "Now for your surprise, my dear. Now for your garden. -Just see what I've made of it to welcome you!" - -They stepped out. Pink. Pink everywhere, above, below, around one. The -paths were arched with swinging iron chains on which, already, the long -festoons advanced. The border, heaping itself up splendidly against the -wall, was splashed with white, yellow, blue and purple, a blaze of -colour indeed, but pink dominated, like the sound of trumpets in an -orchestra. It also made Miss Glover think, strangely, sickly, of the -sound of a gramophone. There was no lawn. The centre of the garden was -flagged, with a highly ornamental sun-dial in the middle and a white -garden seat and a wonderful white stone basin for the birds. There were -no Prince Charlie roses, no mignonette and sweet peas, there were no -pansies. Her garden had disappeared. - -"There!" said Florrie. - -She led her to the garden seat. From here Miss Glover, as she sank down -upon it, could see that the back of the house was also dappled with the -incessant colour. - -"Isn't it a marvel!" said Florrie. "I hardly dared hope they'd grow as -they have, but Dorothy Perkins is a winner, and these latest climbers -run her close. I spared nothing, my dear, nothing--manure, bone-meal, -labour. The men were working here for a week last autumn. All the old -soil was carted away and a rich loam put in three feet deep. I put them -in big. I knew I could get them to take if I took enough pains over it. -Those chains will be covered in another month. I knew it would do you -more good than any open-air cure to find such a garden waiting for you. -I'd defy anybody to have the blues in this garden! In its little way -it's just an epitome of joy, isn't it? It's done _me_ good, to begin -with! I've been having tea out here every day in my week-ends and every -one who's seen it and heard about my plan says I'm a regular old fairy -with a wand. Mrs. Isaacson motored down only last Saturday and thought -it was a perfect poem. And so it is, though I say it as shouldn't." - -Florrie had paused on the deepest breath of purest satisfaction, and the -time had come when Miss Glover must speak. She must find words to -express gratitude and astonishment. She must not burst into tears. She -felt that if she began to cry she would at once be very ill. She did not -want to be taken ill before dear, good, kind Florrie. And it was, of -course, a beautiful garden; far more beautiful than hers had ever been, -no doubt; yet it hurt her so--to find her garden gone--that she heard -her voice come in gasps as she said, "Dear Florrie--you are a wonderful -friend--you are indeed.--I can never thank you enough. It's a miracle." - -Florrie patted her shoulder--she had her arm around her shoulders. "My -best thanks will be to see you happy in it, Edie dear, and getting well -and strong again in it. It's a regular surprise-packet, this garden, let -me tell you, my dear. It'll go on, that border, right up till November, -one thing after another: I thought it all out, pencil and paper and -catalogue in hand. I went over the whole colour-scheme with Mrs. -Isaacson--there's no one who knows more about it. And since most of the -herbaceous things came from her garden, it didn't cost as much as you'd -think. They've always heaps of plants left over when they divide in -autumn, and everything was at my disposal; and all the latest varieties, -as I needn't say. Wait till you see the lilies--yes, my dear, I've found -room for everything; where there's a will there's a way is my motto, you -know--and the phloxes and the chrysanthemums." - -She would never see them, though she was sure that they would all be -very beautiful; she would never see these latest varieties from Mrs. -Isaacson's garden. And she would never see her own little garden again. -How wonderfully fortunate it was--the thought went through her mind -confusedly as she sat there, feeling herself droop against Florrie's -shoulder--that she was not to live with Florrie's and to go on missing -her own garden. How fortunate--but her thoughts swam more and more and -tears dazed her eyes--that she had not to say good-bye twice to her -pansies. She had died, then, really,--that was it,--on the moonlight -night when she had last seen them. And she had left the house to -Florrie, dear kind Florrie, and Florrie would go on having tea happily -under the festoons of roses. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PINK FOXGLOVES - - -THEY were only beginning to revert. Last summer they had stood, spires -of fretted snow tapering at the points to jade-coloured buds, at the -edge of the little copse where the garden path lost itself among young -larches, birches, hazels, and poplars, black and white. The sun set -behind the copse, spreading in the summer evenings a pale gold -background, and often when he went to look at his foxgloves and to -listen to the lonely song of the willow-wren, rippling, like a tiny rill -of water, from the heart of the wood, Aubrey Westmacott had felt that -there was something almost dangerous in such bliss as this. To breathe -this limpid air, to hear the willow-wren, to look at white foxgloves, -and to know himself free forever from the long oppression of London--if -he could have sung his wistful gratitude, his melancholy joy, the song -might have been like the bird's. - -This year the change in the foxgloves had come as a complete surprise; -he was still a novice at gardening. He had left his beloved garden for a -week; regretfully, for he could not bear to lose a day of it--he was -like a lover with a bride, long pined for, who each day grows dearer and -lovelier; but he had gone, because it seemed churlish to refuse the old -don friend at Cambridge--and when he returned, at evening, and had -walked down to the copse and had seen them standing there, so delicately -yet so decisively altered, the shock of the surprise had seemed all -delight. He had intended white foxgloves to rise, always, against the -copse; but then he had not known how lovely pink foxgloves could be. He -had never seen them of such a shade, each bell of palest rose brimmed -with shadows of mauve, and finely freaked within. Regiments of the white -flowers had remained steadfast, so that there could be no sense of loss, -and he had picked an armful of the pink ones and carried them back to -the house, feeling, as he looked at them against his shoulder, that he -would have liked to kiss them. He spent the remaining hours of dusk in -arranging them. He never allowed the parlourmaid to arrange the flowers. -That she saw him, tolerantly, if with a flavour of irony, as a very -eccentric gentleman, he was aware, just as he was aware, quite -cheerfully, that many of his kind neighbours found him a rather absurd -one. But one of the deepest joys this new life afforded him, after the -paternal bliss of seeing the darlings grow, was in disposing them about -the rooms, with a loving discrimination that Ridley's skilled but cold -and conventional hands could never have accomplished. - -This evening he put the foxgloves in the drawing-room, a tall jar on the -bureau, a taller jar on the piano, and a group in the vast white Chinese -bowl, wedged cunningly into place with stones among the stems. Here he -could look at them next morning as he worked at his history. He always -worked in the drawing-room, for there he had the morning sun, and, if -he could not see his massed and tiered herbaceous border, could look out -at the cherry tree and at the tiny squares of terraced lawns, dropping -from level to level, with their stone steps and low stone walls and -narrow jewelled bordering of flowers. - -There was a very nice little study behind the dining-room--it was from -the dining-room that one saw the herbaceous border, and he could -meditate future rearrangements and harmonies while he ate his -breakfast--but the study looked out on the stable shrubberies. He liked, -too, to feel himself encompassed by his treasures, old and new, while he -wrote of medival customs; his mother's incompetent but loveable -water-colours, sketches of her old home, the grey, ancient, gabled house -among just such Cotswold slopes and uplands as his western windows -looked out upon, though his mother's old home, passed long since to -alien hands, lay on the other side of the county; and his father's -seafaring trophies, from China and Japan and far Pacific islands, and -all the lately acquired delightful solidities of Jacobean oak, and his -maturest choice in printed linen. Here, on their background of mullioned -window or dark wainscoting--such a gem of a little Jacobean house it -was--the pink foxgloves greeted him next morning, set among feathery -heads and sharp green spears of meadow grass, glimmering and poised on -tiptoe, like groups of softly blushing nymphs, and he stood for a long -time looking at them, his hands clasped behind his back. - -He was forty-six, a fragile little man, blanched and stooping from the -long years of imprisonment in the Government office, from which the -undreamed-of inheritance had released him only three years ago, with -faded gold hair hanging across his forehead and a gentle face of stifled -dreams, the mouth slightly puckering as if in intentness on some task. -The eyes, of a dim yet dense pastel blue that told darkly in his faded -face, were intent, too, but not acute; they dwelt; they did not -penetrate. He wore a small, short moustache, and a pair of gold -_pince-nez_ dangled at his coat button. - -Delicate as he had always been, and ineffectual, as he had always so -dejectedly been aware of being, he, too, with all his relatives, had -thought it very fortunate when, on leaving the university, he had -secured the tiny post in the Civil Service. There, he knew, he would -stay; he was not of the type that rises, and he had never during the -long years that followed rebelled consciously against his fate. He was, -he often told himself reproachfully, so very fortunate compared with men -far abler and more deserving than himself. He found that he could not -write, as he had hoped to do, after the conscientious hours at the -office. He read a great deal, and crept away to the country for every -week-end, sitting by meadow or river, like a dusty mouse let loose from -its trap and softly panting in the sunlight. He was often ill, and the -doctors always recommended a country life, but it was not on hygienic -grounds that he pined for limpid spaces and starry solitudes. There was -a soft passion in his blood, inherited from the mother whom he so much -resembled, for the sights and sounds and occupations of rurality. He -adored flowers. He often dreamed of them at night, and in waking hours -the thought of a garden of his own haunted him. Sometimes he went to -stay with friends in their gardens; but this was an ambiguous joy; it -was like seeing the pink and white babies playing about their nurses and -perambulators in the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens, and having no -claim to kiss any of them. He loved children, too. - -And now he found himself transplanted to this wonderful fairy tale by -Uncle Percy's legacy. He still, often, could hardly realize it. There -was a haze of dizzy delight over all the memory of the last three years; -the search for a house, the securing of Meadows, the furnishing and -ordering of his household--he who had lived in rooms in Kensington for -twenty-four years, ruled over by a flawlessly honest but relentless -landlady! To think that he could have other fish for breakfast than -finnan haddock, and other vegetables in winter than cabbage! This was a -minor but an emphatic pleasure. - -But above all, around all, the garden! He had planned and planted it -all, studying books, brooding over catalogues, making lists, writing -labels ever so neatly. The vegetables were given over to the gardener; -but his flowers, except for deep trenching--and oh, how deep, how rich, -he saw to it that it was! he tended single-handed. His seed-boxes, his -cold-frames, his tools and baskets, how he adored them all, and how -happy he was in any small personal economies, so that extravagance in -manure and bone-meal and leaf-mould should be well justified. The -history of medival customs was also a long-cherished ideal, but it -remained of secondary interest; his heart, always, was in the garden, -meditating mulchings, waterings, or hoeings. Every dream had come true, -had more than realized itself. Was it any wonder that he should feel -himself going softly in his amazed gratitude, should sometimes, as when -he listened to the willow-wren at evening, feel that such happiness was -dangerous. - -It had not seemed to flaw the happiness, it had seemed but to add a -sweeter undertone to it, melancholy yet blissful, that into the new -Paradise there should have stolen a new longing, and that, as of old, he -should find himself haunted by an unattainable loveliness. He thought of -this as he looked at the pink foxgloves, for they made him think of the -face of Leila Pickering. "Yes, yes, yes," he said to himself, as he -turned to the medival history, for he had the habit, caught from his -long loneliness, of speaking much to himself and with a quaint -repetition of words that stole into his social speech, "it is she they -are like; she they are like. Lovely, lovely, like her." - -Later in the morning, privileged as she was to interrupt even the -history, it was Mrs. Pomfrey who informed him that the strange, delicate -beauty was transitory, an unfixed type, and that, next year, or in a -very few years, the palely rosy nymphs would be purple. - -"They'll revert. You can get pink ones, you know, from the seedsmen; -rosy carmine they call it; but not at all this colour. I've never seen a -colour quite like this. Your soil must do it. I've always thought the -soil of Meadows had magic in it." - -Mrs. Pomfrey was the late rector's widow, and lived in a thicket of -roses half a mile away in the village. She was tall, black-robed, -majestic, and melancholy, with a deep voice and black eyes and a high, -hooked nose and large false teeth that shifted slightly and slightly -clashed together when she spoke. She had survived all emotions except -the grief of having to grow her roses on a clayless soil, and to this -grief she often returned. A girlhood friend of Aubrey Westmacott's -mother, she had been his link with Windbury. His week-ends with her -there had been the very comets of his dark London sky, and for years he -had seen Meadows inadequately tenanted, with an eye of brooding love. - -"Oh! they'll revert to purple, then," he said, somewhat distressed; and -he repeated "purple, purple," several times, as if to familiarize -himself with the sound and very sight of it, while Mrs. Pomfrey answered -him, "Give 'em time and they'll all revert. You must dig 'em up and sow -again from year to year if you want to keep 'em pure." - -"Not that I don't care very much for the purple ones," said Aubrey; -"they are most beautiful flowers, most beautiful; but it's wild in -woods, that I like best to see them. It will be a business to replant; -dear me! It took me a day of hard work to establish my white ones in -that haphazard-looking little colony down there." - -"Gardening is all hard work," said Mrs. Pomfrey, "and all -disappointment, for the most part, too. It's only the things you didn't -expect to succeed that ever do, and any effect you particularly count on -is pretty sure to fail you." She tempered her grimness by a slight, -bleak smile, however, for she and Aubrey Westmacott understood each -other and had the gardener's soul, for which no work is too hard and no -disappointments too many. - -"It will be very wonderful to have the intervals of pink to look forward -to, though," Aubrey found the atonement. "They are singularly lovely, -aren't they? Will you think me very silly, now, I wonder, or sillier -than you always think me?" - -"I don't think you silly, my dear Aubrey," Mrs. Pomfrey interposed, -"only guileless; you are very guileless; I've thought that ever since -you were taken in by that dreadful cook of yours, who had red hair, and -got drunk and rubbed the whitebait through a sieve." - -"Well," Aubrey continued, smiling his gentle, tentative smile, "my -foxgloves, at all events, can't take me in, and since they are so very -unusual and so lovely I thought I'd ask a few people in to-day to see -them. The Carews, you know, and Barton, and Mrs. and Miss Pickering. And -you--if you can come. I'll put it off till to-morrow, if that will -secure you, only the foxgloves may not be quite so lovely by then." - -"I will come with pleasure, my dear Aubrey," said Mrs. Pomfrey, "and -though nobody will appreciate your foxgloves as you do, we shall all -enjoy your tea." - -"Miss Pickering cares very much for flowers, you know, very much. We've -talked a great deal about flowers," said Aubrey, swinging his eyeglass -and nodding as he looked at his old friend. - -"Does she? She doesn't know much about 'em though." - -"No; all those years in India, and in towns. She has lived so much in -towns. Such an inappropriate life it seems for such an exquisite -creature." - -"Does it?" said Mrs. Pomfrey. She added after a moment, as if with -concession, "She is a very pretty girl." - -Aubrey Westmacott was not acute. "Isn't she?" he said eagerly. "A -beautiful and noble and lovely head, isn't it? like a flower; she is -altogether like a flower, with her slenderness and height. Do you know," -he went on, swinging his glasses more quickly, while he kept his -ingenuous eyes on his friend, "can you guess the flower she makes me -think of? In that pale pink dress, that pink dress she wore the other -day at the rectory garden party, and with that white hat lined with -pink. Can you guess?" His eyes overflowed with their suggestion. - -Mrs. Pomfrey moved hers from his face to the foxgloves. "Like those, I -suppose you mean." - -"_Isn't_ she?" he repeated. "Now, isn't it quite remarkable? You see it, -too." - -"Yes; I see it," said Mrs. Pomfrey. She studied the flowers and again, -after a deliberating pause, went on, "Do you think Mrs. Pickering is -like purple foxgloves?" - -Aubrey's eyeglass tumbled from his hand. He was astonished, almost -indignant. "Mrs. Pickering?" - -"She looks like her daughter," said Mrs. Pomfrey; "as much like her, -that is, as a purple foxglove looks like a pink one." - -"I can imagine nothing more unlike a flower than Mrs. Pickering," said -Aubrey, with gathered repudiation. - -"No; certainly; she's not at all like a flower. She's more like a -sparrow--something sharp and commonplace and civic. I only intended an -analogy, for she must have been a very pretty girl." - -"Nothing could be less sharp or commonplace or civic than Miss -Pickering." Aubrey was now deeply flushed. - -"Oh, of course not, my dear Aubrey; she is very unusual looking," Mrs. -Pomfrey again conceded. "And she is tall and her mother is short. Old -Colonel Pickering, too, was tall, I remember. I saw him once or twice -when they were living at Cheltenham the year before he died! a bleached, -dull, oppressed old man, a much better type than the wife; she ruled -him, I heard, with a rod of iron. One may be sure that she doesn't rule -Miss Leila. She is a young lady with a will of her own, unless I am much -mistaken in her." - -"A will of her own; yes, yes"--Aubrey eagerly, pathetically to Mrs. -Pomfrey's ear, gathered up the ambiguous fragments--"and great firmness -of will; great decision of character; and the serenity, you know, the -sweet dignity that go with it, that so often go with it. You have -noticed her serenity, her dignity. And she is very silent--a great -contrast to her mother. I often wonder what brought them here. It's very -fortunate for all of us; but Mrs. Pickering is, as you say, so civic, -yes, so commonplace, that I don't understand what she can find in this -quiet place to please her. She certainly doesn't care about her garden. -Those beds about The Cottage are very distressing; they distress Miss -Pickering." - -"It's quite clear to me why they came," said Mrs. Pomfrey. "They can't -afford London, and, I suppose, know nobody there if they could; and -there is more chance of a pretty girl like Miss Leila marrying well here -than there is in Cheltenham. She doesn't hunt, it's true; but the -hunting makes a difference, and there is a good deal going on in one -way and another. Mrs. Pickering hoped to capture Arthur Barton; she made -that very evident. But he has never looked at another woman since his -wife died, and never will, I imagine; at all events, he didn't look at -Miss Leila." - -Aubrey's eyes, dwelling on her, expressed reprobation and almost horror. -"She tried to marry her daughter to Barton! That lovely child and -Barton! What a terrible woman!" - -"Miss Pickering must be a good twenty-five, my dear Aubrey, and I was -married at eighteen. No; I don't like Mrs. Pickering, but I can see -nothing reprehensible in her determination to settle her daughter well -in life." - -"But Barton! He is fifty! He must be fifty! He must be older than I am; -yes, very considerably older than I am." - -"Well?" said Mrs. Pomfrey, and there was a mingled reluctance and -grimness in her smile, "and do you think of yourself as unmarriageable?" - -He ran his hand several times over his head and through his hair. He was -still flushed, but suddenly he became pale, swallowing quickly several -times. - -"Do you know--you have said something--you have made me think -something--put something before me. Yes; I must tell you, I must tell -you," he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and fixing his eyes -on the wall above Mrs. Pomfrey's head. "I love her; I love Miss -Pickering. You may think it absurd. I know I'm a dull old bachelor; -everything of that sort; but there it is. Ever since I saw her, a year -ago, when they first came. I never dreamed of anything else. A dull old -bachelor, nothing to offer, and twice her age. But I can't help -wondering--it's only a wonder--whether there might just be a chance for -me--if you don't think my age, and all that, makes it impossible. What I -mean," Aubrey finished, with a sort of quiet desperation, "is--could she -love me? It would have to be love with a girl like Miss Pickering. Am I -a man that a girl like that could love?" - -Tears now were in his eyes as he brought them back to Mrs. Pomfrey's, -and seated upon the sofa, the pink foxgloves in the Chinese bowl beside -her, she looked back at him very gravely. She was so grave that for some -moments she was silent. Then, before speaking, she took out her -spectacles and polished them and put them on. She saw him quite well -without them. It was as if in emphasis of the gravity of the moment. -And, in the first place, she did not answer his question. - -"How much have you seen, my dear Aubrey, of this young lady?" she -enquired. - -He said, faltering, that he had seen a good deal of Miss Pickering -during this spring and summer. Mrs. Pickering had been very kind, had -asked him there quite often for tennis; and Miss Pickering had been far -more kind, for she had played with him and he was a wretched player, -though he was so fond of the game. "And we've had one or two little -walks. She came with me to the woods this spring and helped me to dig -anemone roots. Oh! I don't pretend it's anything at all; it's only, I -know, her kindness; I never thought it anything else. But--if you really -don't think me absurd for dreaming of it--?" He faltered to a long -gazing question. - -Mrs. Pomfrey now rose. She stood looking away from him, then moved -towards the door. "My dear Aubrey," she said, "I think of you what -anybody who knows you must think--that the woman who wins your love is -one of the most fortunate of women. Whether you are the kind of man that -a girl like Miss Pickering could love, I cannot say. I've really seen -very little of her. All that I know of her is that she is very pretty -and has nice quiet manners. If she marries you, she is, as I say, the -most fortunate of women." - -Mrs. Pomfrey stepped out into the little square, flagged hall. He -accompanied her to the garden gate, following her speechless, while, -lifting up her skirts, displaying large, flat-heeled shoes, she stepped -down from terrace to terrace. She paused at the last. - -"Your Alpine phlox is doing very nicely. You'll find that by next year -it will have spread to a foot across," she said. He had put in the -Alpine phlox the autumn before under her supervision. She added at the -gate, "By that time there may be a Mrs. Westmacott at Meadows." - -Pale, almost tearful, he pressed her hand over the gate. "I can't say -how I thank you," he murmured. - -After a little while he was able to compose his thoughts and write his -notes. Thompson took them round, and before lunch he had his answers. -They could all come, except Mr. Barton, the dapper, fussy, kindly, -pepper-and-salt little squire, who lived in the beautiful big house just -over the nearest hill; he had gone up to London for the day. - -Aubrey very much enjoyed giving little tea-parties at Meadows. In London -he had not enjoyed them at all. He had given them when duty required -it, and he had sometimes been very extravagant and had taken a couple of -young girl cousins, up for the season, to a restaurant and a play. But -he had never enjoyed these occasions. He was shy and a poor talker, and -in London the demands upon one's personality were too heavy to make his -entertaining a success. The demands upon one's personality in the -country were so small and so easily satisfied; a garden talked for one -and entertained for one. All his neighbours, except Mrs. Pickering, -whose formal beds did not count, had gardens and were profoundly -interested in them. The mild, middle-aged Carews were authorities, and -to-day he remembered, with all the pressure of his new preoccupations, -that he must question them about that matter of mulching. - -At four-thirty he saw two parasols approaching along his box hedges--one -was black and one was rose-colour; his heart stood still when he saw it. -She would be wearing, then, the dress that made her look more than ever -like a pink foxglove. He went down the terraces to greet mother and -daughter at the gate. - -Mrs. Pickering was short and stout and blonde, her slightly rapacious -features--small aquiline nose, small smiling mouth, and small projecting -chin--embedded and muffled, as it were, in powdery expanses of cheek and -throat. She had an unsmiling, steel-blue eye, appraising, determined, -deliberate, under its level bar of dark eyebrow. She did not please -Aubrey. Her voice in especial, metallic yet glossy, as if with a careful -veneer, disturbed him. A gossiping lady of the neighbourhood had -informed him that Mrs. Pickering's origins were quite lacking in -distinction and that in her handsome girlhood she had stalked the -stupid Colonel--of a quite good family--and had brought him down, -resistless, at the first shot. These stories, for which he had not liked -his informant the more, seemed to hover in Mrs. Pickering's glance and -smile, and her voice to preserve the flavour of many strategies and -triumphs. But Aubrey did not look for long at Mrs. Pickering. She -rustled in, dressed in her fashionable black and white, a long chain of -steel and brilliants crossing her buttressed bosom, a crest of plumes, -black and white, waving upon her head. - -Miss Pickering followed her mother. Tall, very tall, and poised with a -lovely grace, she was, but for the arresting darkness of brows and -lashes, fair; with the infantile fairness, the wild-rose tints, that to -the ingenuous male will always seem to vouch for a spiritual -exquisiteness to match. And she, too, had small, aquiline features, and -her hair was as golden as the heart of a wild rose. She did not smile, -like her mother; she was a serene young lady, and silent, as loveliness -should be. - -"This sweet place!" said Mrs. Pickering. "How charmingly you are -improving it, Mr. Westmacott; it looks prettier every time I see it." - -"It will take years before it looks as I mean it to look," said Aubrey, -leading them up the terraces. "That's the joy of gardening, isn't it? It -gives one something to plan for one's whole future." He smiled with a -slight appealingness at Miss Pickering. "I am afraid I make myself -rather foolish sometimes; I talk so much about my garden." - -"I don't wonder that you do," said Mrs. Pickering; "it's quite a little -Paradise." - -In the drawing-room it was Mrs. Pickering who continued to talk. She -renewed her laments over the water-colours. "To think that these -beautiful old places should get into the hands of common middle-class -people!"--Aubrey had again to assure her that the people who had bought -his mother's old home were very nice indeed.--And Mrs. Pickering said -that she doted upon his room, "So old-world, so peaceful!" and -expatiated on the view of the terraced lawns and further meadows from -the window. She made no comment on his foxgloves, and it seemed like a -presage of happiness when Miss Pickering, from her chair, remarked, -looking up at them, "How lovely your pink foxgloves are!" - -"You think so? You like them? Yes, yes, are they not lovely?" He was -delighted with her commendation. - -"It's such a pretty idea, putting them with the grasses," said Miss -Pickering. "I do like lots of flowers in a room." - -He did not have an opportunity of speaking with her alone till after -tea. Then, when they had all gone into the garden--how it happened he -did not know, for he would not have dared arrange it--he found himself -walking down the path towards the copse with Miss Pickering, while -behind them, quite far already behind them, Mrs. Pickering paused and -exclaimed over the herbaceous border, Mr. Carew beside her. Mrs. Carew -and Mrs. Pomfrey had sat down under the trees near the house. - -"Would you like to see the pink foxgloves growing?" he asked her. "They -are very beautiful growing--more beautiful, I think you'll feel, than in -the house." - -"I'd love to see them," said Miss Pickering. - -They crossed the slip of meadow among the tall grasses and, "There," -said Aubrey, pointing, with a faint smile, "there they are!" - -"_How_ sweet!" said Miss Pickering, with her serene emphasis. They stood -to look. - -"Do you know," said Aubrey, wondering at himself, but he felt upborne, -"that I find they look like you--the pink ones." - -"Really?" She smiled now, turning her calm, blue eyes upon him. "That's -very flattering." - -"No, no; not flattering; not at all flattering," said Aubrey. "Not at -all, not at all," he repeated under his breath. He could say no more -just then. They walked on, his heart in a flutter. - -"Have you ever heard a willow-wren, Miss Pickering?" he asked suddenly. - -"A willow-wren? I don't think so. I don't know much about birds." - -"It is usually singing in the wood at this hour. Would you care to come -and see if we can hear it?" - -"I'd love to. I wish you'd teach me all about birds," said Miss -Pickering. - -His heart was thumping now. They entered the copse. It seemed to him, as -they passed them, that the foxgloves were tall angels set about Paradise -and welcoming him there. It was very still among the trees. Miss -Pickering walked lightly beside him. She, too, looked like an angel. -They reached a clearing, where an old fallen log lay, and here they sat -down. "We shall hear it, I think," said Aubrey, "if we sit here -quietly." - -Presently, in the stillness, the little bird began to sing its song, the -descending chromatic chain of liquid notes, melancholy and happy; the -song of his very soul, Aubrey felt, and that the bird said for him all -that he could not say as, with head bent, he sat listening, the beloved -presence beside him. She was part of the song; and in it, as they -listened together, their very hearts were mingling. They knew each -other, he felt sure, very well. - -"How sweet!" she murmured, and he nodded, not able to look at her. - -There was a silence, and then the bird sang again. He raises his eyes to -hers now, and they turned to him and smiled. Her hand lay on the rough -bark of the log, and his was near it. Was it her hand that responded to -the unconscious appeal of his, or had he dared? He held it. That was the -bewildering, the transcending fact. - -"Oh, Miss Pickering! Miss Leila--Leila," he stammered. "May I tell you? -May I ask you? Can you care for me?" - -Her eyes still smiled, if very gravely. "Do you really love me?" she -murmured. - -"Oh, Leila!" he repeated. The willow-wren still sang, but all the little -chains of sound seemed to be woven into a mist about him, trembling, -shining. He held her hand to his lips. He wished to kneel before her. -This was Paradise. - -"It's so very sudden," said Leila Pickering. "I never dreamed you cared -till just now." - -"Ever since I saw you first--ever since I saw your eyes. It has been -like the fragrance of my flowers at evening, like the moon rising on my -flowers. I did not dare to hope--you so young, so lovely;--life before -you." - -"I think we can be very happy together," said Leila Pickering. "I knew -you were a dear from the first moment I saw you, too." - -The willow-wren stopped singing now and flew away. In the distance, -then, he heard the liquid, dropping notes, and they sounded very sad. -His arm was around Leila Pickering, and she leaned her head on his -shoulder, so that in an ecstasy of wonder he felt the warm brightness of -her hair against his cheek. He had never heard her talk so much. She -told him that she had had such a dull, horrid life, so poor, knowing -such tiresome, second-rate people. And she did not get on at all well -with her mother. - -"Nobody has ever really understood me--till you came," she said, sitting -upright now beside him, the lovely colour in her cheeks delicately -heightened, her eyes shining while she talked. She confided in him. She -loved him. They were betrothed--this was the blissful, culminating -thought that seemed to go in waves of music through him as he gazed at -her. He had ceased to hear the willow-wren's melancholy little song. And -then he heard her say: - -"I don't want to live in the country, you know. You won't mind? Of -course I love it; but we can pay week-end visits, always;--you must know -such heaps of nice people; friends. And we'll travel too--I long to see -the world. India doesn't count. Only think, I've never been to Paris -except once--on a horrid, cheap trip, for a week. We never could afford -to do anything really amusing or buy any really nice things. My life has -been so frightfully dull, and I do want to stretch my wings and see lots -of people and entertain and go to plays, you know. I adore London. I'm -sure I shall be a good hostess." - -It was as if a sword had transfixed him. He seemed to hear a great bell -booming--a great London bell--Big Ben; he had always heard Big Ben from -his office in Whitehall, and there had been a jangle of bells in -Kensington, too, and a roar, a ceaseless roar. And he seemed to hear the -words "Dangerous, dangerous." He had been too happy. - -He kept his mild, kind eyes of a pastel blue upon her, and he told -himself, while he wrestled, transfixed, that she must not guess; but, as -if pressed from his anguish, he heard himself murmuring helplessly, -though the gentle, fixed smile held his lips, "You don't care for my -little place, then? You wouldn't care to go on living at Meadows? It's a -nice little place, Meadows--a nice little place; we could make it very -pretty, and we could have people here, as many as you wanted." - -Had a note of pleading, almost desperate, crept in unawares? He saw her -calm eyes harden slightly, fixed on him. And he saw, then, tears rise in -them. - -"Oh! it's so dull, so dull, down here!" she breathed. "It's a darling -little place, Meadows--of course, of course I love it. I wish we could -afford to keep it, just to run down to for a quiet week-end now and -then; but you couldn't, could you? And it's far too small for -entertaining, isn't it? And no one really smart cares to come and stay -with one if one has no shooting, nothing to offer. One can really _live_ -in London--I've always felt that. You do care more for me than you do -for Meadows?" she finished with a smile, half appealing and half -challenging. - -And looking into the blue eyes, blurred and enlarged, like a child's, -with their tears, he saw himself as mean and petty and selfish. He loved -her, and was it only as another flower to place among his flowers, -another treasure to place among his treasures, a possession of his own, -without end or purpose for itself? He loved her, and, unimaginably, she -loved him and would marry him. Love must know pain and sacrifice--"pain -and sacrifice"--he seemed to hear himself repeating. This was a young -life, with its rights to life, and it must stretch its wings. - -He smiled at her and raised her hand again to his lips, saying, "Of -course I care more for you than for Meadows, dear Leila. Of course we -will live where you choose." - -And very radiant now, rising and smiling down upon him, Leila Pickering -said, "You _are_ a dear. I'm sure it's best for us both; we'd get so -pokey here. I know we couldn't afford Mayfair--I wouldn't dream of that; -but I think a house in one of those little new streets near Cadogan -Square would be just right for us; don't you?" - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CARNATIONS - - -I - -RUPERT WILSON came into the studio where his wife, who had been out -sketching all the morning, was washing her paint-brushes, carefully -turning and rubbing them in a pot of turpentine. She wore her painting -apron, for Marian in the midst of her artistic avocations was always -neat and spotless; and, half turned from him as she was, she did not -look round as he entered. Rupert carried his stick, a rustic, ashen -stick of which he was very fond, and his Panama hat; he was going out -and Marian probably knew that he was going out, and where; this made it -more difficult to say in a sufficiently disengaged voice, "I'm just -going down to see Mrs. Dallas for a little while." - -"Oh! are you?" said Marian. She continued to stir her brushes, and -though her wish, also, very evidently was to appear disengaged and -indifferent, she was not able to carry it out, for she added, as if -irrepressibly, "You need hardly have taken the trouble to come and tell -me that." - -Rupert looked at her, and since she did not look at him, it was very -intently, as if to measure to the full the difference between this -Marian and the Marian he had known and believed in. It was hard to -realize that his wife should show a trivial and unworthy jealousy and -should strike him such a blow; for that it was a blow he knew from the -heat in his cheek and the quickening of his pulse; but, as he looked at -her, standing there turned from him, her blue apron girt about her, her -black hair bound so gracefully around her head, the realization -uppermost in his mind was that Marian, since the second baby had come, -had grown very stout and matronly. He seemed to see it to-day for the -first time, as if his awareness of it came to emphasize his sudden -consciousness of her spiritual deficiency. - -When he had met and fallen so very deeply in love with Marian, she had -been, if not slender, yet of a supple and shapely form, with just -roundness and softness enough to contrast delightfully with her rather -boyish head, her air, clear, fresh, frank, of efficiency and swiftness. -He had, of course, found her a great deal more than clear and fresh and -frank; but, entangled as he had been in that wretched love-affair with -Aime Pollard,--the pretty, untalented young actress who had so -shamefully misused him,--torn to pieces and sunken in quagmires as he -had been, these qualities in Marian had reached him first like a draught -of cold spring water, like dawn over valley hills. These were the -metaphors he had very soon used to her when she had applied her firm, -kind hands to the disentangling of his knots and her merry, steady mind -to tracing out for him the path of honourable retreat. He had found her -so wonderful and lovely and had fallen so much in love with her that his -ardour, aided by her quiet fidelity, had overborne all the opposition -of her people. Foolish, conventional people they were,--their opposition -based, it appeared, almost unimaginably to his generous young mind, on -the fact that Marian happened to have money and that he had none, except -what he might make by his books; and also, though it was nearly as -unimaginable, on the fact that a good many of these people were in the -peerage. Marian, a year before he had met her, had broken away from the -stereotyped routine of their country life and had come to London to -study painting; and it was that Marian of the past who had seemed to -share to the full all his idealisms. They had married within three -months of their meeting. - -From such a dawn, white, fresh, blissful, to this dull daylight! from -such a Marian to this narrow-minded matron! Marian still had beauty. Her -clear eyes were as blue, her wide, pale lips as sweet; but she was a -matron. Her neck had grown shorter, her chin heavier; the girlish grace -of glance and smile seemed muted, muffled by their setting; there was no -longer any poetry in her physique. And as Rupert stood looking at her -and seeing all this, his sense of grievance, though he was unaware of -this factor in it, grew deeper. - -A little while passed before he said,--and it was, he felt, with -dignity,--"I really don't know what you mean by that, Marian." - -She had now finished her brushes and had taken up her palette. She began -to scrape the edges as she answered,--and her voice was not schooled, it -was heavy with its irony and gloom,--"Don't you? I'm sorry." - -"I trust indeed that it doesn't mean that you are jealous of my -friendship for Mrs. Dallas?" - -"Friendship? Oh, no; I'm not jealous of any friendship." - -"Of my affection, then; of my love, if you like," said Rupert. "You know -perfectly well what I feel about all that--and I thought you felt it, -too. It's the very centre of my life, of my art; my books turn on it. -It's the thing I have most of all to say to the world. Love isn't a -measured, limited thing; its nature is to grow and give. My love for -Mrs. Dallas doesn't touch your and my relation; it enriches it rather." - -Marian scraped her palette and said nothing. He could see her cheek, the -cheek that ran too massively into her neck. Marian's skin was white and -fine; a faint colour now rose to it; a faint colour was, in Marian, a -deep blush. - -To see her blush like that gave him an odd sensation. It was as if the -blush were echoed in his heart; he felt it grow and melt softly, and -there drifted through his mind a thought of Mrs. Dallas and of her -magic. - -Through the studio window, draped with its summer creepers, he could see -the two perambulators moored in the shade of the lime tree on the lawn. -The babies were having their afternoon sleep. He was very fond of his -children; and to feel, now, mingling with the strange, yearning glow, -this pause of contemplative fondness, was to feel himself justified anew -and anew aggrieved. The glow of tenderness seemed to envelope the babies -as well as Mrs. Dallas. And it shut out Marian. - -What had she to complain of? Was he not a tender husband and a loving -father? Could she suspect his love for Mrs. Dallas--it was she herself -who had forced him to use that word--of grossness or vulgarity? It was -as high and as pure as his love for her. - -His love for Marian had evolved into the perambulators, and this -recognition, flitting unseasonably, vexed him with a sense of slight -confusion that made him feel more injured than before. It was true that, -theoretically, he held views so advanced as to justify, in true, -self-dedicating passion, all manifestations. Practice and theory in his -young life had been far apart; but the thought of passion, in connection -with Mrs. Dallas, had, as it were, been made visible by Marian's blush; -and, slightly swinging his hat, slightly knotting his brows as he looked -at the matronly Marian, he groped for some new formulation of his creed, -since it was evident that however much he might love Marian it was no -longer passion he felt for her. One must perhaps allow that passions -could not be contemporaneous; but he had always combated this shackling -view. - -He stood there, gazing, trying to think it out,--a tall young man, well -made yet slightly uncouth, with ruffled, heavy locks and large intent -eyes. Something of the look of a not quite purely bred Saint Bernard -puppy he had; confiding, young and foolish, with his knotted brow and -nose a little overlong. And as he found himself unable to think it out -and as Marian still stood silent, scraping, scraping away at the palette -in an exasperating fashion, he said,--and now in an openly aggrieved -voice,--"I thought you liked her yourself; I thought you quite loved -her. You seemed to." - -Now that he was losing his temper, Marian was regaining hers. Her voice -had all the advantage of quiet intentions as she answered, "I did like -her; I thought her very charming. I don't dislike her now. But I'm -sorry to see a woman of her age behaving with so little dignity." - -"A woman of her age! Dignity!" - -"She is at least forty-five." - -"I don't follow your meaning. Is a woman of forty-five cut off from -human relationships?" - -"From some, certainly; if she has any regard, as I say, for her dignity. -And a woman in Mrs. Dallas's position ought to be particularly careful." - -"Mrs. Dallas's position!" She really reduced him to disgusted -exclamations. - -"You know, Rupert, that there are all sorts of stories about her. You -know that Mrs. Trotter told us that her first husband divorced her on -account of Colonel Dallas.--Other stories, too." - -"Upon my word! You astonish me, Marian! You heard all these vile tales -when we first came here,--from people, too, who you'll observe, run to -Mrs. Dallas's dinner-parties whenever they have the chance,--and you -didn't seem to mind them much when you were going there almost every -day--and taking every one you knew to see her. What about your Aunt -Sophy--if you believed these stories?--An old dragon of conventionality -like your Aunt Sophy! You took her again and again, and arranged that -luncheon in London with her when you and Mrs. Dallas went up--so that -they should have another chance really to make friends. I remember you -used the expression, 'really make friends.' It's odd to hear you talking -of stories at this late hour." - -"I only talk of them because Mrs. Dallas has made me remember them. I am -quite as open-minded as you are about such things. I was just as ready -to think well of her--even if they were true. Why do you call them vile? -You wouldn't think it wrong for a woman to leave her husband if she -didn't love him, and to go with a man she did love. If Mrs. Dallas did -that, why is it vile to say so?--Aunt Sophy, as a matter of fact, said -it was a different story. And she was charmed with Mrs. Dallas, just as -I'd determined she should be, stories or no stories. I did all I could -for her, because I counted myself her friend and thought it a shame that -any one so charming should be handicapped in any way. But I didn't -imagine that a friend would try to take my husband from me." Marian -spoke with severe and deliberate calm. - -"I like that! I really do like that!" said Rupert, laughing bitterly. -"It's really funny to hear you talk as if Mrs. Dallas could owe you -anything! I wish she could hear you! I wish we could have her -dispassionate opinion of that hideous old bore of an Aunt Sophy. It was -obvious enough that she put up with her simply and solely through -friendship for you. Do all you could for her! A woman who has hordes of -friends--charming, finished, cosmopolitan people of the world! Why, my -dear girl, it's she, let me tell you, who has given you more chances -than you ever had in your life for meeting really interesting people! -They're not the sort you'd be likely to meet at your Aunt Sophy's, -certainly. They'd perish in her _milieu_!" - -"Mrs. Dallas doesn't perish in it," Marian coldly commented. "On the -contrary, I never saw her more alert. She didn't seem to find Aunt Sophy -in the least a bore. She was very much pleased indeed to lunch there and -she has looked her up every time she's gone to London since; moreover, -she's going to stay with her at Crofts this autumn. It doesn't look -like boredom." - -"I wish her joy of Crofts! She's a complete woman of the world, of -course, and she knows how to put up with all sorts and conditions of -bores. She's taken on Lady Sophy because she's your friend. It's -pitiful--it's unbelievable to see her so misjudged!--Take me from you! -I've never gone there but she's asked me why you didn't come. She still -sends you flowers pretty well every day. Those are hers, I see. I'm glad -that you've deigned to put them in water." - -The tall sheaf of carnations, white and rose and yellow, that stood in a -jug on a shelf in the studio must, evidently, have come from Mrs. -Dallas's garden. No other person grew such carnations. The garden at -Ashleigh Lodge, this pleasant country house that they had taken for the -six summer months, was not its strong point, and Mrs. Dallas had kept -them reinforced from her abundance. Rupert associated the carnations, -their soft and glowing colours, their formal grace and spicy sweetness, -with the whole growth of his devotion to Mrs. Dallas. He fixed his -indignant eyes on them now. - -"Of course I put them into water. I am going to arrange them and take -them into the drawing-room presently," said Marian with her hateful -calm. "But they give me no more pleasure. Nor does she. She is like -them. They are heartless flowers and she is a heartless woman. I see -quite plainly now what I didn't see before. She's that type,--the -smiling, calculating siren. She lives for admiration; she's herself only -when she has someone at her feet, and she's seen to it that you should -be,--though I'm bound to say that you haven't made it difficult for her. -It fits in with all the stories." - -Rupert, at this, turned away and went out. He thrust his hat firmly down -on his fair locks and swung his stick as he strode by the little -footpath through the woods. Bitter disappointment with Marian surged in -him, and hot anger, but above all an atoning tenderness that seemed -almost to break his heart in its longing to protect and justify the -woman so traduced by her. His head throbbed and drummed as he went. To -have it come to this! To have such hands laid on it--their love! their -silent, hidden love! That Mrs. Dallas returned his love he seemed to -see, with many other things, clearly, rapturously, if with trembling, -for the first time to-day. He saw it with Marian's unworthiness; -Marian's unworthiness had shown it to him; and now, exulting, he claimed -it. She loved him, veiling the depth in her vagueness, her aloofness, -her indulgent irony. His mind retraced, with yearning gratitude, the -steps of their relationship. No one had ever been to him what she was. -How she helped and lifted him! How juvenile and undiscriminating in -their happy acceptances were Marian's appreciations of his work beside -Mrs. Dallas's half-idle comments. He had read through to her, in -manuscript, all his last novel; and Marian had not seen it yet. He had -not wanted to read it to Marian; and she, besides, had been very busy -with her painting. - -Mrs. Dallas had listened to the novel almost every day, sitting in the -shade of her veranda, in her white dress, with the hands that, unless -she were gardening, seemed always exquisitely idle, yet that in their -idleness seemed to dream and smile;--he could see the white skin, the -delicate finger-tips, the pearls and rubies slipping down, and his heart -contracted with a pang and ecstasy as he saw himself holding her hand, -kissing it. He must kiss it, to-day, and he must tell her. For she -needed him; he was sure of it. She needed him terribly. If she lifted -him, yet how much, too, he could lift her, out of the lethargic shallows -and sullen quagmires of her life. - -She could not be happy with her husband. He felt himself shut his eyes -before the retrospect of what the disenchantments and disasters must be -that lay behind her. If she had taken great risks, with that heart of -highest courage he divined in her, if she had faced great sacrifices for -her present husband, what wonder that her loveliness was now clouded by -that irony and languor? She was not kind to Colonel Dallas; he could not -hide from himself that she was not kind to him; but, as he owned it, he -yearned over her with a deeper comprehension of tenderness, feeling his -rights the greater. How could she be kind to the selfish, complaining, -elegant old man?--for, to Rupert, Colonel Dallas's fifty-five years -seemed old. She never said anything actually sharp or disagreeable to -him--even when he was at his most fretful and tiresome; but when he was -least so she was not any the kinder, and by her glances, by the -inflections of her cool and indolent voice in answering him, she -displayed to the full, to others and to himself, did he take the pains -to see it, how dull and how tiresome she found him. No; she was like a -weary, naughty child in this; and seeing her as a child, with a child's -faults--and did it not prove how unblinded his love must be that he -should see it?--he felt himself fold her to his heart in a tenderness -more than a lover's; a paternal passion was in it; he had known that it -must be in true love; he had said so in one of his books. How his books -would grow from his knowledge of her! - - -II - -He had now passed through the woods and crossed the road and entered the -footpath that ran down to Woodlands, the small house encircled by birch -and fir woods where, for now some four or five years, the Dallases had -pitched their errant tent. One could reach it, also, by the road; but -Rupert always took this short cut that brought him out at a little gate -opening on the upper lawn. There was an upper and a lower lawn at -Woodlands; on the upper Colonel Dallas had a putting-green; the lower -was a tiny square surrounded by Mrs. Dallas's beds of carnations. -Rupert, when he emerged upon the putting-green, could look down past the -red-tiled roofs and the white rough-cast walls of the house at the -carnations, massed in their appointed colours--from deep to palest rose, -from fawn and citron to snowy white--among flagged paths. - -Mrs. Dallas had told him, in one of her infrequent moments of -communicativeness, that during years of wandering as a soldier's -wife--her first husband, also, had been a soldier--she had come to be -known as the woman who could make things grow anywhere. She had grown -flowers in sands and marshes. She had snatched it might be but the one -season of fulfilment from the most temporary of sojournings--in China, -in India, in Africa. Sometimes only bulbs would grow; sometimes only -roses; but what she tried for, always, and had never attained in more -perfection than at Woodlands, was carnations. They were her favourite -flower and they atoned to her here, she said, for living in a house that -made her always think of an ornamental bottle of some popular -dentifrice, so red and white, so fresh and spick and span, and with such -a well-advertised air, was Woodlands. Her carnations were the only -things of which he had ever heard her speak with feeling. Rupert, as he -looked down at them from the upper lawn and descended the stone steps, -felt his heart beating violently. - -A veranda ran along the front of Woodlands, and Mrs. Dallas was sitting -on it, just outside her drawing-room windows. The shaded depths of the -room behind her glimmered here and there with the half-drowned -brightness of crystal, porcelain, lacquer,--the things, none very good -but all rather charming, that she had picked up for a song in the course -of her wanderings; and she sat there, rather like a siren indeed, at the -mouth of her cavern, its treasures seeming to shine in the translucent -darkness behind her as if through water. Rupert, remembering and -accepting the simile, saw her as a siren, a creature of poetry and -romance, though he recognized that her poetry, like her romance, was -hidden from the ordinary observer. Even to his eyes she always appeared -first and foremost as a woman of extreme fashion, and his other -perceptions of her were tinged with the half-tormenting, half-delicious -pungency of this one, for Rupert had known till now no women of -fashion. He had passed his youth, until going to Oxford, in a -provincial town, where his father, an admirable and sagacious man, was a -hard-worked doctor; and his only glimpses of society had been in his -encounters, always displeasing to him, with Marian's tiresome and -conventional kinsfolk and the few haphazard contacts in London that came -in the way of a young writer. Mrs. Dallas might embody poetry and -romance, but she also embodied luxury and the exercised and competent -economy that made it possible. She might have to live in small, gimcrack -Woodlands and do without a motor; but she had her maid. The slices of -bacon at breakfast were carefully computed; but the coffee was of the -best and blackest. - -To-day, as always when he had seen her, she seemed ready for any -possible social emergency. She could have stepped from her veranda, with -those wonderfully cut little white shoes, into the smartest of -garden-parties, or have received in her shimmering cavern the unexpected -visit of a royal personage; and her soft white linen with its heavy -Italian embroideries clotted, like thick cream, about the hem and wrists -and breast, would have been as exquisitely appropriate as it was to this -empty afternoon of reverie. - -She was a small, very shapely woman, soft and curved and compact. Her -coiffure would have looked old-fashioned in its artifice and elegance, -and with its "royal fringe," were it not for its air of a rightness as -unquestionable as that of some foreign princess's, who kept and did not -follow fashions. Mrs. Dallas's face, too, was small and colourless and -slightly faded; her hair was of a lighter brown than her arched eyebrows -and her melancholy and dissatisfied eyes; her eyelids, tinged with a -dusky mauve, drooped heavily and made her always look a little sleepy; -the smiling line of her full-lipped yet minute mouth was ironic rather -than mirthful. To have called it a bewitching or an alluring face would -have been to imply a mobility it did not possess; but it was potent -through its very passivity; it was provocative through its profound and -slumbrous indifference. - -There was certainly no hint of allurement in the glance she turned on -Rupert Wilson as he came round the corner of the veranda; it was, -indeed, even to his rapt preoccupation, a little harder in its quiet -attentiveness than usual; yet she smiled at him, and her smile was -always sweet, holding out a languid hand in silence and leaving it to -him to say, "You expected me." - -It was hardly a question, and Mrs. Dallas gave it no answer. He had, -indeed, come to see her every day for many weeks now. But yesterday had -finished the novel, and to-day was almost the first they had had without -some definite programme of reading. - -Rupert sat down on the steps of the veranda at her feet and took off his -hat and looked out across the carnations; and since she said nothing, -he, too, was silent, and to his trembling young heart the silence was -full of new avowals. - -Colonel Dallas's smoking-room also opened on the veranda, and as they -sat there he came out. He was a tall, heavy man, with large pale cheeks -drooping on either side of a white moustache, and a gloomy eye that -could become fretful. He cast now a glance that was only gloomy at his -wife and her companion. - -"Beastly hot day," he said, to her rather than to Rupert. "It's worse in -the house than out, I think." - -"Are you going over to the Trotters' for tea and croquet?" his wife -inquired. - -"To the Trotters'? Why should I go to the Trotters'?" - -"They asked you, and you accepted." - -"Well, I certainly don't feel inclined to endure that broiling walk for -the sake of _les beaux yeux_ of Madame Trotter _et filles_. It's a dull -neighbourhood, this, but the Trotters are, perhaps, when all's done and -told, the dullest people in it." - -"You've always seemed to get on particularly well with them, I've -thought," said Mrs. Dallas, in the voice that when it seemed considerate -could contrive to be most disparaging. "It's a pity not to go. You need -a walk. You can't afford Carlsbad this year, you know." - -"I need hardly be reminded of that," said Colonel Dallas, and now it was -fretfully. "To run the risk of apoplexy on the road and to drink the -Trotters' foul Indian tea is hardly an equivalent. No; I shall practise -some putting shots, and perhaps, if it gets cooler towards evening, I'll -go over to the links. The Trotters can manage without me.--What time do -the Varleys arrive?" - -"At seven-thirty. There's no other train they could arrive by, as far as -I'm aware." - -The colonel looked at his watch, drew his hat down over his eyes, and -went slowly away round the corner of the house. - -His wife's eyes did not follow him, nor, it was evident, her thoughts. - -"It has been rather oppressive, hasn't it?" said Rupert, glancing up at -her. "You haven't been feeling it too much, I hope." - -"Not at all. I like it. I think it's only people who don't know how to -be quiet who mind the heat," said Mrs. Dallas. "This is the one time of -the year that one can sit out of doors in a thin dress, and I am very -grateful for it." Even about small things Mrs. Dallas always seemed to -have her mind quite made up. Her likes and dislikes, for all the -inertness of her demeanour, were clear and unshifting. She sometimes -made Rupert feel himself amorphous, vague, uncertain; and this feeling, -though blissful, had yet its sting of sadness and anxiety. - -"Well, some people aren't able to be quiet, are they?" he observed. "On -a day like this I always think of people in factories,--great, roaring, -clanking places with the sun gnawing at their iron roofs,--and the pale, -moist faces, the monotonously rapid hands." - -"Do you?" said Mrs. Dallas. She often said that, in that tone, when he -gave expression to some enthusiasm or sympathy. She did not make him -feel snubbed, but always, when she said, "Do you?" she made him feel -young again, a little bewildered and a little sad. He imagined, to -explain it in her, that people's thoughts did not interest her, her -woman's intuition probing below their thoughts to their personalities. -It was he, himself, with his heart full of devotion, that interested -Mrs. Dallas. Yet it was not of him that she next spoke. "How is Marian?" -she asked. "Is she painting to-day?" - -He was aware that his face altered and that his colour rose. He had to -steady something, in his glance and in his voice, the pressure of his -new consciousness was so great, as he answered, "Yes, she's been -painting all the morning." - -"I haven't seen her for some days now," Mrs. Dallas remarked. - -"No." The longing in him to confide in her, to pour out his grief and -his devotion, was so strong that for the moment he could find only the -simple negative. - -"I quite miss Marian," Mrs. Dallas added. - -He looked down at the little foot placed on a cushion beside him, and he -said, "You've always been so kind, so charming to Marian." He remembered -Marian's words with a deepened wrath and tenderness. - -"Have I? I'm glad you think so. It's been very easy," said Mrs. Dallas. - -A silence fell. - -"May I talk to you?" Rupert jerked out suddenly. "May I tell you things -I've been feeling? I have been feeling so much--about you--about -myself.--I long to tell you." - -"By all means tell me," said Mrs. Dallas with great placidity; and one -could see that she had often made the same sort of reply to the same -sort of appeal. - -"You know what you have been to me," said Rupert, turning on the step so -that he could look up at her. "You know how it's all grown--beautifully, -inevitably. No one has ever been to me what you are." - -Mrs. Dallas's sleepy eyes rested on him, and her delicate nostrils, -slightly dilating, might have been, though without excitement, inhaling -a familiar incense. - -"I do love you so much," said Rupert in a trembling voice, gazing at -her; "I do love you. You understand what I mean. You know me now and you -couldn't misunderstand. I want to serve you. I want to help you. I want -you to lean on me and trust me--to let me be everything to you that I -can." And as he spoke he stretched out his hand and laid it on her hands -folded in her lap. - -Mrs. Dallas let it lie there, and she looked back at him, not moved, -apparently, but a little grave. "No, I don't think I misunderstand your -feeling," she said after a moment. "Of course I've seen it plainly." - -"Yes, yes, I knew you did.--And that you accepted -it,--dearest--loveliest--best." He had drawn her hand to him now and he -pressed his lips upon it. And as he kissed Mrs. Dallas's hand, as that -imagined happiness was consummated, he felt his mind cloud suddenly, as -if in a cloud of fragrance, and, thought sinking away from him, he knew -only an aching sweetness, the white, warm hand against his lips, the -darkness of the glimmering room near by, and the scent of the -carnations, exhaling their spices in the hot sunshine. Closing his eyes, -he breathed quickly. And above him, a little paler, Mrs. Dallas, for a -moment, as if with the conscious acceptance of a familiar ritual, also -closed her eyes and breathed in, with the scent of her carnations, the -immortal fragrance of the youth and passion that, to her, could soon no -longer come. "Dear boy!" she murmured. - -They heard the step of Colonel Dallas descending from the upper lawn. -Rupert drew back sharply; Mrs. Dallas softly replaced her hand upon the -other in her lap. Her husband appeared, and he looked very fretful. - -"The sun is quite tropical. It's impossible to play in it. We don't get -a breath of air down in this hole." He took out his watch--Colonel -Dallas was always taking out his watch. "What time is tea?" he asked. - -"At five o'clock, as usual, I suppose," said his wife. - -"It's only just past four," said the colonel, with the bitterly resigned -air of one who loses a wager he had hardly hoped to win. "I shall go to -the Trotters'. It's better than being baked in this oven. Their lawn is -shaded at all events." He spoke as if there had been some attempt to -dissuade him from the alleviations of the Trotters' lawn. - -"I don't know why you didn't go half an hour ago," said his wife. -"You've so often discovered that the sun is tropical on the upper lawn -at this hour." And as the colonel moved off she added, "Just tell them -that I'll have lemon-squash instead of tea, will you?" - -It was a rather absurd little interlude; yet it had its point, its -appropriateness; it fitted in with those thoughts of succour, and Rupert -tried, now, to recover them, saying, after the gate had closed upon the -colonel and keeping still at his little distance, "Are you very -unhappy?" - -How he was to help Mrs. Dallas except by loving her and coming to see -her every day and being allowed to kiss her and hold her hand he did not -clearly know, but it seemed the moment for returning to those offers of -service. He did not attempt to regain her hand. Mingling with the -rapture, when the kiss and the scent of the carnations had blurred his -mind, there was also a sense of fear. He was different; and there was -more in his love than he had known. - -"Very unhappy? Not more than most people, I suppose. Why?" Mrs. Dallas -asked. Her tone was changed. Her moment of diffusion, of languor and -acceptance, was gone by. - -"Why?" Rupert felt the change and the question hurt him. "When that's -your life?--This?" - -"By that, do you mean my husband?" Mrs. Dallas inquired kindly. "He's -not my life. As for this--if you mean my situation and occupation--having -love made to me by a pleasant young man while I smell carnations, I can -assure you that there's nothing I enjoy much more." - -She did more than hurt him now; she astonished him. "Don't!" he -breathed. It was as if something beautiful were being taken from him. -Instinctively he stretched out his hand for hers and again she gave it; -but now she looked clearly at him, a touch of malice in her smile, -though her smile was always sweet. - -"Don't what?" - -"Don't pretend to be hard--flippant. Don't hide from me. Give yourself -to the real beauty that we have found." - -"I have just said that I enjoy it." - -"Enjoy is not the word," said Rupert, in a low voice, looking down at -the hand in his. "It's an initiation. A dedication." - -"A dedication? To what?" Mrs. Dallas asked, and even more kindly; yet -her kindness made her more removed. - -Her words seemed to strike with soft yet bruising blows upon his heart. -"To life. To love," he answered. - -"And what about Marian?" Mrs. Dallas inquired. And now, still gently, -she withdrew her hand and leaned her cheek on it as, her elbow on the -cushions of her chair, she bent her indolent but attentive gaze upon -him. "I should have thought that dedication lay in that direction." - -His forehead was hot and his eyes, hurt, bewildered, indignant, -challenged hers yet supplicated, too. "Please don't let me think that -I'm to hear mean conventionalities from you--as I have from Marian. You -know," he said, and his voice slightly shook, "that dedication isn't a -limiting, limited thing. You've read my books and cared for them, and -understood them,--better, you made me feel, that I did myself,--so that -you mustn't pretend to forget. Love doesn't shut out. It widens." - -"Does it?" said Mrs. Dallas. "And what," she added, "were the mean -conventionalities you heard from Marian? I've been wondering about -Marian." - -"She is jealous," said Rupert shortly, looking away. "I could hardly -believe it, but she made it too plain. It seemed to take the -foundation-stones of our life away to hear her. It made all our past, -all the things I believed we shared, seem illusory. It made me feel that -the Marian I'd loved and trusted was a stranger." - -Mrs. Dallas contemplated his averted face, and as she heard him her -glance altered. It withdrew itself; it veiled itself; it became at once -less kind and more indolent. "And you really don't think Marian has -anything to complain of?" she inquired presently. - -"No, I do not," said Rupert. "Nothing is taken from her." - -"Isn't it? And if I became your mistress, would you still think she had -nothing to complain of?" Mrs. Dallas asked the question in a tone of -detached and impartial inquiry. - -How far apart in the young man's experience were theory and practice was -manifested by the hot blush that sprang to his brow, the quick stare in -which an acute eye might have read an ingenuous and provincial dismay. -"My mistress?" he stammered. "You know that such a thought never entered -my head." - -"Hasn't it? Why not?" - -"You know I only asked to serve--to help--to care for you." - -"You would think it wrong, then, to be unfaithful, technically, to your -wife?" - -"Wrong?" His brow showed the Saint-Bernard-puppy knot of perplexity. -"It's not a question of wrong. Wrongness lies only in the sort of love. -Real love is sacred in all its expressions of itself; my ideal of love, -just because it includes that one, can do without it." - -"But, on your theory, why should it do without it?" Mrs. Dallas, all -mildness, inquired. - -His mind was driven back to those questionings in the studio, when he -had thought of the incongruous yet allied themes of passion and -perambulators, and groped again, angrily, in the same obscurity. -"It's--it's--a matter of convenience," he found, frowning; "it--it -wouldn't work in with other beautiful things. It wouldn't be -convenient." - -"I'm glad to hear you find such a reasonable objection," said Mrs. -Dallas. "There could hardly be a better one. It wouldn't be at all -convenient. Though, I gather, if it could be made convenient, you still -think that Marian would have nothing to complain of." - -"I don't know why you are trying to pin me down like this." Rupert, -stooping, gathered some flakes of stone from the path and scattered them -with a sharp gesture that expressed his exasperation. "You know what I -believe. Love is free, free as air and sunshine. How can one stop one's -self from loving? Why should one? And if our love, yours and mine, could -mean that complete relation, then, yes, the ideal thing, the really -ideal thing, would be for Marian to feel it right and beautiful and to -be glad that there should be two perfected and complete relations -instead of one. As it is, that inclusive vision isn't asked of her." - -"She's not, in fact, to be asked to be a Mormon," Mrs. Dallas remarked. -"All that she has to put up with is that her husband should be in love, -platonically, with another woman, and should have ceased to be in love -with her. It's hard, you know, when some one has been in love with you, -to give it up." - -"But I have not ceased to love Marian!" Rupert cried. "Why should you -suppose it? My love for you doesn't shut out my love for her. It's a -vulgar old remnant of sexual savagery to think it does. A mother doesn't -love one child the less for loving another. Why can't people purify and -widen their minds by looking at the truth?--That jeer about Mormons is -unworthy of you. Marriage is a prison unless husband and wife are both -free to go on giving and growing. What does love mean but growth?" - -Mrs. Dallas's eyes had drifted away to her beds of carnations and they -now rested on them for a little while. Rupert took up his hat and fanned -himself. He was hot, and very miserable. - -"It always strikes me, when I hear talk like yours," said Mrs. Dallas -presently, "that it is so much less generous and noble than it imagines -itself to be. It's the man, only, who frames the new code and the man, -only, who is to enlarge himself and run two or three loves abreast." - -"Not at all. Marian is precisely as free as I am to love somebody else -as well as me." - -"As free? Oh no," said Mrs. Dallas, laughing softly. "Theoretically, -perhaps, but not actually. Nature has seen to that. When women have -babies and lose their figures it's most unlikely that they'll ever be -given an opportunity to exercise their freedom. That fact in itself -should make you reconsider your ideas about love. Own frankly that they -apply only to men and don't pretend to generosity. The only free women -are the _femmes galantes_; and you'll observe that they are seldom -burdened with a nursery, and that they never grow fat." - -She touched, with an accuracy malignant in its clairvoyance, his -subconscious awareness of Marian's physical alteration. Something in him -shrank away from her in fear and indignation. She was trying to make him -see things from a false and petty standpoint, the standpoint of a woman -of the world, a mere woman of the world--that world of shameful -tolerances and cruel stupidities. "I don't know anything about _femmes -galantes_," he said, "nor do I wish to. You misunderstand me if you -think that by love I mean sensuality." - -With slightly lifted brows she looked out at the carnations; and had she -been angry with him he could have felt less angry with her. He was, -indeed, very angry with her when she remarked, tranquilly, "I don't -think you know what you mean by love." - -"I mean by love what Shelley meant by it," Rupert declared. - - "True love in this differs from gold and clay, - That to divide is not to take away. - Love is like understanding that grows bright - Gazing on many truths. - -"I mean what all the true, great hearts of the world have meant by -it,--poetry, rapture, religion; and they can only be sustained, renewed, -created, by emotion, by passion, by sexual passion--if you like to call -it by a name you imagine to be derogatory." He felt himself warmed and -sustained against the menace that emanated from her by the sound of his -own familiar eloquence. - -But Mrs. Dallas still tranquilly contemplated the carnations. - -"That's the man's point of view. The view of the artist, the creator. -Perhaps there's truth in it. Perhaps he can't write his poems and paint -his pictures without taking intoxicants. But it will never be the view -of the woman. Mary Shelley will never really like it when Shelley makes -love to Jane Clairmont; Marian will never like it when you make love to -me. They'll try to believe it's the ideal, to please him, when they are -the ones he is in love with; but when he is in love with other women -they won't go on believing." - -"That is their fault, their littleness, then. The wide, glorious outlook -is theirs, too, if they choose to open their eyes. I don't accept your -antithesis for women,--humdrum respectability, roast mutton, milk -pudding, or dissipation. I don't believe that when a woman marries and -becomes a mother she must turn her back on love." - -Mrs. Dallas at this began to laugh, unkindly. "Turn her back on love? No -indeed. Why should she? Hasn't she her husband and children, to say -nothing of her friends, her father and mother, her sisters and brothers? -You idealists seem always to forget these means of expansion. By love -you mean simply and solely the intoxicant. Call it poetry and religion, -if you like, but don't expect other people, who merely see that you are -intoxicated, to call it that." - -He sat, trying to think. Idly, half absently, with languid fingers, she -seemed to be breaking his idols as though they had been silly little -earthenware figures, not good enough--here was the stab, the -bewilderment--for her drawing-room. And who was she to do it, this -remote, mysterious creature, steeped in the perfume of her passionate -past? He felt as he gazed at her that it was not only himself he must -defend against her. - -"It's curious to me to hear you talk in this way." He armed himself, as -he spoke, with all that he could muster of wisdom and of weight. "You -are the last woman I'd have expected to hear it from. You've made me -your friend, so that I'd have a right to be frank, even if you hadn't -let me love you. What right have you to turn your back on all the -beauty and romance of life--to smile at them and mock them? You haven't -allowed yourself to be bandaged and crippled by convention, I'm sure of -it. You have followed your heart--bravely, truly--out into life. You -have loved--and loved--and loved--I know it. It breathes from you. It's -all you've lived for." - -"And you think the result so satisfactory?" said Mrs. Dallas. She looked -at him now, and if it was with irony it was with sadness. She turned -from her question. "Well, if you like, I am one of the _femmes -galantes_; they are of many types, you know; I wasn't thinking, when I -shocked you so, of the obvious, gross type. I was thinking of the woman -who corresponds to you--the idealist, the spiritual _femme galante_. -And, I'm convinced of it, for a woman, it doesn't work. A man, if he is -a big man, or has a big life,--it isn't always the same thing by the -way,--may have his succession of passions, or, as you'd claim,--and I -don't believe it,--his contemporaneities; he has a context to frame them -in; they may fall into place. But a woman's life can't be calculated in -those terms of dimension. It is big enough for the emotion that leads to -marriage and to the loves that grow from that, the loves you think so -little of. It is an emotion that can't be repeated over and over again, -simply because, in a normal life, it has grown into something else, -something even better, I should say: a form of poetry and rapture and -religion quite compatible with roast mutton and respectability. But the -women who miss the normal life and who try to live on the emotions, -they--well, I can only say that to my mind they always come to look -silly. Silly is the only word for them." - -He stared at her. "You don't look silly." - -"Why should I?" Mrs. Dallas asked. "I'm not of the idealist type. I -don't confuse intoxication with religion and think I have the one when -I've only the other. I may have missed the real thing, but I've not -repeated the emotion that ought to lead to it. You are quite mistaken in -imagining that I've loved and loved and loved. I haven't. I have allowed -other people to love me. That, as you'll own, is a very different -matter. I am hard and cold and disillusioned. I am not soft and yearning -and frustrated. Why should I look silly?" - -He stared at her, and his heart was flooded with pain. What was she, -then? What was her feeling for him? What had she meant? As she spoke and -as he looked at her, the veil of romance dissolved from about her and he -saw her for the first time with her own eyes,--devoid of poetry, a hard, -cold, faded, worldly woman. Yet she was still a Sphinx, strange and -alluring, and still he struggled against her, for her, saying hotly, -though his heart was chilled, "If it's true, you've hurt -yourself--you've hurt yourself horribly, through fear of looking silly." - -"No, I've not hurt myself," said Mrs. Dallas. "I've been hurt, perhaps; -but I've not allowed my hurts to repeat themselves too often. Some -things in life should be unique and final. The people who don't keep -them so become shoddy. Marian, for instance, is neither hard nor cold, -nor shoddy either. You have made one of the mistakes that idealists are -always making in imagining that she was humdrum respectability and that -I was poetry and rapture and religion.--Oh, it's no good protesting. If -I had a double chin and thin hair you'd never have wanted to help my -soul, however unhappy I was. And if Marian had sat about in carefully -chosen clothes and looked mysterious and not let you feel sure that she -cared about you, you would probably have remained in love with her. So -please own that you have been mistaken and that on the one side is love, -the love that Marian feels for you, although she knows you; because she -knows you; and on the other is illusion, intoxication, sensuality; yes, -my dear Rupert, such as you felt when I let you kiss my hand a little -while ago." - -He sat, sullen, even sulky, half turned from her, and again he stooped -and gathered up the flakes of stone and tossed them away down the path. - -The clink and chink of ice and glass was heard approaching through the -drawing-room, and the maid stepped out bearing the tray, which she set -down on a wicker table before her mistress. The tall crystal jug, veiled -in frosty rime, showed tones of jade and chalcedony, and fillets of -lemon peel threaded it like pale, bright enamel. This gem-like beaker, -the plate of golden cakes, with the scent of the carnations, with Mrs. -Dallas's little foot on its cushion, with her rings of pearl and ruby, -had all been part of the magic she had meant to him. The very sound of -the ice, dully yet resonantly chinking, brought a suffocating sense of -nostalgia. It was over, all over. He was disenchanted. She was cruel to -him, to him who had loved her. She had cut into him and killed bright, -ingenuous, trustful things. And, in a placid voice, she asked him if he -would have some cake, and filled his glass. - -He took it from her and drank it off in silence. The icy, aromatic -liquid seemed an antidote to that other intoxicant she had mocked. Irony -flowed through his veins; a bitter-sweet sense of vengeful maturity. -When he set down the glass, he looked up at her, and he felt himself -measuring his sword against the stiletto of an adversary. - -"Well, I've had my lesson," he said. "I've been a generous but deluded -idealist, it seems, in imagining that men and women are equals in their -claims on life. Since I'm an artist, I have a right to my raptures, I -take it. And poor Marian must be jealous with reason. Well, well; it's -an odd morality to hear preached." - -Mrs. Dallas still sipped her lemonade and she quietly considered him. -She said nothing, and even after she had finished and set down her glass -she sat for still a little while in silence. - -"I'm sorry I've seemed to preach," she then remarked, "and I certainly -think that Marian has every reason to be jealous. What more did I say? -That a man isn't as ridiculous and undignified as a woman when he falls -in and out of love-affairs on the condition that he has a big life? That -was it, wasn't it?" - -"That was it, and I'm glad to have your assurance that I am in no danger -of being ridiculous or undignified." - -"Do you mean," said Mrs. Dallas, looking at him, "that you think yours -such a big life?" - -It had been, before, his heart, its tenderness, its devotion and -dedication, that she had cut into; it was into something deeper now, -something more substantially and vitally at the centre of his life, -something of which his heart and all its ardours were but tributaries. -He was to learn that self-love could bleed with a fiercer, darker gush. -The blood, as if foretelling his ordeal, sprang to his forehead as he -looked back at her. - -"I have my art," he said, and he disdained any pretended humility; he -spoke with pride and even with solemnity. "I live for my art. I don't -think that I am an insignificant man." - -"Don't you?" said Mrs. Dallas. It was with an unaffected curiosity that -her eyes rested on him, and it sank into him, drop by drop, like poison. -"Not insignificant, perhaps," she took up after a moment. "That's not -quite the word, perhaps. You are very intelligent and appreciative and -good-hearted. I don't suppose one can be quite insignificant if one is -that. But--do you call it art, your writing? I wonder. Oh, you are quite -right to live for it, of course, just as other men do for stock-broking -or fox-hunting or print-collecting, or anything else that employs their -energies or satisfies their tastes or brings in money; but, to count as -art, a man's activities must mean more than just his own satisfaction in -them, mustn't they? You write careful, intelligent, sentimental little -books; but I can't feel that the world would be any the poorer if you -were to take to stock-broking or fox-hunting instead. No, it doesn't -seem to me, my dear Rupert, that your life is nearly large enough for a -succession of love-affairs. It's all right when one is young and looking -for a mate; experiments are in order then; but you've found your mate, -and you'll soon be not so very young, and if on the strength of your art -you imagine yourself entitled to unseasonable intoxications, you'll -become, in time, an emotional dram-drinker, one of those foolish old -inebriates we are all familiar with, and you'll spoil yourself for what -you were meant to be and can be,--a devoted husband and an excellent -_pre de famille_." - -Stretched on his rack, broken, bleeding, Rupert stared at her. Who was -this woman, this cruel, ambiguous woman who watched his agony with -deliberating, drowsy eyes? There came into his mind the memory of a -picture seen in childhood, some sentimental print that had strongly -impressed his boyish sensibilities. A corner of a Roman amphitheatre, a -rising tier of seats; sham architecture, sham Romans, no doubt, and a -poor piece of claptrap, looked back on from his maturity; but the face -of the Roman woman, leaning so quietly forward under its gold tiara, to -watch, unmoved, the tormented combatants below, was it not like this -face? Yes, she was of that stony-hearted breed, unaltered by the -centuries. - -The torment of his humiliation snatched at anger for a veil. He said, -smiling, "You have been very successful till now in concealing your real -opinion of me." - -"Have I concealed it?" - -"My work certainly seemed to be of absorbing interest to you." - -"I listened to it; yes." - -"I didn't imagine you'd stoop to feign interest. I didn't imagine you'd -take such pains to allure and flatter a commonplace young _pre de -famille_." - -"Did I take pains to allure and flatter him?" - -"From the first!--From the very first!--That day we met!--My God!" Even -now he could not help feeling himself, seeing himself, as one of his own -heroes; and, for a moment, he bent his head upon his hands--as they -would have done had a calamity as unimaginable as this befallen them. -"That first day!--The apple-blossoms framing you! You stood under your -white parasol in our orchard--and you smiled at me!" - -"I generally do at agreeable-looking young men when I see that they -admire me," Mrs. Dallas commented. - -"Oh, don't pretend!--Don't hide and shift!" He lifted fierce eyes; "It -wasn't only that. You seemed to care. You seemed to need me. You made it -easy--inevitable. You came--and came; and you asked me here again and -again." - -"Not 'me,'--'us,'" Mrs. Dallas amended suavely. She was looking at him, -all this time, with that thoughtful, poisonous curiosity; and as he now -sat, finding for the moment no words, his fury baffled by her quiet -checkmating, she went on, "And afterwards I let you come alone because I -saw that you admired me, and that is always pleasant to me. When, at -first, as you say, I showed myself so affable, it was because I liked -Marian. I do still like her; more than I ever liked you, my dear Rupert; -if you are good-hearted and intelligent, she is more so, and she has -more sense of humour than you have, and doesn't take herself so -seriously. And, to be quite frank, since we are talking it all out like -this, I not only liked Marian, but saw that she could be of use to me. -I've had, in some ways, a tiresome, tangled life, and things haven't -always gone as I wanted them to go, so that I don't let opportunities -for strengthening and straightening here and there pass me by. Through -Marian I met several people I wanted to meet and make sure of. People -useful to me. I think Marian quite understood and quite wanted to help. -She would. She is of my world in a sense you aren't, you know, my dear -Rupert. And, in my idle way, I did take a good deal of trouble to be -agreeable to her. It all turned out exceedingly well and I was very -grateful to Marian. That's one reason, you see, why I felt to-day that -our little flirtation was going too far and must be put a stop to. I -don't want Marian to be jealous of me; it would be distinctly -inconvenient. But there is more in it than that. I wouldn't have put -myself to this bother and talked things out like this if it hadn't been -because of my liking for Marian. It makes me angry to see that you don't -know how lucky you are to have such a wife. I want you to see how very -lucky you are. I want you to see yourself as others see you,--a very -unimportant young man, without position and without money, married to a -quite unusually delightful girl who has both. This isn't the young man's -fault, of course; one wouldn't like him the less for it; but one does -expect him to be aware of his own felicity. One does expect him to feel -that, at present, his wife is too good for him. I don't mean in the -conventional sense; one wouldn't ask him to recognize that; but in the -sense of worth and charm and distinction, for those are the things he -supposes himself to care for." - -She had, while she spoke of the "young man" thus impartially, turned her -eyes from him, and they rested again on the beds of carnations. The sun -had sunk behind the hill, and though the bright soft colours were -unshadowed, they all lay in a different light and seemed to glow coolly -in their own radiance, like jewels. - -Rupert rose. His anger had passed from him. He no longer felt Mrs. -Dallas to be an antagonist; but he felt her to be a stranger; and he -felt himself to be a stranger. A sense of fear and loneliness and -disembodiment had fallen upon him while he listened to her. He held out -his hand to her. "Good-bye," he said. "I think I must be going." - -She took his hand and looked up at him with the gaze so remote, so -irrevocable. "Good-bye," she said; "I hope to see you and Marian some -day soon, perhaps." - -The words, with their quiet relapse on convention, made him feel himself -in a new world. He had been thinking of final, fatal things, things dark -and trenchant; she showed him compromise, continuity, commonplace good -sense; and, dispossessed, bereft as he was, something in him struggled -to place itself beside her in this alien atmosphere, to make itself a -denizen of the new since he had forever lost the old world. - -"Oh yes, I'll tell her," he said. And as he released her hand he found, -"Thank you. I'm sure you meant it all most kindly." - -"It's very nice of you to say so," said Mrs. Dallas, smiling. - -It was the world of convention; yet with all his bewildered groping for -clues and footholds, he felt, dimly, as a glimmer before his eyes or a -frail thread in his hands, that the smile was perhaps the most sincerely -sweet that he had ever had from Mrs. Dallas. It was as if she saw his -struggle and commended it. - - -III - -He walked away, up the steps, across the putting-green and out into the -woods. He went slowly as he began the gradual ascent. He felt very -tired, as though he had been beaten with rods, and there was in him a -curious mingling of confusion and lucidity, of pain and contemplation. -The present and the future were curtained with shame, uncertainty, and -dismay; but the past was vivid, and, like a singular, outgrown husk, he -seemed to look back at that Rupert on the veranda, so blind, so bland, -so fatuous, and to see him as Mrs. Dallas had seen him. - -Beyond the curtain was Marian. He knew that he went towards Marian as if -towards safety and succour; yet all was opaque before his eyes, for who -was it that Marian was to succour but that fatuous Rupert? and was it -for such as he that he could seek support? How could he go to Marian and -say, "I have been given eyes to see you as you are; help me, now, to be -blind again to what I am." No; he could not, if he were to follow his -glimmer and hold his thread, seek succour from Marian. - -When he reached the house he went into the drawing-room and found her -sitting there in a cool dress, a book upon her knee. She did not see him -as he entered quietly and he stood for some moments in the doorway -looking at her. - -She had been crying; her cheeks were white and her eyelids heavy; but -though this perception came to him with a blow of feeling, it did not, -for the moment, move him from his contemplation of her, with all that it -brought of new and strange to the familiar. - -She was strange, though she was not a stranger, as he had become to -himself. He noted the black curves of her hair, the ample line of her -bosom, the gentle, white maternal hand laid along the book. On a -cabinet, above her head, he saw that she had very beautifully arranged -the white, rose and yellow carnations. It was like her to do this -justice to her rival's gift; like her to place them there not only -faithfully but beautifully. And as she sat, unaware of him, in the -luminous evening air, he felt her to be full of enchantment and this -enchantment to centre in the hand laid along the book. His eyes fixed -themselves on the hand. It seemed a symbol of the Marian of grace and -girlhood whom he had loved with such ardent presage of eternal faith, -and of this Marian sitting quietly in her saddened and accepted life, -not changed except in so far as she was yet more worthy of fidelity. He -saw that she had passed through her ordeal and transcended it; he saw -that she would never again show him jealousy; and he saw that as the old -Marian he had, perhaps, forever lost her. A lover must always show -jealousy. This was a wife, maternal and aloof. - -He came into the room and she looked round at him. Her eyes, altered by -weeping, were mild and alien. They were without hostility, without -accusation; deliberating, gentle; the eyes of a wife. "Did you have a -nice afternoon?" she asked laying down her book. "It's been delicious, -hasn't it?" - -Quite as irrevocably as Mrs. Dallas she made the world that he must -enter. She, too, in her different way, a way founded on acceptance -rather than rejection, showed him compromise and continuity. And nothing -that Mrs. Dallas had said to him cut into him so horribly as to see -Marian show him this new world. - -An impulse came to fall on his knees beside her, bury his head in her -lap, and pour out all his griefs. But already, and for Marian's sake, -now, he had learned a better wisdom. To fall and weep and confess would -be, again, to act like one of his own heroes; and Marian, in her heart, -knew all that there was to know of that old Rupert. He must make her now -know, and make himself know, a new Rupert. - -He sat down opposite her and, smiling a little, he said, "Mrs. Dallas -has done with me." - -"Done with you!" Marian repeated. Her faint colour rose. - -"Quite," said Rupert, nodding; "in any way I'd thought she had me." - -"Do you mean," said Marian, after a moment, "that she's been horrid to -you?" - -"Not in the least, though it felt horrid. She merely let me see that I'd -been mistaken." - -"Mistaken? In what way?" - -"In almost every way. In my ideas about myself, and about life, and -about her.--It wasn't, for one thing, me she liked in particular, at -all. It was you." - -Marian's flush had deepened. "She seemed to like you very much indeed." - -"Only frivolously; not seriously. She showed me to-day how silly I'd -been to think it anything but frivolous. She made me see that I'd been a -serious ass." - -Marian sat looking at him. She was startled, and on his -behalf--wonderful maternal instinct!--she was angry; yet--he saw it all -in the sweet, subtle alteration of her face--she was happy, half -incredulously yet marvelously happy. And as he saw her happiness, tears -came to Rupert's eyes and he felt himself, deeply and inarticulately, -blessing Mrs. Dallas. She had been right. This was something "even -better." - -"She's an exceedingly clever woman," he said, smiling at Marian, though -she must see the tears. "And an exceedingly first-rate woman, too. And -I'll always be grateful to her. The question is,"--he got up and came -and stood over his wife,--"I've been such an ass, darling. Can you -forgive me?" - -He had found her hand as he questioned her and he held it now up to his -cheek closing his eyes, how differently! - - -IV - -Mrs. Dallas, after her young friend had left her, sat on for quite a -long while on the veranda. The concentration of her recent enterprise -effaced itself from her eyes and lips. Her glance, steeping itself again -in indolent and melancholy retrospects, fell into a reverie. Once or -twice, putting up a languid hand, she yawned. - -When the whole garden lay in coolness, she went in and got her gardening -apron and gloves and basket of implements. It was an ideal moment for -layering her carnations. Tripping out again on her little high-heeled -shoes, she placed her kneeling-mat before a splendid plant and set to -work. She scorned complicated aids. A box of long hairpins were her -chief allies, and a sharp knife. Deftly she selected a blue-gray shoot -and stripped the narrow leaves, sharply cut a transverse slit into the -tender stalk, firmly bent and pinned the half-severed spray into the -heaped earth where it was to make new roots and establish itself in a -new life. And, as she did so, her mind reverting to thoughts of Rupert -and of her rough usage of him, a simile came to her that made her smile, -her hard and not unkindly smile. She did not regret it, though -unquestionably she had had her own moment of reluctance and of loss. It -had hurt him terribly, no doubt, as, if they had feeling, it must now -hurt her carnations to be cut and bent and pinned. But "It might be the -making of him," Mrs. Dallas thought. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -STAKING A LARKSPUR - - -AS a matter of fact (one has often to take one's stand on fact when -thinking about Vera), it's I who am the gardener; it's I, that is to -say, who draw the plans and compute the cost and give the orders and see -that the men carry them out. I often lend a hand at carrying them out, -too, for I love planting seedlings and staking plants and tweaking out -weeds here and there when I've the chance. That wonderful blue border -Vera had on the south terrace last summer,--it was just going over when -the war broke out,--I put in all the new blue larkspurs myself, three -hundred of them,--the larkspurs that Mrs. Thornton was to remind me -of,--and I designed and planted and with my own hands helped to lay out -the dream-garden, Vera's special garden. It was she, certainly, who had -had the idea, standing on the site of the little, old, abandoned sunken -garden in its circle of stone wall and cypresses, and saying, "I see a -dream-garden here, Judith; a place where one can come and sit alone and -dream dreams." She often has charming ideas, Vera, but she knows nothing -about gardening. I sound already as if I were crabbing her, I know; and -perhaps I am. Certainly I never think of her relation to her garden -without a touch of irony, and this story, which begins in the -dream-garden, isn't to her advantage. It was there that I felt my first -definite irascibility in regard to Vera and little Mrs. Thornton, and -felt the impulse, as far as I was able, to take Mrs. Thornton under my -wing. - -It's a rather clipped and confined wing, and yet I can do pretty much as -I choose at Compton Dally; I don't quite know why, for Vera doesn't -exactly like me. Still, she doesn't dislike me, and I think she's a -little bit afraid of me; for I am as definite and determined as a pair -of garden shears, and my silence is often only the good manners of the -dependant, and Vera knows it. - -I am her cousin, an impecunious cousin, my mother a sister of her -father's, old Lord Charleyford, who died last year. Vera herself was -very impecunious until she married Percival Dixon; impecunious, but -always very lovely and very clever, and she was on the crest of every -wave, always, and never missed anything, except ready money and a really -good offer, even before Percival Dixon came along--he came _via_ South -Africa--and gave her all the money that even she could spend, and bought -back Compton Dally for her. Compton Dally had been in the family for -hundreds of years, and it was our grandfather, Vera's and mine, who had -ruined us all and finally sold it. It was everything for Vera to get it -back, even if she had to take Percival Dixon with it; and I confess that -for Compton Dally I could almost have taken Percival Dixon myself; but -not quite, even for Compton Dally. - -Well, she has always been fairly decent to me; not as decent as she -might have been, certainly, but more decent than I, at all events, -expected, whatever may have been poor mother's hopes and indignations. I -always thought mother unfair; there was no reason why Vera should go out -of her way to give me a good time, and it showed some real consideration -in her to have suggested, when mother died and while Jack was reading -for the bar, that, until he and I could set up housekeeping in London -together, I should come and be her companion and secretary and general -odd-job woman; and for people like Vera to show any consideration is -creditable to them. I am five years older than Jack, and our plan has -always been to live together. I intend, of course,--though Jack at -present doesn't, dear lamb!--that he shall marry; but until then I'm to -live with him and take care of him and help him with his work. All this -if he ever comes back again. He is fighting at the front as I write, so -that it remains to be seen whether I'm to go on always with Vera. If -Jack doesn't come back I shan't find it more difficult than anything -else. We have always been all in all to each other, he and I; but that -is quite another story and one that will never be written. This one is -neither about Jack nor me, but about Vera and her garden and little Mrs. -Thornton and her husband and her clothes. - -Vera had thrown open Compton Dally to wounded Tommies and wounded -officers, and the Thorntons came in that way. He'd only been back from -the Boulogne hospital for a week, was badly crippled, and had a very -gallant record. Most of Vera's officers before this had been colonials -who had no homes to go to. The Thorntons weren't colonials, but they had -no home and were very poor, so that the arrangement for them to spend -six weeks or two months at Compton Dally while Captain Thornton got back -his strength--as far as he was able to get it back, poor man!--seemed an -admirable one. - -They came on a hot June afternoon both very tired, while we were all -having tea on the west terrace. The Tommies--there were over a dozen of -them, with two Red Cross nurses to take care of them--had their tea in -the billiard-room, which is made over to them for their games and meals -and almost constant gramophone, and the accurate laughter of Harry -Lauder is wafted out to us on various music-hall strains at most hours -of the day. He was laughing loudly and richly as the Thorntons arrived. -After tea Vera led them about the garden. Vera's garden is merely a part -of her toilette, and plays almost as important a part as her clothes in -her general introduction of herself; and that she intended to introduce -herself gracefully to Captain Thornton was evident; and that I was to -pilot Mrs. Thornton, I had known after Vera's glance at her imitation -Panama hat, her blue linen skirt, of an obsolete cut and a bad one at -that, and her white blouse, shrunken in washing. Vera placed her swiftly -as dull and dowdy, and it was my part, always, to pilot the dowdy and -the dull. - -I don't mind that, however; even now, after three years of it, I always -enjoy going over Compton Dally and the gardens with newcomers. It's such -a beautiful old place, so grave and so serene, its splendid Tudor front -lifted high on stone terraces, and its courts and corners behind -breaking out into all sorts of unexpected and enchanting antiquities. It -symbolizes, if you begin with the Saxon arches in the cellars, the -whole history of England, and means so much more than any person who has -ever lived there, or who ever will live there, can ever mean. It's worth -the sacrifice of generations of younger sons and myriads of marriageable -daughters. What could they all do better than to keep it going? I always -recalled this when I wondered how Vera could have married Percival -Dixon, and felt almost as much satisfaction as she could feel in the -fact that two robust little boys, still at their preparatory school, -stood reassuringly behind her and Percival; the elder, too, a thorough -Compton, with hardly a trail of Dixon apparent on his ingenuous young -countenance. I have the whole history of Compton Dally at the tips of my -fingers, and if people give me an opening and show that they care about -it, I can talk to them for hours as I take them round, feeling, for my -little part and share in it, that, even if Vera weren't as decent as she -is, I should put up with a great deal to stay in it and take care of it. - -We didn't go about the house to-day. The Thorntons saw the big -herbaceous border and the rose-garden, the rock-garden, tinkling with -its little rivulet, the moat, and the lime-tree alley; and then Vera, -trailing her gossamer draperies along the flagged path between the -cypresses,--for Vera, even at this epoch of shortened petticoats, -manages always to trail,--murmured, as I've heard her murmur, when she's -at Compton Dally, at least once a week, "And this is my dream-garden, -where I come and sit alone and dream dreams." - -She led Captain Thornton down among the cypress boughs. He had a -splinted leg and an unaccustomed crutch, and found the steps a -difficulty; but Vera put a hand under his elbow and let him lean -heavily on her shoulder, and he reached the dream-garden without, I -hope, too many twinges. - -It is really very lovely. I don't like hearing it called a dream-garden, -naturally; but I do feel always, when I come into it, that it is like -sinking into the stillness and magic of a happy dream. The gypsophila -wasn't out yet, but it made a mist, like drowsiness; white peonies, grey -santolina, white roses and silver sea-thistle, the dreamy spires of -white foxgloves, low, purple pansies, and tall irises, white and grey -and purple--these, in their twilight colours, were massed against the -grey stone walls, and there were four bay-trees in stone urns at the -corners. The beautiful old stone seat (I found it in Brompton Road, but -it might have been made for Compton Dally three hundred years ago in -Italy) was heaped with grey and purple cushions. In the centre rose the -fluent shaft of the fountain, falling, with a musical rustle and murmur -into the stone basin where pale goldfish move among the water-lilies. - -We sat down, and Vera went on to say, as always: - -"The other gardens are for friends. I plan them for them. I see them -there. This is for loneliness, for my very self; and to me it is the -heart of the whole, as solitude should be the heart of life." - -Vera, as a matter of fact (you see, the phrase recurs constantly), is -never alone. If she is wan and strange and wistful, it isn't from -dreaming dreams, but from not having enough sleep and doing five times -too many things and seeing five times too many people in the day. Vera, -too, I may say it here, isn't in the least an ass, though she may, on -occasions she finds suitable, talk like one. Occasions are often -suitable, so that, as I once told her, she's in danger of making a habit -of it. She looked at me, when I told her this, with the pausing, -penetrating, ironic gaze she is so capable of, and finally, with a -slight grimace, said, "I'll be careful, Judith." - -I have moments of feeling fond of her and this was one of them. She is -careful; I've very rarely heard her talk like an ass when the occasion -was unsuitable; but so many people are stupid that these are rare, and I -foresee that, as she gets on and sinks by degrees into the automatism -that overtakes so many artificial people, it may become a habit, just as -the touch of rouge on her pale lips is already becoming more emphasized. - -Captain Thornton, I saw at once, as she did,--for she saw most -things,--was not stupid; but he was very simple. There was a certain -bewilderment on his handsome, sturdy face, wistfulness rather than -delight, such as a soul newly arrived in Paradise might feel, unable to -forget the passes of death and the companions left behind in suffering. -He wasn't forgetting; I felt that as I looked at him. So many of them -forget. Vera, I am sure, hardly ever remembers what it all really -means--all these wounded heroes. Perhaps it is natural that she -shouldn't; she has no one near in it. - -Captain Thornton gazed about him quietly, and from the garden looked -back at the angel who had led him there. Of course Vera must have looked -like an angel to him. I haven't described Vera, and she is difficult to -describe. To say that she is pale and dark, with attenuated features and -dwelling, melancholy eyes, is only the beginning of it. Of course she -is getting on now,--she is nearing forty-five,--but she's still lovely; -her smile makes me think of a pearl dropped in wine, and behind the -melancholy of her eyes is that well of waiting irony. She looks as soft, -as tenderly encompassing, as a summer night; but she is really sharp, -sharp, sharp. Thwart or vex her, and out leaps the stiletto; or, rather, -it would be more exact to say, out come the claws. But women of the Vera -type will always, to young men like Captain Thornton, be angels pure and -simple. I don't suppose, for one thing, that he'd ever talked intimately -with any one quite like her. He came, I was to learn, from a remote -country rectory where the great ladies of the neighbourhood had been -unfashionable, matter of fact, and clothed for the most part in tweed -and leather, and none of them would have been likely to make much, -before the war, of a young soldier. Vera was making much of him, and a -fashionable angel is an angel doubly equipped. He would not know what it -was that made her so strange in her sweetness; but fashion of that -achieved and recondite kind is like a soft incense wafted around a -woman. She is first, everywhere, always, without an effort; and people -who are first, if they also look like angels, win hearts as easily as -they run and twist their fingers among their ropes of pearls, as Vera -was doing now. She always wore her pearls; they fell together in a milky -heap in her lap, and long earrings glimmered in the shadows of her hair. - -Vera's way of talking, too, is like a spell. Her voice is rather like -the fountain, so low, so inarticulate, yet so expressive. She murmurs -rather than speaks, with now and then a pause that is almost a soft -gurgle. Sometimes it exasperates me to hear her, but sometimes even -cross-grained I am charmed. - -The voice purled and rippled and gurgled over Captain Thornton now. He -sat on Vera's farther hand, and Mrs. Thornton sat between Vera and me. -Already, at tea-time, Mrs. Thornton had interested me. She had remained -silent without seeming shy. Superficially, no doubt, she was dowdy, and -superficially she looked dull, or, as I saw it, dulled; and dull and -dowdy is what at tea they all put her down for. It's curious, how in a -group of highly civilized people, a newcomer, without a word or glance -exchanged between them, is in a moment assessed and placed and -relegated. Everybody was going to be very kind to Mrs. Thornton, that I -saw, and everybody was going to relegate her; only the highly civilized -can manage the combination. - -Mrs. Thornton, from one point of view, had a pallid, podgy little face, -with wide lips and short nose and a broad, infantile brow above eyes -singularly far apart. All the same, and the more I looked at her the -more I saw it, it was a delicious face; squared here, stubborn there, -sweet by turns and glances. And she was of the loveliest colour, with a -skin silver-white, and thick, shining, pale-gold hair, and eyes of a -deep, dense, meditative blue. All her attributes, however, were -invisible to Vera, and I was fully prepared for the glance with which, -over Mrs. Thornton's imitation Panama, she presently said to me: - -"Darling, do take Mrs. Thornton round the water-garden. It's so lovely -at this hour. Captain Thornton must wait for it till to-morrow. He's too -tired to go farther now." - -Mrs. Thornton got up at once, with her air of vague acquiescence in -anything proposed, and I led her up and out and down the lime-tree alley -and through the copse, where Vera, in spring, has her wild garden, to -the banks of the river, the clear, wandering little stream, bridged and -islanded, golden in the afternoon light under its willows and reflecting -irises and meadow-sweet. - -"Now we can sit down," I said, and on a bench under a willow we did sit, -Mrs. Thornton with an involuntary sigh of weariness. "I expect your -husband will soon get all right here," I said presently. "It's such good -air. Is his leg badly damaged?" - -"Well, you see, he can already get about quite well with it," said Mrs. -Thornton; "but I'm afraid he'll never be able to do any of the things he -most cares for again--riding and cricket, and his soldiering, of course. -He will have to give up the army. I am afraid it's afterwards one will -begin to feel all the things that one must give up. Just now all that I -can think about is that he has come back alive. Have you any one out -there?" she asked. - -I told her about Jack and how he had got a commission at the beginning -of the war and gone out in January. - -"It must be even more of a wrench to have them go when they aren't -already in the army," said Mrs. Thornton. "A soldier's wife ought not to -feel it so much of a wrench. I'm afraid I did, though." - -I saw already that Mrs. Thornton had taken to me. It was natural that -she should. I had taken to her quite tremendously, and she must have -felt it; and, besides, a great many women do feel confidence in me at -once. I, to be sure, look like anything but an angel, though I, like -Vera, have small, pale features and dark hair. But mine's not a -melancholy or mysterious face. My eyebrows dip together over my nose, -and my mouth is at once placid and irascible. I look, in my straight, -austere clothes,--the silver buckles on my shoes and the fob of old -trinkets at my waist for all adornment,--like a cross between a young -priest in his soutane and a Blue-Coat boy; and I think it is the boyish -woman, curt and kind and impersonal, who gains the confidence of others -of her sex. - -"I don't know that it was more of a wrench," I said. "I expect that you -and I felt pretty much the same sort of thing on that Victoria platform -when we said good-bye to them. What do you and your husband intend -doing, now that he has to give up his profession?" - -"Well, we had thought of having a chicken-farm somewhere. We are both so -fond of the country, and I've a cousin who has a chicken-farm, and I've -helped her with it, and she has made it pay. Even if Clive's leg stays -so bad, I am very strong. But we've had, really, no time yet to talk -things over." - -"You don't look very strong," I observed, "but that may be because you -are over-tired. You look very tired. I should say that you got up at six -this morning, and raced around London shopping in the heat, and packed, -and had no lunch, and a journey on top of it all. So no wonder you are -tired." - -"How clever of you!" Mrs. Thornton cried, laughing. "That is exactly -what I have been doing. And I've been in a Belgian refugee hostel ever -since Clive went, and that is tiring, though it keeps one going, too. -Don't you find it difficult just to go on from day to day?" She was -leaning forward on her knee now to look up into my face while I knitted. -"I mean, when one wakes in the morning, for instance, to think that one -has to get up and brush one's teeth and do one's hair and all the rest -of it. It seems impossible when what one is feeling is that one wants to -be chloroformed till it is all over. It was then that the hostel was so -sustaining; one had to get up whether one felt like it or not." - -"I know; yes," I said, nodding. "I've work, too, though it's not so -sustaining as a hostel. I'm my cousin's secretary, and we have all these -Tommies now; they take up a good deal of time. It must be curious, -having it all over, all that weight of anxiety." - -"It is, it is," said little Mrs. Thornton, eagerly, with her look of -gratitude for finding some one with whom to talk about it. "It's almost -like losing a limb. I feel crippled, as well as Clive. Isn't it absurd? -But it's almost like loss. And one is dazed with the relief of it." - -"How long have you been married?" I asked. - -"Only a year and a half," she told me, and that Clive's mother and hers -had been great friends, and that she had often gone to stay with his -people in the country, so that she had always known him. Her mother had -died when she was a child and her father only two years ago. She had -lived in London with her father, who had been an artist. She was just -twenty. And after she had told me about herself, she asked me about -Jack, and I found myself telling her all about him and about those plans -of ours for living together in London if he ever comes back. - -The party at Compton Dally was small, and they were all there (except -Sir Francis who was an old family friend and who was paying a long -visit), to help Vera with her Tommies. The only other officer besides -Captain Thornton was poor Colonel Appleby, a pale, frightened, -middle-aged man invalided home with nervous shock. At dinner that night -Lady Dighton, who is the embodiment of lassitude and acquiescence, had -him, and Mrs. Travers-Cray had Sir Francis, and Vera had Captain -Thornton, so that Percival fell to the share of Mollie Thornton, and I -wondered how she liked him. If she was already feeling herself out of -it, to have Percival at dinner wouldn't make her feel herself in; quite -the reverse. Percival's appearance is always summed up to me by the back -of his head: the wedge of fat, red neck above his high collar, the -sleek, glittering black hair, and the rims of his red ears curving -forward on each side. The back of his head seems really as -characteristic as the front, though that is jovial and not unkindly. -Percival looks sly over his food, and looks over his wine like the sort -of man who is going to tell a story that no one else will find at all -amusing. He told Mollie several such stories that night, I inferred, -though she was evidently neither shy nor shocked; it was in the quality -of her smile that I read her kindly endurance. - -Milly, Vera's girl, just seventeen and just promoted to late dinner, sat -on Mollie's other hand and did not, as far as I observed, address her -once during the meal. But, then, Milly never makes efforts unless they -are plainly useful. All Vera's beauty had been spoiled in her by the -Dixon admixture, and yet she is a most engaging-looking little minx, -with broad, bold, black, idle eyes and a blunted nose, auburn hair and a -skin of roses and carnations. Vera had seen to that. Poor Vera is quite -fond of the child, a half-vexed, half-ironic constantly rebuffed -tenderness. But Milly says to me, "Mother is such a bore, you know," and -likes me far better, who make no claim upon her and who, she must feel, -like her very little. She will soon take flight, however, when a -sufficiently advantageous occasion presents itself. The war has been a -sad blow to her projects, and what I like in Milly is the fact that she -has never uttered a word of complaint as to the shattering of her -girlish gaieties. However, to get back to Mollie Thornton, I don't think -she could have enjoyed her companions at dinner. - -After dinner I go and amuse the Tommies and talk to the nurses until -bedtime, but, before I went, I observed that Vera, after her wont with -the detrimental belongings of a guest, had placed Mollie in a corner -with a book and the urgent, smiling murmur: "By a friend of mine. Quite, -quite beautiful. I know you'll love it." It is a book called "Spiritual -Control," with a portrait of its author, who is a stock-broker, a sleek, -stalwart, satisfied person whom Vera characterizes, why I can't think, -except that she had him once to stay after hearing his lecture, as her -"friend." A great many people find the book inspiring; Vera, as a matter -of fact, doesn't, and she found Mr. Cuthbert Dawson a terrible bore. It -was plain from her giving poor Mrs. Thornton "Spiritual Control" to -read, where she placed her. - -When I came back an hour later she was still in her corner with -"Spiritual Control," but she wasn't reading it. She had drawn the -curtain at the window where she sat, and was looking out at the -splendid, dramatic moonlight. Sir Francis and Colonel Appleby were -reading the evening papers, Lady Dighton and Leila Travers-Cray talked -together while they knitted, Milly had disappeared, and at the farthest -end of the great room, on its farthest sofa, Vera, pale and pearly, was -talking to Captain Thornton. - -"Well," I said, "how is your spirit? Is it more controlled?" - -Mrs. Thornton looked up at me, and after a moment her smile of -understanding merged into one of friendly enjoyment. - -"How do you manage," she said, "to be so austere in the daytime and so -splendid at night? You make me think of a Venetian princess in that -brocade." - -"It is nice, isn't it?" I said. "And made by the littlest of -dressmakers. I'm clever at clothes. But tell me how you like Mr. -Cuthbert Dawson." - -"Well, he is very cheerful and sincere," said Mrs. Thornton, kindly; -"but I don't seem to get much out of it. I'm really too tired and stupid -to read to-night." - -"And it's time your husband was in bed," I said. "One of the nurses is -coming for him." - -Mrs. Thornton looked down the long room at her husband. - -"If only I'd had the Red Cross training," she said, "I could have taken -care of his leg then. I suppose I mustn't ask to be allowed to. Isn't it -quite early?" she added. "He's enjoying the talk with Lady Vera." - -"It's half-past ten, and we are strict with our invalids. Here is nurse -now. I'll come up with you and see that you are comfortable." - -No one could have said that there was any creature comfort lacking in -Mrs. Thornton's reception at Compton Dally. Captain Thornton, as the -invalid, had a larger room, but Mrs. Thornton's room, next it, was quite -as charming a one, pink and grey, with old French prints and hangings of -_toile de Jouy_. She went up to the prints for a moment of silent -appreciation before turning to me with a sigh, half pleasure and half -wistfulness. - -"How lovely everything is here! Papa would have been in rapture over -those Cochins. I shall enjoy my sleep to-night." And then,--it was her -only sign of awareness,--"I suppose I'm to be allowed to go and say -good-night to Clive when nurse has done with him." - - * * * * * - -My study at Compton Dally, where I type and write and do accounts, opens -on the west terrace, and from my bureau I seemed, at most hours of the -days that followed, to have a view of Mollie Thornton's little figure -wandering, as it were, on the outskirts, not plaintive,--there was never -a touch of plaintiveness,--but passive. With her sewing or knitting or a -book she sat a good deal under the shade of the cedar that stands at the -corner of the terrace, and she spent a good deal of time drifting up and -down the vistas of the lawns and park watching birds, a binocular in her -hand. She was certainly a most comfortable person to relegate, since she -never looked melancholy and usually contrived to seem occupied, and -Vera, when she passed behind her on the terrace on her way to the -dream-garden, Captain Thornton beside her, would pause and put her hand -on her shoulder and say, "Happy, dear?" in the most dulcet tone. And -when Mrs. Thornton, lifting those meditative eyes, answered, "Yes, thank -you," Vera, all bland benevolence, would say, "That's right," and pass -on. Leila Travers-Cray and Lady Dighton sometimes exchanged a few -friendly remarks with her, and she read the morning papers to Colonel -Appleby when his eyes hurt him; but she was relegated far, far away, as -completely as any human being could be who could in any way count as a -guest. - -I was very busy and had not much time to be with her, though all the -time I had was hers; but I knew accurately what she was feeling. I -related it always with that dreadful Victoria platform, with those -moments of pain and yet of rapture which we had both known, when we had -felt ourselves, in our suffering, stand for England, lifted up in -accepting sacrifice to the august and beautiful spirit that claimed our -dearest. One would expect, after that transcendent suffering, to find as -transcending a joy; but how was joy possible to a young wife caught into -what might be to her husband a fairyland or a paradise, but to her was a -cruel and complicated machine where her only part was to turn round with -the other wheels and pretend to like it? I knew that it must not be -taken too seriously. It was only to last for six weeks, and then she -would have her Clive back again; yet while it lasted it must make the -months of suffering passed through seem happy by comparison. There had -then been nothing between them but distance and the fear of death; and -now everything was between them--everything Vera stood for; her house, -her friends, her smile, her pearls, her dream-garden. - -On morning after morning I saw Vera leading him away to it, with her -armful of books, and Chang, her Pekinese, trotting at her heels. I -perfectly understood Vera's state of mind in regard to Captain Thornton. -There was no occasion for commonplace jealousy. He merely made her feel -cheerful and rejuvenated. Everything she had to show and tell him was -new to him. She became new to herself, poor old Vera! and gained from -the quiet regard of his sane and simple eyes--handsome eyes under -straight, dark brows--a sense of freshness and worth in everything. She -liked him better than any of the wounded heroes she had yet had. Some of -them had been merely stupid, and one or two had been gloomy, sardonic -men--men of her own world, to whom nothing she had to say would seem -new. Clive Thornton was neither stupid nor sardonic, and he was simple -enough to accept Vera's fancy tricks--her talk of dreaming dreams and -solitude--as part of an angel's manner, and he was just clever enough to -be able to appreciate anything she had to say. I could quite see how -endearing Vera must find his steady gaze and his considering silences. -Even with my vigorous espousal of his wife's side I never felt angry -with him. His not seeing that she was unhappy was part of the same -innocence that made him not see that Vera was a cat. Mollie, besides, -took quite as much care to conceal her unhappiness as Vera to behave -like an angel. It never crossed his mind that his wife was relegated; it -never crossed his mind that they were separated. He did not feel -separated; they were both, as far as he knew, in fairyland together. And -yet I knew it might not all be so trivial and transient as it seemed. A -new standard was being formed for him; a new idea of what it was to be -an angel. It was possible that all unconsciously he would no longer -think of Mollie as one when he left Compton Dally; and when I took this -in I began to gather up my weapons. - -I found Mollie one afternoon sitting on the bench under the willow-tree -where we had had our first talk. She had her knitting, but her hands -were still, and she was gazing before her at the water. If she were not -a tragic figure, it was only because there are some things sadder than -tragedy. She had faced everything, been through everything, she had gone -down into the Hades where so many of us were still living, and now she -found herself baulked and menaced by commonplace daylight. Tragedy is, -in some ways, an easy thing to bear. - -"Well, what are you doing here by yourself?" I asked her, advancing. -There was a look on her face, startled and steadied, that showed me what -she had been thinking about in the fancied security of her solitude. But -she managed at once the vague smile that concealed so much, and said -that she had been, as usual, resting. "I seem to find out every day more -and more how tired I was," she added. - -"You didn't care to go with the others, motoring?" I took my place -beside her. "You'd have liked Marjorams. It's a lovely old place. Some -people think it beats Compton Dally, though, naturally, I'm not one of -them." - -"I'm sure you're not," said Mollie, laughing a little. "That was one of -the things that first struck me about you--how you loved it. I felt that -you were a fiercely loyal person." - -"I think I am--narrow loyalties, but fierce ones," I said. "But you -haven't answered my question." - -"About motoring? I don't care much about it, you know. And there really -wasn't room enough for me." - -I knew there hadn't been; but I was deliberately eschewing tact. - -"Has Captain Thornton gone?" I inquired, knowing, also, that he hadn't. - -"No; Lady Vera is reading to him in the flagged garden," said Mollie in -the voice that showed me how little she had to learn about spiritual -control. "Lady Vera is going to take him out for a run in her two-seater -before dinner. He enjoys that a great deal more than the big car." - -"It's far pleasanter, certainly," I agreed. And I went on: "They are -reading, you mean, in the dream-garden. You mustn't forget that it's a -dream-garden--where one goes to be alone." - -She looked round at me quickly, and after a moment I saw that she -faintly coloured. She said nothing, leaving it to me to follow up my -graceless gibe. I was quite ready to follow it up. - -"As a matter of fact," I said, knitting the loops along the side of my -heel, "Vera hardly ever is alone there. It's always, with Vera, a -_solitude deux_. She's not at all the sort of woman for real solitude. -She is the sort of woman who likes to feel, or, rather, to look lonely -and not to be alone." - -To this, after a pause, Mollie said: - -"She is very charming; Clive finds her very charming." And, forced to -it, apparently, by my crudity, she added, "Aren't you fond of her, -then?" - -"No, I'm not; not particularly," I said. "Especially not just now. Vera -is not at her best, to my mind, when she is being angelic to young -married men." - -Mollie Thornton now blushed deeply. - -"I am perfectly contented that she should be angelic to Clive," she -said. - -"You are very loyal," I returned. "But you'll own that he is getting -more out of it than you are. It's a place, Compton Dally, for wounded -heroes rather than for a wounded hero's wife." - -"Do you mean," she asked after a moment, "that I oughtn't to have come?" -She had indeed owned to everything in the bewilderment of the question. -I laughed at it. - -"Oughtn't to have been with your husband at a time like this! Even Vera -could hardly ask that, could she? And that's my quarrel with her; that -it's the time of all times that you should be together and that she -never lets you see him, practically." - -She looked away, and after a moment I saw that her eyes had filled with -tears. - -"He hasn't an idea of it," she said at last. - -"That fact doesn't make you happier, does it?" - -"He thinks I'm as happy as he is. He thinks that we are together in it -all, and that she is an angel to me, too," said Mollie. "She always is -an angel to me when she sees me." - -"All men are rather stupid when it comes to knowing whether their wives -are happy," I remarked. "I think your Clive is a great dear; but I like -you best because you see things he doesn't. You, for instance, see that -Vera isn't an angel, though she may look like one." - -"He has no reason to think anything else, has he?" said Mollie, and I -saw that I had brought her to the point to which I had intended to bring -her. "I don't let him guess that I'm not happy; it would be horrid of me -if I did, for it would only mean that he'd feel at once that we must go -away, and all this loveliness would be over for him. A stuffy little -flat in Bayswater isn't a very alluring alternative; and that's where -we'd have to go--to my aunt's--till Clive was better." - -"How you'd love the stuffy flat! How glad you'd be to be there with him! -And, to do him justice, how happy he'd be there with you! He will be in -a month's time. The only question is, the month. No, Vera isn't an -angel. If she were an angel, she'd have seen to it that you were happy -here, too. But when it comes to being nice to other women,--really nice, -I mean,--she can be a cat. And what I'd like very much to see now is -what she'd make of it if you could show her that you could look like an -angel, too. It's so much a matter of looks." - -"Make of it? But I couldn't look like an angel." - -"You could look like a rival; that's another way of doing it. You could -look like another woman of her own sort. You could make her see you. She -simply doesn't see you now. I suspect that if Vera saw you and saw that -you were charming, she'd show her claws. I'd like Captain Thornton to -see her showing her claws." - -In silent astonishment, her blue eyes fixed upon me, Mollie gazed. - -"No, I don't hate Vera, if that's what you're wondering," I said. "I -like you, that's all, and I don't intend that she shall go on making you -unhappy." - -"But I don't want Clive made unhappy," Mollie said. "I can't imagine -what you mean; but, whatever it is, I don't want it. I couldn't bear all -this to be spoiled for him. I couldn't bear it not to be always, for -him, a paradise." - -It was my turn to gaze at her, and I gazed penetratingly. - -"And what if it all came to mean that you yourself, because of it, were -never to be more to him than a second-rate paradise? What if she were to -spoil you for him?" - -I brought out the cruel questions deliberately, and for a moment Mollie -faced them and me. - -"Why do you say that? How cruel to say that!" she murmured, and then -suddenly she bowed her head upon her hands. "It's been my terror. I'm -ashamed of myself for thinking it. And now--you see it!" - -I put my arm around her shoulders. - -"I'm not cruel. I only want us to see things together. I don't really -think they'd ever come to that; and, at all events, he would never know -that they had." - -"But I should," Mollie said. - -"Yes, you would. And it's horribly true that real things can be spoiled -and blighted by false things. I've often seen it happen. You do see the -danger, and you must take up the burden, my dear, of being cleverer than -your husband, and save him along with yourself. If Vera were what she -looks and seems to him, he might be right in feeling that he found in -her something he couldn't find in you. You must show him that she isn't -what she looks and seems and you must show him that you can be a -first-rate paradise, too." - -"In a little flat in Bayswater! On a chicken-farm! No, it can't be done. -Paradises of this sort don't grow in such places," poor Mollie moaned. - -"You can keep up the real paradise in them--the one he has already--when -you get there. The point is that you must show him now that you can look -like this one here. And the way to look it is to dress it. I'm sure -you've realized the absolutely supreme importance of dress for women of -the paradise type--the women you see here, all these sweet ministering -angels to the Tommies and the young husbands. I don't mean to say that, -with the exception of Vera, they're not as nice as you are in spite of -being well dressed; but I do mean that if they dressed as you do they'd -not be women of the paradise." - -Mollie's hands had fallen, and she was gazing again with eyes childlike, -astonished, and trusting. - -"But, Judith, what do you mean?" she asked. "Dress? Of course you all -dress beautifully. Haven't I loved simply looking at you all, as if -you'd been the most exquisite birds? But how could I do it? I haven't -the money; I never have had. If one has no money, one must be either -sthetic or dowdy, and I've always prefered to be dowdy." - -"Yes, I saw that; I liked you for that. There's hope for the dowdy, but -none for the sthetic; the one is humble, and the other is complacent. -Your clothes express renunciation simply--and the summer sales. But -though it is a question of money, some women who have masses of money -never learn how to dress. They remain mere dressmakers' formulas; and -others, with very little, can't be passed by. They count anywhere. -You've noticed my clothes. I've hardly any money, yet I'm perfect. All -my clothes mean just what I intend them to; just as Vera's mean what she -intends, and Mrs. Travers-Cray's and Lady Dighton's, and Milly's, for -Milly already is as clever as possible at knowing her thing. But you've -abandoned the attempt to intend. You've sunk down, and you let the winds -rake over you. You've always made me think of a larkspur, that blue and -silver kind, all pensive grace and delicacy; but you're a larkspur that -hasn't been staked. Your sprays don't count; they tumble anyhow, and no -one sees your shape or colour. Last night, for instance--that -turquoise-blue chiffon: not turquoise, and not that sort of chiffon." - -"I know it. I hated it," she said. - -"Of course you did, and so does any one who looks at you in it." - -"But I couldn't afford the better qualities," she appealed. "And in the -cheaper ones I couldn't get the blue I wanted, the soft Japanese blue." - -"No, you couldn't. And you thought it wouldn't show if you had it made -up on sateen. It always does show. No, it needs thought and time and -computing, too much time, too much thought, to say nothing of too much -money for many women, of course; for them it wouldn't be worth it. There -are other things to do than to live in paradise. But for you it is worth -it; to show him that you can look like an angel, and to show him that -Vera can look like a cat. No, _I'll_ show him; mine is the -responsibility. It's worth it, at all events, to me. I'll put in the -stakes, and tie you and loop you and display you. You'll see. I told you -I'd a clever little dressmaker. That's an essential. And we'll scrape up -the money. You shall be dressed for once as you intend." - -She was bewildered, aghast, tempted, and, on the top of everything, -intensely amused. Her face was lighted as I'd never seen it before with -pure mirth, and it looked like still, silver water that becomes suddenly -glimmering, quivering, eddying, and sunlit. She was charming thus -lighted. It was a sort of illumination of which Vera's face is -incapable; her gaiety is always clouded with irony. - -"It is all too kind, too astonishing, too funny for words," Mollie said. -"Of course I should love to be well dressed for once, and I can't see -why I shouldn't avail myself of your little dressmaker now,--especially -now, since, as you tell me, I offend through my dowdiness. And I do -really need some new clothes. I'm wearing out my trousseau ones, you -know. Yes; wasn't it a horrid little trousseau? But, don't you see," and -the sunlight faded, "I can't be a real, not a real angel, not a real -paradise. It's much deeper. It's a question of roots. It's the way they -smile, the way they walk, the way they know what they want to say and -what they don't want to say." - -I nodded. "You know, too, and you'd say it, if people saw you and cared -to hear what you said." - -"That would help, of course. I've never felt so stupid in my life as -here. But, oh, it's deeper!" said Mollie. "I don't belong to it. How -they all make me feel it! I'm an outsider; and why should I pretend not -to be?" - -"It wouldn't be pretending anything to dress as you'd like to dress. No -one who _sees_ is an outsider now a days, if they can contrive to make -themselves seen. That's the whole point. And there's nothing you don't -see. You see far more than Vera does. Don't bother about the roots. Take -care of the flowers, and the roots will take care of themselves; that's -another modern maxim for you. Your flowers are there, and all that we -need think of now is how to show them. Wait. You'll see. We'll go to -London to-morrow," I said; "and this very evening we'll have a talk -about your hair." - - * * * * * - -You may be sure that I was on the spot to see a week or so later my -larkspur's dbut as an angel. We were all assembled in the drawing-room -before dinner, and she was a little late, as I, not she, had intended -that she should be. It was precisely the moment for a mild sensation. -The day had been hot and long. Everybody, apart from being anxious,--for -everybody was anxious, Sir Francis and Mrs. Travers-Cray with sons at -the front and Lady Dighton's husband in the Dardanelles--apart from that -ever-present strain, everybody to-day was a little jaded, blank, and -tired of one another. There reigned, as a symptom, that silence that in -the moments before dinner falls sometimes upon people who know each -other too well for surmise or ceremony. They stood about looking at the -evening newspapers; they picked up a book; they sat side by side, -knitting without speaking. Vera, sunken in a deep chair near my sofa, -yawned wearily. No one, in fact, had anything to look to before bedtime -except the stimulant of the consomm or a possible surprise in the way -of sweets. - -I had known that I could count upon Mollie not to be self-conscious when -she appeared in her new array, but I hadn't counted upon such complete -and pensive simplicity. Her eyes were on me as she entered, her husband -limping behind her, and they seemed to ask me, with a half-wistful -amusement, if she came up to my expectations. She far surpassed them. I -never saw a woman to whom it made more difference. "It," on this -occasion, was blue--the blue of a night sky and the blue of a sky at -dawn, the blue, too, of my larkspurs, lapping at the edges here and -there, as delicately as filaments of cloud crossing the sky, into white. -It made one think, soft, suave triumph that it was, of breezes over the -sea at daybreak and of a crescent moon low on a horizon and of white -shores and blue Grecian hills; at least it made me think of these -things, it and Mollie together; and with it went the alteration of her -hair--bands of folded gold swathed round and round her little head. No -one but myself had ever seen before that Mollie had the poise and -lightness of a Tanagra figure nor that the shape of her face was curious -and her eyes strange and her skin like silver; but I knew, as she -advanced down the long room, that Vera, sunken in her chair, saw it all -at last, drank in every drop of it, with an astonishment that, though it -expressed itself in no gesture, I was able to gauge from her very -stillness, her concentration of stillness, as she watched the relegated -becoming visible at last. It's not pleasant for anybody to have to own -that they've been blind and made a mistake, and Vera was specially fond -of discovering oddity and charm and of claiming and displaying and -discussing a discovery. And here was oddity and charm which she had not -only failed to discover, but had helped to obscure. Mollie was indeed -visible, and every eye was on her as she drifted quietly forward in the -evening light and sat down beside me. She was mine, and no one else's; -that was quite evident, too. - -That Captain Thornton had received something of a revelation was also -evident, though it had not probably amounted to more than seeing, and -saying, that Mollie was looking awfully well; but it expressed itself in -the fact that, instead of joining Vera, as was his wont, he came and sat -down next to Mollie on my sofa. We began to talk, and, though the -watching pause was prolonged for yet another moment, the others then -began to talk, too. It was as if, not quite knowing what had happened to -them, they were all a little cheered and exhilarated; as if they'd had -their consomm and as if the sweet had been altogether a surprise. A -spectacle of any sort has this effect upon a group of jaded people. Only -Vera kept her ominous silence. - -Dinner was announced, and we all got up. Percival, with a new alacrity, -approached Mollie,--he almost always had Mollie,--the others paired off -as usual, and Vera rose to Captain Thornton's arm. It was then that she -said, smiling thoughtfully upon Mollie: - -"Aren't you doing your hair in a new way, dear?" - -I saw from Mollie's answering smile that she was still ingenuous enough -to hope that she might win Vera's approval with that of the others, the -hope, too, that while Clive might think of herself as a first-rate -angel, he should never see Vera as a cat. - -"It is new," she said. "I've just learned how to; Judith showed me. Do -you like it?" - -Leaning on Captain Thornton's arm, Vera, with gently lifted brows, -rather sadly shook her head. - -"I suppose I don't care about fashions. It's very fashionable, isn't it? -But I loved so that great, girlish knot. People's way of doing their -hair is part of their personality to me. Judith cares so much about -fashion, I know. Do you care about fashion, Captain Thornton? Do you -like this fashionable way? You know, I can't help always thinking that -it makes women's heads look like cheeses; in napkins, you -know--Stiltons." - -It was the first scratch. Mollie, though with a little startled glance, -took it with all mildness, making no comment as Percival led her away, -Percival remarking that it was, he thought, a ripping way of doing her -hair; and I, as I went out manless, heard Captain Thornton, behind me, -saying, in answer to Vera's murmurs: - -"Yes; I see; I see what you mean. But, do you know, all the same I think -it's most awfully becoming to Mollie. It brings out the shape of her -face so." - -"What a _dear_ little face it is!" said Vera, rapidly leaving the -cheese. - -It all worked like a stealing spell. There was nothing marked or sudden -in it. No one, I think, except Vera, was aware that his or her attitude -to little Mrs. Thornton had changed. She had become visible, that was -all, and they became aware that she was not only worth looking at, but -worth talking to. At dinner that night old Sir Francis fixed his -eye-glass to observe her more than once and after dinner he joined her -in the drawing-room and talked with her till bedtime. It turned out -then that he had known her father and actually possessed one of his -pictures; had been a great admirer. Next morning he was walking with her -on the terrace before breakfast. Mollie in a blue lawn, as sprightly as -it was demure, her casque of golden hair shining in the sunlight. Lady -Dighton asked her that afternoon to come motoring with her and the -Tommies, and in the evening I heard Mrs. Travers-Cray, while she and -Mollie wound wool together, telling her about her two boys at the front. -The only person who didn't see more of Mollie was Captain Thornton; but -that, I felt sure, was because Vera was determined that he shouldn't. - -It was not for a day or two that I was able to compare notes with -Mollie. - -"Well," I said, joining her on the terrace before dinner, "_a y est_." - -"It's extraordinary," said Mollie. "Everything is different. I myself am -different. I feel, for one thing, as if I'd become clever to match my -clothes. It would be almost humiliating to have the mere clothes make so -much difference and every one change so to me unless I could really feel -that I'd changed, too." - -"You're staked. I told you how it would be." - -"And I owe it all to you. It's a wonderfully sustaining feeling to be -staked; secure, peaceful. Such a funny change, Judith, is little Milly! -Have you noticed? She came up to me when I was walking this afternoon -and linked her arm in mine, and in ten minutes was confiding in me all -about her perplexed love-affairs, as if we'd been old friends." - -"Yes, she would. She loves to tell people about her love-affairs." - -"But I couldn't have imagined that she was really so ingenuous; for, in -a sense, she is ingenuous." - -"Exceedingly ingenuous when she isn't exceedingly sophisticated; I think -one often sees the mixture. The only thing you must be prepared for with -the Milly type is that in a week's time she may forget that she ever -confided in you and, almost, that she ever knew you. Her ingenuousness -is a form of presumptuousness." - -"Yes, I think I saw that. I'm beginning to see so many things--far more -things than I'll ever have use for on a chicken-farm, Judith." And -Mollie laughed a little. - -"And what does your husband say?" I asked. - -"Well, I've not seen much of him, you know. But I'm sure he likes it -awfully, the way I look." - -"Only Vera won't let him get at you to tell you so." - -"Oh, he sees enough of me to tell me so," said Mollie, smiling: "only it -takes him time to come to the point of saying things, and it's true that -we haven't much time." - -"And she hasn't given you any more scratches before him?" - -"Not before him." Mollie flushed a little. "It _was_ a scratch, wasn't -it? I don't think he saw that it was." - -"He will see in time. And it's worth it, isn't it, since it's to make -him see?" - -"Yes, I can bear it. She's rather rude to me now when he isn't there, -you know; but it's really less blighting to have some one see you enough -to be rude to you than to see you so little that they are affectionate. -Yet I hope she won't be too rude." - -"She can hardly bear it," I said. - -It was the next morning that Vera showed me how little she was able to -bear it. She had kept me singularly busy, as if afraid that I might wave -a magic wand even more transformingly, and she came into the study where -I was writing invitations for a garden-fte in aid of the Red Cross -fund, and after giving me very dulcetly a long list of instructions, she -went to the window and looked out for some silent moments at Mollie -sauntering up and down with Sir Francis under the blue bubble of her -parasol. - -"I suppose you dressed her when you took her up to town that day," she -then remarked. - -I had wondered how long Vera could keep under cover and I was pleased to -see her emerge. - -"Well, hardly that," I said, marking off with my pen the names of the -people on my list who were away and not to be counted on for help with -the bazaar. "She badly needed some clothes and couldn't afford expensive -places; so I took her to my little woman. She was able to carry out -Mollie's ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, hasn't she? She knows -so exactly what suits her." - -"Carry out her ideas? She hasn't an idea in her head. Carry out yours, -you mean, you funny creature. I can't conceive why you took the pains to -dress up the deadly little dowd." Vera drummed with her fingers on the -window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and -they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray, -sweet, impassive, honey-coloured woman, was one of the few people for -whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard. - -"Oh, you're mistaken there, Vera, just as you've been mistaken about her -looks," I said, all dispassionate limpidity. "She has heaps of ideas, I -can assure you, and I saw it from the beginning; just as I saw that she -was enchanting looking." - -"Enchanting! Help! Help! That little skim-milk face, with those great -calf's eyes! Who is the poor dear martyr thing who carries her eyes on a -plate? St. Lucia, isn't it? She makes me think of that--as much -expression. You may have succeeded in making her less of a dowd, but -you'll never succeed in making her less of a bore." - -"Well, Mrs. Travers-Cray doesn't find her a bore," I remarked, casting a -glance of quiet, satisfied possessorship at the group outside. - -"Oh, Leila always was an angel," said Vera, "and your little protge -has made a very determined set at her." - -"Sir Francis is an angel, too, then. He delights in her; that's -evident." It was perhaps rather indiscreet of me to goad Vera like this, -but I could not resist taking it out of her and rubbing it into her, and -I knew that Sir Francis would vex her almost as much as Mrs. -Travers-Cray. "And look at Milly," I added. "You can't say that Milly is -an angel. The fact is that Mrs. Thornton is a very charming young woman, -and that if you don't see it you are the only person who doesn't." - -"Another person who doesn't see it is her husband," said Vera. She was -determined not to show that she was angry, but I could see how angry she -was. "Sir Francis, of course, old goose, thinks any one charming if they -are young and dress well and look at him with appealing eyes. It is her -husband I'm really sorry for. It's evident that he never spoke to a -civilized woman in his life till he came here. He doesn't show much -signs of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It's -pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first -curate's daughter they find round the corner. And now that she's pushing -herself forward like this, he is done for." Vera, I saw, was very angry -to be goaded so far. - -"Surely she is the more interesting of the two," I blandly urged. -"Neither of them has a spark of ambition if it comes to pushing; they'll -be quite happy on their chicken-farm. But if it were a question of -getting on and getting in with the right people, it would, I imagine, be -she rather than he who would count. This last day or two has made that -evident to my mind. In her soft, strange way little Mollie is unique, -whereas he is only an honest young soldier, and there are thousands more -just like him, thank goodness!" - -Vera at this turned her head and looked at me for a moment. After all, -even if I wasn't angry, I, too, had given myself away. And it evidently -pleased her to recognize this--to recognize that she wasn't being -worsted merely by Mollie's newly revealed charm, but by my diplomacy as -well. And it is rather a good mark to Vera, I think, that I don't -believe it ever crossed her mind for a moment that she had the simplest -method of speedy vengeance in her hands--had simply to send me packing. -Of course we should both have known that to use such a method would have -been to reveal one's self as crude and vulgar; yet a cattish woman who -is very angry may easily become both. Vera didn't. There are things I -always like about her. - -She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling -with cousinly good-humour: - -"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that, -Judith darling--how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he doesn't. -You are so essentially a woman's woman, aren't you? I suppose it's just -because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don't feel -drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you, -of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their -hair and the colour of their ties. You're a first-rate woman's woman, I -grant you, and you're very clever and you've succeeded in foisting your -little friend on silly Sir Francis and on Leila Travers-Cray, and it's -all rather dear and funny of you, and I've quite loved watching it all -and seeing you at work; but you won't succeed in foisting Mrs. Thornton -on her husband, and he'll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out -whether he's anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found -him,"--and Vera now spoke with a simple candour,--"quite, quite a dear; -with a great deal in him--sensitiveness, tact, flavour. So much could -have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and -started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who doesn't -know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? No; -I'm afraid Mrs. Mollie, after she's left your hands, Judith dear, will -tumble quite, quite flat again. _Would_ you mind, darling, getting all -the invitations off to-day? We mustn't be slipshod about it. And don't -forget to write to the merry-go-round man, and to Mark Hammond to see if -he'll sing." So, having delivered what she hoped might be a somewhat -stinging shaft at my complacency, Vera trailed away. - -If I hadn't so goaded her I don't believe, really, that she'd have taken -the trouble that she did take to prove herself right and me wrong. There -had been, before this, little conscious malice or intended unkindness. -But now the claws were out. During the next day or two it at once -justified and infuriated me to watch the manifold little slights and -snubs of which poor Mollie was the victim, the dexterity with which, -while seeming all sweetness, Vera essayed to belittle and discompose -her, to display her as ignorant or awkward or second-rate. Only a woman -can be aware of what another woman is accomplishing on these lines, and -though Captain Thornton once or twice showed a puzzled brow, her skill -equalled her malice, and he never really saw. I was prepared for it when -Mollie came to my study one morning and shut the door and said: - -"I'm afraid I can't stand it any longer, Judith." - -"It has been pretty bad," I said. "She's been so infernally clever, -too." - -"Our time is really nearly up," said Mollie, "and I'm trying to think of -some excuse for getting Clive to feel we'd better go before it comes. -Only now she's telling him that I am jealous of her." - -Pen in hand, I leaned back and looked up at my poor little accomplice. -This, I recognized, was indeed Vera's trump-card, but I certainly hadn't -foreseen that she would use it. - -"Has he told you so?" I asked. - -"Oh, no, he wouldn't. He couldn't, could he? But I know it. Men are very -transparent, aren't they, Judith? He is always urging me to see more of -her, and telling me that she is so kind, so clever, such a dear, and -that I'd really think so, too, if I'd try to see more of her. And when -I say that I'm sure she is, and that I hope I shall see more of her, he -thinks--I can see it--that I'm only playing up, and between us, her and -me, he is rather wretched and uncomfortable. What shall I do, Judith? -You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures, -she was really sneering at father's, and when I tried to -answer,--because I felt I had to answer about that,--making me seem so -rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he didn't -understand. And it's all the time like that. I have to pretend not to -see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns -everything against me." - -"Be patient. Give her a little more time," I said. "She'll run to earth -if you give her a little more time." - -"But it is so horrid, between Clive and me, Judith: if I say what I -think to him, he will only see it as jealousy, so even with him I have -to pretend, and it makes me feel as if I were growing to be like her, -and I can't bear it." - -I meditated while poor Mollie dried her eyes, to which the irrepressible -tears had risen. "Ask him if he can't arrange for you to see more of -her," I said presently. - -She looked at me with a general trust, yet a particular scepticism. - -"But she will make that seem as if I were trying to force myself on -them; because she's always with him, isn't she?" - -"Only now because she keeps him, not because he wants to stay. I'm quite -sure that he wants to be more with you. I think you can manage it, -Mollie. Just say, when he next urges: 'Oh, but I'd love to, Clive. Only -you must tell me when. Perhaps sometime you'd take me to the -dream-garden when you think she'll be there and that she'd care to have -me, and then, when you get us started, you could leave us. You could go -and take Judith for a stroll.' Something of that sort." - -She eyed me sadly and doubtfully. - -"I'll try whatever you tell me to try, but I feel afraid of her. I feel -as if she cared, really cared, to do me harm." - -"She's been proved wrong," I said, "and I've rather rubbed it in; but at -the worst, Mollie, she can never harm you now as there was danger of her -doing. It's better, far better, you'll own, for your husband to think -you're jealous and a naughty angel than for him to think you're a -second-rate one." With this aphorism, for the time being, she had to be -contented. I myself felt sure that the hour of reckoning was to come. - -It was next afternoon, after lunch, Vera being engaged in the -drawing-room with visitors, that I met Captain Thornton on the lawn with -his wife. Mollie was very large-eyed and rather pale, and I inferred -from her demeanour that she had taken a step or made a move of some -kind. - -"Do come with us, Miss Elliot," said Captain Thornton. "I'm just taking -Mollie along to the dream-garden. She wants to have a little talk, all -to herself, with Lady Vera, and Lady Vera told me to wait for her there -till these people were gone; so it's just the thing. And you and I can -leave them together, do you see? People never get really to know each -other unless they are alone together, do they?" - -"No, they don't," I replied. "Though sometimes they never get to know -each other when they are alone together," I couldn't resist adding; but -as I saw a slight bewilderment on his honest face I indulged in no -further subtleties, and made haste to add, "Does Vera know that you were -going to arrange a meeting?" - -"Oh, not a bit of it. That's just the point," said the guileless young -man. "I want her to think that it's all Mollie's doing, you know; -because she's got it into her head that Mollie doesn't really care about -her. Funny idea, isn't it? As if Mollie could be like that to any one -who's been as kind to us as Lady Vera has! But I'm sure that if they -have a few quiet talks it will all come right. Mollie is so -undemonstrative; I told her that. It needs time for her to get used to -anybody." - -Mollie, her arm within her husband's, cast across his unconscious breast -a grave, deep glance upon me as he thus quoted his defence of her. What -was she to do with Vera, the glance perhaps asked me, too, now that she -was to have her? What account of the interview would Vera serve up to -Clive? Was not her last state to be worse than her first? I tried, in my -answering glance, to reassure and sustain, yet I myself felt uncertainty -about this fulfilment of my counsel. - -We reached the dream-garden. Vera and Captain Thornton had been there -for most of the morning, and books and papers were piled on the seat -where the grey and purple cushions denoted attitudes of confident -tte--tte. - -Captain Thornton and I talked about the war, and I saw, with a mild, -reminiscent irony, remembering Vera's sting, that he was perfectly -prepared to give me every opportunity for judging him. I felt, indeed, -though Vera had so absorbed him, that he had never cared to talk about -the war with her. She and the other angels were there to help one to -forget, but with me he was glad to remember. It was I who heard Vera's -swift footfall approaching. Captain Thornton, stooping to mark out with -books and pencils the plan of a battle, had, I think, almost forgotten -the coming interview, and until Vera appeared among the cypresses, -flushed above her pearls, he remained unaware. She stood there at the -top of the steps for a moment, looking down at us, at Captain Thornton -and me, our heads so close together, and at Mollie in her blue and with -her unrevealing little face, and I saw from her expression, as she took -us all in, that she had not been succeeding so well with Captain -Thornton as Mollie and even I had feared. It was a smouldering -irritation against him that flared up with her anger against Mollie and -me. - -"Oh!" she said, a dreadfully significant monosyllable on Vera's -competent lips. It expressed surprise and weariness and the slight -embarrassment of the civilized confronted with the barbarian. "Oh!" she -repeated, and she descended the steps, Chang trotting after her with his -countenance of quizzical superciliousness. "I'm so very, very sorry." -She did not look at any of us now; her voice was exceedingly -inarticulate and exceedingly sweet. "I'm afraid there's been a mistake. -It's the other gardens that are for my friends. I'm charmed always to -see them there. And there are so many other gardens, aren't there? But -this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to -be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired." - -We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those -weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook -them into place. - -"It's my fault," Clive stammered. "I mean--I didn't understand. I -thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know -you better, and I suggested this." - -Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang -sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. "I'm very, very -sorry," she gurgled, with oh, such vagueness! "It's my one corner. My -one place to be alone. I don't see people here unless I've asked them to -come." She took up a review and opened it, and her eyes scanned its -pages. - -We were dismissed,--"thrown out," as the Americans say,--and we -retreated up the steps, Mollie helping Clive, and down the flagged path -and out into the lime-tree alley. - -It was a display so complete that it left me, indeed, a little abashed -by the success of my manoeuvres, while at the same time I felt that I -mustn't let Captain Thornton discern the irrepressible smile that -quivered at the corners of my mouth. When we were out on the lawn he -turned his startled eyes on me. - -"Really, you know, I'd no idea, Miss Elliot--what?" He appealed to me. - -"That Vera could lose her temper?" I asked. - -Clive continued to stare. - -"It comes to that, doesn't it? What else can it mean?" He looked now at -his wife. "To speak like that to you, Mollie! And when she's been saying -she wanted so awfully to make real friends with you." - -Mollie, I saw, was dismayed. The triumph had been too complete. She -could not keep up with it. - -"I am sure that Lady Vera is very badly overwrought about something," -she said. "She wanted particularly to be alone and she found us there, -and it put her on edge." Actually she was trying to patch up his fallen -angel for him. - -"But she told me to wait there for her.--Sent me off to wait for her -when those people came," said Clive. "It seems to me that it was you she -minded finding. And yet she's been going on about your never coming to -talk to her. She's been going on about it like anything." He caught -himself up, blushing, and I saw that Vera was all revealed to him. I -hardly needed to pluck another pinion from her, though I didn't resist -the temptation to do so, saying: - -"You see, Vera is rather jealous. She can't bear sharing things--her -friends of her dream-garden. She liked to have you there, but she didn't -like to have Mollie there. Did she tell you she wanted to make friends -with Mollie? She's never taken any pains to show it, has she?" - -"Oh, please, Judith!" Mollie implored. - -"But he sees it all now, Mollie, so why shouldn't I say it?" I inquired. -"Her point has been, Captain Thornton, to keep you in and to keep Mollie -out, and she very nearly succeeded in doing it." - -"Please, Judith! It's not only that. She's been such a real friend to -you, Clive! I'm sure she is overwrought about something, and it will be -all right when you next meet her." But Mollie pleaded in vain. - -"I'm hanged if it will be all right!" said Captain Thornton. - -Vera made no attempt to reinstate herself. It was part of her strength -never to try to recover what was lost. She kept up appearances, it is -true, but that was for her own sake rather than in any hope, or even -wish, to regain his good opinion. When we all met at tea, she came -trailing in, with Chang under her arm, and as she sank into her place, -diffusing the suavest unconsciousness, she said to Mrs. Travers-Cray: - -"Charlie Carlton's been killed, have you heard? This war is something -more than I can bear." - -Charlie Carlton, as I knew, was a cousin of the recent callers and a -most remote friend of Vera's; but it was the best that she could do for -the occasion, and all that she was inclined to do, though a melancholy -smile, as impersonal as it was impartial, was turned more than once on -Captain Thornton and Mollie as she inquired whether they liked sugar in -their tea or had enough cream. She had made their tea for six weeks now, -and after the first week she had never forgotten that they both liked -sugar and both disliked cream. But she thus washed her hands of intimacy -while keeping up the graces of hostess-ship. They might have arrived -that afternoon. - -Mollie and her husband rose beautifully to the situation, for their last -two days at Compton Dally; that is, Mollie rose, for the husband at such -times has only to follow and be silent. I don't think that she could -have shown a grace and a distance as achieved as Vera's had it not been -for those charming clothes of hers. You must have something to rise from -if you are to float serenely above people's heads; otherwise you merely -stand on tiptoe, very uncomfortably. Mollie and Vera might have been -two silken balloons, passing and repassing suavely in the dulcet summer -air. And on the last day Vera's sense of dramatic fitness prompted her, -evidently, to the most imperturbable _volte-face_: she showed to Mollie -a marked tenderness. To Captain Thornton she was kind, perfectly kind, -but that she found him rather dull was evident. It might have been -Mollie with whom she had spent all those hours in the dream-garden. - -"Must you really go, dear?" she asked. - -Mollie said that she was afraid they must. She had heard from her aunt, -who was waiting to take them in, and, owing to all Vera's kindness, -Clive was now quite strong again. Vera did not insist. - -"I've _so_ loved getting to know you!" she said, holding Mollie's hand -at the door of the motor on the morning of their departure. "It's been -_such_ a pleasure. You must often, often come to Compton Dally again. -_Good_-bye, dear!" - -But Mollie knew, and Vera knew that she knew, that never again would -they be asked to Compton Dally. Meanwhile, if the war isn't over and -Jack hasn't come back, I'm to go and stay with them next spring on the -chicken-farm. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -EVENING PRIMROSES - - -IT had been a hot day and there seemed to be thunder in the air, but she -was afraid there would be no rain that night. The abandoned garden -needed it sadly; though, as she reflected, rain would encourage weeds -rather than the few remaining flowers. Poppies had sown themselves -everywhere, degenerates of the Shirleys which, three years ago, had -spread their silken cups in the large bed at the foot of the lawn. Their -withered stalks cracked beneath her steps in the paths and glimmered -under the unpruned branches of the cordon apple trees. There were -thistles, too, sorrel, and tall nettles, a matted carpet of bindweed and -groundsel in the little kitchen-garden, once so neat, and, of course, as -poor Charlie had predicted, the Michaelmas daisies had eaten up nearly -everything in the herbaceous border. That was one of the last questions -he had written to her: "How are my pink phloxes? Have the Michaelmas -daisies smothered them?" They had. It was the season at which the -phloxes should be in fullest flower, but not one was to be seen; the -dense, fine foliage of the daisies had advanced in a wall of green -nearly to the border's edge. - -It was still oppressively warm. A toad hopped indolently away and -paused at the box edging, lying up against it, his front feet extended, -as if so wearied by the heat that he took his chances of discovery. She -stopped to look at the clumsy creature, in which so little of nature's -accurate grace was expressed; and as she stood there, a sudden rustle in -the box betrayed another inhabitant--this time a baby hedgehog which, -too young for fear, moved busily about among the flat dandelion plants -that rosetted the path, and even, encountering the tips of her shoes, -stopped to examine them carefully before moving on again. The baby -hedgehog would have amused Charlie. He had always been delightful about -animals; he and the boys had always had that great interest in common. - -Yes, the bird-boxes were still there. She could see one in the big apple -tree and one fixed to the porch of the house, under the rose. How well -she remembered the frantic delight that hailed the hatching of the first -brood of tits. And the day when Charlie had deemed it prudent to -withdraw the door for a peep at the beautifully fitted mosaic of bright -little heads and bodies within, lifting up Giles in his holland pinafore -for a long, blissful gaze. Six years ago that must have been. - -The light was altering now, and when she turned at the end of the path, -a great moon had risen across the lane and seemed to hang in the -branches of the walnut tree that grew in the field beyond. A great, -shining, heavy moon, and mournful, it seemed to her; her desolate -thoughts, she was aware, lending their colour to everything. Heavy, -mournful, desolate; that was the rhythm of her own steps passing along -in the twilight, pursued by the unformulated consciousness that lay -behind all these pictures of the past; pausing at last, as if to let the -dogging sorrow overtake her, as she came to where, near the -summer-house, against the wall, the evening primroses grew. - -It was years since Charlie had first planted them there, and she had -said to herself at the time that they would never be rid of them, -tenacious, recurrent things, sowing themselves patiently, and coming up -loyally even when there was no one to wish them well. She felt touched -by their presence; for though she had always found them untidy and -uninteresting, she saw, really now for the first time, that they could -be beautiful. Homely, loyal flowers; yet--was it the invading sense of -sorrow colouring them, too?--a little uncanny, showing at this neutral -hour of mingled dusk and moonlight their pale, evident gold; becoming -conscious, as it were, becoming personal at the time when other flowers -became invisible. Not that it was a sinister uncanniness; not that of -ghosts; of fairies, rather; the very strangeness, sadness, sweetness of -the moon, to which, from them, she lifted her eyes. And they reminded -her of something, but what, she could not say. Not of Charlie. There had -never been anything strange or sad about Charlie, except the fact, -pursuing her now in his deserted garden, that he was dead and would -never see it again. - -It was a year to-day since he had been killed, and she had come down to -the country with the sense of commemoration. She wanted, alone in the -little place so full of thoughts of him, to find him, to recall him; and -she had been doing that at every turn. Yet the evening primroses shining -there brought a pang deeper than any vision of him. They, though so -homely, seemed to personify loneliness; they seemed to be missing -something; and although she was desolate because Charlie was dead, -because he would never again delight in his garden, it was, in a sense, -for him rather than for herself that she sorrowed, and, in a sense, she -did not miss him at all. - -She stood still in the path, her hands clasped behind her, her head -bent, a personification of widowhood in her thin black draperies, her -intent, memorial poise. And she could have said of herself with truth -that, during all this year, she had known only a widow's sad -preoccupations. There had been the settling of business matters; lawyers -and bankers to interview; planning for the boys, with school-masters to -visit; and the tending of bereaved relations--Charlie's dear old parents -clung to her. But now, on the day of his death, it was as if for the -first time she had had leisure, at last, to realize that, with it all, -she had never had the widow's heart. She had grieved over him; she had -longed to do all for him that could be done--there was nothing new in -that; but it was far worse than not being heartbroken: it was the sorry -fact that she did not even miss him. He had left, as it were, no -emptiness behind him. - -She had lifted her head and looked round the garden, trying, in the -physical fact of absence, to summon the spiritual void. How he had -planned, dug, planted it; pruned his fruit trees; placed his anemones in -leaf-mould, his bulbs on sand. She saw his kindly, handsome figure -everywhere; his brown cheek, good grey eye, and close-cropped, tawny -hair. A manly, simple creature; the salt of the earth, as honest as the -day--oh, she saw it all; she had said it to herself a hundred times; and -there had, indeed, been nothing one could say against Charlie. But then, -as a wife, there had been nothing to say against her, either; he had -been perfectly happy with her--the happiest creature, even in the manner -of his death. He had been killed instantaneously, while walking, on a -sunny day, beside his men along a road in France. Every letter she had -had from his brother officers over there spoke of his gaiety and good -spirits. The war itself had, on the whole, meant happiness to him, for -all his gravity over certain of its tragedies. But he had been almost as -grave over mischances with his Boy Scouts, and it had all remained for -him an immense, magnificent form of boy-scouting. - -Dear, good Charlie! Yet--was it possible that something of the old -long-conquered exasperation could still, at this hour, thrust itself -into her memories? He had not been quite boyish enough to justify his -lightness and make it loveable. That had been the final fundamental -trouble in their mistaken marriage; she had not been able to mother him. -He had not been appealing, beguiling, endearing, like a child. Not like -a child; not boyish, fatherly, rather; even, playfully didactic, and -assuming always that theirs was a completely reciprocal marital -intimacy. It had not been his fault, of course. She had been too clever -ever to let him guess how stupid she found him. She felt the possessive -arm laid about her shoulders for an evening stroll; saw the wag of his -premonitory finger as he raised himself from a border to call out a -jocose reprimand; heard the chaff with which, before friends, he counted -her mistaken opinions. - -And it had been when they were alone, especially at dinner,--Charlie -across the table from her in his faultless black and white,--that the -pressure of their distance had been most difficult to protect him from. -He talked then, and she had to answer adequately. He was fond of talk, -and, while the most uncritical of Conservatives, was full of solutions -for old ills. He took Trade-Unionists, Home-Rulers, and Dissenters -playfully and held them up to kindly ridicule. "You can laugh most -people out of their nonsense," was one of Charlie's maxims; and if they -didn't respond to the treatment,--he had tried it unsuccessfully on the -village cobbler who preached in the tin chapel on Sunday,--he suspected -them of being rather wicked. - -In the first year of their marriage she had paid him the compliment of -disagreement, or, at least, discrimination. She had, until her marriage, -thought of herself as a Conservative; to be counted one by Charlie -disturbed her sense of rectitude. But Charlie opposed, became puzzled, -and finally aggrieved. He bothered and bothered and argued and argued, -with the air of trying to bring an erring child to reason. "Now look at -it in this light," he would say. Or, "Try to see the thing squarely, -Rosamund"; and would turn upon her irrelevant batteries from the -_Spectator_. She had at last the sensation of flying, battered and -breathless, from his platitudes, and found, soon, her only refuge in -duplicity. After that, through all the years of their married life, -Charlie, she knew, thought of their evening hours alone together as -exceedingly pleasant and successful. He wasn't one of your fellows who -doze over the _Field_ with a cigar after dinner. He had a clever wife -and he appreciated her and was proud--in spite of feminine aberrations -affectionately recognized and checked--of what he called her -"intellects." He called his father and mother his "respected -progenitors" and his stomach was never other than "Little Mary." And -while he talked and expounded and made his unexacting jests, Rosamund -knew that her silences had no provocation, her smile no irony. - -So it had gone on--so it might have gone on for the normal span of life. -The only insecurity that had threatened her careful edifice was the -question of the boys. The boys were like herself, or, rather, like her -adored and brilliant father--proud, sensitive, ardent little creatures, -tender-hearted and frightfully intelligent. Physically, too, they were -of a different race from Charlie, with thick brown locks, passionate yet -gentle eyes, and full, small, closely closing mouths. As boys, Charlie -had fairly well understood them,--he got on well with the average -boy,--as persons, never; and though as boys, at least as little boys, -they got on beautifully with him, they had, as persons, almost at once -understood him, even when they were too young to evade or hide from him. -If they had not been so young, they would, already, then, have hurt him -often. - -And for her the boys at once complicated everything. It had been easy, -in one way, to yield in non-essentials, though she was woman enough to -cry her eyes out when Charlie had taken Philip and Giles, at the -earliest age, to have their dear Jeanne-d'Arc heads close-cropped in -pursuit of the ideal of manliness; easy, comparatively, to steel her -heart when timid little Philip, blanched with terror, was made to ride -at six. Charlie had been right about that,--how glad she had been to -own it!--for Philip had, in a week's time, forgotten his fears. But she -and Charlie had come near quarrelling over Giles's rag-doll Bessie. -Giles was only three and adored Bessie, and Charlie had tossed her in -the air, mocked her, and held her up by the toe while Giles sobbed -convulsively. - -"Do you really want our boys to be milksops, Rosamund?" he had asked, -as, refusing to argue, she took the doll from him, placed her in Giles's -arms, and kept them both on her lap, pressed within her arms, her head -bent down over them so that she need not look at her husband. He had -gone away vanquished, and Giles had kept his Bessie, until, in the -course of nature, she had dropped away from him. - -Worse than this came one day when Charlie had found Philip in a corner -writing poetry. He had not been altogether pleased by the children's -literary tastes. To grind dutifully at Latin and Greek was one thing, -and he was fond of a tag from Tennyson. But he had never cared to read -Keats and Shelley when he was a kid. He took the copy-book out of -Philip's reluctant hands and, turning from page to page, read out, in -mock-dramatic tones, the derivative, boyish efforts, which yet, to her -ear, had every now and then their innocent, bird-like note of reality. - -"And now this--'To a Skylark,'" said Charlie, laying a restraining, -affectionate hand on Philip's shoulder, wishing him to rise superior to -vanity and join in the fun, once it was pointed out to him. - - "'Glad creature from the dew upspringing - And through the sky your path upwinging!' - -Up, up, pretty creature!" - -Philip, twisting round under his father's arm, burst into tears of rage, -tore the book from his hand and struck him. - -It had been a terrible moment, and Rosamund, reduced as she almost was -to Philip's condition, had never more admired her husband, who, turning -only rather pale, had walked away, saying, "I think you'll be sorry for -that when you think it over, old fellow." That he had been astonished, -cut to the quick, she had seen, feeling it all for him at the moment of -her deepest feeling for Philip. - -"I'm not sorry! I'm not sorry!" Philip had sobbed, rushing to her arms -and burying his head on her breast. "I'm not sorry! He's stupid! stupid! -stupid!" - -"Hush, hush," she had said--what a horrid moment it had been! "That is -wrong and conceited of you, Philip. You must learn to take a little -chaffing. You know how your father loves you." - -"It's not conceited! It's not conceited to care about what one tries to -do. You know it's not. _You're_ not stupid!" the boy had sobbed. - -Alas, it had been only four years ago; only a year before the war! Even -then, at nine, Philip had been old enough, when he recovered from his -weeping, to know that he had hurt her most, had made things difficult -for her; and he had been sorry about his father, too, going to him -bravely with a tremulous, "Please forgive me, father." "That's all -right, old boy," Charlie had said. It _was_ all right, too, in a sense. -It left not a trace in the sweetness of Charlie's nature. It was Philip -who had been shaken, frightened to the very core, by what his own -outburst had revealed to himself and to her. The boy would always have -felt affection for his father; but he, too, would soon have protected -him; he, too, would hardly miss him. - -The moon had now risen far up out of the walnut branches, and flooded -the garden with sorrowful brightness. Poor, poor Charlie! was that all -it came to, then, for him? this deserted garden and a wife and children -who hardly missed him? Why, was it not the very heart of his tragedy for -her to see that they would be happier without him? "And he _was_ a -dear," she said to herself, remembering with an almost passionate -determination kind, trustful looks and the happy love of fifteen years -ago. - -She had been standing still all this while, near the evening primroses; -but now, with the great sigh that lifted her breast, she moved forward -again, and a bird, disturbed in its rest, flew out from the thick tangle -of honeysuckle at the entrance to the summer-house, startling her. As -she stopped, her eyes drawn to the spot, she saw, suddenly, that a pale -figure was sitting in the summer-house, closely shrunken to one side; -hoping in its stillness,--that was apparent,--to remain undiscovered. -Ever since she had entered the garden it must have been sitting there; -and ever since she had entered the garden it must have been watching -her. But why? How strange! - -Dispelling a momentary qualm, she stooped her head under the honeysuckle -and entered; and then, clearly visible, with her pale hair and face,--as -pale, as evident as an evening's primrose,--the girl sitting there, -wide-eyed, revealed, with her identity, that haunting analogy of a -little while ago. Of course, it came in a flash now, that was what they -reminded her of. Long ago she had thought--conceding them their most -lovable association--that Pamela Braithwaite looked like an evening -primrose. - -"My dear Pamela," she said, almost as gently as she would have said it -to a somnambulist; for, like the flowers, again, she was sad, even -uncanny; although Pamela's uncanniness too,--sweet, homely -creature,--could never be sinister. She put a hand upon her arm, for the -girl had started to her feet. - -"Oh--do forgive me, Mrs. Hayward!" Pamela gasped. Sad? It was more than -that. She was broken, spent with weeping. "I didn't know you were -coming. I sit here sometimes in the evenings. I thought you wouldn't -mind." - -"My dear child, why should I mind? I'm thankful to you for coming to the -sad little place. It's much less lonely to think about, for you have -always been so much of our life here." - -This, she knew, was an exaggeration; but she must be more than kind to -such grief as this: she must find some comfort, if that were possible. - -And to feel herself accepted, welcomed, did give comfort; for, sinking -again on the seat, bending her face on her hands, Pamela sobbed, "Oh, -how kind you are!" - -"Poor child, poor, poor child!" said Rosamund. She was only five years -older, but she felt as a mother might feel towards the stricken girl. -She put an arm around her, murmuring, "Can you tell me what it is? Don't -cry so, dear Pamela." - -Pamela Braithwaite had been a girl of eighteen when they had come, in -the first year of their marriage, to Crossfields. The Braithwaites lived -a mile away, near the river, a large, affectionate, desultory family, -in a large, dilapidated house. Already Pamela mothered the younger -brood, and mothered the widowed father as well--a retired tea-planter, -who had brought from Ceylon some undefined but convenient complaint that -enabled him to pass the rest of his days wrapped in a number of coats, -eating very heartily, and, as he expressed it, "sitting about." A -peaceful, idle man, legs outstretched in sun or firelight, hat-brim -turned down over his eyes (he had a curious way, even in the house, of -almost always wearing his hat), pipe between his teeth; good-looking, -too, tall and fair, like his daughters, and with a touch in his -appearance, though not in his character, of amicable distinction. - -Pamela, except for a brother already married and in Ceylon, was the -eldest, with a long gap between her and the group of younger brothers, -of whom Rosamund thought mainly as a reservoir of Boy Scouts until they -had had to be thought of as a reservoir of volunteers. There were three -or four younger sisters, too, some of whom had married and some of whom -had gone forth into the world--always with an extreme light-heartedness -and confidence--as companions or secretaries. These again were hardly -individualized in Rosamund's recollection, except for the fact that, -since Pamela was always making blouses or trimming hats for them, she -had become aware that it was Phyllis who wore pink and Marjory blue. - -But whoever went, Pamela always stayed; and even when the war broke upon -the world, with Frank, the Braithwaite baby, just old enough to enlist, -and Phyllis and Marjory at once enrolling themselves as V.A.D.'s, Pamela -remained rooted. Who, indeed, had she gone, would have taken care of -Mr. Braithwaite, and of the brothers and sisters home on leave, and of -the garden earnestly dedicated to potatoes, or the small family of -Ceylon nephews and nieces deposited continually in her charge by their -parents? - -Poor little Pamela! She had had a burdened life; the assiduities of -maternity and none of its initial romance. With her large, clear eyes, -very far apart, she had always a wistful look; but it was that of a -child watching a game and waiting for its turn to come in, and no -creature could have given less the impression of weariness or routine. -For she had remained, even at thirty-three, the merely bigger sister; an -atmosphere of schoolroom tea and the nurture of rabbits and guinea-pigs -still hanging about her; her resource and cheerfulness seeming concerned -always with the organizing of games, the care of pets, and the soothing -of unimportant distresses. Tall, in her scant tweed skirts, her -much-repaired white blouse, her slender feet laced into heavy boots, -gardening gloves on her hands, so Rosamund had last seen her, a year -ago, just before Charlie had been killed, when she had straightened -herself from moulding potatoes in the lawn borders and had come forward -with her pretty smile to greet her visitor and take her in to tea. Frank -had been killed since then, as well as Charlie, but at that time, for -both households, the war was splendid adventure rather than sorrow. - -Mr. Braithwaite, in the sunny, shabby drawing-room, had stumbled up -among his wrappings, to point out to her his accurate flags, advancing -or retreating on the many maps that were pinned upon the walls. Frank's -last letter had been read to her, and Dick's and Eustace's; and Pamela -had come in and out, helping the maid with the tea (the Braithwaite -maids were always as cheerful and desultory as the family, and Rosamund -never remembered seeing one of them who had not her cap askew or her -cuffs untied), standing to butter the bread herself, the side of the -loaf before cutting the slice, after her old schoolroom fashion; her -discreet yet generous use of the butter--the crust covered to a nicety -and no lumps on the crumb--seeming to express her, as did the pouring -out of the excellent tea, drawn to a point and never over, and the -pleasant, capacious cups with their gilt rims and the immersed rose -which, as one drank, discovered itself at the bottom. - -A sweet, old-fashioned, homely creature; like the evening primroses; -like them, obliterated, unnoticed in daylight; and like them now, -becoming visible, becoming personal, even becoming tragic at this -nocturnal hour; for was this really Pamela, sweet, prosaic Pamela, -sobbing so broken-heartedly beside her? How meagre, intellectual, and -unsubstantial her own grief seemed to Rosamund as she listened, almost -aghast, her arm about Pamela's shoulders; and her instinct told her: "It -is a man. It is some one she loves--not Frank, but some one she loves -far more--who is dead. It is something final and fatal that has broken -her down like this." And aloud she repeated: "Can you tell me, Pamela -dear? Please try to tell me. It may help you to tell." Her own heart was -shaken and tears were in her own eyes. - -Between her sobs Pamela answered, "I love him--I love him so much. He is -dead. And sometimes I can't bear it." - -Rosamund had never heard of a love-affair. But these years of war had -done many things, had found out even the hidden Pamelas. - -"I didn't know.--My poor child!--I never heard. Were you engaged?" - -She had Pamela's ringless hand in hers. - -"No! No! It wasn't that. No--I've never had any one like that. No one -ever knew. He never knew." Pamela lifted her head. Her face seemed now -only a message emerging from the darkness; shadowed light upon the -shadow, it was expression rather than form. "May I tell you?" she said. -"Can you forgive my telling you--here and now,--and to-night, when -you've come to be with him? It was Mr. Hayward I loved. I've always -loved him. He has been all my life. Ever since you first came here to -live." - -Rosamund gazed at her, and through all her astonishment there ran an -undertone of accomplished presage. Yes, that was it, of course. Had she -not been feeling it, seeking it all the evening?--or had it not been -seeking her? Here it was, then, the lacking emptiness. Desolate voids -seemed to open upon her in Pamela's shadowy eyes. She tightly held the -ringless hand and felt, presently, that she pressed it against her heart -where something pierced her. Was it pity for Pamela? or for Charlie? -This was his; had always been his. And Pamela, who had had nothing, had -lost everything. "My dear!" she murmured. - -"Oh, how kind you are!" said Pamela. She sat quiet, looking down at -their two hands held against Rosamund's heart. And with all the -austerity of her grief she had never been more childlike in Rosamund's -eyes. Like a child, once the barriers of shyness were down and trust -established, she would confide everything. - -Rosamund knew how it must help her to confide. "Tell me if you will," -she said. "I am glad you loved him, if it has not hurt you too much. You -understand, don't you, that I must be glad--for him?" - -"Yes, oh, yes; I understand. How beautiful of you to see it all!--Even -though it's so little, it is his; something he did; and so you must -care. But I don't think there's much to tell; nothing about him that you -don't know." - -"About you, then. About what he was to you." - -"That would simply be my whole life," said Pamela. "It's so wonderful of -you to understand and not to blame me. So many people would have thought -it wrong; but it came before I knew what it was going to be, and I never -can feel that it was wrong. He never knew. And even if he had, it -couldn't have made any difference. It must be because of that that I can -tell you. If you hadn't been so happy, if it hadn't been so perfect--for -you and him--I don't think that I could have told. I should just have -rushed away when you came in and hidden from you." - -"Why?" asked Rosamund after a moment. She heard something in her own -voice that Pamela would not hear. - -"I don't quite know why," said Pamela; "but don't you feel it too? -Perhaps if it hadn't been so perfect, even my little outside love might -have hurt you--or troubled you--to hear about. But I see now that you -are the only person in the world who could care to hear. It is a comfort -to tell you. I am so glad you came." Pamela turned her eyes upon her -and it was almost with her smile. "When I see you like this I can -believe that he is here, listening with you, and sorry for me, too." - -How like an evening primrose she was! Rosamund could see her clearly -now: the candid oval of the face, the eyes, the innocent, child forehead -with thick, fair hair falling across it. - -"Yes. Go on," she said, smiling back. - -She was not worthy of Pamela, and poor Charlie was not worthy of her; -but no human being is worthy of a flower. And though so innocent, she -was not stupid; subtlety like a fragrance was about her as she said, -"You can comfort me because you have so much to comfort with." - -"So much grief, or so much remembered happiness?" - -"They go together, don't they?" said Pamela. "Every sort of fulness. But -I needn't try to get it clear. You understand. I always thought that -perhaps people who had fulness couldn't; now I see that I was mistaken." - -"Have you been very unhappy, dear child?" - -"Until now? While he was here? Oh, no, I have been lonely. Even before -he came, even though my life was so crowded, it was rather lonely. I -never had any one of my own, for myself. But afterwards, even if I felt -lonely, I was happy. At least, after just at first. Because, just at -first, it was miserable, for I couldn't help longing to see him more and -to have him like me more, and that made me understand that I was in love -with him, and I was frightened. I can't explain clearly about it, even -to myself. But I was very, very unhappy. Perhaps you remember the time -when I was twenty, and got so run down, and they sent me to Germany to -my old governess--the only time I ever went away from home, out of -England. It was a miserable time. I tried not to think of him and not to -care. But I had to come back, and he was there, and I knew I couldn't -stop caring, and that all I could do about it was to try to be better -because of him,--you know,--and make people happier, and not think of -myself, but of him and them. And everything changed after that. I was -never frightened any more, and though perhaps it wasn't exactly -happiness, it was, sometimes, I believe, almost better. I can't explain -it, but what I mean is in some poetry. I never cared much about poetry -till he came. Then I seemed to understand things I'd never understood -before, and to feel everything that was beautiful. - -"You remember how dear he was to us all--to the boys and me. I always -shared in everything they did. Every bit of this country is full of him; -I could never bear to go away and leave it. I want always to stay here -till I die.--Flowers and birds--wasn't he wonderful about them? And our -walks in the woods! He saw everything, and made us see it. I never woke -in the morning without thinking, Will he come to-day? What will he say -and do? I was never tired of watching him and listening to him. All his -little ways--you know. When I pleased him,--sometimes I saw the bird we -were watching for first, or caught my trout well,--it was a red-letter -day. And in big things--to feel I should have pleased him if he'd known. -It was he who helped me in every way, without knowing it. And I took -more and more joy in you. At first I had felt dreadfully shy with -you--and afraid of you. You were so clever, with all your books and -music and friends, and you didn't seem to need anything. But afterwards -you were so kind, that, though I was always shy, I was not frightened -any longer. I used to think about you so much, and imagine what he felt -about you--and you about him.--You won't mind my saying it, I know. -Perhaps you remember the way I used so often, in the evenings, to walk -past with the children, and say good-night over the wall. That was to -see you and him walking together. You were so beautiful! You are far and -far away the most beautiful person I've ever known. I always noticed -everything you wore, and how your hair was done. I was glad when you -took it down from the knot and had it all at the back, as you do now. -And the lovely pale blue dress, with the little flounces--do you -remember?--a summer dress of lawn. I did love that. And the white linen -coats and skirts, and the big white hat with the lemon-coloured bow. -Your very shoes--those grey ones you always had, with the low heels and -little silver buckles. No one had such lovely clothes. And the way you -poured out tea and looked across the table at one. Always like a -beautiful muse--you don't mind my saying it?--a little above everything, -and apart, and quietly looking on.--How I understood what he felt for -you! I felt it, too, I think, with him." - -Yes, dear flower and child, she had: offering to Charlie that last -tribute of a woman's worship, the imaginative love of the woman he -loves; cherishing the cruelly sweet closeness of that piercing -community. How she had idealized them both. How she had idealized -Charlie's love. Charlie had never seen her like this. Charlie had never -dreamed of her as a muse, above, apart, and quietly watching. Why, with -Pamela's Charlie she herself could almost have been in love! - -"What did you talk about, you and he," she asked, "when you were -together?" Their sylvan life, Pamela's and Charlie's, was almost as -unknown to her as that of the birds they watched. She had almost a soft -small hope that perhaps Pamela could show her something she had missed. -"Did you ever talk about poetry, for instance?" - -"No; never about things like that," Pamela answered. "He talked more to -the boys than to me; he talked to us all together--about what we were -doing. But I used to love listening to him when he came and talked to -father. Politics, you know; and the way things ought to be done. He was -a great deal discouraged, you remember, by the way they _were_ being -done. All those unjust taxes, you know. He wanted, he used always to -say, to _give_ to the poor himself; he _loved_ taking care of them. But -he hated that his money should be taken from him like that, against his -will. And he always, always foresaw the war; always knew that Germany -was plotting, and how England swarmed with spies. He thought we ought to -have declared war upon her long ago and struck first.--I'm rather glad -we didn't, aren't you? because then, in a way, we should have been in -the wrong rather than they; but of course he felt it as a statesman, not -like an ignorant woman.--You think Germany plotted, too?" - -"Yes, oh, yes." How glad Rosamund was to be able to think it, to be -able, here, with a clear conscience, to remember that, on the theme of -Germany's craft and crime, she and Charlie had thought quite -sufficiently alike. "But I am with you about not striking first." - -"Are you really?" There was surprise in Pamela's voice. She did not -dwell on the slight perplexity. "Of course, he always worsted father if -he disagreed. It was rather wicked of me, but I couldn't help enjoying -seeing father worsted. He'd never thought things out, as Mr. Hayward -had. But that's what he talked about--things like that--and you." - -"Me?" Rosamund's voice was gentle, meditative--her old voice of the -encounters with Charlie. How she could hear him through all Pamela's -candid recitative! - -"He was always thinking about you. 'My wife says so and so. My wife -agrees with me about it. I brought my wife last night to see it as I -do.' Oh, you were with him in everything! It was so beautiful to see and -hear! I used to imagine that the Brownings were like that--after I read -their lives. He was a sort of poet, wasn't he? Any one so loving and so -happy is a sort of poet--even if they don't write poetry. Down in the -meadows one day, when we were watching lapwings, he and I and the -boys,--he wanted to show us a nest; you know how difficult they are to -find,--you passed up on the hillside, with Philip and Giles. We could -see you against the larchwood, they in their holland smocks and you in -white, with the white-and-yellow hat. I shall never forget the way he -stood up and smiled, his eyes following you. 'There's Rosamund and the -progeny,' he said.--You know the dear, funny way he had of saying -things." - -Yes--she knew it. Yet tears had risen to Rosamund's eyes. Dear old -Charlie; dear, old, tiresome Charlie! The tears had come as she saw him -standing to look after her and his boys; but there was nothing more, -nothing that she could give to Pamela, not one crumb of enrichment from -what Pamela believed to be her great store. Pamela had seen all--and -more than all--that there was to see. - -In her own silence now she was aware of a growing oppression. She was -too silent, even for one mute from the depth and sacredness of memory. -Might not such silence seem to reprove Pamela's flooding confidence? She -struggled with her thoughts. "The lapwings?" she heard herself -murmuring. "I remember his showing me a nest. How he loved birds and how -much he knew about them! Weren't you with us on the day we put up all -the nesting-boxes here? Do you remember how he planned for the placing -of each one, each bird to have its own appropriate domain? It was a -lovely day, in very early spring." - -"Oh--_do_ you remember that?" How Pamela craved the crumb was shown by -her lightened face; it was almost happy, as it turned to Rosamund, with -its sense of recovered treasures. "Very early spring--March. Snowdrops -were up over there,--and there,--and there were daffodils at the foot of -the wall. You were in blue: a frieze coat and skirt of Japanese blue, -with a grey silk scarf and a little soft grey hat with a blue wing in -it; and you said,--you were standing just over there, near the -pond,--'We can always count on tits.'--But you did get robins, too, and -thrushes in the big boxes; and then the splendid year when the -nut-hatches came to the box down in the orchard. And you were tying up -one box, but it was too high and he came and did it for you. I can see -you both so plainly, your hands stretching up against the sky. Tall as -you are he was taller; his head seemed to tower up into the branches. -Such a blue sky it was! And afterwards we had tea in the drawing-room, -and the tea wasn't strong enough for him, and you liked China and he -Indian tea. And you teased him and said that you had always to make him -the little brown pot all for himself. He said, 'Tea never tastes so -right as out of a brown pot.' There were white tulips growing in a bowl -on the tea-table. And then you played to us. And you sang--'I need no -star in heaven to guide me.'--He was so fond of that. Oh, do you remember -it all, too?" - -All--all. Rosamund, though her tears fell, felt her cheek flushing in -the darkness. How often he had asked for "I need no star in heaven to -guide me"! How often she had sung it to him, rejoicing so soon, while -she threw the proper tumultuous fervour that Charlie loved into the -foolish air, in the atoning thought that already Philip's favourite was -"Der Nussbaum" and that even little Giles asked for "the sheep song," -the bleak, beautiful old Scottish strain: "Ca' the yowes to the knowes," -with its sweetest drop to "my bonnie dearie." "Oh--give us something -cheerful!" Charlie would exclaim after it. - -"I remember it all, dear," she answered; and there was silence for a -while. - -"How do you bear it?" Pamela whispered suddenly. - -The hour, the stillness, the hands that held her, drew her past the last -barrier. Her broken heart yearned for the comfort that the greater loss -alone could give. What was the strength that enabled his wife to sit -there so quietly, so gently, so full of peace and pity? - -Rosamund felt herself faltering, stumbling, as she heard the inevitable -question, and knew, as it came, that even Pamela's heavenly blindness -might not protect her, unless she could be very careful, from horrid -loss or suspicion. To touch with a breath of her daylight reality that -silver world of recollection would be to desecrate. Could she hold her -breath and tread softly while she answered? Yes, surely. Surely she, who -had hidden through all the years from Charlie, could hide from Pamela, -although Pamela already was nearer than Charlie and knew her better than -he had ever done. All the old strength and resource welled up in her, -protecting this lovely thing, as, after the long moment, not looking at -Pamela, but into Charlie's garden, she found the right answer. - -"You see, dear, it is so different with me. You have only your memories. -I have the boys--his boys--to live for." - -It was right. It was the only answer. She heard Pamela's long, soft -breaths, full of a gentle awe, and felt her hand more tightly clasped. -Once the right step was taken, it was easier to go on: - -"I want to tell you why I am so glad to have found you here, Pamela -dear. You'll understand, I think, when I say that motherhood lives in -the present and future, and is almost cruel, cruel to everything not -itself, for it forgets the past in the present. Do you see,"--she found -the beautiful untruth,--"he is so much in them for me, that I might -almost forget him in them--forget to mourn him, as one would if they -were not there. So do you see why it comforts me to know that, while I -must go on into the future with them, you will be keeping him here and -remembering?" - -She could look at Pamela now, in safety, and she turned to her, finding -rapt eyes upon her. - -"Come here often, won't you, when I'm away as well as when I'm here. We -must make it all look again as it did when he was with us--flowers and -trees and bird-boxes. You will help me in it all and you will think of -him here and love him. I know what happiness you meant to him--more than -he was aware of. You were a beautiful part of his life. You say you were -always, for him, only together, with the boys. That is only partly true. -He used often to speak of you to me, the little passing things people -say of any one they are very fond of and take for granted. He -appreciated you and counted upon you. I came here so sad, Pamela, so -burdened. I've never been sadder in my life than I was to-night as I -walked here. And you have lifted it all. It makes all the difference to -know that you are here, in his garden, remembering him. More difference -than I can say." - -It was an unutterable gratitude that, with her tears, with love and pity -and reverence, welled up in her, seeing what Pamela had done. The garden -was no longer empty, and Charlie not forgotten. In the night of his -death and disappearance this flower had become visible. Always, when she -thought of him, she would think of evening primroses and of Pamela, so -that it would be with tenderness, with the understanding, homely, -unexacting, consecrating, that Pamela gave; Pamela herself becoming a -gift from Charlie; emerging from the darkness, evident and -beautiful,--almost another child whose future she must carry in her -heart; though the only gift she could give her now, in return for all -that she had given, was the full and free possession of the past, -where, outside the garden wall, she had been a wistful onlooker. She -felt that she opened the gate, drew Pamela in, and put into her keeping -all the keys that had weighed so heavily in her unfitted hands. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -AUTUMN CROCUSES - - -I - -"WHAT you need is a complete change, and quiet," said his cousin -Dorothy. - -Guy, indeed, in spite of his efforts to keep up appearances, was a -dismal figure. He had been passing the teacups and the bread and butter, -enduring all the jests about sugar-rations and margarine, and enduring, -which was so much worse, the complacencies over the approaching end of -the war. His haggard face, narrow-jawed and high-foreheaded, expressed -this endurance rather than any social amenity, and he was aware that -Aunt Emily could hardly feel that the presence of her poet and soldier -nephew added much to her tea-party. Indeed, the chattering, cheerful -women affected his nerves almost as painfully as did the sound of the -motor-buses when--every day it happened--he stopped on the curb, after -leaving his office in Whitehall, and wondered how long it would take him -to summon courage to cross the street. He felt, then, like breaking down -and crying; and he felt like it now when they said, "Isn't it all _too_ -splendid!" - -Cousin Dorothy was as chattering and as cheerful as the rest of them, -and she had every reason to be, he remembered, with Tom, her _fianc_, -ensconced in Paris, safe after all his perils. Dorothy, though like -everybody else she had worked hard during the war, had seen nothing and -lost nothing. And she had never had any imagination. All the same, he -was thankful when she rescued him from the woman who would talk to him -idiotically about his poetry (she evidently hadn't understood a word of -it), and took him into a quiet nook near the piano. - -It might, then, have been mere consanguinity, for he had never before -found intimacy possible where Dorothy was concerned; or it might have -been a symptom of his state (his being at Aunt Emily's tea-party at all -was that!); but, at all events after admitting that Mrs. Dickson had -been boring him, he found himself presently confessing his terrors about -the motor-buses, his terror of the dark, his sleeplessness and general -disintegration. His nervous laugh was a concession to Dorothy's possible -misunderstanding; but as he went on, he felt himself almost loving her -for the matter-of-factness she infused into her sympathy. After all, -even good old Dorothy wasn't stupid enough to suspect him of cowardice; -and although, from a military point of view, he had made such a mess of -it (invalided home again and again on account of digestive complaints, -and finally, last spring, transferred to his small official post in -London), to any one, really, who had at all followed his career, it -would be apparent that no one could have stuck harder to the loathly -job. He had felt it that, and only that, even while, prompted by pride, -he had made his effort to enlist, in the first months of the war. It had -been with a deep relief that he had found himself at once rejected and -free to stay behind, free to serve humanity with his gift rather than -with his inefficiency; for he took his poetic vocation with a youthful -seriousness. And when, later on, through one of the blunders of medical -examinations, he was drawn into the net of conscription, no one could -have denied that he marched off to the shambles with unflinching -readiness. - -Dorothy, he saw, took courage all along for granted: "It's simply a case -of shell-shock," she said, as if it were her daily fare; "you're queer -and jumpy, and you can't stand noise. It's quite like Tommy." - -He couldn't associate Tommy, short-nosed, round-headed, red-eared Tommy, -with anything of the sort, and said so in some resentment. But Dorothy -assured him that for some months--just a year ago--Tommy had been at -home on sick leave, and really bad enough for anything. "He suffered in -every way just as you do." - -Guy was quite sure he hadn't, but he did not want to argue about it. For -nothing in the world would he have defined to Dorothy what he really -suffered. - -"It's country air you need; country food and country quiet," Dorothy -went on. "You _can_ get away?" - -"Oh, yes; I can get away all right. Old Forsyth is most decent about it. -He was telling me this morning that I ought to take a month." - -"I wonder if Mrs. Baldwin could have you at Thatches," Dorothy mused. -"Tommy got well directly." - -"Mrs. Baldwin?" His voice, he knew, expressed an unflattering -scepticism, but he couldn't help it. "Is she at home--an institution?" -He saw Mrs. Baldwin, hatefully tactful, in a Red Cross uniform. "No, -thank you, my dear." - -"Of course not. What do you take me for?" Dorothy kept her competent -eyes upon him. "It's not even a P.G. place--at all events, not a regular -one, though of course you do pay for your keep. She has very narrow -means and takes friends sometimes, and, since the war, it's just -happened--by people telling each other, as I'm telling you--to be -shell-shock cases rather particularly. It's a lovely country, and a -dear, quaint little cottage, and she does you most awfully well, Tommy -said." - -"I don't like the idea of settling down like that on a stranger." - -"But she wouldn't be a stranger. You'd go through me, and I feel as if I -knew her already through Tommy. He said he was at home at once. 'Cosy,' - was how he expressed it. And you get honey on your bread at tea and -cream in your coffee at breakfast, and all sorts of delightful things -_en casserole_, that she cooks with her own hands, quite equal, Tommy -said, to the French. And, Tommy knows, _now_, you see." - -"It's Mrs. Baldwin herself who frightens me. She frightens me more than -the motor-buses in Whitehall." - -"That's just what she won't do. She's perfectly sweet. Cosy. -Middle-aged. A widow. Her nice old father lives with her, and Tommy -liked him so much, too. You help her to garden, and with the bees, you -know. And the old father plays chess with you in the evenings. There's a -stream near by where you can fish if you want to. It's late for that, -of course; but Tommy got some quite good sport; he was there at just -this time of year. And he said that it was most awfully jolly country, -and that the meadows all about were full of autumn crocuses." - -"Autumn crocuses? In the fields? I've never seen them wild." - -"They do grow wild, though, in some parts of England. They are wild -there. Tommy particularly wrote about them. He said one walked down to -the stream among the autumn crocuses." - -Dorothy was baiting her hook very prettily, and he gloomily smiled his -recognition of it. "They do sound attractive," he owned. He hadn't -imagined Tom a man to notice crocuses, and he was the more inclined to -trust his good impressions further. After all, apart from Mrs. Baldwin -and her father, the country, with honey, cream, and autumn crocuses, was -a happy combination, if he had been in condition for feeling anything -happy. - -What would Dorothy have thought of him, could she have known that, while -they talked, her rosy, bonnie face kept constantly, before his haunted -eyes, dissolving into a skull? Faces had a way of doing this with him -since his last encounter with the war in the spring. And all the people -talking in the room squeaked and gibbered. How could they go on talking? -How could they go on living--after what had happened? How could he? The -familiar nausea rose in him even as he forced himself to smile and say, -"Well, could she have me--Mrs. Baldwin?" - -He could not have made an effort to find a place for himself. Such -efforts, he felt sure, would have landed him at some God-forsaken -farmhouse miles from the station, where the beds were damp and the meat -tough; or, even worse, at a Bournemouth hotel, amid orchestras and -people who made a point of dressing for dinner. But, if some one found -it for him, he would let himself be pushed off. - -"I'm sure she could," said Dorothy with conviction. "I have her address -and I'll write to-night and tell her all about you: that you're a rising -poet, and that your friends and relations will be _so_ grateful if -she'll do for you what she did for Tommy." - -He had an ironic glance for her "rising." His relations--and Aunt Emily -and her brood were the nearest left to him--had never in the least taken -in his standing or realized that he was, among people who knew, looked -upon as completely risen. At the same time, sunken was what he felt -himself; drowned deep; too deep, he sometimes thought, for recovery. His -last little volume had been like a final fight for breath. He had -written most of it over there, after Ronnie's death and before his own -decisive breakdown, and he knew it a result as much of his malady as of -his war experience. - -He wondered now, anew, whether these people had really read the poems. -If they had, it only showed how impervious to reality they must remain. -And there had actually been one, written after one of his leaves, called -"Eating Bread-and-Butter," that should indeed have embarrassed them, had -they remembered it, inviting them to eat it with him in a trench with -unburied comrades lying in No-Man's Land before them. His head, as he -thought of that,--from unburied comrades passing to unburied -friends,--gave a nervous, backward jerk, for he had told himself before -that he _must_ stop thinking in certain directions; and indeed the poems -had helped to exorcise the obsession at the time when they had been -written. - -All the same, it was very strange--such a poet at such a tea-party. He -had plunged into Aunt Emily's tea-party as he plunged nowadays into -anything that presented itself as offering distraction. And now, as he -said, "Well, if you'll put it through, I'll go, and be very grateful to -you," he felt that he was making another plunge into Mrs. Baldwin's -cottage. - - -II - -It was a pretty cottage he found, as, on the September evening, his -station fly drew up at the wicket-gate. They had come a long way from -the station, and, after leaving a small village, the winding lane, too, -had seemed long. He saw, nevertheless, as he alighted, that the rustic -building, old stones below and modern thatch above, could not be far -from the central group of which it formed an adjunct; for it had been -contrived, by devices dear to the heart of the week-ender, from two or -three labourers' cottages thrown into one and covered all over with the -capacious and brooding thatch. "Quaint," Dorothy's really inevitable -word, altogether expressed it, from the box hedges that ran on either -side of the flagged path, to the pale yellow hollyhocks beside the door. - -A round-cheeked country girl, neatly capped and aproned, opened the door -on a square, rush-matted hall; and beyond that he saw a room full of the -sunset, where a table was being laid and from which Mrs. Baldwin came -out to greet him. - -She was not tall, and had thick, closely bound braids. He had dreaded -finding himself at once dealt with as a case; but Mrs. Baldwin's manner -was not even that of one accustomed to paying guests. Her murmur of -welcome, her questions about his journey, her mild directions as she led -him up to his room, "Be careful at this landing, the level of the floor -goes up and the beam comes down so low,"--were rather those of a shy and -entirely unprofessional hostess. - -He thought, as soon as he took in his room, with its _voile-de-Gnes_ -hangings and dear old furniture, that he pleased her by saying, "What a -delicious room!" and even more when, on going to the wide, low, -mullioned window, its panes open to the west, he added, "And what a -delicious view!" There were meadows and tall hedgerow elms, and, running -in a tranquil band of brightness, the stream that reflected the sky. - -She did not say that she was glad he liked it, but her very gentle smile -at the welcome it all made for him was part of the welcome. What she did -say was, with the little air of shy preoccupation, while she wrung her -finger-tips together, those of one hand in those of the other, "I think -the water's very hot. I have a rather young little maid. You'll tell me -if you want anything. Are three blankets and the down quilt enough? The -nights are rather cold already." - -He said that three would be perfect, secure, from his glance at the -deep, comely bed, that they would be beautifully thick and fleecy. - -"Then you'll come down to us when you are ready." She stood in the door -to look round again. "Matches here, you see; biscuits in the little -earthenware box; and the spirit-lamp is in case you should wake in the -night--you could make yourself a cup of cocoa? Everything is -there--cocoa, milk, and sugar. It usually sends one off again directly." - -It was all the slightly shy hostess rather than the businesslike soother -and sustainer; and, no, it wasn't a bit cosy. He repudiated that word -indignantly, while he washed--the water _was_ very hot, admirably hot; -there was a complacency about cosy, and Mrs. Baldwin had no complacency, -though she was, for all her shyness and the unconscious gestures of -physical nervousness, composed. Her hands, he remembered, recalling -their little trick,--he had noticed it in the hall,--were like a -child's; not the hands of a practical housewife. Yet, from the look of -that bed (yes, thank heaven, a box-spring mattress!), from the heat of -the water, and, above all, the deft and accessible grouping of the -spirit-lamp and its adjuncts, she proved that she knew how to make one -comfortable. - -There were the meadows and--going again to the window, he wondered -leaning out,--could he see the autumn crocuses? Yes, surely; even at -this evening hour his eyes distinguished the pale yet delicately -purpling tint that streaked the pastoral verdure. What a delicious -place, indeed! He stood, absorbed in looking out, until the maid came to -say that supper would be ready in five minutes. - -The long room, the living-room,--for it combined, he saw, all social -functions,--also faced the meadows at the back of the house, and the -primrose coloured sunset still filled it as he entered. Mrs. Baldwin was -busying herself with the table, and an old gentleman with a very long -white beard rose, with much dignity, from the grandfather's chair near -a window-seat. Mr. Haseltine, so his daughter named him, had more the -air of seeing the visitor as a P.G., perhaps even as a shell-shock -patient; but he was a nice old man, Guy felt, although his beard was too -long. He wore a brown velveteen jacket, and Guy surmised that he might -have been a writer or scholar of some not very significant sort. - -"Yes, we think ours a very favored nook indeed," he said, as Guy again -praised the prospect. "Yes; three cottages. Very happily contrived, is -it not? There is a clever builder in the next town. He kept the old -fireplace, you see; that end was a kitchen and the beams are all the old -ones. Three gardens, too, thrown into one; but that is entirely my -daughter's creation. Pig-styes used to be in that corner." - -Guy looked out at the squares of colour, the low beds of mignonette, the -phloxes, larkspurs, and the late sweet-peas a screen of stained-glass -tints against the sky. Where the pig-styes had been was a little -thatched summer-house with rustic seat and table. The bee-hives were -just outside the hedge, at an angle of the meadow. Mr. Haseltine -continued to talk while Mrs. Baldwin and the maid came in and out, -carrying tea and eggs and covered dishes. - -"I hope you don't mind high tea," she said. "It seems to go with our -life here." - -He felt that high tea was his favourite meal. There was a big white -earthenware bowl on the table, filled with sweet-peas. "Where do you get -the old-fashioned colours?" he asked her. "I thought the growers had -extirpated them; one sees only the long-stemmed ones nowadays, with the -tiresome artistic shades." - -He pleased her again, he felt sure, and she told him that she always -saved the seed, liking the old bright colours better, too. - -He was glad that he had come, although Mr. Haseltine's beard was too -long and he feared that he would prove talkative in the worst way, the -deliberate and retaining way. He liked the smell of everything,--a -mingling of sweet-peas, rush-matting, and China tea,--and the look of -everything; good, unpretentious old oak furniture, fresh, if faded, -chintzes, and book-lined walls; and he presently liked the taste of -everything too. - -"I feel already as if I should sleep to-night," he said to Mrs. Baldwin. - -She sat behind the tea-urn a little distracted, if anything so mild -could be called distraction, by the plunging movements of the little -maid as she moved about the table. "That will do nicely, Cathy," she -said. "We can manage now. You can bring in some more hot water if I -ring.--Oh, I do hope you'll sleep. People usually sleep here." - -She was hardly middle-aged, though, after Dorothy's bright browns and -pinks, Tommy might well have thought her so. Many years older than -Dorothy, of course, yet how many he could not in the least compute. -There was an agelessness, with something tough and solid, about her; she -was as little slender as she was stout; she might, with her neutral -tints,--hair, skin, dress,--have looked almost the same at sixty as she -did now. She wasn't pale, or sallow, or sunburned; yet her complexion -seemed so to go with her hair that the whole head might have been carved -in some pleasantly tinted stone. Only her eyes gave any depth of -difference; gentle eyes, like a grey-blue breadth of evening. She had a -broad, short face and broad, beautifully drawn lips, and looked almost -mysteriously innocent. - -Guy took her in to this extent, swift as he was at taking people in, and -sensitive as he was to what he found. He felt sure--and the depth of -comfort it gave him made him aware of all the reluctances Dorothy's -decision had overborne--that she hadn't the ghost of a method or of a -theory. Shell-shock people had merely happened to come and had happened -to get well quickly. He even gathered, as the peaceful evening wore -on,--Cathy clearing, placid lamps lighted, the windows still left open -to the twilight--that she didn't really think very much about her cases, -in so far as they were cases and not guests. Having done her best in the -way of blankets, hot water, and spirit-kettles, and seen them settled -down into the life she had made for herself,--and not at all for -them,--she went her own way, irresponsible and unpreoccupied. - -To-night she didn't attempt to entertain him. It was Mr. Haseltine, at -supper, who kept up the conversation, and with the air of always keeping -it up, with even the air, Guy imagined once or twice, of feeling it -specially his part to make amends, in that sort of resource, for his -dear daughter's deficiency. She was, Guy saw, very much his dear -daughter; but he felt sure that it had never entered the old gentleman's -head that any one would find her interesting when he himself was there. - -After supper she was occupied for a little while at her desk, adding up -figures, it appeared, in house-books; for she came to her father and -asked him if he would do a column for her. "It has come out differently -three times with me," she confessed, but without ruefulness. "I'm so -dull at my accounts!" - -Guy, as Mr. Haseltine fumbled for his large tortoise-shell eyeglasses, -offered to help her, and then came over and sat beside the desk and did -the rest of the sums for her. She was tidying up for the month, she told -him, and always found it rather confusing. "It's having to put the -pennies, which are twelves, into pounds, which are twenties, isn't it?" -she said, and thanked him so much. - -But this could hardly be called entertaining him, nor could it, when he -accompanied her across the lane in the now deepening dusk, to shut up -her fowls. After that, there was the game of chess, during which Mrs. -Baldwin absented herself a good deal, helping Cathy, Guy imagined, with -the beds and hot-water bottles; and at nine-thirty they all lighted -their candles and went upstairs. - -Bedtime had been, for many months, his most dreaded moment. The door -shut him in and shut away the last chance of alleviation. There was -nothing for it but to stretch himself haggardly on his couch and cling -to every detail in the day's events, or in the morrow's prospects, that -might preserve him from the past. To fight _not_ to remember was a -losing game, and filled one's brain with the white flame of insomnia. He -had found that it was when, exhausted by the fruitless effort, he -suffered the waiting vultures to settle upon him, abandoned himself to -the beaks and talons, that, through the sheer passivity of anguish, -oblivion most often came. - -To-night, from the habit of it, his mind braced itself as he came into -the room, and he was aware, as he had been for nearly a year now, that -Ronnie's face was waiting, as it were, on the outskirts of -consciousness, to seize upon him. But, after he had lighted the candles -on his dressing-table and the candles on the mantelpiece, taken off his -coat, and started undressing, he found that his thoughts, quite -effortlessly, were engaged with his new surroundings, old Mr. -Haseltine's beard and eyeglasses occupying them, and the clucking noise -he made in drinking the glass of hot ginger and water that had been -brought to them on a tray while they played; Mrs. Baldwin's accounts, -her fowls, and the colour of her eyes. He decided that the colour was -Wedgwood, or perhaps periwinkle blue--some very dense, quiet colour. - -As he moved about the room, this protective interest came to him from -the little objects he made acquaintance with: the round Venetian box, -dim gilt and blue and red, on the chest of drawers in which he found a -handful of tiny shells--shells, no doubt, that Mrs. Baldwin had picked -up during a seaside outing; the faded old blue leather blotter on the -writing-table, marked E. H., which had probably been hers since maiden -days (and did E stand for Ethel or Edith or Ellen?); the pretty -lettering in fine black script of the writing-paper so pleasantly -stacked; the dear old Dutch coffee-pot and jug on the mantelpiece, and -the bowl of mignonette that she, of course, had arranged. He sank his -face into its fragrance, and peace seemed breathed upon him from the -flowers. - -He was wondering, as he got into bed, with a glance, before he blew out -the candle, at the birds and branches, the whites and blacks and roses -of the _voile-de-Gnes_, whether he would find the autumn crocuses open -in the meadows next morning; it had looked like the evening of another -fine day. Then, the candle out, his thoughts, for a little while, were -tangled in the magical dreamland of the _voile-de-Gnes_, and the breath -of the mignonette seemed to lie upon his eyelids with a soft compulsion -to peace, until, all thought sliding suddenly away, he dropped into -delicious slumber. - - -III - -He found the crocuses open, before breakfast. Only Cathy was in the -living-room, sweeping, when he crossed it, though he thought he heard -Mrs. Baldwin in the kitchen. A robin was singing on a spray over the -summer-house. The sky arched pale and high; and though there was no mist -in the air, its softness made him think of milk. - -From the garden he passed into the meadows, and, almost at once, saw, -everywhere, the fragile, purple flowers about him, if purple were not -too rich a word for their clear, cold tint. Lower down, near the stream, -they made him think of the silver bobbins set playing by great rain -drops when they fall heavily upon wide, shallow pools of water; and they -seemed to grow even more thickly in the farther meadow beyond the wooden -bridge. A sense of bliss was upon him as he walked among the flowers. He -had never seen anything more lovely, and all but the darker buds were -open, showing pale golden hearts to the sun. - -Yet, by the time that he had crossed the bridge, leaning on the high -rail to look down into the limpid, sliding water, he knew that it could -never stay at that or mean that for him. He had seen fields of flowers -in France, and, while the horrors there had been enacted, these fields -of crocuses, year after year, had bloomed. What they meant for his mind -was the unbridged chasm between nature and the sufferings of man. Only -when one ceased to be a man, ceased to remember and to think, could such -a day, such sights, bring the unreasoning joy. - -Walking back, he saw, as he approached the house, that Mrs. Baldwin was -standing at the garden-gate, and, bare-headed, in the linen dress of -pale lavender, she made him at once think of the crocuses, or they of -her. Their gentleness was like her, their simplicity, and something, -too,--for he felt this in her,--of unearthliness. More perhaps, than any -other flower they seemed to belong to the air rather than to the ground, -and, with their faint, pale stalks, their fragile petals unconfined by -leaf or calyx, to be rising like emanations from the sod and ready to -dissolve in mist into the sunlight. - -"You've had a little walk?" Mrs. Baldwin asked him as they met. - -He said he had been looking at the crocuses. "Are they really crocuses?" -he questioned. "I've never seen them wild before." - -"They're not real crocuses," she said, "though those grow wild, too, in -a few places in England. These flowers are always called autumn crocuses -hereabouts; but they are really, botanically, meadow saffron; and they -grow wild in a great many places. You see they are not so dark a purple -as the wild crocus, and they are much taller, and the petals are more -pointed. Much more beautiful flowers, I think." - -"Meadow saffron. That's a pretty name, too. But I think I'll go on -calling them autumn crocuses. They were one of the reasons that made me -want to come here," he told her. - -They were leaning on the little garden-gate looking over the meadows. - -"Really? Did you hear about them?" - -He told her what Dorothy had said, passed on from the appreciative -Tommy, and she said again, "Really!" and with surprise, so that, -laughing a little, he said that he believed she would never have thought -of Mr. Barnet as an appreciator of crocuses. She laughed a little, too, -confessing to a community of perception where Tommy was concerned, and -remarked that it was very nice of him to have cared. "What he talked -about," she said, "was the food. He was never done praising my coffee. -It's time for coffee now," she added. - -Guy, as they went in, said that, after all, if that was what Tommy -talked about, he wondered that his caring for the crocuses should have -surprised her, for he was sure that the one was almost as poetical as -the others. It was poetical, indeed, as she made it, in a delightful and -complicated apparatus, glass and brass and premonitory scented steam; -and the milk was as hot as the water had been, and there was cream. "How -do you manage it, in these days?" he asked. But she said that it wasn't -wickedness and bribery, really: she and Cathy skimmed it from the milk -that was brought from the nearest farm. - -He realized that he was himself talking about the food just as Tommy had -done; just as the chattering women at Aunt Emily's tea-party had done; -just as everybody, of course, had been doing in England ever since food -became such an important matter. But it was Mrs. Baldwin who made him do -it; for though unearthly, she was deliciously prosaic. He felt that anew -when he heard her going about the house in her low-heeled little shoes, -with Cathy. They did, evidently, all the work, and how fresh, composed, -and shining everything was. The living-room, with its happy southern -windows, its tempting writing-tables, its flowers and books, was an -embodiment of the poetry that only such prose can secure. - -Guy, while Mr. Haseltine sat behind his rustling _Times_, strolled -before the shelves, surprised, presently, at their range of subject. -Surely not Mrs. Baldwin's, such reading; hardly, he thought, Mr. -Haseltine's. He took down a volume of Plotinus and found, on the -fly-leaf, "Oliver Baldwin," written in a small, scholarly hand. That -explained it, then. Her husband's. The Charles d'Orleans, too, the -Fustel de Coulanges, the Croce, and the Dante, with marginal notes. He -had been a man of letters, perhaps. Of the dozen books he took down to -examine, only one was initialled "E. H.," and that, suitably, was -_Dominique_. But it had been given her by "O. B." - -As in the garden, presently, he and the old gentleman walked up and -down, smoking, Guy asked him, with the diffidence natural to the -question, whether his son-in-law, Mrs. Baldwin's husband, had been -killed in the war; though he couldn't imagine her a war-widow. One -didn't indeed think of her in connection with marrying and giving in -marriage--that was part of the unearthliness; yet widowhood, permanent -widowhood, seemed a suitable state. She was not girlish, nor was she -wifely. She was widowed, and it had happened, he felt sure, in spite of -his question, long ago. - -As he had expected, his companion replied, "Ah, no; he died eight, nine -years since." And Mr. Haseltine then went on to tell, taking the war as -the obvious interest, and not without the satisfaction that Guy had so -often met and so often loathed, that he had lost dear ones. "Children of -my eldest son. Fine lads. Brave boys. One in the first month--at the -Marne; the other only last year, flying. Yes; I've done my bit," said -Mr. Haseltine, with the fatuity that he was so plentifully companioned -in displaying. - -"Bit." Odious word. His "bit." Why his? Had any one written a poem on -the formula coming from the lips of those for whom others had died? A -scattered, flagellating line or two floated through Guy's mind. -Something about barbed wire came in. He wondered how old Mr. Haseltine -would have felt about his "bit," hung up on that and unable to die. He -wondered where the fine lads now lay. No more coffee for them, with -cream in it; no more robins singing; no more strolling smokes among -mignonette in the sunlight. How they were forgotten, already, except for -trophies, for self-glorification to display! How pleased, how smug this -rescued, comfortable world! Something of his distaste attached itself -even to Mrs. Baldwin when she next appeared. Something irritating him in -her peacefulness. She, too, had seen nothing and lost nothing. But, at -all events, she wouldn't, he knew that, take any stand on the two -nephews to claim her "bit." There was nothing fatuous about Mrs. -Baldwin. The slight distaste still lingered, however, and he found -himself wondering once or twice, during the day that passed, in spite of -it, so pleasantly, whether she wasn't, for all his idealizing similes, a -stupid as well as a sweet woman. It was not because of filial -self-effacement that she let her father do all the talking at meals: it -was simply because she had nothing to say, and the good old boy was -quite right in taking his responsibility for granted. The person who -could talk was the responsible person. Her mind, though so occupied, was -quite singularly inactive and, he was sure, completely uncritical. She -didn't find her father in the least a bore, or suspect that anybody else -might find him so. She did find, Guy felt sure, satisfaction in all her -occupations. He heard her laughing--a quiet little laugh--with Cathy in -the kitchen; and in the afternoon, when he helped her to prick out -seedlings, her attentive profile--as, after he had dug each hole, she -dropped in the little plant, pressed the earth about its roots, and -fixed it in its place--made him think of the profile of a child putting -its dolls to bed. They planted three beautiful long rows, and Guy was -quite tired by tea-time, for though they had high tea at half-past six, -they were not deprived of the precious afternoon pause, taking place as -it did at the unaccustomed but pleasing hour of four. - -After tea she went to see some people in the village, Mr. Haseltine -dozed in his chair, and Guy took a long walk. - -So the days went on, and at the end of a week he was able to write to -Dorothy and tell her that he was sleeping wonderfully and that Mrs. -Baldwin's cottage was all that she had pictured it. By the end of the -week he had even grown rather attached to Mr. Haseltine, and he enjoyed -playing chess with him every evening; and sometimes they had a game in -the afternoon when tea was over. The undercurrent of irritation still -flowed, but he had learned to put up with the old gentleman and to -circumvent his communicativeness, and in the case of Mrs. Baldwin he -more and more felt that she was the sort of person to whom one would, -probably, forgive anything. It had become evident to him that what might -be dulness might also be unawareness. That was a certain kind of -dulness, it was true, but it didn't preclude capacity for response if -the proper stimulus were applied. It amused him to note that if none of -the nearly inevitable jars of shared life seemed ever to occur between -her and her father, it was simply because, when a difference arose, she -remained unconscious of it unless it were put before her. Nothing could -have been less in the line of selfishness; it was she who thought of -him, of his comfort and happiness, and who ordered her life to further -them; he, in this respect, was passive; but Guy felt that the poor old -boy often brooded in some disconsolateness over small trials and -perplexities that a companion more alert to symptoms would have -discerned and dispelled at once. Mr. Haseltine even, sometimes, confided -such grievances to the P.G. - -"I don't want to bother Effie about it," he said;--E. had stood for -Effie--"she's a dreamy creature and very forgetful. But it's quite -evident to me that the rector and his wife have been expecting to be -asked to tea to meet you. I've just been talking to them in the lane, -and I saw it plainly. They had asked us to bring you before you arrived, -hearing we were to have another guest,--they've always been most kind -and neighbourly in helping us to entertain our new friends,--and I -really don't know why Effie should have got out of it. I usually have to -remind her, it's true. But I sometimes get tired of always having to. -She doesn't care for them herself; but that's no reason why you might -not. We have few enough interests to offer visitors." - -Guy was glad to have escaped the rectory tea, though he did not say this -in assuring Mr. Haseltine that the entertainment offered at Thatches was -absolutely to his taste. He was completely out of place at any rectory; -he could imagine no rector who would not find his poems pernicious; but -he felt that there was justice in Mr. Haseltine's contention. He _might_ -have cared for them. As it was, Mr. Haseltine was brought once again to -reminding her. It was evident then that she was ready to please anybody -or everybody. - -"Ask them? Ought I to ask them?" - -"My dear, it's ten days since they sent their invitation. They spoke -again--and it's the second time--of having been so sorry not to see us, -when I met them yesterday, in the lane. I don't know why you did not -go." - -"I thought it would bore Mr. Norris, father. He came here for quiet, you -know. But would it bore you?" she asked Guy. "They are very nice. I -don't mean that." - -"It's certainly very pleasant being quiet," said Guy; "but if Mr. -Haseltine likes having them, I assure you that people don't frighten me -in the least." - -"Oh, not on my account," Mr. Haseltine protested. "I see our good -friends continually. It is of them I am thinking, as well as of Mr. -Norris. He might find them more interesting than you do, Effie, and they -will, I fear, be hurt." - -Now that it was put before her, Mrs. Baldwin did it every justice, -rising from the breakfast-table, where she had just finished, to go to -her desk, and murmuring as she went, "I hadn't thought of that. They -might be hurt. So, if it _won't_ bore you, Mr. Norris." - -And the Laycocks were asked, and did indeed bore Guy sadly. - -It was on the night after their visit--Mr. Laycock had questioned him -earnestly about his personal impressions of the war and to evade him had -been wearying--that Guy, for the first time, really, since he had come, -found sleep difficult and even menaced. It was because of that, he felt -sure, looking back on it, that the curious occurrence of the next day -took place--curious, and, had it taken place in the presence of any one -else, embarrassing. But what made it most curious was just that; he had -not felt it embarrassing to break down and sob before Mrs. Baldwin. - -The morning had begun badly. The breakfast-table papers had been full of -the approaching victory. Mr. Haseltine read out passages from the -_Times_ as he broke his toast and drank his coffee. He had reiterated -the triumph of his long conviction, and Mrs. Baldwin had murmured -assent. "All's well with the world," was the suffocating assurance that -seemed to breathe from them both. "All's blue." Was hell forgotten like -that? What if the war were won? Of course, it had to be won--that was an -unquestioned premise that had underlain his rebellions as well as Mr. -Haseltine's complacencies since the beginning. But what of it? No -victory could redeem what had been done. - -He went out into the garden, to be away from Mr. Haseltine, as soon as -he could, and took a book into the summer-house; and it was here, a -little later, that Mrs. Baldwin, seeing him as she passed, her -garden-basket on her arm, paused to ask him, with her smile of the shy -hostess, if he were all right. She didn't often ask him that, and he saw -at once that his recent recalcitrancy to rejoicing had pierced even her -vagueness. He knew that he still looked recalcitrant, and he was -determined not to soften the overt opposition rising in him; so he -raised his eyes to her over his book and said that he was not, perhaps, -feeling very fit that morning. - -Mrs. Baldwin hesitated at the entrance to the summer-house. She looked -behind her at the garden and up at the roses clustering over the lintel -under the thatch; she even took out her scissors, in the uncertainty -that, evidently, beset her, and snipped off a dead rose, and she said -presently, "It was all that talk about the war, wasn't it--when what you -must ask is to forget it." - -"Oh, I don't ask that at all," said Guy. "I should scorn myself for -forgetting it." She glanced in again at him, mildly. "I want to forget -what's irrelevant, like victory," he said; "but not what is relevant, -like irremediable wrong." - -Her awareness had not, of course, gone nearly as far as this. She kept -her eyes on him, and he was glad to feel that he could probably shock -her. "You see," he found himself saying, "I saw the wrong. I saw the -war--at the closest quarters." - -"Yes--oh, yes," Mrs. Baldwin murmured. - -"For me, tragedy doesn't cease to exist when it's shovelled underground. -If one goes down into hell, one doesn't want to forget the fact--though -one may hope to forget the torments and horrors; one wants, rather, to -remember that hell exists--and to try and square life with that -actuality." - -There was silence after this for a moment, and he imagined that she was -very much at a loss. Her next words seemed indeed to express nothing so -much as her failure to follow--that and a silliness really rather -adorable, had he been in a mood to find it anything but exasperating. -"But, still--hell doesn't exist, does it?" she offered him for his -appeasement. - -Guy laughed. "Doesn't it? When things like this war can happen? How -could it ever have existed but in men's hearts? It's there that it -smoulders and, when its moment comes, leaps out to blast the world." - -He could talk to her like this because she was too simple to suspect in -him a poetical attitudinizing; any one else would of course suspect it. -Guy was even aware that to any one else that was what it would have -been. She looked kind and troubled and as much as ever at a loss. She -didn't know at all how to deal with the patient, and she was evidently -uncertain what to do, since it might seem heartless to go away and leave -him to his black thoughts, yet intrudingly intimate to come and sit down -beside him. Nothing could be less intimate than Mrs. Baldwin. It was he, -of course, who was tasteless in talking to her in a vein appropriate -only to intimacy. - -"Don't bother over me," he said, offering her the patent artifice of a -smile. "I'm simply a bad case. You mustn't let me trouble you. You must -just turn your back on me when I'm like this." - -It was not poetic attitudinizing now; there was in his voice a quaver of -grief and she responded to it at once. - -"Oh, but I don't like to do that. I do wish I could be of some help. I -see you haven't slept, for you look so tired, as you did when you first -came. And Mr. Laycock did bore you. It's wrong of people to talk to you -about the war." - -For the first time he saw in the eyes fixed upon him, pity, evident pity -and solicitude. And before it he felt himself crumble suddenly. He saw -all the reasons she had for pitying him, did she but know. He saw -Ronnie's face again; he saw his own haunted night and his own grief. He -wanted her to see it. "Oh--one can't be guarded like that," he murmured; -"I must try to get used to it. But--I didn't sleep; that's true. I'm so -horribly afraid of not sleeping. You can't imagine what it is. I've the -most awful visions." And leaning his elbows on the table, he put his -hands before his face and began to cry. - -She stood there; he did not hear her move at first; and then she entered -and sat down on the seat beside him. But she said nothing and did not -touch him. He had had in all the tumult of his disintegration, a swift -passage of surmise; would she not draw his head upon her shoulder, like -a mother, and comfort him? But that would have broken him down heaven -knew how much further. - -He cried frankly, articulating presently, "It's my nerves, you know; -they have all gone to pieces. I lost my friend; my dearest friend. For -months I didn't sleep." - -Mrs. Baldwin's silence was not oppressive, or repressive either. He -heard her hands move slightly on the basket she held on her knees and -the soft chafing in the folds of her linen bodice that her breathing -made. It was an accepting stillness and it presently quieted him; more -than that, it enabled him at last to lift his head and look at her -without feeling ashamed of himself. Oddly enough, he knew that he, -perhaps, ought to be. He _could_ have helped himself. There had been an -element of wilfulness in his breakdown; he had wanted her to see; but, -even had she known this about him, he would not have felt ashamed. She -was so curiously a person with whom one could not associate blames and -judgments. She was an accepting person. - -She wasn't looking at him, but out at the sweet, bright, autumnal little -garden; and as her eyes came to him, he felt them full of thought; felt, -for the first time, sure that, whatever she might be, she was not dull. - -He could not remember, looking back at the little scene, that she had -said a single further word. He did not think that he had said anything -further. He was helping her, a little while after, to prune the Aime -Vibert rose that had grown with great unruliness over the little -tool-house near the kitchen door. "It will really pull it down unless we -cut out some of these great branches," she had said, as, equipped with -stout gloves, they had worked away together, unfastening the tangled -trails and stretching them out on the ground. So displayed, the Aime -Vibert was drastically dealt with, and it was midday before they -finished fastening the thinned and shortened shoots into place. - -She had said nothing further; but he believed that, for the first time, -her thought really included him. He had been put before her. She was -different afterwards. He had become an individual to her, and had ceased -to be merely the paying guest. - - -IV - -The third week came. There was rain, rather sad September rain, for a -day or two. They sat in the evenings before the wide fireplace where -logs blazed. Mrs. Baldwin, at his suggestion, read aloud to them Fabre's -_Souvenirs Entomologiques_. She read French prettily, better than he did -himself, and he was a little chagrined once or twice to find that she -knew it better, priding himself on his French as he did. He had lived -for a year in Paris, with Ronnie, before the war. - -The horrors of the grim, complicated underworld revealed by the French -seer distressed him. Mrs. Baldwin did not feel them as he did, feeling -the marvels rather than the horrors, perhaps. She laughed a little, -rather callously, at the ladies who devoured their husbands, and seemed -pleased by the odious forethought of the egg-laying mothers. She shared -Fabre's humorous dispassionateness, if not the fond partiality which, -while it made him the more charming, didn't, Guy insisted, make his -horrid wasps and beetles a bit more so. As usual, she vexed him a -little, even while, more and more, he felt her intelligent; perhaps she -vexed him all the more for that. - -"She's so devilishly contented with the world," he said to himself -sometimes, even while he smiled, remembering her laughter. - -Old Mr. Haseltine fell asleep one night while she read, and to be -together there before the fire, the old man sleeping beside them, made -them nearer than they had ever been before. Guy was aware of this -nearness while he listened and while he watched her hand, short, like a -child's (and her face was so short) support the book, and her eyelashes -dropping down the page or raised to a fresh one. - -When he went to his room that night, he stood still for a long time, his -candle in his hand, listening to the soft beat of the rain against the -window. He was hardly ever now afraid of being alone, or of the dark, -and he stood there musing and listening, while he still seemed to see -Mrs. Baldwin's hand as it held the book, and her reading profile. Her -life seemed to breathe upon him and he rested in it. He slept -deliciously. - -"Did you know that I write?" he asked her next day. He had wondered -about this once or twice before. - -"Oh, yes; your cousin, in her letter, you know, told me that you wrote," -said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They were in the living-room after midday dinner, and alone. She looked -up at him very kindly from the papers and letters she was sorting at her -desk. - -"You've never heard of my effusions otherwise, though?" He put on a -rueful air. "Such is fame!" - -"Are you famous?" Her smile was a little troubled. "I don't follow -things, you know, living here as I do." - -"You read the papers. I _have_ had reviews: good ones." - -"I don't read them very regularly," she admitted. "And I so often don't -remember the names of people in reviews, even when I've liked what is -said of them. Have you any of your poems here? Perhaps you'll let me -read them." - -He felt, with the familiar chagrin, that she would never, of herself, -have thought of asking him. - -"Yes, my last volume. It's just out." - -He was going for a walk in the rain with Mr. Haseltine that afternoon. -There was an old church in the neighbouring village that his friend -wanted him to see. Mrs. Baldwin had letters to write. "Will you have -time to look at it while we are out?" he asked. - -Although she had shown so little interest in him, he was eager, -pathetically so, he felt, that she should read and care about his poems. -She said that it was just the time: her letters would not take long. And -so he ran up to his room and got the little book for her: _Burnt -Offerings_. - -All the time that he was walking with Mr. Haseltine and seeing the -church, and the old manor house that took them a half mile further, he -wondered what she was thinking about his poems. - -By the time they had returned the rain had ceased. A warm September -sunlight diffused itself. Veils lifted from the stream and trailed upon -the lower meadows. The sky grew clear and the leaves all sparkled. They -found that Mrs. Baldwin had had her cup of tea, for it was past four; -but all had been left in readiness for them, the kettle boiling; and -after Guy had swallowed his, he went out and saw her walking down among -the crocuses. - -"Oh, you are back?" she said when he joined her. "I wanted to be there -to give you your tea. Was it all right?" - -"Perfectly," he said. "We put in just your number of spoonfuls." - -Mrs. Baldwin wore her little knitted jacket and had put on her white, -rubber-soled canvas shoes against the wet; but her head, with its thick, -close braids, was bare to the sunlight. - -"I had to come out as soon as it stopped raining," she said; "and I'm -afraid I simply forgot to look out for you and father." - -Her gentleness had always seemed contentment; this afternoon it seemed -happiness, and he had never seen her look so young. He wondered if she -were going to take him so dreadfully aback as not even to mention his -poems; if she had simply forgotten them, too. Already her demeanour, -unclouded, almost radiant, inflicted a wound; she had either forgotten, -or she had cared little indeed, since she could look like that. But, -after he had commented, consentingly, on the lovely hour, she went on -with a change of tone, a voice a little shy, "I've read the poems. Thank -you so much for letting me see them." - -"You read all of them?" - -"Yes. I didn't write my letters." - -"I hope you read them, then, because you cared for them." - -She didn't answer for a moment, walking along and placing the small -white feet carefully among the crocuses. "They are very sad," she then -said. - -He was aware, after an instant of adjustment to the blow, that she made -him very angry. Terrible, his poems, searing, scorching; wicked, if one -would; but not sad. - -"Oh!" he murmured; and he wondered if the divided feeling she had from -the first roused in him had been this hatred, not perhaps of her, but of -her unvarying acquiescence, her untroubled inadequacy. - -"They interested me very much," she said, feeling, no doubt, that, -whatever he was, he was not pleased. "They made me see, I mean, all the -things you have been through." - -"Sad things, you call them. You know, I rather feel as if I'd heard you -call hell sad." - -She looked up at him quickly, and it was now she who was taken aback -and, as she had been the other day, at a loss. And, as on the other day, -she found the same answer, though she offered it deprecatingly, feeling -his displeasure. "But hell doesn't exist." - -"Don't you think anything horrible exists?" - -They turned at the end of the meadow. It seemed to him, although he felt -as if he hated her, that they were suddenly intimate in their -antagonism. He would force that antagonism, and its intimacy, upon -her--to its last implication. - -"Horrible? Oh, yes, yes!" she said, startled, and that was, he reflected -grimly, to the good. "But it would have to be irretrievable, wouldn't -it, to be hell?" she urged. - -"Do you suggest that it's not irretrievable? You own it's horrible. -Irretrievably horrible, I call it. And that's what I call hell. Yet all -that you can find to say of my poems is that they are sad." - -She hesitated, feeling her way, hearing in the recurrent word how it had -rankled. "I meant sad, I think, because of you; because you had suffered -so much." - -"You seem always to imply that one might _not_ have suffered!" And -thrusting aside her quickly murmured, "Oh, no, no!" he went on: "I can't -understand your attitude of mind. Do you realize at all, I sometimes -wonder, what it has all meant, this nightmare we are living in--we, that -is, to whom it came? Can you imagine what it was to me to see boys, dead -boys, buried stealthily, at night, under fire? Boys so mangled, so -disfigured--you read that poem, 'Half a Corpse'?--that their mothers -wouldn't have known them; featureless, dismembered boys, heaped one upon -the other in the mud. Has your mind ever dwelt upon the community of -corruption in which they lie, as their mothers' minds must dwell? I do -not understand you. I do not understand how you can dare to call such -things sad." - -His own wrath shook and yet sustained him, though he knew a fear lest he -had gone too far; but in her silence--they had reached the other end of -the meadow and turned again in their walk--he felt that there was no -resentment. It was as if she realized that those who have returned from -hell cannot be asked to stop and pick their words with courtesy, and -accepted his vehemence, if not his blame; and again, when she spoke at -last, he felt that her bewilderment had settled into thought. - -"Yes, I can imagine," she said. "But no, I don't think that my mind has -dwelt on those things. If I were their mothers, I don't think that my -mind would dwell, as you say. Something would burn through. There are -other kinds of suffering--better kinds; they help, I believe. And, for -that kind, it is worse, but is it so much worse than in ordinary life? -That is what happens all the time when there is no war; dreadful changes -in the dead; and burials. They are not quite so near each other in a -churchyard, and their graves are named; but do you think that makes it -easier to bear?" - -He felt now as if it were insult she was offering him. - -"You deny all tragedy to war, then? It's all to you on a level with an -Elegy in a Country Churchyard, with curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths? You read 'His Eyes,'"--Guy's voice had a hoarser -note, but, mingled with the sincerity of what, at last, he knew he was -to tell her, the very centre of his sick heart, went a surface -appreciation of what he had just said and of how curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths would go into a bitter poem one day,--"you read that -poem of mine at the end of the book. 'His Eyes' is about myself and my -friend Ronnie Barlow, the artist; you never heard of him, I know. He -hung, with shattered legs, dying, just in front of us, on the barbed -wire, for three days and nights. When he could speak, it was to beg to -be shot. We tried to get to him, four, five times; it was no good. There -was barbed wire between, and the Germans spotted us every time. He died -during the third night, and next morning I found him looking at me--as -he had looked during these three days--his torment and his reproach. And -so he went on looking until the rats came and he had no more eyes to -look with. Will you tell me that that is no worse than the deaths died -in the parishes of England? Will you tell me that it's the sort of death -died by the cheery, mature gentlemen who ate their dinners and slept -warm and dropped a tear--while they did their 'bit' in their Government -offices--over the brave lads saving England?" - -He had taken refuge from Ronnie in hatred of those whom, in the poem, he -called his murderers, and his voice was weighted with its fierce -indictment. In the pause that followed he had time to wonder if she -found him, at last, intolerable. She walked beside him, still looking -down, and it might well have been in a chill withdrawal. He almost -expected to hear her, in another moment, find the conventional phrase -with which to leave him. But no,--and in his own long sigh he recognized -the depth of his relief,--she was not going to punish him with -convention; she was not going to leave him. And what she said at last -was, "I'm so sorry! Please believe that I'm so very, very sorry! -Only--why do you speak, and write, as though it were some one's fault?" - -Ah, here then, at last, they had come to it, the barrier, on one side of -which he stood with his hell and she on the other in her artificial -paradise. - -"I write it and speak it because it is the truth," he said. "Millions of -innocent creatures, of gifted, beautiful creatures, like my friend, have -been slaughtered, tortured, driven mad, because of greasy, greedy -wire-pullers in their leather chairs at home." - -"In this war, too?" - -"In this war preminently." - -"You don't feel that the crime was Germany's?" - -"Oh, of course!" his laugh sneered the facile acquiescence. "Let us put -it on Germany, by all means. We'll sleep the sounder! Certainly, I grant -it to you freely--Germany struck the match and lighted the fuse." - -"And weren't we all responsible for the fuse--you and I, I mean, as much -as the people in the leather chairs?" There was no irony in her -repetition. "The people who fought, as much as the people who didn't -fight? Wasn't the fuse simply our conception of our national safety? of -our national honour? That is what I feel so sad about your -poems,--though I should never have wanted to explain it,--that you are -so wrong, so ungenerous, so vindictive." - -In all his life it had rarely been his lot to know such astonishment. -Astonishment came first; and then the deep, deep hurt that rose, wave -after wave, within him. Was this, then, what she felt for him--only -this? Hadn't he told her about Ronnie--her alone of all the world? -Should not that have made her reverent of him, and pitiful? Should a man -who had endured such griefs receive such blows? Waves of colour, too, -flooded his face and tears rushed to his eyes. He thought, when he was -able at last to gather thoughts together, that it should now be for him -to find the conventional phrase and leave her. But, glancing again at -her profile, finding it, though singularly pale, so much more gentle -than severe, the impulse dropped. He was not strong enough for -convention. He was shaken, shattered; too weak even for -self-preservation. - -He walked, miserable, and his mind full of a whirling darkness, beside -her, determining only that she should be the first to speak again. She -was. She had quite come out of her shyness,--if it had ever been -that,--and though it was with something faltering, something that was, -he made out, sorry for them both in the predicament to which, after all, -he, and not she, had brought them, it was more than all with resolution -that she said,-- - -"I am so sorry if I seem presumptuous. But you asked me. And your poems -aren't the first I've read. So many young men, who have been so brave, -like you, and who have been through it all so that they have the right -to speak, seem to feel more than anything that hatred, not against -war,--we all hate war,--but against people, some groups of people, they -make responsible. There are bad and selfish people everywhere,--among -poets, I feel sure, just as much as among statesmen; but hasn't this war -proved--since everybody has gone--that no one group is bad and selfish; -that there are men in every group who have been glad to die for their -country? I know I have no weight with young men like you; I am not a -person of any importance for opinion; but how I wish that I could make -you believe that you ought not to write like that--with hatred in your -heart. Can great poetry be written out of hatred? And it's not only -yourself it hurts: it hurts other people; harms them, I mean. It spreads -a mood of darkness and fever just when they are so in need of light and -calm. And for the mothers, for people who have lost, cruelly, those whom -they loved as much, perhaps even more, than you loved your friend--do -you not see how your poems must sicken them? Do you not see that it all -becomes just that--a community of corruption? You imprison them, force -them back into their helpless suffering; when what they pray for is -strength to rise above it and to feel all the goodness and love that has -been given for them; to feel what is beautiful, not what is horrible; so -as to be worthy of their dead." - -As he listened to her,--and with a slow revulsion of all his nature, as -if, against his very will and mind, she moved his heart to breaking with -something passionate that spoke in her words,--an overwhelming -experience befell him. - -The crocuses beneath their feet, her sunlit shape beside him, her voice, -as she spoke to him thus, with her very soul, blended together in a -rising wave of light, or music, piercing, sweeping him, lifting him up -to some new capacity, leaving the old inert and dangling, lifting and -still lifting him, until at last, as if with a great, emerging breath, -he came into a region bright and fair, whence, looking down on the dark -and tattered past, he saw all life differently, even Ronnie's death, -even Ronnie's eyes. Ronnie was with him, with Mrs. Baldwin, in the -bright stillness. - -Upborne, sustained, like a swimmer in some strange, new element, he -seemed to gaze down through its golden spaces at the inert, alien -darkness that had been himself. "Rubbish! Rubbish!" he seemed to hear -himself say. Yet all was not left behind; all was not rubbish; else how -could he be here, with her, with Ronnie? It was bliss to see himself as -he had been, since something else was so immeasurably secure. Oh--could -one stay always like this! This was to taste of everlasting life. His -longing, as if with a cry, a grasp from the swimmer, marked the soft -turning of the tide. He sank, but it was sweetly, if with a strange, an -infinite sadness, a sadness recorded, accepted, while he sank, as making -forever the portion of the temporal consciousness. And the bliss still -stayed in the acceptance, and purple ripples seemed to glide back -rhythmically as the crocuses swam before his eyes. It had all been only -an instant then, for her last words came to him as if she had but spoken -them and he heard his own voice murmuring, as if from very far away, -"Perhaps you are right." - -The ripples stayed themselves. He looked down at the crocuses and saw -Mrs. Baldwin's white shoes standing still among them. Lifting his eyes, -which felt heavy, he found her looking at him with attention, with -anxiety. - -"It's nothing," he tried to smile. "Nothing at all. I mean--you've done -me good." He saw that she hadn't an idea of how she had done it. - -"Do take my arm," she said. "I ought to have remembered that you are not -strong yet." - -He took her arm. Perhaps he needed it. His normal consciousness was -gathering about him once again, but no longer with the old close -texture. It was all more permeable to light--that was how he tried to -put it. And he heard his voice go on, "You see--what it all amounts -to--oh, I'm not thinking about the poems, I know that you must be -right--it's not what you say, is it? It's something far more right than -what you say. But I love you. That's why you can do it to me. I wonder I -didn't see it before. You made me angry with your peacefulness. I didn't -understand. I needed your peace. You, you were what I needed. You will -forgive my speaking? Surely you'll understand. Perhaps you feel you -hardly know me, while you are like my life. Is it possible that some day -you might love me back and marry me?" - -He had used the words that came. They were the words of the normal -consciousness. How else could he ask her to keep him always near her so -that he might never lose that sense of paradise? - -But she had stopped still and had drawn her arm from his. Was it -possible that after what she had done to him, for him, she could see him -only thus? "Oh, no," she said. "No. No." Never had he seen a human face -express with such ineffable gentleness such repudiation. And she -repeated it, as if he had given her too much to bear; as if for her own -reassurance; as if to efface even the memory of his words: "No; no; -no!" She began again to walk towards the house. - -Had it not been for the initiation that had passed he knew so clearly -now, in all unawareness from her spirit to his, he would have felt to -the full the shame of his rejection, the deserved shame. For he was a -stranger and she had given him no right to believe that she even liked -him. But he could feel no shame. Had he really thought that she could -love him? Had it not been only that he wanted to tell her that he loved -her, and had wanted her, as it were, to keep him safe? He found himself -trying to explain this to her,--not pleading,--only so that she should -not be angry. "I had to tell you. You'd done me so much good. Everything -came different. Really, I'm not so presumptuous. I never meant to ask -anything." - -But she was not angry. "Forgive me," she said. "I hardly know what I am -saying. You so astonished me. Forgive me. But I don't feel as if I knew -you at all. Please don't think me reproaching you. I begin to -understand. You are not at all strong. It was like the other day when -you cried, I mean--I feel sure you think you care for me; but you -couldn't have said it, when we know each other so little, if you had -been well." - -She was putting it aside, for his sake, as an aberration, and he really -smiled a little as he shook his head. "No; really, really, it's not -that; not because I've been on edge and ill. It was something that came -to me from what you are; something that's been coming ever since I saw -you. I know that I am nothing to you; but for a moment, just now, it -seemed, when I had received so much, that you must know what you had -given; it seemed that a person to whom so much could be given, could -not be so far away. But even then I saw quite clearly what you saw in -me; a vain, pretentious, emotional creature; insincere, too, and proud -of my suffering. I am that. But I had never seen it before. And when it -came to me from you and, instead of crushing me, lifted me up, I knew -that I loved you.--No; I won't try to explain. Only you do forgive me? -You will let me go on as if it hadn't happened? I promise you that I'll -never trouble you again." - -Oh, the gentleness, the heavenly gentleness! It breathed through him -like the colour of the crocuses, although she was as impersonal, as -untouched, and as mysterious as they. He was nothing to her--nothing; -but she stood before him, looking at him, and though she gave nothing -but the gentleness, he knew that he received all that he needed. It was -enough that she was there. - -"But it's _I_ to be forgiven--_I_," she repeated. "Of course we will go -on. Oh, you look very tired. Please take my arm again. I spoke so -strangely to you. But--but--" She had flushed: for the first time he saw -the colour darken her face as if with a veil of pain, and in her voice -was the passion, deeper, stiller, that he had heard a little while ago -and that had enfranchised him. "I am married--I mean, my husband is -dead, but I am married. Perhaps you don't understand. Perhaps you will -some day, if you should lose some one you love and feel them still your -very life. We were like that. He is always with me." - -They had said nothing more as they walked up the meadow to the house, -his arm in hers. He had no sense of loss; rather, from her last words -to him, came a sense of further gain. She would be like that. He saw now -that her peace, against which he had pressed and protested, was -something won, was depth, not emptiness. She, too, had lost and -suffered. She was made dearer to him, more sacred. As for his love, it -did not belong--he had seen this even before she told him why--to this -everyday world to which he had returned. But it was everything to have -found it, with that other world, and to know that there it had its -being, its reality, forever. What was it that had enlarged, transformed -his life, but that very certitude of an eternity where all good was -secure? He could not explain it to himself in any words. Words were the -keys of temporality. But he had seen, if only for the few shining -moments, that Ronnie was not lost; that nothing had been in vain. - -If he found no difficulty, it was evident to him that Mrs. Baldwin felt -none, and he was glad to believe that this might be because he showed -her so completely, in his candid contentment, that he would never -trouble her again. She was not more kind to him; but she took, perhaps, -even more care, as if feeling that she had miscalculated something in -his recovery. She inaugurated a glass of hot milk, instead of spiced hot -water, at bedtime, and a rest on the sofa, with a rug, before the midday -dinner. "You will look so much better when you go back than when you -came," she said. - -For the time of going back drew near, and he did not dread it, though -loving Thatches and all it meant more and more with every day. But of -course, even in the temporal world, he was not to lose Thatches. That -was quite understood between them. The P.G. would be welcome whenever -he cared to come. - - -V - -He was playing chess on the afternoon before his departure. Tea was over -and Mrs. Baldwin had gone out. Guy had noticed that she had been perhaps -a little stiller than usual that day, when he had seen her, and that he -had seen her little. The game did not go very well; they were neither of -them keen on it; and when the old gentleman had won an easy victory, he -leaned back in his chair, the board still on its little table between -them, and said, "Poor Effie! She's still in the church, or in the -churchyard, I expect." - -Guy felt the shock of a great surprise. Strangely enough, though Mrs. -Baldwin had spoken of her husband and of his death, and though his books -were there, he did not associate him with Thatches, nor with the -churchyard. And with the word, "churchyard," a painful anxiety rose in -him. - -"Is it an anniversary?" he asked. - -"Yes," Mr. Haseltine nodded, sighing and rubbing his hand over his head. -"September twenty-ninth. I'd forgotten myself till just a little while -ago. Oliver died on this day. Her husband. Poor Effie!" - -"They lived here?" Guy asked. He had imagined that it had been after her -bereavement that she and her father had found and made a home of -Thatches. - -"Oh, yes. They lived here. All their married life," said Mr. Haseltine. -"Ten years or so. It was a great love-match. They were very happy. I -never saw a happier couple--until the end." - -"Did anything part them?" - -Mr. Haseltine had put his hands into his pockets and was gazing at the -board as if with a painful concentration, and though he shook his head -he answered, "It was the malady. Cancer, you know. Cancer of the face. -Such a handsome fellow, too: beautiful, bright, smiling eyes; beautiful -mouth. All gone. All disfigured, cruelly disfigured, and with horrible -suffering." - -Guy felt his breath coming thickly. "Was it long?" he asked. - -"Yes. Long. Eighteen months, I think. Morphia did little good at last. -He couldn't swallow; could hardly speak; begged to be killed and put out -of his torment. She was with him in it all. She never left him, day or -night; nor could he have borne it if she had. Nothing quieted him except -her hand in his. But at the end," said Mr. Haseltine, pushing away the -table and rising, "at the end, it attacked his brain and then he raved -at her. She couldn't go into the room at the last." - -The old man, with step lagging, as if weighted, walked away to the -window and stood looking out, while Guy, at the table, felt his heart -turn to stone. - -"Poor Effie!" Mr. Haseltine repeated after a little while. He came back -into the room and moved up and down, pausing to look at the books and -pictures. "She has never been the same since. For a long while we were -afraid she couldn't live. She hardly slept for months; and when she did -sleep, she used to wake crying, crying, always for him. When she became -stronger, she used to walk up and down those meadows, sometimes for -hours at a time. Very gentle; no complaint; always ready to talk to -people, to go on with things as best she could; but changed; completely -changed. We speak very little of him; but when we do, it's quite -naturally. She goes to the church sometimes, and there are always -flowers on his grave; but I don't think she has any orthodox beliefs; I -don't know that she has any beliefs at all. Still, she seems helped. She -is a very dear, unselfish woman; a dreamer, she was always a dreamer; -but always meaning well; and she does good in her quiet way. And I think -she likes this plan of having people come and stay and seeing after -them; especially now that they are so often people who have had a bad -time. Dear me, dear me!" Mr. Haseltine again shook his head, stationed -again at the window and looking out. "You would hardly have recognized -her had you seen her ten years ago. She had bright hair and a charming -colour; and full of gaiety and mischief. You'd hardly believe it now." - -"I'm so sorry," Guy heard himself saying. He remembered that those were -the words Mrs. Baldwin had used to him about Ronnie. - -"Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Haseltine. "Life is certainly very -difficult for some of us, and Effie has had her share. Somehow one -doesn't remember it when one is with her. I only recalled the day by -chance." - -Guy was walking in the meadows when Mrs. Baldwin returned. He saw her in -the garden, reading the letters that the evening post had brought, and -his first impulse was to remove himself as speedily as might be from her -sight, to cross the bridge and the farther meadow, and turn into the -lane that led away from it. But then he saw, as he stood irresolute, -that she was coming down to him, and he stood there, helpless, watching -her approach in the soft radiance of the late afternoon. She wore one -of the lavender-coloured dresses and the little knitted jacket. In her -hand were the opened letters. Her face was tranquil. She was, of course, -unaware of what had happened to him. - -She joined him. "You are having your last look at the crocuses?" - -It was their last look together. That, of course, was why she had come, -full of care and of kindness. - -"Yes. Yes. My last look for the year." He heard that his voice was -strange. And his heart seemed to lie like a cold hard block in his side. - -"Aren't you feeling well?" she asked. - -He walked beside her in silence. What could he say? But how was it -possible not to tell her? - -They had turned towards the sunset and came now to the bridge. She was -looking at him, with solicitude. He stopped before they crossed. - -"I must say something to you," broke from him. "I must. I can't go away -without your knowing--my shame--my unutterable remorse." - -She looked at him with the look he knew so well. Kindly, firmly, if with -anxiety, she prepared to hear him thrust some new torment upon her. - -"Shame? Remorse?" she murmured. - -"About my poems. About my griefs. What I've said to you. What I've given -you to bear. I thought I'd borne so much. I thought you unfeeling, -without experience. I thought I'd been set apart--that all of us had -been set apart, who suffered in the war. Stop me at once if you won't -hear it from me. But your father told me, just now, about your husband's -death." - -She became very pale. She looked away from him, but she said nothing. - -"That's all," said Guy after a long silence. He saw that there was -nothing more to tell her. She had understood. - -"Let us walk up and down," said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They crossed the bridge. He saw the stream sliding brightly below them -between the old, black planks. In the farther meadows the crocuses grew -more thickly and opened widely their pale purple chalices. - -"We have all suffered," said Mrs. Baldwin. "You mustn't have remorse or -shame. Nothing is harmed between us." - -The horrible stricture around his heart relaxed, and as they went very -slowly up and down he felt his throat tighten and tears rising, rising -to his eyes. He could not keep them back. He wasn't really quite strong -enough for this. They fell and fell, and from time to time he put up his -hand to brush them away. - -"We have all suffered," Mrs. Baldwin repeated gently. - -"Some, more! some, more!" he said brokenly. "Some, most of all!" - -They came back to the bridge, but though they crossed over, they did not -pass out through the high gate that barred the other end. The gate was -closed, and Guy stopped at it and leaned on it and put his face on his -hands. Mrs. Baldwin stood at the gatepost beside him, her hand holding -it and her head leaned against her hand. - -"He would have liked you," she said. "He was so interested in young men, -young poets. He was not old himself; and he wrote, too, did you know? -All those books in the living-room are his. He used to work there. I -will give you his two books if you care to have them. They were thought -very good; I think you will like them.--It was because of the crocuses -we came here," she went on. "We found them one September, just like -this, and the three little ruined cottages, and we knew at once that we -must live here. He so loved them. When he was very ill--but before the -very end when nothing could come to him any longer, when he was quite -shut away--he used to lie at the window and look out at them--that big -window above the living-room." - -Divinely she was helping him. It was as if, taking him by the hand, she -led him again away from his darkness and into her own light. - -Yes, brokenly it came to him, it was there, secure; how won, he knew -not. Through her he had found it; but that was because her feet had -passed before him up the calvary. She had gone through everything; and -she knew everything. - -And, to his new hearing, something of the infinite weariness of that -ascent was in her voice when she next spoke, although it was a voice as -peaceful as the evening air around them. "Are they not beautiful?" she -said. - -He raised his head and looked at the flowers through his tears. They had -never been so beautiful. "They make me think of you," he told her. - -"Do they?" Mrs. Baldwin still leaned her head against her hand, still -looked out over the meadows. "But there are so many of them," she said. -"So many. That is what I feel first of all about them. I could not think -of them as like one person. Multitudes. Multitudes.--And so silent! They -make me think always of the souls of the happy dead." - -_The Riverside Press_ - -CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS - -U. S. A. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -embody the spendour=> embody the splendour {pg 105} - -in spite of Florre's good cheer=> in spite of Florrie's good cheer {pg -136} - - * * * * * - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - -***** This file should be named 40650-8.txt or 40650-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/6/5/40650/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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/license - - -Title: Christmas Roses and Other Stories - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: September 2, 2012 [EBook #40650] -[Last updated: December 20, 2012] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="360" height="550" alt="image of the book's cover" title="image of the book's cover" /></a></p> -<p class="cb">CHRISTMAS ROSES<br /> -AND OTHER STORIES</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/title_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/title.jpg" width="340" height="550" alt="CHRISTMAS ROSES -AND OTHER STORIES -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt) -Author of “Tante,” “The Third Window,” etc. -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge -1920" title="CHRISTMAS ROSES -AND OTHER STORIES -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt) -Author of “Tante,” “The Third Window,” etc. -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge -1920" /></a> -</p> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<p class="c"><small>COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SÉLINCOURT<br /> -<br /> -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</small></p> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<h2>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td><a href="#Christmas_Roses">CHRISTMAS ROSES</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_001">1</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#HEPATICAS">HEPATICAS</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_063">63</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#DAFFODILS">DAFFODILS</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_092">92</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#PANSIES">PANSIES</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_121">121</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#PINK_FOXGLOVES">PINK FOXGLOVES</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_147">147</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#CARNATIONS">CARNATIONS</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_168">168</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#STAKING_A_LARKSPUR">STAKING A LARKSPUR</a> </td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_208">208</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#EVENING_PRIMROSES">EVENING PRIMROSES</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_253">253</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td><a href="#AUTUMN_CROCUSES">AUTUMN CROCUSES</a></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_279">279</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a name="Christmas_Roses" id="Christmas_Roses"></a> -<img src="images/ill_pg_001-a.jpg" width="450" height="52" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h2>Christmas Roses</h2> - -<hr /> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"> -<span class="letra"> -<img src="images/ill_pg_001-b.jpg" -width="150" -height="133" -alt="T" -title="T" -/></span>HEY were coming up everywhere in their sheltered corner on the -wall-border, between the laurustinus and the yew hedge. She had always -loved to watch their manner of emerging from the wintry ground: neck -first, arched and stubborn; heads bent down as if with held breath and -thrusting effort; the pale, bowed, folded flower, when finally it rose, -still earthy, still part, as it were, of the cold and dark from which it -came; so that to find them, as on this morning, clear, white, -triumphant, all open to the wind and snow, was to renew the sense of the -miraculous that, more than any other flower, they always gave her. More -than any other flower, they seemed to <i>mean</i> to come, to will and -compass it by the force of their own mysterious life. More than any -other flower, winter piled upon their heads, unallured by spring and the -promise of sunlight, they seemed to come from the pressure of a gift to -bring rather than a life to seek. She thought always, when she saw them, -of Christmas bells over snowy fields, in bygone centuries; of the Star -in the East, and of the manger at Bethlehem. They were as ancient as -that tradition, austere<a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a> and immaculate witnesses in an unresponsive -world; yet they were young and new, always; always a surprise, and even -to her, old as she was, bereft and sorrowful, a reminder that life was -forever a thing of births, of gifts, of miracles.</p> - -<p>They did not fail her this morning when she came out to them, and she -thought, as she stopped to look at them, that one was not really old -when, in the shock of sheer happiness, one knew childhood again and its -wonder. Yet, as she worked among them, cutting away dead leaves and -adjusting sprays of evergreen so that the rains should not splash them -with mud, it was a new analogy they brought; and, for the first time, -measuring her resource after the appeal Tim’s letter had made upon it, -she reflected that the Christmas roses were rather like herself. She, -too, in this wintry season of her life, was still determined and -indomitable. Widowed and childless, with many mournings in her heart, -griefs and devastations in her memory, she, too, was a force, silent and -patient; and it was this that people still found in her. For the appeal -always brought the answer. She had felt herself, so often, benumbed into -lethargy, and, yielding to the mere mute instinct of self-preservation, -had so often folded herself up and lapsed into the blank darkness of her -grief (her husband’s death, so many years ago; and Miles’s, and little -Hugh’s, and her dear, dear Peggy’s). But it had always been to hear -herself, as if in a dream, called to from the outside world, and to feel -herself, in answer, coming up again, rising, if only to snows and -tempests, in a renewal of life which brought with it, always, a renewal -of joy in life.</p> - -<p>For months now, since August, she had been<a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a> sunken in the last grief—it -must be—that could come to her; for Miles was the last, of her own, who -had remained—Peggy’s youngest boy. The oldest, already a soldier, had -been killed in the first months of the war, and, after all his years of -peril, it had seemed as if Miles was to escape. But, cruelly, just at -the turning of the tide, when victory had become assured, he had been -shot down, and in his crashing fall through the air she had felt the end -of everything, Peggy dying again with him; for Peggy, too, had died like -that, crashing and falling and dragged, in a horrible hunting accident. -There seemed, now, nothing more left to suffer, and nothing more to live -for, either, unless it were her poor Tim; and it had, exactly, been -Tim’s letter that had driven her out to wrestle with the elements, after -her wont in any disturbance or perplexity, so that she could think over -what he told her while she wielded her trowel and fork on the convenient -wall-border.</p> - -<p>She had, on rising from the breakfast-table, sent Tim a wire: “I shall -expect her. Writing later,” and had then called to Parton to bring her -old warm coat, her hood with its satin lining, and her buckled galoshes.</p> - -<p>Parton was accustomed to her mistress’s vagaries in regard to gardening, -and made no comment on the enterprise except to express the hope that it -would not snow again. Parton, in spite of her youth a most efficient -combination of parlourmaid and lady’s-maid, was devoted to her mistress; -the little pat and tweak she gave to the bow of the hood, and the -gentleness with which she adjusted the galoshes, expressed a close yet -almost reverential relationship.<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a></p> - -<p>It was not freezing, and under the light fall of snow the ground was -soft. Mrs. Delafield found herself enjoying the morning freshness as she -tidied and weeded, and had her usual affectionate eye for the -bullfinches nipping away at her plum-buds and the tits and robins at the -little table spread with scraps for them near the house; while all the -time Tim’s letter weighed on her, and the problem it presented; and as -she pondered on it, and on Rhoda, her niece, Tim’s only child, her firm, -square, handsome, old, white face was not devoid of a certain grimness.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield was very handsome, perhaps more handsome now than she had -been in youth. Her brow, with the peak of thick white hair descending -upon it, her thick black eyebrows and her rather thick, projecting nose, -were commanding—almost alarmingly so to those who in her presence had -cause for alarm. The merely shy were swiftly reassured by something -merry in her gaze and by the benevolent grace still lingering on her -firm, small lips. She had square eyes clearly drawn, and with an oddity -in their mountain-brook colouring, for one was brown and one was freaked -with grey. Her form was ample and upright, and in all her gestures there -was swiftness and decision.</p> - -<p>It was of Tim she thought at first, rather than of Rhoda, the cause of -all their distresses. But she was not seeing Tim as he now existed, -bleached, after his years of India, invalided, fretted by family cares, -plaintive and pitiful. She saw him as a very little boy in their distant -Northern nursery of sixty years ago, with bright curls, ruddy cheeks, -and the blue eyes, candid and trusting, that he still kept; standing -there, bare-armed and bare-legged,<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> in his stiff, funny little dress of -plaid, before the fire-guard, while nurse, irate, benevolent figure, cut -bread and butter for breakfast. Dear little Tim! still her younger -brother; still turning to her, as he had always done, for counsel or -succour in any stress or anxiety. It was nothing new that the anxiety -should be about Rhoda; there was nothing, even, that had surprised her -in Tim’s letter; yet she knew from the sense of urgency and even -breathlessness within her that the blow which had been dealt him could -not leave her unaffected. She could, after all, still suffer in Tim’s -suffering. And even before she had let her thoughts dwell decisively on -Rhoda, she had found herself thinking, while the grimness settled on her -face, “I shall know how to talk to her.”</p> - -<p>She had always known how to talk to the moody young beauty; that was why -Tim had sent off this letter of desperate appeal. She never quite saw -why Rhoda had not, from the first, felt in her merely an echo of her -father’s commonplace conventionality and discounted her as that. Rhoda -had never, she felt sure, guessed how far from conventional she was; how -much at heart, in spite of a life that had never left appointed paths, -she knew herself to be a rebel and a sceptic; no one had ever guessed -it. But there had always been between her and Rhoda an intuitive -understanding; and that Rhoda from the first had listened and, from the -first, had sometimes yielded, proved that she was intelligent.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield saw herself so accurately as Rhoda must see her. The -terse, old-fashioned aunt in the country residence—yes, dear Fernleigh, -square and mid-Victorian, with its name, and<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> its creepers, its -conservatory, and its shrubberies, was so eminently a residence; and she -had never wanted to alter it into anything else, for it was so that she -had found it when, on her mother-in-law’s death, she and the young -husband of so many years ago had first gone there to live. Rhoda must -see her, her hair so smooth under its cap of snowy net, her black -gowns—stuff for morning wear, silk for evening—so invariable, with the -frills at neck and wrists, thick gold chains and the dim old brooches -that went with them, as belonging almost to an epoch of albums on -centre-tables, of Mendelssohn’s sacred songs, and archery tournaments; -an epoch of morning family-prayers and moral categories, where some -people still believed in hell and everybody believed in sin. She didn’t -think that Rhoda had ever seen through all these alienating appearances -to the reality she herself knew to be so different; but it had always -been evident that she felt it through them; that she was at ease with -her aunt, candid, even if angry, and willing, even when most silent and -recalcitrant, to come down to Fernleigh, when her distracted parents -could deal with her no longer, and to “think things over,” as they put -it to her, imploringly.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield could see Rhoda thinking things over from a very early -age, from the earliest age at which recalcitrancy could count as -practically alarming. She could see her walking slowly past this very -border at the time that she had determined to go on the stage,—she had -only just left the hands of her devastated governesses,—pausing now and -then to examine unseeingly a plant, her hands clasped behind her, her -dark, gloomy, lovely, young head brooding on the sense of wrong,<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> and, -even more, no doubt, on plots and stratagems. Her aunt had always -watched her, while seeming, in the most comfortable manner possible, to -give her no attention; noting everything about her,—and everything -counted against poor Tim’s and Frances’s peace of mind,—from the -slender, silken ankles to the tall column of the proud young throat; all -of it, every bit of Rhoda, so determined by an insatiable vanity, which -was the worst of her, and by a sardonic pride, which was the best.</p> - -<p>Rhoda, to do her further justice, was even more wonderful in the eyes of -her admirers than in her own. Her consciousness was not occupied so much -with her own significance as with all the things due to it; and it was -upon these things, and the methods of obtaining them, that she brooded -as she walked. “Naughty girl,” had been her aunt’s unexpressed comment; -and perhaps one reason why Rhoda had found it comfortable, or, at least, -composing, to be with her, was that it was a relief to be seen as a -naughty girl rather than as a terrifying portent.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield had determined at once that Rhoda should not go on the -stage, though not, really, because Tim and Frances had begged her to -dissuade the child. She could perfectly imagine having wished to go on -the stage herself in her young days; and it was this consciousness, -perhaps, that made her so fair to Rhoda’s desire. She had taken her -stand on no conventional objection; she had not even argued with Rhoda; -she had simply been able to make her feel, bit by bit, that she hadn’t -one little atom of talent.</p> - -<p>It had been the same thing, really, when Rhoda had announced her -intention of marrying a dreadful young man, a bad young man,—Mrs. -Delafield<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> knew where to apply her categories,—who had a large studio -where he gave teas and painted small, disagreeable pictures. They were -clever pictures; Mrs. Delafield was aware of this, though Tim and -Frances saw them only as disagreeable; and the young man, if bad, was -clever. Mrs. Delafield had travelled up to town several times in this -emergency, and had even accompanied Rhoda to the studio, where a young -lady with bare legs and feet was dancing, with more concentration than -spontaneity, before a cigaretted audience. Oddly enough, after this -visit, it had been much easier to make Rhoda give up Mr. Austin Dell -than it had been to make her give up the stage. Mrs. Delafield had -merely talked him over, very mildly, him and his friends, asking here -and there a kindly question about one or a slightly perplexed question -about another. It had been Rhoda herself who had expressed awareness of -the second-rate flavour that had brooded so heavily over dancer and -audience, not leaving Mr. Dell himself untouched. On the point of Mr. -Dell’s income Mrs. Delafield soon felt that Rhoda knew -misgivings—misgivings as to her own fitness to be a needy artist’s -wife. She made no overt recantation, but over her tea, presently, agreed -with her aunt that it was a pity to dance with bare feet unless the feet -were flawlessly well-shaped. “She is such a little fool, that Miss -Matthews!” Rhoda had remarked. And after this there was no more talk of -Mr. Dell.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind">W<small>HEN</small>, in the second year of the war, poor Tim and Frances, dusty, jaded, -nearly shattered, but appeased<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> at last, were able to announce the -engagement of their daughter Rhoda to the unexceptionable Niel Quentyn, -Mrs. Delafield’s special function seemed ended; but, looking back over -her long intercourse with her niece, she knew that Rhoda had felt her a -relief rather than an influence; that she had made things easier rather -than more difficult to her; that, in short, she had always successfully -appealed to the girl’s intelligence rather than to what poor Tim and -Frances called her better self; and it was of Rhoda’s intelligence, and -of what possible pressure she might be able to bring to bear upon it, -that she thought finally, as she worked at her border and waited for the -fly that was to bring Rhoda’s baby and its nurse from the station.</p> - -<p>She had not been able to rejoice with her brother and his wife over -Rhoda’s match. She who had measured, during her years of -acquaintanceship with her, her niece’s force, had measured accurately, -in her first glance at him, Niel’s insignificance. He was good-looking, -good-tempered, and very much in love; but caste, clothes, code, and the -emotion of his age and situation summed him up. He had money, too, and -could give Rhoda, together with a little handle to her name, the dim, -rich, startling drawing-room in which her taste at once expressed -itself, and a pleasant country house, where, as he confided to Mrs. -Delafield, he hoped to inspire her, when the war was over, with his own -ardour for hunting.</p> - -<p>Rhoda was far too clever to quarrel with such excellent bread and -butter; but what could he give her more? for Rhoda would want more than -bread and butter; what food for excitement and adventure<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> could he offer -her indolent yet eager mind and her nature, at once so greedy and so -fastidious? Mrs. Delafield asked herself the question, even while she -watched Rhoda’s wonderful white form move up the nave at her splendid, -martial wedding; even while poor Frances wept for joy and “The Voice -that breathed o’er Eden” surged from the organ; and she feared that Niel -was getting far more than he had bargained for and Rhoda far less.</p> - -<p>The first year, it was true, passed successfully. Poor Frances, who had, -fortunately, died at the end of it, had known no reason for abated -rejoicing. She lived long enough to see the baby, little Jane Amoret, as -Rhoda persisted in calling the child; and she had welcomed Niel home -once on leave—Niel as much infatuated as ever and trying to take an -intelligent interest in Picasso. It was since then, during the past -year, that Tim’s letters had expressed a growing presage and appeal. -Moved by the latter, and only a short time before her own grief had -overtaken her, she had gone up to London and stayed with him for a few -days, and had taken tea with Rhoda.</p> - -<p>At Rhoda’s it had been exactly as she expected. The drawing-room was -worthy of its fame; so worthy that Mrs. Delafield wondered how Niel -afforded it—and in war-time, too. Rhoda, as she often announced, was -clever at picking up things, and many of the objects with which she had -surrounded herself were undoubted trophies of her resource and -knowledge. But all the taste and skill in the world didn’t give one that -air of pervading splendour, as of the setting for a Russian ballet, in -which the red lacquer and the Chinese<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> screens, the blacks and golds and -rich, dim whites were, like Rhoda herself, sunken with her customary air -of gloomy mirth in the deepest cushions and surpassingly dressed, merged -in the soft, unstressed, yet magnificent atmosphere. It was the -practical side of matters—the depth of good, dull Niel’s purse measured -against the depth of Rhoda’s atmosphere—that alarmed Mrs. Delafield, -rather than Rhoda herself and Rhoda’s friends, of whom poor Tim had so -distressingly written.</p> - -<p>There were many suave and merry young men, mainly in khaki, and various -ladies, acute or languorous, who had the air of being as carefully -selected as the chairs and china. There were tea and cigarettes, and an -abundance of wonderful talk that showed no sign of mitigation on account -of her mid-Victorian presence; though, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, -musing on the young people about her, no one could say, except their -clever selves, how much mitigation there might not be. Like Rhoda, no -doubt, they felt her reality through her mid-Victorianism. Her small -black bonnet with its velvet strings, and her long, loose jacket trimmed -with fringe, would not restrain them beyond a certain point. Yet she -suspected that they had a point, and she wondered, though the question -did not alarm her, where it could be placed.</p> - -<p>They talked, at all events, and she listened; at times she even smiled; -and since by no possibility could her smiles be taken as complicities, -she was willing that they should be taken as comprehensions. Rhoda’s -friends, though so young, were chill and arid, and the enthusiasms they -allowed themselves had the ring of provocation rather than of ardour. -Yet she did not dislike them; they were<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> none of them like Mr. Dell; -and, though so withered by sophistication, they had at moments flashes -of an uncanny, almost an ingenuous wisdom.</p> - -<p>The occasion had not alarmed her, and she had found but one moment -oppressive, that of the appearance—the displayal, as of a Chinese idol, -indeed, or a Pekinese spaniel (Rhoda had three of these)—of poor little -Jane Amoret. She rarely disliked her niece, even when feeling her most -naughty; but she found herself disliking her calculated maternity, with -its kisses, embraces and reiterated “darlings.” Jane Amoret had eyed her -gravely and, as gravely, had held out her arms to her nurse to be taken -back when the spectacle was over. Jane Amoret’s attire was quite as -strange as her mother’s drawing-room, and Rhoda had contrived to make -her look like a cross between an Aubrey Beardsley and a gorgeous, -dressed-up doll Madonna in a Spanish cathedral.</p> - -<p>On returning to Tim, Mrs. Delafield found that she could not completely -reassure him, but she laid stress, knowing it would be, comparatively, a -comfort, on Rhoda’s extravagance, eliciting from him a groan of “I -know!—I know!—Poor Niel’s been writing to me about it!—Dances; -dinners; gowns. One would say she had no conscience at all—and at a -time like this!” But he went on, “That’s nothing, though. That can be -managed when Niel gets back—if he ever does, poor fellow!—and can put -his foot down on the spot. You didn’t see him, then? He wasn’t -there—the young man?”</p> - -<p>Tim had never before spoken definitely of a young man.</p> - -<p>“The young man?” she questioned.<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> “There were a dozen of them. Of -course, she’ll have a special one: that’s part of the convention. Rhoda -may cultivate—like all the rest of them—every appearance of lawless -attachment; but you may be sure, dear Tim, that it’s only a pose, a -formula, like the painted lips and dyed hair, which doesn’t in the least -mean they are demi-mondaines.”</p> - -<p>“Painted lips? Dyed hair? Demi-mondaines?” Tim had wanly echoed. “Do you -really mean, Isabel, that Rhoda paints and dyes?”</p> - -<p>“Not her hair. It’s too lovely to be dyed. But her lips,—why, haven’t -you seen it?—ever since she was eighteen. It is all, as I say, a pose; -a formula. They are all afraid of nothing so much as of seeming -respectable. I imagine that there’s just as much marital virtue at large -in the world nowadays as when we were young.—Who is the young man?” she -had, nevertheless, ended.</p> - -<p>“My dear, don’t ask me!” Tim had moaned, blanched and battered in his -invalid’s chair. (Why wouldn’t he come down and live with her? Why, -indeed, except that, since Frances’s death, he had felt that he must -stand by, in London, and watch over Rhoda.) “I only know what I’ve -heard. Amy has talked and talked. And everybody else is talking, -according to her.” Amy was Frances’s sister, a well-meaning, but -disturbing woman, with a large family of well-conducted, well-married, -unpainted, and unfashionable daughters.<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> “She is here every day about it. -They are always together. He is always there. The poet—the new young -poet. He has a heart or a chest or a stomach—something that has sent -him home and that keeps him safe at Whitehall, while poor Niel fights in -France. Surely, Isabel, you’ve heard of Christopher Darley? Wasn’t he -there? Young. Younger than Rhoda. Black hair. Big eyes. Silent.”</p> - -<p>Silent.—Yes, there had been, beside Jane Amoret, one silent person in -Rhoda’s drawing-room. And she had been aware of him constantly, though, -till now, unconsciously. Very young; very pale; aloof, near a window, -with an uncalculated aloofness. She reconstructed an impression that -became deeper the further she went into it. Thick backward locks that -had given his forehead a wind-blown look, and a gaze now and then -directed on herself, a gaze grave, withdrawing, yet scrutinizing, too.</p> - -<p>“Yes; I think, now that you describe him, I must have seen him,” she -murmured; while a curious alarm mounted in her, an alarm that none of -Rhoda’s more characteristic circle had aroused. “He wasn’t living by a -formula of freedom,” she reflected. “And he wasn’t arid.” Aloud she -said, “He looked a nice young creature, I remember.”</p> - -<p>“He writes horrible poems, Amy says; blasphemous. There they are. I -can’t understand them. He casts down everything; has no beliefs of any -kind. Nice? I should think that’s the last adjective that would describe -him.”</p> - -<p>She had picked up the unobtrusive volume and found herself arrested; not -as she had been by the memory of the young man’s gaze, nor yet in the -manner that Tim’s account indicated; but still arrested. Very young—but -austere, dignified, and strange, genuinely and effortlessly strange. So -a young priest might have written, seeking in close-pressed metaphysical -analogies to find expression for spiritual passion. She stood, puzzled -and absorbed.</p> - -<p>“No, it isn’t blasphemous,” she said presently.<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> “And he has beliefs. -But surely, Tim dear, surely this young man can’t care for Rhoda.”</p> - -<p>How could a young man who wrote like that about the mystic vision care -for Rhoda?</p> - -<p>“Not care for Rhoda!” Tim’s voice had now the quaintest ring of paternal -resentment. “The most beautiful young woman in London! Why, he’s head -over heels in love with her. And the worst of it is that, from what Amy -sees and hears, she cares for him.”</p> - -<p>“It’s curious,” Mrs. Delafield said, laying down the book. “I shouldn’t -have thought he’d care about beautiful young women.”</p> - -<p>And now Tim’s letter, on this December morning, announced that Rhoda had -gone off with Christopher Darley; and Mrs. Delafield could find it in -her heart, as she worked and pondered, to wish that her dear Tim had -followed Frances before this catastrophe overtook him.</p> - -<p>“Good heavens!” she heard herself muttering, “if only she’d been meaner, -more cowardly, and stayed and lied—as women of her kind are supposed to -do. If only she’d let him die in peace; he can’t have many years.”</p> - -<p>But no: it had been done with <i>le beau geste</i>. Tim had known nothing, -and poor Niel, home for his first peace leave, had come to him, -bewildered and aghast, with the news. He had found a letter waiting for -him, sent from the country. Tim copied the letter for her:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">D<small>EAR</small> N<small>IEL</small>:</p> - -<p>I’m sure you felt, too, that our life couldn’t go on. It had become -too unsatisfactory for both of us. Luckily we are sensible people -nowadays, and such<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> mistakes can be remedied. You must mend your -life as I am mending mine. I am leaving you, with Christopher -Darley. I am so sorry if it seems sudden; but I felt it better that -we should not meet again.</p> - -<p class="r"><span style="margin-right: 2em;">Yours affectionately</span><br /> -R<small>HODA</small></p></div> - -<p>“If only the poet hadn’t had money, too!” Mrs. Delafield had thought. -For this fact she had learned about Mr. Darley in London. Rhoda would -never have abandoned that drawing-room had she not been secure of -another as good.</p> - -<p>Tim wrote that nothing could have been manlier, more generous, than -Niel’s behaviour. He was willing, for the sake of the child, to take -Rhoda back, reinstate her, and protect her from the consequences of her -act; and what Tim now begged of his sister was that she should see -Rhoda, see if, confronting her, she could not induce her to return to -her husband. Meanwhile Jane Amoret would be dispatched at once with her -nurse to Fernleigh. Tim had written to his child in her retreat, and had -implored her to go to her aunt. “I told her that you would receive her, -Isabel,” so Tim’s letter ended; “and I trust you now to save us—as far -as we can be saved. Tell her that her husband will forgive, and that I -forgive, if she will return. Let her see the child. Let that be your -appeal.”</p> - -<p>Poor, darling Tim! Very mid-Victorian. “Forgive.” Would “receive” her. -The words had an antediluvian ring. With what battledore and -shuttle-cock of mirth and repartee they would be sent sailing and -spinning in Rhoda’s world. All the same, she, who was mid-Victorian in -seeming rather than<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> in reality, would make other appeals, if Rhoda -came. Already she could almost count the steady heads of her intentions -thrusting up as if through the ground. Even in Rhoda’s world repartee -and mirth might be displayed rather than acted upon, and Rhoda might -find herself, as a result of <i>le beau geste</i>, less favourably placed for -the creation of another drawing-room than she imagined. That, of course, -was the line to take with Rhoda; and as she reflected, carefully now, on -what she would say to her,—as she determined that Rhoda should not -leave her until she had turned her face firmly homeward,—the sound of -wheels came up the road, and outside the high walls she heard the -station fly drawing up at her gates. In another moment she was welcoming -Jane Amoret and her nurse.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind">S<small>HE</small> had not seen the child for five months now, and her first glance at -her, for all its sweetness, brought something of a shock, revealing as -it did how deeply she cared for the little creature. She was not a -child-lover, not undiscriminatingly fond of all examples of the -undeveloped, though her kind solicitude might have given her that -appearance. Children had always affected her, from the cradle, as -personalities; and some, like the mature, were lovable and some the -reverse. Jane Amoret had already paid her more than one visit—she had -been more than willing that Rhoda should find her a convenience in this -respect; and she had, from the first, found her lovable. But the five -months had brought much more to the mere charm of babyhood. She was now -potent and arresting in<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> her appeal and dignity. She sat in her nurse’s -arms, her eyes fixed on her great-aunt, and, as Mrs. Delafield held out -her hands to her, she unhesitatingly, if unsmilingly, answered, leaning -forward to be taken.</p> - -<p>She was a pale, delicate baby, her narrow little face framed in -straightly cut dark hair, her mournful little lips only tinted with a -rosy mauve; and, under long, fine brows, her great eyes were full of -meditativeness. Rhoda, though now so richly a brunette, had, as a baby, -been ruddy-haired and rosy-cheeked, with eyes of a velvety, submerging -darkness. Jane Amoret’s grey iris rayed out from the expanded pupil like -the corolla of a flower. There was no likeness between the child and her -mother. Nor was there anything of Niel’s sleepy young countenance, with -its air of still waters running shallow.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield, something of a student of heredity, saw in the little -face an almost uncanny modern replica of her own paternal grandmother, -whose pensive gaze, under high-dressed powdered hair, had followed her -down the drawing-room in the home of her childhood. In Jane Amoret she -recovered the sense of that forgotten romance of her youth—the -wonderful, beautiful great-grandmother with the following eyes. Had they -not, even then, been asking something of her?</p> - -<p>“It isn’t everyone she’ll go to, ma’am,” said the nurse, as they went up -the path to the house, Mrs. Delafield carrying Jane Amoret.</p> - -<p>Nurse was a highly efficient example of her type—crisp, cheerful, a -little glib. Mrs. Delafield had never warmly liked her, and felt -convinced now, that in spite of her decorous veneer of reticence,<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> the -servants' hall would be enlightened as to the whole story before many -hours were over. Well, it could not be helped.</p> - -<p>They went up to the big nursery overlooking the walled garden at the -back of the house, where, since the morning’s post and its -announcements, a great fire of logs had been blazing. Nurse made but one -respectful, passing reference to Rhoda. The country air would do Lady -Quentyn good. She had, nurse thought, over-tired herself of late. What -else she thought, Parton and the others were soon to hear hinted. And as -Rhoda’s calculated maternity had chilled her aunt on that day five -months ago, so she was chilled now to think that Rhoda should have had -more taste in the choice of her drawing-room than in that of her baby’s -nurse.</p> - -<p>While, in the next room, the unpleasing woman was unpacking her own and -Jane Amoret’s effects, Mrs. Delafield was left alone with the child. She -had found, on a shelf, a box of well-worn blocks, and seating herself in -the low, chintz-covered wicker chair beside the fire, she placed them, -one by one, before Jane Amoret, who, on her white wool rug, gave them a -gentle attention. She had been too young for blocks on her last visit.</p> - -<p>The old chair, as Mrs. Delafield moved in it, leaning down, creaked -softly, and she remembered, a curious excitement stirring under all -these recoveries of the past, that it had been condemned as really too -decrepit when Peggy had been a baby. Yet the threat had never been -carried out. It had gone on through Peggy’s babyhood and through the -babyhood of Peggy’s children, and, unused for all these years, here it -gave forth again just the plaintive yet comfortable sounds which, even<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> -more, it seemed, than another baby’s presence, evoked Peggy and her own -young maternity.</p> - -<p>The chair, the blocks, the firelight playing on the happy walls, with -their framed Caldecotts and Cherry Ripes and Bubbles, all evoked that -past, filling her with the mingled acquiescence and yearning of old age. -And Jane Amoret evoked a past far, far more distant. Peggy had not been -like the great-grandmother. None of them had ever reincarnated that -vanished loveliness. But here, mysterious and appealing, it was before -her; and it seemed to brush across her very heartstrings every time -that, from the blocks, the child lifted the meditative grey of her eyes -to her great-aunt’s face.</p> - -<p>Far too mysterious, far too lovely, far too gentle, this frail -potentiality, for any uses ever to be made of it by Rhoda, by Niel, or -by nurse. And the yearning became a yearning over Jane Amoret.</p> - -<p>Yes, there the edifice rose, block by block—her deft, deliberate -fingers placed them one after the other, under Jane Amoret’s eyes, -absorbed in this towering achievement. The miniature Alhambra finished, -she sat and gazed, and her little chest lifted in a great sigh of wonder -and appeasement. Then, her baby interest dropping, she looked round at -the flames, and, for a little time, gazed at them, while her -great-aunt’s hand moved softly to rest upon her head. It seemed then, as -if in answer to the rapt and tender look bent above her, that Jane -Amoret’s eyes were again raised and that she stretched up her arms to be -taken.</p> - -<p>“She really loves me,” said Mrs. Delafield, as touched and trembling as -a young lover. She lifted her, pressing the little body against her -breast; and, as Jane Amoret gave herself to the enfolding, a<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> thought -that was as sharp and as sudden as a pang flashed through her -great-aunt’s mind. “I can never give her up.”</p> - -<p>What came to her first, as she sat there, Jane Amoret’s head leaning -against her, was the thought of Christmas roses. It was a gift, a -miracle. And to what depths of loneliness the gift had been given; with -what depths of life she answered it! But she was breathless while she -tried to think, knowing something terrible in her own swift acceptance; -seeing for the first time something lawless and perilous in her own -nature. Never in her life had she betrayed a trust; never broken a law. -Yet often, through the years, she had paused, contemplative and -questioning, to gaze at something her mirror showed her, an implication -that only she could see, a capacity never realized. And what she saw -sometimes, with discomfort and shrinking, in those freaked eyes, those -firm lips, was an untamed wildness that had come to her from much -further back than a great-grandmother; something predatory and reckless, -perhaps from the days of border robbers, and Highland chiefs whose only -law was their own will.</p> - -<p>She knew now what were the faces waiting to seize upon her accusingly. -Not Rhoda’s. She swept Rhoda and her forfeited claim aside. Let her stay -with her poet, since that was what she had chosen. It was Niel and poor -Tim who looked at her aghast. But another face hovered softly and -effacingly before them; a pale young face with rosy-mauve lips and -following eyes that said,<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> “They will never understand me. This is what I -was trying to tell you, always. I knew that I was coming back. This is -what I was asking you to do.”</p> - -<p>It was superstition; it did not deceive her for a moment. Desire -dressing itself in a supernatural appeal. Absurd and discreditable. But, -in all truth and honour, wasn’t there something in it? Wasn’t there a -time, once in a blue moon, for lawlessness, when it came as a miracle? -Whom would she harm, really? What could his paternity mean, really, to -drowsy young Niel? And could she not salve Tim’s wounds?</p> - -<p>The only thing that could count,—she came to that at last, feeling the -child, with sleeping, drooping head and little hands held within her -hand, already so profoundly her own,—the only thing was Jane Amoret -herself. Had she a right to keep her from what was, perhaps, her chance -of the normal, even if the defective, life? Wasn’t even a bad and -foolish mother better than no mother at all, and an untarnished name -supremely desirable? She struggled, her eyes fixed on the fire, her hand -unconsciously closing fast on the little intertwined hands within it. -And with the face of the great-grandmother came again the thought of the -Christmas roses, of the gift, the miracle.</p> - -<p>She had not sought anything. She had not even chosen. It was rather as -if Jane Amoret had chosen her. She need not make an effort to keep the -gift. She need merely make no effort to give it back. If Rhoda came (oh, -she could but pray that Rhoda would not come!), she need not find the -right words for her. She had only to remain the passive spectator of -Rhoda’s enterprise and not put out a hand to withdraw her from it. And, -thrusting, feverishly, final decisions from her, her mind sprang out -into far projects and promises. She could, with a will, live for twenty -more years yet and fill them full for<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> Jane Amoret. Niel must not lose -his child, evidently. She would arrange with Niel. He had always liked -her and turned to her. Let this be his home, and welcome. But of course, -he would marry again. She could persuade him not to take Jane Amoret -from her to give to a step-mother. Niel would be easy.</p> - -<p>And Tim, now, must come, of course. Tim should, with her, enjoy Jane -Amoret to the full. What a happy childhood she could make it! It was, to -begin with, quite the happiest nursery she knew, this long-empty nursery -of hers. In a few years' time Jane Amoret would be old enough to have -her own little plot in the garden—Peggy’s plot; and a pony like Peggy’s -should come to the empty stables. She saw already the merry, instructed -girl she would choose as Jane Amoret’s governess: some one young enough -to play out of lesson hours; some one who would teach her to know birds -and flowers as well as history and Latin. She would keep Jane Amoret’s -hair cut like this,—it was the only point in the child’s array in which -her taste was Rhoda’s,—straight across the forehead and straight across -the neck, until she was fifteen, and she should wear smocked blue linen -for morning and white for afternoon, as her own children had done. With -good luck, she might even see Jane Amoret married.</p> - -<p>Actually, she was thinking about Jane Amoret’s marriage, actually -wondering about the nice little eldest boy at the manor,—while her arms -tightened in instinctive maternal anxiety around the sleeping -baby,—when Parton, doing her best not to look round-eyed, announced -Lady Quentyn.<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a></p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p>S<small>HE</small> knew, as she waited for Rhoda to come up, that something she had -forgotten during this last half-hour—perhaps it was her -conscience—steeled her suddenly to the endurance of a test. Tim had -worded it, “Let her see the child. Let that be your appeal.” Would it -not appease her conscience to stand or fall by that? It should be her -appeal. But the only one.</p> - -<p>Jane Amoret had waked, and now, dazed but unfretful, suffered herself to -be placed again on the rug among the blocks, one of which Mrs. Delafield -put into her hands, bidding her build a beautiful big house, as -great-aunt had done. The anguish of her own suspense was made manifest -to her in the restless gesture with which, after that, and while she -waited, she bent to put another log on the fire.</p> - -<p>Rhoda’s soft, deliberate rustle was outside. In another moment she had -entered, and the effect that Mrs. Delafield dreaded seemed produced on -the spot; for, arrested at the very threshold, almost before her eyes -had sought her aunt’s, Rhoda stared down at the child with knotted, with -even incredulous brows.</p> - -<p>“Oh! He’s sent her already, then!” she exclaimed.</p> - -<p>What did the stare, the exclamation, portend?</p> - -<p>“Yes. He sent her, of course, as soon as he came back.”</p> - -<p>“But why?—until our interview is over?”</p> - -<p>“Why not? She’d been alone for a week.” Mrs. Delafield spoke with the -mildness which, she determined, should not leave her.<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> “Niel, of course, -wanted to have her cared for.”</p> - -<p>Rhoda, during this little interchange, had remained near the door; but -now, perceiving, perhaps, that she had come near to giving herself away, -she cleared her brows of their perplexity and moved forward to the fire, -where, leaning her velvet elbow on the mantelpiece, she answered, drily -laughing; “Oh! Niel’s care! He wouldn’t know whether the child were fed -on suet-pudding or cold ham! She’s not alone, with nurse. There’s no one -who can take such care of her as nurse. I knew that.” And she went on -immediately, putting the question of Jane Amoret’s presence behind her -with decision, “Well, poor Aunt Isabel, what have you to say to me? -Father wrote that you would consent to be the go-between. He absolutely -implored me to come, and it’s to satisfy him I’m here, for I really -can’t imagine what good it can do.”</p> - -<p>No; Mrs. Delafield had grasped her own security and her own danger. It -had not been in remorse or tenderness that Rhoda’s eyes had fixed -themselves upon her child, it had been in anxiety, lest Jane Amoret’s -presence should be the signal of some final verdict against her. She had -come because she hoped to be taken back; and if there was all the needed -justification in Rhoda’s callousness, there was an undreamed-of danger -in her expectation.</p> - -<p>“Well, we must see,” Mrs. Delafield remarked; and already she was -measuring the necessities of Rhoda’s pride against the urgencies of -Rhoda’s disenchantment. It was Rhoda’s pride that she must hold to. -Rhoda, even if she had come, had only come to make her own terms.</p> - -<p>“Did you motor over?” she asked. “You are not very far from here, are -you?”</p> - -<p>No train could have brought her at that hour.<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a></p> - -<p>“Twenty miles or so away,” said Rhoda. “I was able to hire a motor, a -horrible, open affair with torn flaps that let in all the air, so that -I’m frozen.”</p> - -<p>Her loveliness did, indeed, look a little pinched and sharpened, and -there was more than the cold drive to account for it. But she was still -surpassingly lovely, with the loveliness that, once you were confronted -with it, seemed to explain everything that might need explanation. That -was Rhoda’s strongest card. She left her appearance to speak for her and -made no explanations, as now, when, indeed, she had all the air of -expecting other people to make them. But her aunt only said, while Jane -Amoret, from her rug, kept her grave gaze upon her mother, “Won’t you -have some hot milk?”</p> - -<p>“Thanks, yes, I should be glad of it,” said Rhoda. “How lucky you are to -have it. We are given only condensed for our coffee at the hotel. It’s -quite revolting.” And after Mrs. Delafield had rung, and since no -initiative came from her, she was, in a manner, forced to open the -conversation. “Niel has only himself to thank,” she said. “He’s been -making himself too impossible for a long time.”</p> - -<p>“Really? In what way? Perhaps the hard life over there has affected his -temper.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield allowed herself the irony. Rhoda, indeed, must expect -that special flavour from her.</p> - -<p>“Something has certainly affected it,” said Rhoda, drawing a chair to -the fire and spreading her beautiful hands before it.<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> “I’m quite tired, -I confess,—horrid as I’m perfectly aware it sounds to say it,—of -hearing about the hard life. Life’s hard enough for all of us just now, -heaven knows; and I think they haven’t had half a bad time over there, -numbers of them—men like Niel, I mean, who’ve travelled comfortably -about the world and never had the least little wound, nor been, ever, in -any real danger, as far as I can make out; at least, not since he’s had -the staff work. It’s very different from my poor Christopher, who rotted -in the cold and mud until it nearly killed him. There would be some -point in his talking of a hard life.”</p> - -<p>This was all very illuminating, and the bold advance of Christopher won -Mrs. Delafield’s admiration for its manner; but she passed it over to -inquire again, “In what way has Niel been making himself impossible?” -The more impossible Rhoda depicted him, the easier to leave her there, -shut out by his impossibility.</p> - -<p>“Why, his meanness,” said Rhoda, her cold, dark eyes, as she turned them -upon her aunt, expressing, indeed, quite a righteous depth of -reprobation. “For months and months it’s been the same wearisome cry. -He’s written about nothing but economy, fussing, fuming, and preaching. -It’s so ugly, at his time of life.”</p> - -<p>“Have you been a little extravagant, perhaps? Everything is so much more -costly, isn’t it? He may well have been anxious about your future, and -the child’s.”</p> - -<p>It was perfectly mild, and the irony Rhoda would expect from her.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no he wasn’t,” said Rhoda, now with her gloomy laugh.<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> “He was -anxious about his hunting. I don’t happen to care for that primitive -form of amusement, and Niel doesn’t happen to care about anything else; -certainly he doesn’t care about beauty, and that’s all I do care about. -So in his view, since, precisely, life has become so costly, beauty had -to go to the wall and I mustn’t dress decently or have a decently -ordered house. I haven’t been in the least extravagant,” said Rhoda. -"I’ve known what it is to be cold; I’ve known what it is to be hungry; -it’s been, at times, literally impossible to get food and coal in -London. Oh, you don’t know anything about it, Aunt Isabel, tucked away -comfortably down here with logs and milk. And if Niel had had any -appreciation of the position and had realized at all that I prefer being -hungry to being ill-dressed, he would have turned his mind to cutting -down his own extravagances and offered to allow me"—and now, for an -instant, if velvet can show sharpness, Mrs. Delafield caught in the -sliding velvet eye an evident edge of cogitation, even, of -calculation—“at least two thousand a year for myself. Money buys -absolutely nothing nowadays.”</p> - -<p>So there it was, and it amounted to an offer. Or, rather, it amounted to -saying that it was the sum for which she would be willing to consider -any offer of Niel’s. Mrs. Delafield, measuring still Rhoda’s pride -against Rhoda’s urgency, mused on her velvet garments, the fur that -broadly bordered her skirts, slipped from her shoulders, and framed her -hands. Poor Tim had been able to give his daughter only a few hundred a -year, and Niel’s hunting must indeed have been in danger. Rhoda’s pride, -she knew, stood, as yet, between herself and any pressure from the -urgency; she could safely leave the offer to lie and go on presently to -question,<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> “And you’ll be better off now?”</p> - -<p>Inevitably unsuspecting as she was, Rhoda, all the same, must feel an -unexpectedness in her attitude, and at this it was with a full, frank -sombreness that she turned her gaze upon her. Anything but a fool she -had always been, and she answered, after the moment of gloomy scrutiny, -“Don’t imagine, please, Aunt Isabel, that because I speak openly of -practical matters I left Niel to get a better establishment. I left him -because I didn’t love him. I was willing to sacrifice anything rather -than stay. Because it is a sacrifice. I took the step I’ve taken under -no illusion. We are too uncivilized yet for things to be anything but -difficult for a woman who takes the step, and the brave people have to -pay for the cowards and hypocrites.”</p> - -<p>This, somehow, was not at all Rhoda’s own note. Mrs. Delafield felt sure -she caught an echo of Mr. Darley’s ministrations. She was glad that -Rhoda should receive them: they would sustain her; and since she was -determined—or almost—that Rhoda should stay with Mr. Darley, it was -well that she should receive all the sustainment possible.</p> - -<p>“It certainly must require great love and great courage,” she assented.</p> - -<p>Rhoda’s eyes still sombrely scrutinized her. “I didn’t expect you to see -it, I confess, Aunt, Isabel.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, but I do,” said Mrs. Delafield.</p> - -<p>The milk was now brought and Rhoda began to sip it.</p> - -<p>“As for my being better off, since you are kind enough to take an -interest in that aspect of my situation,” she went back,<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> “Christopher -hasn’t, it’s true, as much money as Niel. But our tastes are the same, -so that I shall certainly be very much better off. We shall live in -London—after Niel sets me free.” And here again she just glanced at her -aunt, who bowed assent, murmuring, "Yes; yes; he is quite willing to set -you free; at once."—“And until then,” Rhoda went on, as if she hadn’t -needed the assurance,—second-rate assurance as, Mrs. Delafield felt -sure, she found it,—“and until then I shall stay in the country. -Christopher has his post still at the Censor’s office, and won’t, I’m -afraid, get his demobilization for some time. He translates things, you -know. So we are going to find a little old house, for me,—we are -looking for one now,—and I shall see a few friends there, quite -quietly, and Christopher can come up and down, until everything is -settled. I think that’s the best plan.”</p> - -<p>Rhoda spoke with a dignity that had even a savour of conscious -sweetness, and, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, was running herself very -completely into her corner.</p> - -<p>There was silence now for a little while. Rhoda finished her milk, and -Jane Amoret, gently and unobtrusively moving among her blocks, -succeeded, at length, in balancing the last one on her edifice and -looked up at her great-aunt for approbation.</p> - -<p>“Very good, darling. A beautiful house,” said Mrs. Delafield, leaning -over her, but with a guarded tenderness. What a serpent she had become! -There was Rhoda’s jealousy to look out for. She might imagine herself -fond of Jane Amoret, if she saw that some one else adored her.</p> - -<p>“She’s quite used to you already, isn’t she?” said Rhoda, watching them.<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> -“I wonder what you’ll make of her. She strikes me as rather a dull -little thing, though she’s certainly very pretty. She’s rather like -Niel, isn’t she? Though she certainly isn’t as dull as Niel!” She -laughed slightly. "All the same,"—and Mrs. Delafield now, in Rhoda’s -voice, scented the close approach of danger, and was aware, though she -did not look up to meet it, that Rhoda’s eyes took on a new -watchfulness,—“All the same I must consider the poor little thing’s -future. That is, of course, my one real difficulty.”</p> - -<p>“Was it? In going away? In having left her, you mean?” Mrs Delafield -prayed that her mildness might gloss, to Rhoda’s ear, the transition to -conscious combat that her instinctive change of tense revealed to her -own. “Oh, but you need not do that. Don’t let that trouble you for a -moment, Rhoda. I will take charge of her—complete charge. I can do it -easily. My house is empty, and the child will be a companion to me. I -don’t find her dull. She is a dear little thing, so good and gentle. You -need really have no anxiety.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I see.” Rhoda was gazing at her earnestly. “Thanks. That’s -certainly a relief. Though all the same I don’t suppose you’d claim that -you could replace the child’s mother.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I think so, Rhoda. A mother who had left her for a lover.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield kept her eyes fixed on the fire. Rhoda stood up and -leaned her back against the mantelpiece. She could no longer control the -manifestations of her impatience and her perplexity.</p> - -<p>“That would be your view, of course; and father’s; and Niel’s. It’s not -mine. I consider the responsibility to be Niel’s.” -<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> -“Well, whosesoever the responsibility, the deed is done, isn’t it?” -Mrs. Delafield observed. “I’m not arraigning you, you know. I’m merely -stating the fact. You have left her.”</p> - -<p>Rhoda’s impatience now visibly brushed past these definitions. “You say -that Niel is ready to set me free. I took that for granted, of course. -It’s only common decency. But that’s hardly what father could have meant -in imploring me to come to—you. He told me nothing—only implored, and -lamented. And, since I am here, I’d like some information, I confess.”</p> - -<p>It was the first step away from pride, and it was a long one. And Mrs. -Delafield knew that with it came her own final turning-point. Here, at -this moment, she must be true to Tim and Niel, or betray their trust. -And here no less—for so it seemed to her—she might, in betraying them, -take the law into her own hands and promise herself, and them, that, in -breaking it, she would make something better. Yet she did not feel these -alternatives, now, at war within her mind. She knew that they were -there, implicit, but she knew them already answered. Rhoda had answered -for her; and Jane Amoret had answered. It took her, however, a moment to -find her own answer, the verbal one, and while she looked for it, she -kept her eyes on the fire.</p> - -<p>“Your father wants you to go back,” she said at last.<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> “Niel is willing -to take you back. That is the information I had for you. Not for a -moment because he would accept your interpretation of responsibility, -and not for a moment because of any personal feeling for you; which must -be a relief to you. Merely for your sake, and the child’s. But I don’t -know how to plead such a cause with you, Rhoda. I understand you, I -think, better than your father does. I’ve always seen your point of view -as he could never see it, and I see it even now. So that I should feel -that I asked you something outrageous in asking you to go back to your -husband when you love another man. If you should want to go back, that -would be a very different matter—if, by chance, you feel you’ve made a -mistake and are tired, already, of Mr. Darley.”</p> - -<p>She had time, in the pause that followed, the scales pulsing almost -evenly—it was as if she saw them—between Rhoda’s pride and Rhoda’s -urgency, to wonder at herself. And most of all to wonder that she -regretted nothing. She kept her eyes on the fire, but she knew that -Rhoda, very still, scrutinized her intently. The sharply drawn tension -of the moment had resolved itself, to her imagination, into a series of -tiny ticks, as if of the scales settling down to the choice, before -Rhoda spoke. Then what she found to say was, “That’s hardly likely, is -it?”</p> - -<p>“I felt it impossible, you will be glad to hear,” said Mrs. Delafield. -“No one who understands you could suspect you, whatever your faults, of -two infidelities in the space of a fortnight.”</p> - -<p>And now again there was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of -the flames up the chimney and the soft movements of Jane Amoret among -her blocks.</p> - -<p>Rhoda turned away at last, facing the fire and looking down at it, her -hands on the edge of the mantelpiece, her foot on the fender; and she -presently lifted the foot and dealt the logs a kick.</p> - -<p>It was all clear to Mrs. Delafield. She was tired of her poet, or, at -all events, did not, in the new life,<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> find compensations enough. She -had come, hoping to have her way made clear for a reëntry, dignified, if -not triumphant, into the old life. And here she was, in her corner, her -head fairly fixed to the wall.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, what had become of the mid-Victorian conscience? What had, -indeed, become of any conscience at all, since she continued to regret -nothing? She even found excuses, perfidious, no doubt, yet satisfactory. -It had been the truth she had given Rhoda—the real truth, her own, if -not the truth she owed her, not the truth as Tim and Niel had placed it, -all confidently, in her hands. But since it was preëminently not the -truth that Rhoda had come to seize, she was willing, now that she had -fixed her so firmly, to give her something else, and she really rejoiced -to find it ready, going on presently and with a note of relief that -Rhoda’s ear could not fail to catch:—</p> - -<p>“Not only from the point of view of dignity one couldn’t suspect it of -you, Rhoda, but—I want to say it to you, having had my glimpse of Mr. -Darley—from the point of view of taste. If you were going to do -anything of this sort,—and I don’t need to tell you how deeply I -deplore it nor how wrong I think you,—but if you were going to do it, -you couldn’t have chosen better. He is gifted; he is charming; he is -good. I saw it all at once.”</p> - -<p>There was her further truth, and really it was due to Rhoda. Rhoda, at -this, faced her again and, highly civilized creature that she was, it -was with her genuine grim mirth.</p> - -<p>“Upon my word, Aunt Isabel!” she commented. “You are astonishing.”</p> - -<p>“Am I? Why?” asked Mrs. Delafield, though she knew quite well.<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a></p> - -<p>“Why, my dear? Because you are over sixty years old and you wear caps. I -expected to find dismay, reproach, and lamentations—all the strains of -poor old father’s harmonium; to have you down on your knees begging me -to return to the paths of virtue. And here you are, cool and unperturbed -and, positively, patting us on the back; positively giving us your -blessing. Well, well, wonders will never cease! Yes, he is charming, no -one can deny that; and good and gifted, too. But to think of your having -spotted it so quickly! Why, you only saw him once, if I remember, and I -don’t remember that you talked at all.”</p> - -<p>“We didn’t. I only saw him once.”</p> - -<p>“And it was enough! To make you understand! To make you condone!—Come, -out with it, Aunt Isabel, you wicked old lady! I see now why I’ve always -got on so well with you. You <i>are</i> wicked.”</p> - -<p>“To make me understand. I won’t say condone.”</p> - -<p>“You needn’t say it. You’ve said enough. And certainly it is a feather -in Christopher’s cap. But he is the sort of person one falls in love -with at first sight.”</p> - -<p>“So I see.”</p> - -<p>“And so do I,” said Rhoda, still laughing. But her slightly avenging -gaiety dropped from her after the last sally, and turning again to the -fire, and again kicking her log, she said, almost sombrely, “He -absolutely worships me.”</p> - -<p>Was not this everybody’s justification? Mrs. Delafield seized it, -rising, as on a satisfying close.</p> - -<p>“Will you stay to lunch?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Dear me, no!” Rhoda laughed.<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> “I must get back to Christopher. And the -motor is there waiting. So you’ll write to father and tell him that I -came here and that you advised me to stick to Christopher.”</p> - -<p>"Advised? Have I seemed to advise, Rhoda? Do you mean"—it was, Mrs. -Delafield knew, the final peril—“that you had considered not sticking -to him?”</p> - -<p>Rhoda continued to laugh a little, drawing up her furs.</p> - -<p>“Rather not! It couldn’t have entered my head, could it, either from the -point of view of dignity or of taste—as you’ve been telling me? You -have been very wonderful, you know! Tell father, then, if you like, that -you gave us your blessing.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll tell him,” said Mrs. Delafield, “that I’m convinced you ought not -to go back to Niel.”</p> - -<p>"I see,"—Rhoda nodded, and their eyes sounded each other, -curiously,—“though father thinks I ought.”</p> - -<p>“Of course. That’s why you’re here.”</p> - -<p>“Father would have gone down on his knees to beg me.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Down on his knees. Poor Tim!”</p> - -<p>She was horribly frightened, but she faced Rhoda’s grim mirth deliberate -with gravity. And Rhoda, whatever she might have seen or guessed, -accepted her defeat; accepted the dignity and taste thrust upon her. -<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> -“Father, in other words, isn’t a wicked old gentleman as you are a -wicked old lady. I see it all, and it’s all a feather in Christopher’s -cap. Well, Aunt Isabel, good-bye. Shall I see you again? Will you come -and call when I’m Mrs. Darley? I don’t see how, with a clear conscience, -you can chuck us, you know.”</p> - -<p>“Nor do I,” Mrs. Delafield conceded, after only a pause. “I don’t often -go to London, but, when I do, I shall look in upon you, if you want me -to.”</p> - -<p>“Rather!” Rhoda, now gloved and muffled, had fallen back on her normal -rich economy of speech. “You’ll be useful as well as pleasant. And -Christopher will adore you, I’m sure. I’ll tell him that you think him -charming.”</p> - -<p>“Do,” said Mrs. Delafield, following her to the door.</p> - -<p>She had forgotten even to kiss Jane Amoret good-bye.</p> - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p class="nind">S<small>till</small> Mrs. Delafield knew no remorse. Rather, a wine-like elation filled -her. She thought of her state of consciousness in terms of wine, and -ordered up from her modest cellar a special old port, hardly tasted -since her husband’s death, and, all alone, drank at lunch a little glass -in honour of Jane Amoret’s advent. Also, though elated, she was -conscious of needing a stimulant. The scene with Rhoda had cost her more -than could, at the moment, be quite computed.</p> - -<p>What it had won for her she was able to compute when, after lunch, she -went upstairs to look at Jane Amoret asleep in her white cot. She did -not feel like a robber brooding in guilty joy over ill-gotten booty. She -could not feel herself that, nor Jane Amoret booty. Jane Amoret was -treasure, pure heaven-sent treasure, her flower of miracle. Christmas -roses had been in her mind since morning, and the darkness, the -whiteness of the child, as well as her beautiful unexpectedness, made -her think of them anew; her gravity, too; something of melancholy<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> that -the flowers embodied; for they were not smiling flowers—gazing rather -at the wintry sky in earnest meditation.</p> - -<p>Jane Amoret’s black lashes lay upon her cheek, ever so slightly turned -up at the tips, and her great-aunt, leaning over her, felt herself -doting upon them and upon the little softly breathing profile embedded -in the pillow, a bud-like, folded hand beside it.</p> - -<p>“Little darling, we will make each other happy,” she whispered.</p> - -<p>Rhoda had passed from their lives like a storm-cloud.</p> - -<p>Jane Amoret was still sleeping, and she had gone downstairs to the -little morning-room where, since the war, she had really lived, to -settle with herself what she must say to Tim, when there came a ringing -at the front-door bell. The morning-room, at the back of the house, like -the nursery, overlooked the southern lawn and the walls of the -kitchen-garden; but she could usually hear if a motor drove up, and, in -her still concentration upon the empty sheet lying before her on the -desk, she was aware that there had been no sound. It was too early for a -visitor, too early for the post, and she looked up with some curiosity -as Parton came in.</p> - -<p>“It’s a gentleman, ma’am, to see you,” said Parton; and her young, -trained visage showed signs of a discomfiture deeper than that Rhoda’s -coming had evoked. “Mr. Darley, ma’am; and he hopes very much you are -disengaged.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield had, as a first sensation, that of sympathy with Parton. -Parton evidently knew all about it and was evidently in distress lest -her face<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> betrayed her knowledge. In her effort to maintain her own -standards of impassivity she suddenly blushed crimson, and Mrs. -Delafield then felt that she was very old and Parton very young, and -that in that fact alone was a bond, even if there had been no other. She -had many bonds with Parton, and now, seeing her so soft, uncertain, and -dismayed, she would have liked to pat her on the shoulder and say, -“There, my dear, it doesn’t make any difference. I assure you I’m not -disturbed.” And since she could not say it, she looked it, replying with -the utmost equability, “Mr. Darley? By all means. Show him in at once, -Parton.”</p> - -<p>There was, after Parton had gone, a short interval, while Mr. Darley -doubtless was taking off his coat, and during which she felt herself -mainly engaged in maintaining her equability. But, after her encounter -with Rhoda, wasn’t she equable enough for any situation? Besides, Mr. -Darley could in no fashion menace Jane Amoret, and under all her -conjectures and amazements there lay a certain satisfaction. She knew, -from her encounter with Parton, that she was interested in all young -creatures when they were nice, and she was not sorry to have another -look at Mr. Darley.</p> - -<p>When he entered and she saw him,—not in khaki as that first time, but -in a gray tweed suit,—when Parton had softly and securely closed the -door and left them together, she found herself borne along on a curious -deepening of the current of sympathy for mere youth. She had not -remembered how young he was; she had not had that as her dominant -impression at Rhoda’s tea, as she had it now. He must be several years -younger than Rhoda; hardly more than twenty-two or three,<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> she thought; -and it must have been as a mere child that the war had swept him out -into maturing initiations. Something of an experience, shattering yet -solidifying, was in his face, fragile, wasted, yet more final and -finished than one would have expected at his time of life; and also, in -curious contrast to his boyish, beardless look, a deep line was engraved -across his forehead; whether by suffering or by the trick she soon -discovered in him of raising his eyebrows in an effort of intense -concentration, she could not tell.</p> - -<p>She gave him her hand simply, and said, “Do sit down.”</p> - -<p>But Mr. Darley, though he looked at the chair she indicated, did not -take it. He remained standing on the hearthrug, facing the windows, his -hands clasped behind him, and she then became aware that he was enduring -a veritable agony of shyness. It did not take the form of -blushes,—though his was a girlish skin that would display them -instantly,—or of awkward gestures or faltering speech. It was a shyness -wild, still, and bereft of all appeal, like that of a bird,—the simile -came sharply to her,—a bird that had followed some swift impulse and -that now, caught in a sudden hand, relapsed into utter immobility. His -large eyes were on hers—fixed. His expression was like a throbbing -heart. She knew that all she wanted, for the moment, was to show him -that the hand was gentle.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid you came hoping to find Rhoda,” she said, looking away from -him and giving her chair, as a pretext, sundry little adjustments before -drawing it to the fire.<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> “But she left this morning, after seeing me, and -you must have crossed her on the road. At least—have you motored?”</p> - -<p>The large eyes, she found, were still fixed on her as, with the -question, she glanced up at him; but he answered immediately—rather as -if with a croaking cry from the blackbird when one pressed it,—</p> - -<p>“No; I came by train. I left a little after Rhoda did.”</p> - -<p>“By train?” she marvelled kindly. “But we are four miles from the -station here. Aren’t you, at your end, as far? And such roads!” She saw -now that his boots and upturned trousers were, indeed, deeply mired.</p> - -<p>“Oh—I didn’t mind the walk,” said Mr. Darley. “It wasn’t far.”</p> - -<p>She was sure he hadn’t found it far. His whole demeanour expressed the -overmastering impulse that had, till then, sustained him.</p> - -<p>“Have you had any lunch?” she went on. “I can’t think where you can have -lunched. There’s nothing at the station. Do let me send for something. -I’ve only just finished.”</p> - -<p>It seemed strangely indicated that she should, to-day, feed Rhoda and -her lover.</p> - -<p>But the caught blackbird was in no state for feeding. More wildly, yet -more faintly than before he gave forth the croaking cry with, “Oh, no. -Thanks so much. Yes. At our station. I found something at our station. -Sandwiches; no, a bun. I had a cup of Bovril.”</p> - -<p>And now, curiously, poignantly to her, he began to blush as though -suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of himself and of how idiotically he -must be behaving. Poor child! How young he was! And<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> how ill he had been -in the trenches; and how beautiful it was to remember—as she did -suddenly, and not irrelevantly, she knew, though she could not trace the -relevance—that, in the little volume, written since his return, there -had not been a shadow of the ugly rancour, revengeful and provocative, -one met in some other soldier-poets whom one might have fancied to be of -his kind. For how he must have hated it! And, at the same time,—memory -brought back a line, a stanza here and there, from her snatched -reading—how holy he had found it; seeing so much more than error, -death, and suffering.</p> - -<p>Her eyes dwelt on him with something beyond the kindly wish to spare him -as she said, “Please sit down. You must be very tired and you are not -strong, Rhoda told me. Don’t be afraid of me. I am an old lady who can -listen to anything and, I think, understand a great deal. I’ve already -heard a great deal from Rhoda. I’m anything but unfriendly to you, I -assure you.”</p> - -<p>It was—she was aware of it when it had crossed her lips—a curious -thing to say to her niece’s lover, to the man who had destroyed Tim’s -happiness and wrecked Niel’s home; but it was too true not to be said. -And she was perfectly sure now that it was not Mr. Darley who had -wrecked and destroyed. It was Rhoda who had taken him, of course; not he -Rhoda. He would never take anybody. He would stand and gaze at them as -he now gazed at her, and only when they threw out appealing arms would -he move towards them. Rhoda had thrown out appealing arms—after she -discovered that alluring arms had no effect. Mrs. Delafield’s -impressions and intuitions tumbled<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> forth in positive clusters as she -took in her companion. Allurements, Russian-ballet back-grounds, snowy -throats and velvet eyes, would have no effect upon him at all; he cared -as little about them at one end of the scale of sensations as about rats -and corpses at the other. He would not even see them. It was something -else he had seen in Rhoda; something she had found herself driven to -display. And if she were getting tired of him already, it was simply -because, having trapped him with the artifice, she now found herself -shut up with him in a cage, which, while it was of her own making, was -extremely uncongenial to her.</p> - -<p>Mr. Darley was far too absorbed in what she had just said to him to -think of taking the chair. It had helped him incalculably—that was -quite apparent; for though the blush stayed, and though he was still -wild and shy, they had already, indubitably, begun to understand each -other.</p> - -<p>“Do you mean,” he asked, “not unfriendly to me or not unfriendly to -Rhoda?”</p> - -<p>This was an unexpected question, and for a moment, not knowing what it -portended, she hardly knew how to meet it. But the understanding that -seemed to deepen with every moment made truth the most essential thing, -and she replied after only a hesitation, “To you.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Darley looked all his astonishment. “But why? Do you feel that you -like me, too? Because, of course, I’ve never forgotten you. That’s why I -felt it possible to come to-day.”</p> - -<p>And since truth was essential, it was she, now, who looked, with her -surprise, something that she felt to be a recognition, as she replied,<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> -“I suppose it must be that. I suppose we liked each other at first -sight. I certainly didn’t know the feeling was reciprocal.”</p> - -<p>“Nor did I!” Mr. Darley exclaimed. He took the chair at the other end of -the hearthrug, facing her, his knees crossed, his arms clutched tightly -across his chest; and now he was able to reach his journey’s goal. As -all, on Rhoda’s side, had been made clear to her that morning, so on -his, all was clear, as he said, with a solemnity so young, so genuine -that it almost brought tears to her eyes, “Then since you do like me, -please don’t let her leave me!”</p> - -<p>The situation was before her, definite and overpowering; but how it -could have come about remained veiled like the misty approaches to a -mountain.</p> - -<p>“Does Rhoda want to leave you?” she questioned.</p> - -<p>“Why—didn’t you know?” Mr. Darley’s face flashed with a sort of stupor. -“Didn’t she come for that?”</p> - -<p>“You answer my questions first,” Mrs. Delafield said after a moment.</p> - -<p>He was obedient and full of trust. “It’s because of the child, you know, -that lovely little creature in London. From the first—you can’t think -how long ago it already seems, though we have hardly been a week -together—I’ve seen it growing, that feeling in her that she couldn’t -bear it. Other things, too; but that more than all. At least,” he was -truthful to the last point of scruple,<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> “I think so. And though she did -not tell me that she was saying good-bye this morning, I knew—I -knew—that she was coming to you because she wanted her child, and would -accept anything, endure anything, to be with it again.”</p> - -<p>“What do you think Rhoda had to endure?” Mrs. Delafield inquired.</p> - -<p>“Oh—you can’t ask me that! I saw you in it and you saw me!” Mr. Darley -exclaimed. “You <i>will</i> be straight with me? You saw that soulless life -of hers, with that selfish figurehead of a husband for all guide. She -was suffocating in it. She didn’t need to tell me. I saw it in her face -before she told me. How can a woman live with a man she doesn’t love? -When you said not unfriendly to me, did you mean to make a difference? -Did you mean that you don’t care for Rhoda? Yet she’s always loved and -trusted you, she told me, more than any one. You were the one reality -she clung to. That’s why <i>she</i> could come to you to-day.”</p> - -<p>“What I mean is that I’m on your side, not on Rhoda’s,” said Mrs. -Delafield, and at the moment her charming old white face expressed, -perhaps as never before in her life, the quality of decisiveness. “I am -on your side. But I have to see what that is.”</p> - -<p>He was feeling her face even more than her words. He was gazing at her -with a rapt scrutiny which, she reflected, exonerating Rhoda to that -extent, would make it difficult for a woman receiving such a tribute not -to wish to retain it permanently. It enriched and sustained one -and—although it was strange that she should feel this—troubled and -moved one, too. A sense of pain stirred in her, and of wonder about -herself and her fitness to receive such gazes. One really couldn’t, at -sixty-three, have growing pains; yet Mr. Darley’s gaze filled her with -that troubled consciousness of expanding life. He wanted Rhoda. She<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> -wanted Jane Amoret. So, wasn’t it all right? Wasn’t she all right? His -side was her side. They wanted the same thing. But the troubled sap of -the new consciousness was rising in her.</p> - -<p>“My side is really Rhoda’s side,” said Mr. Darley, as if answering her -thought. He held his knee in gripped hands and spoke with rapid -security. He was still shy, but he now knew exactly what he wished to -say, and how to say it. “It’s Rhoda’s side, if only she’d see it. That’s -why I was not disloyal in asking my question when you said you weren’t -unfriendly. Really—really—you <i>will</i> believe me—it’s for her, too. I -wouldn’t have let her come with me if it hadn’t been. I’m not so selfish -as I seem. I know it’s dreadful about the child. But—this is my secret; -Rhoda does not guess it and I could never tell her—she doesn’t love the -child as she thinks she does. Not really. In spite of her longing. She -longs to love it, of course; but she isn’t a mother; not to that child. -That’s another reason. It was all false. The whole thing. The whole of -her life. The real truth is,” said Christopher Darley, gazing large-eyed -at her, “that Rhoda is frightened and wants to go back. She’s not as -brave as she thought she was. Not quite as brave as I thought. But if -she yields to her fear and leaves me,—she hasn’t yet, I know, I see -that in your face—but if she goes back to her old life, it will mean -dust, humiliation, imprisonment forever.”</p> - -<p>“That’s what I told her,” Mrs. Delafield said, her eyes on his.</p> - -<p>“I knew! I knew!” cried the young man.<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a> “I knew you’d done something -beautiful for me—for us. Because you see the truth. And you were able -to succeed where I failed! You were able to convince her! You’ve saved -us both! Oh, how I thank you!”</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t quite like that,” said Mrs. Delafield. "It wasn’t to save -either of you. I don’t think it right for a woman to leave her husband -with another man because she has ceased to love her husband. But I made -her go back. I wouldn’t even let her tell me that she wanted to leave -you. I didn’t convince her. I merely made it impossible for her. She -left me reluctant and bewildered. You haven’t found out yet,"—Mrs. -Delafield leaned forward and picked up the little poker; the fire needed -no poking and the movement expressed only her inner restlessness,—“you -haven’t found out that Rhoda, at all events, <i>is</i> very selfish?”</p> - -<p>Christopher Darley at that stopped short. “Oh, yes, I have,” he answered -then; but the frightened croak was in his voice as he said it.</p> - -<p>“And have you found out, too,” said Mrs. Delafield, eyeing her poker, -sparing him, giving him time, “that she’s unscrupulous and cold-hearted? -Do you see the sort of life she’ll make for you, if she is faithful to -you and stays with you, not because she’s faithful, not because she -wants to stay, but gagged and baulked by me? Haven’t you -already—yourself, been a little frightened sometimes?” she finished.</p> - -<p>She kept her eyes on her poker and gave Mr. Darley his time, and indeed -he needed it.</p> - -<p>“If you’ve been so wonderful,” he said at last, with the slow care of -one who threads his way among swords;<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> “if, though you think we’re -lawbreakers, you think, too, that we’ve made ourselves another law and -are bound to stand by it; if you’ve sent her back to me—why do you ask -me that? But no,” he went on, “I’m not frightened. You see—I love her.”</p> - -<p>“She doesn’t love you,” said Mrs. Delafield.</p> - -<p>"She will! She will!"—It made Mrs. Delafield think of the shaking -heart-throbs of the blackbird.—“All that you see,—yes, yes, I won’t -pretend to you, because I trust you as I’ve never before trusted any -human being, because you are truer than any one I’ve ever met,—it’s all -true. She is all that. But don’t you see further? Don’t you see it’s the -life? She’s never known anything else. She’s never had a chance.”</p> - -<p>“She’s known me. She’s had me.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield’s eyes did not leave the poker. But under the quiet -statement the struggle in her reached its bitter close. She had lost -Jane Amoret. She must give her up. Not for her sake; nor for -Rhoda’s,—oh, in no sense for Rhoda’s,—but for his. She could not let -him pay the price. She must save him from Rhoda.</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” he asked; and it was as if crumbling before her -secure strength, almost with tears.</p> - -<p>"I mean that you’ll never make anything different of her. I never have, -and I’ve known her since she was born. You won’t make her, and she’ll -unmake you. She is disintegrating. She has always been like that. -Nothing has spoiled her. From the first she’s been selfish and untender. -I don’t mean to say that she hasn’t good points. She has a sense of -humour; and she’s honest with herself: she knows what she wants and why -she wants it—although she may take care that you don’t. She isn’t petty -or spiteful or revengeful. No,"—Mrs. Delafield<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> moved her poker slowly -up and down as she carved it out for him, and it seemed to be into her -own heart she was cutting,—“there is a largeness and a dignity about -Rhoda. But she feels no beauty and no tragedy in life, only irony and -opportunity. You’ll no more change her than you’ll change a flower, a -fish, or a stone.”</p> - -<p>Holding his knee in the strained grasp, Christopher Darley kept his eyes -on her, breathing quickly.</p> - -<p>“Why did she come with me, then?” he asked, after the silence between -them had grown long. (Strange, she thought, so near they were, that he -could not know her heart was breaking, too. All the time it was Jane -Amoret’s sleeping eyelashes she saw.) “Why did she love me? I am not -irony or opportunity.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think she ever loved you?” said Mrs. Delafield.<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> “Was it not only -that she wanted you to love her? Wasn’t it because you were different, -and difficult, and new? I think so. I think you found her at a bored, -antagonistic moment; money-quarrels with her husband,—he is a good -young fellow, Niel, and he used to worship her,—the war over and life -to take up again on terms already stale. She is calculating; but she is -adventurous and reckless, too. So she went. And of course she was in -love with you then. That goes without saying, and you’ll know what I -mean by it. But Rhoda gets through things quickly. She has no soil in -her in which roots can grow; perhaps that’s what I mean by saying she -can’t change. One can’t, if one can’t grow roots. But now you are no -longer new or difficult. You are easy and old—already old; and she’s -tired of you. You bore her. You constrain and baffle her—if she’s to -keep up appearances with you at all; and she’d like to do that, because -she admires you exceedingly. So she wants to go back to Niel. I know,” -said Mrs. Delafield, slightly shaking her poker, “that if I’d given her -a loophole this morning, she’d be on her way to London now.”</p> - -<p>“And why didn’t you?” asked Christopher Darley.</p> - -<p>Ah, why? Again she brooded over the softly breathing little profile, -again met the upward gaze of Jane Amoret’s grey eyes. Well might he ask -why. But there was the one truth she could not give him. There was -another that she could, and she had it ready. “I hadn’t seen you,” she -said.</p> - -<p>“You thought it right for her to come back to me, until you saw me?”</p> - -<p>“I thought it beneath her dignity—as I said to her—to be unfaithful to -two men within a fortnight.”</p> - -<p>“But why should you care for her dignity?” Mr. Darley strangely pressed. -“Why shouldn’t you care more for your brother’s dignity, and her -husband’s, and her child’s—all the things she said you’d care for?”</p> - -<p>He had brought her eyes to his now, and, for the first time since they -met, it was he who had the advantage. Frowning, yet clear, he bent his -great young eyes upon her and she knew, dismayingly, that her thoughts -were scattered.</p> - -<p>“I have always cared for Rhoda.” She seized the first one. -<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> -“Is it a future for Rhoda to disintegrate the life of the man who loves -her and to get no good of him? Isn’t it better for a woman like Rhoda to -go back to the apparent dignity, since she has no feeling for the real? -Isn’t that what you would have felt, if you’d been feeling for Rhoda? It -wasn’t because you felt for her,” said Christopher Darley. “You had some -other reason. You are keeping another reason from me. You know,” he -urged upon her with a strange, still austerity, “you know you can’t do -that. You know we must say the truth to each other. You know that we -simply belong to each other, you and I.”</p> - -<p>“My dear Mr. Darley—my dear young man!”</p> - -<p>She was, indeed, bereft of all resource. She laid down her poker and, as -she did so, felt herself disarming before him. His eyes, following her -retreat, challenged her, almost with fierceness.</p> - -<p>“I know—I know that you are giving up something because of me,” he -said. “You want her to go back to her husband now, so that I may be -free. It wasn’t of me you thought this morning; nor of your brother, nor -of Rhoda. Everything changed for you after you saw me. What is it? What -is it that made you send Rhoda back to me and that makes you now want to -free me? You are beautiful—but you are terrible. You do beautiful and -terrible things. And you must let me share. You must let me decide, too, -if you do them for me!”</p> - -<p>He had started up, but not to come nearer in his appeal and his demand. -Cut to the heart as he was,—for she knew how she had pierced,—it was -rather the probing of some more intolerable pain that moved him. And -looking down at her with eyes intolerant of her mercy, he embodied to -her her sense of a new life and a new conscience. Absurd though his -words might seem, they were true. Though never, perhaps, again to meet, -she and<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a> Christopher Darley recognized in each other some final affinity -and owed each other final truth.</p> - -<p>She no longer felt old and wise, but young and helpless before the -compulsion of the kindred soul. She owed him the truth, and in giving it -she must risk his freedom and his happiness. Looking up at him, that -sense of compulsion upon her, she said, “It was because of Jane Amoret. -It was because I loved her and wanted to keep her.”</p> - -<p>Christopher Darley grew paler than before. “She is here?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. She came this morning. She is upstairs, sleeping.”</p> - -<p>“Rhoda saw her?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“And left her? To you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Left her to me.”</p> - -<p>He raised his head with a backward jerk and stared out of the window -before him. She kept her eyes on his face, measuring its strength -against hers. He was not measuring. He seemed to be seeing the beautiful -and terrible things of which, he had told her, she was capable. She -felt, when his eyes came back to her, that he had judged her.</p> - -<p>“You see you can’t,” he said gently.</p> - -<p>“Can’t what? Can’t keep her, you mean, of course.”</p> - -<p>“Anything but that. You can’t abandon her—even for my sake.”</p> - -<p>So that had been the judgment. He saw only beauty. -<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> -“I shan’t abandon her. I shall always be able to see as much of her as I -did of Rhoda, and more. And she is different from Rhoda. I shan’t have -the special joy of her, but I shall have the good.”</p> - -<p>“Moreover,” he went on, with perfect gentleness, putting her words -aside, “I can’t abandon Rhoda. All that you have said is true. But it -doesn’t go far enough. You yourself, you know, see life too much in -terms of irony, of fact rather than faith. You’ve owned that Rhoda is -adventurous and honest; you’ve owned that she doesn’t lie to herself. -Then she has growth in her. No human being can be like a flower or a -fish or a stone. It was mere literature, your saying that. Every human -being has futures and futures within it. You know it really. Why you -yourself, though you are so old and fixed, are different now from what -you were an hour ago. I am different, of course. And Rhoda will be -different, too. She won’t disintegrate me. She’ll make me very -miserable, doubtless; she has already. And I shall make her angry. But I -shall hold her, and she’ll change. You shall see. I promise you. And you -will keep Jane Amoret, and she will be eternally different because of -you.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Delafield, while he spoke, had risen. She stood before him, -grasping her gold chain on either side, her eyes very nearly level with -his, and she summoned all her will, her strength, her wisdom to meet -him. Yes, they had come to that, she and this boy.</p> - -<p>“I accept all your faith,” she said.<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> “Only you must help me to make my -world, and not yours, with it. Don’t be afraid for Jane Amoret. I shall -be firmly in her life. Rhoda shan’t keep me out. She won’t want to keep -me out. Rhoda has far more chance of changing, of learning something -from this experience, as a disconcerted and forgiven wife than as a -sullen adventuress; and you—you will not be miserable; not with Rhoda, -at all events; and you will be free. I am going to send a wire to Rhoda, -at once, and tell her that I have reconsidered my advice to her. That, -in itself, will show her how I managed her this morning. I shall tell -her that she must go to London to-night, to her father. And to-morrow -I’ll take Jane Amoret up and bring Rhoda and Niel together.”</p> - -<p>He took it all in, wide-eyed, he too now measuring the threat.</p> - -<p>“You can’t,” he said; “I won’t let you!”</p> - -<p>“You’ll have to let me. I have the fact on my side as well as the faith. -She wants to leave you. She wants only the excuse of being asked. You -can’t stop my giving her the excuse.” Yes, after all, her fact against -his faith, she must have her way. What could his love for Rhoda and his -feeling for herself do against the ironic fact that Rhoda, simply, was -tired of him? “You must see that you can’t force her to stay,” she said. -“You couldn’t even prevent her coming to me this morning.”</p> - -<p>She looked at him with all the force of her advantage and saw that -before the cruel fact, and her determination, he knew his helplessness. -It was, again, the bird arrested in its impulse; and a veil seemed to -fall across his face, a shyness, almost a wildness to shut them out from -each other. He dropped his eyes before her.</p> - -<p>“Dear Mr. Darley, my dear young friend, see that it’s best. See that -it’s best all round. See it with me,” she begged.<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> “I was wrong this -morning; wrong from the very first. Let it come to that only. Count -yourself out. It was of myself, of my own delight in the child that I -was thinking. No, not even thinking; I tried to think it was for her; -but it was my own feeling that decided. If you had never come, it would -still have been right to give her up—though I should never have seen it -unless you’d come. It was almost a crime that I committed. They had -asked me to implore her to go back; they trusted me. And I prevented the -message coming to her. I did not believe the things I said to her—not -as she thought I believed them. I did not care a rap about her dignity; -you saw the falsity at once. I cared only about keeping Jane Amoret.”</p> - -<p>He stood there before her, remote, unmoved, with downcast, unanswering -eyes.</p> - -<p>“Are you angry? Don’t you see it, too?” she pleaded.</p> - -<p>“No.” He shook his head. “You had a right to keep the child.”</p> - -<p>“Against all those other reasons? Against my own conscience?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Because you were strong enough. You were right, because you were -strong enough. I believe in law, too, you see—unless one is strong -enough to break it for something better. You were. It was a beautiful -thing to do.”</p> - -<p>“But then, if you think me so strong, why not trust me now? This, now, -is the thing I want to do.”</p> - -<p>“Because of me. It isn’t against the law you are acting now; it’s -against your own life. I am not angry. But it crushes me.”</p> - -<p>They stood there then, she deeply meditating, he fixed in his unyielding -grief, for how long she could not have said. Parton’s step outside broke -in upon their mute opposition.<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a></p> - -<h3>VI</h3> - -<p class="nind">S<small>HE</small> and Mr. Darley, Mrs. Delafield was aware, presented precisely the -abstracted, alienated air that Parton would expect. The young man moved -away to the window while she took from the salver the note Parton -presented. Then, her hand arrested in the very act by a recognition,</p> - -<p>“Is there an answer?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“No answer, ma’am.”</p> - -<p>“Who brought it?”</p> - -<p>“A man from the station, ma’am.”</p> - -<p>“Very well, Parton.”</p> - -<p>Parton was gone. Mr. Darley kept his back turned. She held the note in -her hand and stared at it. The writing was Rhoda’s; the envelope one of -the station-master’s. She had been at the station, then, when she wrote, -four miles away. The London train, for which she had been waiting, had -gone long since; it had gone before the arrival of Mr. Darley’s.</p> - -<p>An almost overpowering presage rose in her mind; she could hardly, for a -moment, summon the decision with which to open the envelope. Then, -reading as she stood, she felt the blood flow up to her face.</p> - -<p>For it was almost too much, although it was, through Rhoda’s act, she -who had won finally. Even she, then, had not yet correctly measured -Rhoda’s irony or Rhoda’s sardonic assurance. Rhoda, after all, did not -care to keep up appearances with her, and, after all, why should she? -Here was fact, and it had been fact all through. She wanted most to go -back. She wanted it more<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> than to be dignified in her aunt’s eyes, or, -really, in anybody else’s. Once back Rhoda would take care of her -dignity. In a flash Mrs. Delafield saw how little, when all was said and -done, Rhoda would pay.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">D<small>EAR</small> A<small>UNT</small> I<small>SABEL</small> [she wrote, in her ample, tranquil hand]: I’ve -been thinking over all you said and have come to the conclusion -that you are considering me too much. I feel that I must consider -my child. I have made a grave mistake and am not too proud to own -it. Christopher and I are not at all fitted to make each other -happy. So I have wired to father that I arrive this afternoon, and -to Niel that I will see him to-morrow. I have written too, of -course, to my poor Christopher. But he will understand me. Thank -you so much, dear Aunt Isabel, for your kindness and helpfulness.</p> - -<p class="r">Your affectionate R<small>HODA</small><br /> </p> - -<p>P.S. Will you send nurse up with Jane Amoret within the week? Not -at once, please; that would look rather foolish.</p></div> - -<p>With the accumulated weight of absurdity, relief, dismay, she had sunk -down into her chair, still gazing at the letter, and it was dismay that -grew. As if with a violent jolt back to earth, Rhoda seemed to show her -that life was not docile to nobilities. She hated to think that he must -feel with her that shattering fall. There was nothing for them to do now -for each other; no contest and no sacrifice. Rhoda had settled -everything.</p> - -<p>She spoke to him at last, and, as he came to her, not looking around at -him, she held out the note.<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> He stood behind her to read it; and after -that he did not speak.</p> - -<p>She heard him move presently, vaguely, and then, vaguely, he drifted to -and fro. He walked here and there; he paused, no doubt to feel his bones -and to count how many had been broken, and then, with a start, he went -on again.</p> - -<p>“Please come where I can see you,” she said at last.</p> - -<p>He came at once, obediently, standing as he had stood a little while ago -before the fire, his hands locked behind him, but now with face bent -down, fixed in its effort to see clearly what had happened to them.</p> - -<p>“You see, it was over. You see, you couldn’t have made anything of it.” -It was almost with tears that she besought him not to suffer too much. -“You have nothing to regret, except having believed in her. Tell me that -you are not too unhappy.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know what I am,” Christopher said. “But I know I’ve more to -regret than having believed in her. I’ve all the folly and mischief I’ve -made.” He had thought it out and she could not deny what he had seen, -not even when he went on, "If it could have been in our way,—yours and -mine, or, at least, what was yours this morning, when you thought you -had kept her with me,—everything might have been atoned for. It might -have meant a certain kind of beauty, and a certain kind of happiness, -even, perhaps. But in this way, the way she’s chosen, it only means just -that—folly, mischief,"—he turned to the fire and looked down into -it,—“sin,” he finished.</p> - -<p>She could not deny it, even to give him comfort; but she could find -something else.<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> “It was Rhoda who chose. You, whatever your mistakes, -chose very differently. I'm not trying to shift responsibility; to make -mistakes is to be foolish and mischievous. But can’t even sin be atoned -for? Doesn’t it all now depend on you? That you should make yourself -worth it. You are the only one of us who can do that.”</p> - -<p>He turned to her and his eyes studied her with an unaccepting -gentleness.</p> - -<p>“You mean because I’m a poet? It isn’t like you, really, to say that. -You don’t believe in poets and their mission in that sense. It’s too -facile.”</p> - -<p>“Not only because you are a poet. I wasn’t thinking so much of that, -although your gift helps. But simply because you are young and good.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not good enough,” said Christopher. “And I’m too young. You’ve -shown me that. I am afraid of myself. I see what one can do while -meaning the best.”</p> - -<p>She watched him with grave tenderness, feeling again, in his -dispassionate capacity for accepted experience, his strange maturity. -And knowing all that might be difficult, yet knowing that it would be, -after all, to a decision like her own, the merest gossamers of -convention that she must brave, she said,—and as she looked up at him -his face seemed to blend with the face of her little, sleeping, lost -Jane Amoret,—“Don’t you think I, perhaps, could be of help, while you -are so young?”</p> - -<p>He did not understand her at all. He, too, was absorbed in his inner -image of loss, yet he, too, was almost as aware of her as she of him, -and his eyes, with their austere gentleness, dwelt on her, as if -treasuring, of this last encounter, his completed vision of her.<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a></p> - -<p>“Yes, you will be. I shall never forget you and what you’ve been to me. -I’ll do my best,” he promised her. “But I seem to have lost everything. -I could be strong for her; I don’t know that I can be strong enough for -myself.”</p> - -<p>“That’s what I mean,” said Mrs. Delafield. “It takes years to be strong -enough for one’s self, and even when one’s old one hasn’t sometimes -learned how to be. I’m not sure, after this morning, that I’ve learned -yet. But I know that I could be strong for you. Will you let me try? -Will you let me take care of you a little and guard you from the Rhodas -until the right person comes?”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” he asked; and, answering the look in her face, tears -sprang to his eyes.</p> - -<p>“We belong to each other. Didn’t you say it?” she smiled. “We are -friends. We ought not to lose each other now.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! But—” He gazed at her. “How could you! After what I’ve done!”</p> - -<p>“You’ve done nothing that makes me like you less.”</p> - -<p>“Oh—I can’t! I can’t!” said Christopher Darley. “How could I accept it -from you? Already you’ve been unbelievably beautiful to me. It’s not as -if you were a Bohemian sort of creature, like me. Appearances must count -for you. And the appearance of being friends with your niece’s discarded -lover—no—I can’t see it for you. I can imagine you being above the -law, but I can’t imagine you being above appearances. I don’t think that -I should want you to be. I care about appearances, too, when they are -yours.”</p> - -<p>It crossed her mind, with almost a mirthful sense of the sort of -appearances she would have to deal<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> with, that Parton’s face would be -worth watching. Poor Tim’s hovered more grievously in the background. -But, after all, it would be a Tim with wounds well salved.</p> - -<p>“It’s just because mine are so secure and recognized, don’t you see, -that I can do what I like with them,” she said. “It’s not for me a -question of appearances, but of realities. After all, my dear young man, -what am I going to get out of it all? My roots have been torn up too, -you know.”</p> - -<p>“Because of me! Because of me!” Christopher groaned. “Do you think you -need remind me of that? Shall I ever forgive myself for it? Get out of -it? You’ll get nothing. You’ve been tormented between us all, and you -lose Jane Amoret.”</p> - -<p>“Then don’t let me lose you too,” said Mrs. Delafield.</p> - -<p>Again, with the tears, his blush sprang to his face, and he stood there -incredulous, looking down at her, almost as helpless in the shyness the -unexpected gift brought upon him as he had been when he first came in to -her.</p> - -<p>“Really you mean it?” he murmured. “Really I can do something for you, -too? Because, unless I can, I couldn’t accept it.”</p> - -<p>“You can make me much less lonely, when she’s gone,” said Mrs. -Delafield.</p> - -<p>She knew that this was to give the gift in such a way as to ensure its -acceptance; but he murmured, stung again intolerably by the thought of -Jane Amoret, “Oh—I can’t bear it for you!”</p> - -<p>“You can help me to bear it.”</p> - -<p>Still he pressed upon her what he saw as her sacrifice. -<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a> -“You mean that I may see you when I like? I may always write and you’ll -always answer? I can sometimes, even, come and stay, like any other -friend? Please realize that if you let me come down on you like that, I -may come hard. I’m frightfully lonely, too.”</p> - -<p>“As hard as you like. I want you to come hard. Like any friend. Yes.”</p> - -<p>She was smiling up at the young man, and, as she had promised herself -years for Jane Amoret, she promised herself now years—though not so -many would be needed—for Christopher Darley. It was in the thought of -what she could do for Christopher Darley that she saw Rhoda’s -punishment. Not for having left him, but for having taken him; for not -having known what to do with him without taking him. And Rhoda would see -it with her, if no one else did.</p> - -<p>“Come, you must quite believe in me,” she said. “Give me your hand, dear -Christopher, and tell me that you take this meddling, commanding old -woman to be your friend.”</p> - -<p>He had no words as he took the hand she gave him, but from his look it -might have been as if he at last received into his keeping the great -gift, the precious casket of the future; and his eyes, like those of a -devout young knight, dedicated themselves to her service.</p> - -<p>It was again gift and miracle; and though in her mind was the thought of -all her mournings, and of the lost Jane Amoret, she felt, rooting itself -in the darkness and sorrow, yet another flower.</p> - -<p>“And now,” she said, for they must not both begin to cry,<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> “please ring -the bell for me. The time has not quite come for your first visit; but, -before you go, we will have our first tea together.”</p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a name="HEPATICAS" id="HEPATICAS"></a> -<img src="images/ill_pg_063-a.jpg" width="450" height="46" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h2>HEPATICAS</h2> - -<hr /> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"> -<span class="letra"> -<img src="images/ill_pg_063-b.jpg" -width="150" -height="158" -alt="O" -title="O" -/></span>THER people’s sons were coming home for the three or four days' leave. -The first gigantic struggle—furious onslaught and grim resistance—was -over. Paris, pale, and slightly shuddering still, stood safe. Calais was -not taken, and, dug into their trenches, it was evident that the -opposing armies would lie face to face with no decisive encounter -possible until the spring.</p> - -<p>There was, with all their beauty and terror, an element of the facetious -in these unexpected holidays, of the matter-of-factness, the freedom -from strain or sentiment that was the English oddity and the English -strength. Men who had known the horrors of the retreat from Mons or the -carnage of Ypres, who had not taken off their clothes for ten days at a -stretch or slept for four nights, came home from trenches knee-deep in -mud, from battlefields heaped with unburied dead, and appeared -immaculate and cheerful at breakfast; a little sober and preoccupied, -perhaps; touched, perhaps, with strangeness; but ready for the valorous -family jest, and alluding to the war as if, while something too solemn -for adequate comment, it were yet something that lent itself to -laughter. One did such funny things, and saw them; of the other things<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> -one did not speak; and there was the huge standing joke of an enemy who -actually hated one. These grave and cheerful young men hated nobody; but -they were very eager to go back again; and they were all ready, not only -to die but to die good-humouredly. From the demeanour of mothers and -wives and sisters it was evident that nothing would be said or done to -make this readiness difficult; but Mrs. Bradley, who showed serenity to -the world and did not even when alone allow herself to cry, suspected -that the others, beneath their smiles, carried hearts as heavy with -dread as her own.</p> - -<p>It had been heavy, with hope now as well as with dread, for the past -week. It was a week since she had last heard from Jack. Mrs. Crawley -over the hill, had had a wire, and her husband was now with her; and -Lady Wrexham expected her boy to-morrow. There was no certainty at all -as regarded herself; yet at any moment she might have her wire; and -feeling to-day the stress of waiting too great to be borne in passivity, -she left her books and letters and put on her gardening shoes and gloves -and went out to her borders.</p> - -<p>For weeks now the incessant rain had made the relief and solace of -gardening almost an impossibility; but to-day was mild and clear. There -was no radiance in the air; curtains of pearly mist shut out the sky; -yet here and there a soft opening in the white showed a pale, far blue, -gentle and remote as the gaze of a wandering goddess, and the hills -seemed to smile quietly up at the unseen sun. Mrs. Bradley, as she went -along the river-path, could look across at the hills; the river-path and -the hills were the great feature of Dorrington,—the placid, comely red -brick house to which she and Jack had<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> come fifteen years ago, after the -death of her husband in India. Enclosed by woods, and almost catching -sight of the road,—from its upper windows and over its old brick -wall,—the house would have seemed to her too commonplace and almost -suburban, in spite of the indubitably old oak-panelling of the -drawing-room, had it not been for the river and the hills. Stepping out -on to the lawn from the windows of the drawing-room, she and Jack, on -that April day, had found themselves confronting both—the limpid, rapid -little stream, spanned near the house by its mossy bridge, and the -hills, beyond the meadows, streaked with purple woodlands and rising, -above the woods, to slopes russet, fawn, and azure. Jack, holding her by -the hand, had pointed at once with an eager "Isn’t it pretty, -mummy!"—even at eight he had cared almost as much as she, and -extraordinarily in the same way, for the sights of the country; and if -the hills hadn’t settled the question, it was settled, quite finally, -ten minutes later, by the white hepaticas.</p> - -<p>They had come upon them suddenly, after their tour of the walled kitchen -garden and their survey of the lawn with its ugly shrubberies,—now long -forgotten,—penetrating a thicket of hazels and finding themselves in an -opening under trees where neighbouring woods looked at them over an old -stone wall, and where, from an old stone bench, one could see the river. -The ground was soft with the fallen leaves of many an autumn; a narrow -path ran, half obliterated, down to the river; and among the faded -brown, everywhere, rose the thick clusters, the dark leaves, and the -snowy flowers,—poignant, amazing in their beauty.<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a></p> - -<p>She and Jack had stopped short to gaze. She had never before seen such -white hepaticas, or so many, or so placed. And Jack, presently, lifting -his dear nut-brown head and nut-brown eyes, had said, gazing up at her -as he had gazed at the flowers, “They are just like you, mummy.”</p> - -<p>She had felt at once that they were like her; more like than the little -boy’s instinct could grasp. He had thought of the darkness and -whiteness; her widow’s weeds and pale face had suggested that; but he -could not know the sorrow, the longing, the earthly sense of irreparable -loss, the heavenly sense of a possession unalterably hers, that the -dark, melancholy leaves and celestial whiteness of the flowers expressed -to her. Tears had risen to her eyes and she had stooped and kissed her -child,—how like her husband’s that little face!—and had said, after a -moment, “We must never leave them, Jack.”</p> - -<p>They had never left them. Dorrington had been their home for fifteen -years, and the hepaticas the heart of it. It had always seemed to them -both the loveliest ritual of the year, that early spring one when, in -the hazel copse, they would find the white hepaticas again in flower. -And of all the garden labours none were sweeter than those that -cherished and divided and protected the beloved flowers.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Bradley, to-day, worked in her long border, weeding, forking, -placing belated labels. She was dressed in black, her straw hat bound -beneath her chin by a ribbon and her soft gardening gloves rolling back -from her firm, white wrists. Her gestures expressed a calm energy, an -accurate grace. She was tall, and when she raised herself to look over -the meadows at the hills, she showed small,<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> decisive features, all -marked, in the pallor of her face, as if with the delicate, neutral -emphasis of an etching: the grey, scrutinizing eyes, the charming yet -ugly nose, the tranquil mouth that had, at the corners, a little fall, -half sweet, half bitter, as if with tears repressed or a summoned smile. -Squared at brow and chin, it would, but for the mildness of the gaze, -have been an imperious face; and her head, its whitened hair drawn back -and looped in wide braids behind, had an air at once majestic and -unworldly.</p> - -<p>She had worked for over an hour and the last label was set beside a -precious clump of iris. The hazel copse lay near by; and gathering up -her tools, drawing off her wet gloves, she followed the path under the -leafless branches and among the hepatica leaves to the stone bench, -where, sinking down, she knew that she was very tired. She could see, -below the bank, the dark, quick stream; a pale, diffused light in the -sky showed where the sun was dropping toward the hills.</p> - -<p>Where was Jack at this moment, this quiet moment of a monotonous English -winter day?—so like the days of all the other years that it was -impossible to think of what was happening a few hours' journey away -across the Channel. Impossible to think of it; yet the thick throb of -her heart spoke to the full of its significance. She had told herself -from the beginning—passionate, rebellious creature as, at bottom, she -knew herself to be, always in need of discipline and only in these later -years schooled to a control and submission that, in her youth, she would -have believed impossible to her—she had told herself, when he had gone -from her, that, as a soldier’s widow, she must see her<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> soldier son go -to death. She must give him to that; be ready for it; and if he came -back to her it would be as if he were born again, a gift, a grace, -unexpected and unclaimed. She must feel, for herself as well as for her -country, that these days of dread were also days of a splendour and -beauty unmatched by any in England’s history, and that a soldier’s widow -must ask for no more glorious fate for her son than death in such a -cause. She had told herself all this many times; yet, as she sat there, -her hands folded on her lap, her eyes on the stream below, she felt that -she was now merely motherhood, tense, huddled, throbbing and longing, -longing for its child.</p> - -<p>Then, suddenly, she heard Jack’s footsteps. They came, quick and light, -along the garden path; they entered the wood; they were near, but -softened by the fallen leaves. And, half rising, afraid of her own joy, -she hardly knew that she saw him before she was in his arms; and it was -better to meet thus, in the blindness and darkness of their embrace, her -cheek pressed against his hair, his head buried close between her neck -and shoulder.</p> - -<p>“Jack!—Jack!” she heard herself say.</p> - -<p>He said nothing, holding her tightly to him, with quick breaths; and -even after she had opened her eyes and could look down at him,—her own, -her dear, beautiful Jack,—could see the nut-brown head, the smooth -brown cheek, the firm brown hand which grasped her, he did not for a -long time raise his head and look at her. When, at last, he did look up, -she could not tell, through her tears, whether, like herself, he was -trying to smile.</p> - -<p>They sat down together on the bench. She did not ask him why he had not -wired. That question<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> pressed too sharply on her heart; to ask might -seem to reproach.</p> - -<p>“Darling—you are so thin,—so much older,—but you look—strong and -well.”</p> - -<p>“We’re all of us extraordinarily fit, mummy. It’s wholesome, living in -mud.”</p> - -<p>“And wholesome living among bursting shells? I had your last letter -telling of that miraculous escape.”</p> - -<p>“There have been a lot more since then. Every day seems a miracle—that -one’s alive at the end of it.”</p> - -<p>“But you get used to it?”</p> - -<p>“All except the noise. That always seems to daze me still. Some of our -fellows are deaf from it.—You heard of Toppie, mother?” Jack asked.</p> - -<p>Toppie was Alan Graham, Jack’s nearest friend. He had been killed ten -days before.</p> - -<p>“I heard it, Jack. Were you with him?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. It was in a bayonet charge. He didn’t suffer. A bullet went right -through him. He just gave a little cry and fell.” Jack’s voice had the -mildness of a sorrow that has passed beyond the capacity for emotion. -“We found him afterwards. He is buried out there.”</p> - -<p>“You must tell Frances about it, Jack. I went to her at once.” Frances -was Toppie’s sister. “She is bearing it so bravely.”</p> - -<p>“I must write to her. She would be sure to be plucky.”</p> - -<p>He answered all her questions, sitting closely against her, his arm -around her; looking down, while he spoke, and twisting, as had always -been his boyish way, a button on her coat. He was at that enchanting -moment of young manhood when<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> the child is still apparent in the man. -His glance was shy yet candid; his small, firm lips had a child’s -gravity. With his splendid shoulders, long legs, and noble little head, -he was yet as endearing as he was impressive. His mother’s heart ached -with love and pride and fear as she gazed at him.</p> - -<p>And a question came, near the sharp one, yet hoping to evade it:—</p> - -<p>“Jack, dearest, how long will you be with me? How long is the leave?”</p> - -<p>He raised his eyes then and looked at her; a curious look. Something in -it blurred her mind with a sense of some other sort of fear.</p> - -<p>“Only till to-night,” he said.</p> - -<p>It seemed confusion rather than pain that she felt. “Only till to-night, -Jack? But Richard Crawley has been back for three days already. I -thought they gave you longer?”</p> - -<p>“I know, mummy.” His eyes were dropped again and his hand at the -button—did it tremble?—twisted and untwisted. “I’ve been back for -three days already.—I’ve been in London.”</p> - -<p>“In London?” Her breath failed her. The sense of alien fear became a -fog, horrible, suffocating. “But—Jack—why?”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t wire, mummy, because I knew I’d have to be there for most of -my time. I felt I couldn’t wire and tell you. I felt I had to see you -when I told you. Mother—I’m married.—I came back to get married.—I -was married this morning.—Oh, mother, can you ever forgive me?”</p> - -<p>His shaking hands held her and his eyes could not meet hers.</p> - -<p>She felt the blood rush, as if her heart had been divided with a sword, -to her throat, to her eyes,<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a> choking her, burning her; and as if from -far away she heard her own voice saying, after a little time had passed, -“There’s nothing I couldn’t forgive you, Jack. Tell me. Don’t be afraid -of hurting me.”</p> - -<p>He held her tightly, still looking down as he said, "She is a dancer, -mother, a little dancer. It was in London, last summer. A lot of us came -up from Aldershot together. She was in the chorus of one of those -musical comedies. Mother, you can never understand. But it wasn’t just -low and vulgar. She was so lovely,—so very young,—with the most -wonderful golden hair and the sweetest eyes.—I don’t know.—I simply -went off my head when I saw her. We all had supper together afterwards. -Toppie knew one of the other girls, and Dollie was there. That’s her -name—Dollie Vaughan—her stage name. Her real name was Watson. Her -people, I think, were little tradespeople, and she’d lost her father and -mother, and an aunt had been very unkind. She told me all about it that -night. Mother, please believe just this: it wasn’t only the obvious -thing.—I know I can’t explain. But you remember, when we read <i>War and -Peace</i>"—his broken voice groped for the analogy—“You remember Natacha, -when she falls in love with Anatole, and nothing that was real before -seems real, and she is ready for anything.—It was like that. It was all -fairyland, like that. No one thought it wrong. It didn’t seem wrong. -Everything went together.”</p> - -<p>She had gathered his hand closely in hers and she sat there, quiet, -looking at her hopes lying slain before her. Her Jack. The wife who was, -perhaps, to have been his. The children that she, perhaps,<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> should have -seen. All dead. The future blotted out. Only this wraith-like present; -only this moment of decision; Jack and his desperate need the only real -things left.</p> - -<p>And after a moment, for his labouring breath had failed, she said, “Yes, -dear?” and smiled at him.</p> - -<p>He covered his face with his hands. “Mother, I’ve ruined your life.”</p> - -<p>He had, of course, in ruining his own; yet even at that moment of -wreckage she was able to remember, if not to feel, that life could mend -from terrible wounds, could marvellously grow from compromises and -defeats. “No, dearest, no,” she said. “While I have you, nothing is -ruined. We shall see what can be done. Go on. Tell me the rest.”</p> - -<p>He put out his hand to hers again and sat now a little turned away from -her, speaking on in his deadened, bitter voice.</p> - -<p>“There wasn’t any glamour after that first time. I only saw her once or -twice again. I was awfully sorry and ashamed over the whole thing. Her -company left London, on tour, and then the war came, and I simply forgot -all about her. And the other day, over there, I had a letter from her. -She was in terrible trouble. She was ill and had no money, and no work. -And she was going to have a child—my child; and she begged me to send -her a little money to help her through, or she didn’t know what would -become of her.”</p> - -<p>The fog, the horrible confusion, even the despair, had passed now. The -sense of ruin, of wreckage almost irreparable, was there; yet with it, -too, was the strangest sense of gladness. He was her own Jack, -completely hers, for she saw now why he had<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> done it; she could be glad -that he had done it. “Go on, dear,” she said. “I understand; I -understand perfectly.”</p> - -<p>“O mother, bless you!” He put her hand to his lips, bowing his head upon -it for a moment. “I was afraid you couldn’t. I was afraid you couldn’t -forgive me. But I had to do it. I thought it all over—out there. -Everything had become so different after what one had been through. One -saw everything differently. Some things didn’t matter at all, and other -things mattered tremendously. This was one of them. I knew I couldn’t -just send her money. I knew I couldn’t bear to have the poor child born -without a name and with only that foolish little mother to take care of -it. And when I found I could get this leave, I knew I must marry her. -That was why I didn’t wire. I thought I might not have time to come to -you at all.”</p> - -<p>“Where is she, Jack?” Her voice, her eyes, her smile at him, showed him -that, indeed, she understood perfectly.</p> - -<p>“In lodgings that I found for her; nice and quiet, with a kind landlady. -She was in such an awful place in Ealing. She is so changed, poor little -thing. I should hardly have known her. Mother, darling, I wonder, could -you just go and see her once or twice? She’s frightfully lonely; and so -very young.—If you could.—If you would just help things along a little -till the baby comes, I should be so grateful. And, then, if I don’t come -back, will you, for my sake, see that they are safe?”</p> - -<p>“But, Jack,” she said, smiling at him,<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> “she is coming here, of course. I -shall go and get her to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>He stared at her and his colour rose. “Get her? Bring her here, to -stay?”</p> - -<p>“Of course, darling. And if you don’t come back, I will take care of -them, always.”</p> - -<p>“But, mother,” said Jack, and there were tears in his eyes, “you don’t -know, you don’t realize. I mean—she’s; a dear little thing—but you -couldn’t be happy with her. She’d get most frightfully on your nerves. -She’s just—just a silly little dancer who has got into trouble.”</p> - -<p>Jack was clear-sighted. Every vestige of fairyland had vanished. And she -was deeply thankful that they should see alike, while she answered, -“It’s not exactly a time for considering one’s nerves, is it, Jack? I -hope I shan’t get on hers. I must just try and make her as happy as I -can.”</p> - -<p>She made it all seem natural and almost sweet. The tears were in his -eyes, yet he had to smile back at her when she said, “You know that I am -good at managing people. I’ll manage her. And perhaps when you come -back, my darling, she won’t be a silly little dancer.”</p> - -<p>They sat now for a little while in silence. While they had talked, a -golden sunset, slowly, had illuminated the western sky. The river below -them was golden, and the wintry woodlands bathed in light. Jack held her -hands and gazed at her. Love could say no more than his eyes, in their -trust and sorrow, said to her; she could never more completely possess -her son. Sitting there with him, hand in hand, while the light slowly -ebbed and twilight fell about them, she felt it to be, in its accepted -sorrow, the culminating and transfiguring moment of her maternity.</p> - -<p>When they at last rose to go it was the hour for<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> Jack’s departure, and -it had become almost dark. Far away, through the trees, they could see -the lighted windows of the house that waited for them, but to which she -must return alone. With his arms around her shoulders, Jack paused a -moment, looking about him. “Do you remember that day—when we first came -here, mummy?” he asked.</p> - -<p>She felt in him suddenly a sadness deeper than any he had yet shown her. -The burden of the past she had lifted from him; but he must bear now the -burden of what he had done to her, to their life, to all the future. -And, protesting against his pain, her mother’s heart strove still to -shelter him while she answered, as if she did not feel his sadness, -“Yes, dear, and do you remember the hepaticas on that day?”</p> - -<p>“Like you,” said Jack in a gentle voice. “I can hardly see the plants. -Are they all right?”</p> - -<p>“They are doing beautifully.”</p> - -<p>“I wish the flowers were out,” said Jack. “I wish it were the time for -the flowers to be out, so that I could have seen you and them together, -like that first day.” And then, putting his head down on her shoulder, -he murmured, “It will never be the same again. I’ve spoiled everything -for you.”</p> - -<p>But he was not to go from her uncomforted. She found the firmest voice -in which to answer him, stroking his hair and pressing him to her with -the full reassurance of her resolution.<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> “Nothing is spoiled, Jack, -nothing. You have never been so near me—so how can anything be spoiled? -And when you come back, darling, you’ll find your son, perhaps; and the -hepaticas may be in flower, waiting for you.”</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind">M<small>RS</small>. B<small>RADLEY</small> and her daughter-in-law sat together in the drawing-room. -They sat opposite each other on the two chintz chesterfields placed at -right angles to the pleasantly blazing fire, the chintz curtains drawn -against a rainy evening. It was a long, low room, with panelled walls; -and, like Mrs. Bradley’s head, it had an air at once majestic, -decorated, and old-fashioned. It was a rather crowded room, with many -deep chairs and large couches, many tables with lamps and books and -photographs upon them, many porcelains, prints, and pots of growing -flowers. Mrs. Bradley, her tea-table before her, was in her evening -black silk; lace ruffles rose about her throat; she wore her accustomed -necklace of old enamel, blue, black, and white, set with small diamonds, -and the enamel locket that had within it Jack’s face on one side and his -father’s on the other; her white hands, moving gently among the teacups, -showed an ancient cluster of diamonds above the slender wedding-ring. -From time to time she lifted her eyes and smiled quietly over at her -daughter-in-law. It was the first time that she had really seen Dollie, -that is, in any sense that meant contemplative observation. Dollie had -spent her first week at Dorrington in bed, sodden with fatigue rather -than ill. “What you need,” Mrs. Bradley had said, “is to go to sleep for -a fortnight”; and Dollie had almost literally carried out the -prescription.</p> - -<p>Stealing carefully into the darkened room, with its flowers and open -windows and steadily glowing fire, Mrs. Bradley had stood and looked for -long<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a> moments at all that she could see of her daughter-in-law,—a -flushed, almost babyish face lying on the pillow between thick golden -braids, sleeping so deeply, so unconsciously,—her sleep making her -mother-in-law think of a little boat gliding slowly yet steadily on and -on, between new shores; so that, when she was to awake and look about -her, it would be as if, with no bewilderment or readjustment, she found -herself transformed, a denizen of an altered world. That was what Mrs. -Bradley wanted, that Dollie should become an inmate of Dorrington with -as little effort or consciousness for any of them as possible, and the -drowsy days and nights of infantine slumbers seemed indeed to have -brought her very near.</p> - -<p>She and Pickering, the admirable woman who filled so skilfully the -combined positions of lady’s maid and parlourmaid in her little -establishment, had braided Dollie’s thick tresses, one on either -side,—Mrs. Bradley laughing a little and both older women touched, -almost happy in their sense of something so young and helpless to take -care of. Pickering understood, nearly as well as Jack’s mother, that -Master Jack, as he had remained to her, had married very much beneath -him; but at this time of tragic issues and primitive values, she, nearly -as much as Jack’s mother, felt only the claim, the pathos of youth and -helplessness. It was as if they had a singularly appealing case of a -refugee to take care of; social and even moral appraisals were -inapplicable to such a case, and Mrs. Bradley felt that she had never so -admired Pickering as when seeing that for her, too, they were in -abeyance. It was a comfort to feel so fond of Pickering at a time when -one was in need of any<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> comfort one could get; and to feel that, -creature of codes and discriminations as she was, to a degree that had -made her mistress sometimes think of her as a sort of Samurai of -service, a function rather than a person, she was even more -fundamentally a kind and Christian woman. Between them, cook -intelligently sustaining them from below and the housemaids helpful in -their degree, they fed and tended and nursed Dollie, and by that eighth -day she was more than ready to get up and go down and investigate her -new surroundings.</p> - -<p>She sat there now, in the pretty tea-gown her mother-in-law had bought -for her, leaning back against her cushions, one arm lying along the back -of the couch and one foot in its patent-leather shoe, with its sparkling -buckle and alarming heel, thrusting forward a carefully arched instep. -The attitude made one realize, however completely tenderer -preoccupations held the foreground of one’s consciousness, how often and -successfully she must have sat to theatrical photographers. Her way of -smiling, too, very softly, yet with the effect of a calculated and -dazzling display of pearly teeth, was impersonal, and directed, as it -were, to the public <i>via</i> the camera rather than to any individual -interlocutor. Mrs. Bradley even imagined, unversed as she was in the -methods of Dollie’s world, that of allurement in its conscious and -determined sense she was almost innocent. She placed herself, she -adjusted her arm and her foot, and she smiled gently; intention hardly -went further than that wish to look her best.</p> - -<p>Pink and white and gold as she was, and draped there on the chesterfield -in a profusion of youth and a frivolity that was yet all passivity, she -made her<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> mother-in-law think, and with a certain sinking of the heart, -of a Dorothy Perkins rose, a flower she had never cared for; and Dollie -carried on the analogy in the sense she gave that there were such -myriads more just like her. On almost every page of every illustrated -weekly paper, one saw the ingenuous, limpid eyes, the display of -eyelash, the lips, their outline emphasized by just that touch of rouge, -those copious waves of hair. Like the Dorothy Perkins roses on their -pergolas, so these pretty faces seemed—looped, draped, festooned—to -climb over all the available spaces of the modern press.</p> - -<p>But this, Mrs. Bradley told herself, was to see Dollie with a dry, hard -eye, was to see her superficially, from the social rather than from the -human point of view. Under the photographic creature must lie the young, -young girl,—so young, so harmless that it would be very possible to -mould her, with all discretion, all tenderness, into some suitability as -Jack’s wife. Dollie, from the moment that she had found her, a sodden, -battered rose indeed, in the London lodging-house, had shown herself -grateful, even humble, and endlessly acquiescent. She had not shown -herself at all abashed or apologetic, and that had been a relief; had -counted for her, indeed, in her mother-in-law’s eyes, as a sort of -innocence, a sort of dignity. But if Dollie were contented with her new -mother-in-law, and very grateful to her, she was also contented with -herself; Mrs. Bradley had been aware of this at once; and she knew now -that if she were being carefully and commendingly watched while she -poured out the tea, this concentration did not imply unqualified -approval. Dollie was the type of<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> young woman to whom she herself stood -as the type of the “perfect lady”; but with the appreciation went the -proviso of the sharp little London mind,—versed in the whole ritual of -smartness as it displayed itself at theatre or restaurant,—that she was -a rather dowdy one. She was a lady, perfect but not smart, while, at the -same time, the quality of her defect was, she imagined, a little -bewildering and therefore a little impressive. Actually to awe Dollie -and to make her shy, it would be necessary to be smart; but it was far -more pleasant and perhaps as efficacious merely to impress her, and it -was as well that Dollie should be impressed; for anything in the nature -of an advantage that she could recognize would make it easier to direct, -protect, and mould her.</p> - -<p>She asked her a good many leisurely and unstressed questions on this -first evening, and drew Dollie to ask her others in return; and she saw -herself stooping thoughtfully over a flourishing young plant that yet -needed transplanting, softly moving the soil about its roots, softly -finding out if there were any very deep tap-root that would have to be -dealt with. But Dollie, so far as tastes and ideas went, hardly seemed -to have any roots at all; so few that it was a question if any change of -soil could affect a creature so shallow. She smiled, she was at ease; -she showed her complete assurance that a young lady so lavishly endowed -with all the most significant gifts, need not occupy herself with mental -adornments.</p> - -<p>“You’re a great one for books, I see,” she commented, looking about the -room; “I suppose you do a great deal of reading down here to keep from -feeling too dull”; and she added that she herself,<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> if there was -“nothing doing,” liked a good novel, especially if she had a box of -sweets to eat while she read it.</p> - -<p>“You shall have a box of sweets to-morrow,” Mrs. Bradley told her, “with -or without the novel, as you like.”</p> - -<p>And Dollie thanked her, watching her cut the cake, and, as the rain -lashed against the windows, remarking on the bad weather and cheerfully -hoping that “poor old Jack” wasn’t in those horrid trenches. “I think -war’s a wicked thing, don’t you, Mrs. Bradley?” she added.</p> - -<p>When Dollie talked in this conventionally solicitous tone of Jack, her -mother-in-law could but wish her upstairs again, merely young, merely -the tired and battered refugee. She had not much tenderness for Jack, -that was evident, nor much imaginativeness in regard to the feelings of -Jack’s mother. But she soon passed from the theme of Jack and his -danger. Her tea was finished and she got up and went to the piano, -remarking that there was one thing she <i>could</i> do. “Poor mother used to -always say I was made of music. From the time I was a mere tot I could -pick out anything on the piano.” And placing herself, pressing down the -patent-leather shoe on the loud pedal, she surged into a waltz as -foolish and as conventionally alluring as her own eyes. Her inaccuracy -was equalled only by her facility. Smiling, swaying over the keys with -alternate speed and languor, she addressed her audience with altogether -the easy mastery of a music-hall <i>artiste</i>:<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> “It’s a lovely thing—one of -my favourites. I’ll often play, Mrs. Bradley, and cheer us up. There is -nothing like music for that, is there? it speaks so to the heart.” And, -whole-heartedly, indeed, she accompanied the melody by a passionate -humming.</p> - -<p>The piano was Jack’s and it was poor Jack who was made of music. How was -he to bear it, his mother asked herself, as she sat listening. Dollie, -after that initiation, spent many hours at the piano every day,—so many -and such noisy hours, that her mother-in-law, unnoticed, could shut -herself in the little morning-room that overlooked the brick wall at the -front of the house and had the morning sun.</p> - -<p>It was difficult to devise other occupations for Dollie. She earnestly -disclaimed any wish to have proper music lessons, and when her -mother-in-law, patiently persistent, arranged for a skilful mistress to -come down twice a week from London, Dollie showed such apathy and -dulness that any hope of developing such musical ability as she -possessed had to be abandoned. She did not like walking, and the sober -pageant of the winter days was a blank book to her. Sewing, she said, -had always given her frightful fidgets; and it was with the strangest -sense of a privilege, a joy, unhoped-for and now thrust upon her, that -Mrs. Bradley sat alone working at the little garments that meant all her -future and all Jack’s. The baby seemed already more hers than Dollie’s.</p> - -<p>Sometimes, on a warm afternoon, Dollie, wrapped in her fur cloak, would -emerge for a little while and watch her mother-in-law at work in her -borders. The sight amused and surprised but hardly interested her, and -she soon went tottering back to the house on the preposterous heels that -Mrs. Bradley had, as yet, found no means of tactfully banishing. And -sometimes, when the piano again<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> resounded, Mrs. Bradley would leave her -borders and retreat to the hazel-copse, where, as she sat on the stone -bench, she could hear, through the soft sound of the running water, -hardly more than the distant beat and hum of Dollie’s waltzes; and -where, with more and more the sense of escape and safety, she could find -a refuge from the sight and sound and scent of Dollie,—the thick, -sweet, penetrating scent that was always to be indelibly associated in -her mind with this winter of foreboding, of hope, and of growing -hopelessness.</p> - -<p>In her letters to Jack, she found herself, involuntarily at first, and -then deliberately, altering, suppressing, even falsifying. While Dollie -had been in bed, when so much hope had been possible of a creature so -unrevealed, she had written very tenderly, and she continued, now, to -write tenderly, and it was not false to do that; she could feel no -hardness or antagonism against poor Dollie. But she continued to write -hopefully, as every day hope grew less.</p> - -<p>Jack, himself, did not say much of Dollie, though there was always the -affectionate message and the affectionate inquiry. But what was -difficult to deal with were the hints of his anxiety and fear that stole -among the terse, cheerful descriptions of his precarious days. What was -she doing with herself? How were she and Dollie getting on? Did Dollie -care about any of the things she cared about?</p> - -<p>She told him that they got on excellently well, that Dollie spent a good -deal of time at the piano, and that when they went out to tea people -were perfectly nice and understanding. She knew, indeed, that she could -depend on her friends to be that. They accepted Dollie on the terms she -asked<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> for her. From friends so near as Mrs. Crawley and Lady Wrexham -she had not concealed the fact that Dollie was a misfortune; but if -others thought so they were not to show it. She still hoped, by degrees, -to make Dollie a figure easier to deal with at such neighbourly -gatherings. She had abandoned any hope that Dollie would grow; anything -so feeble and so foolish could not grow; there was no other girl under -the little dancer; she was simply no more and no less than she showed -herself to be; but, at this later stage of their relationship, Mrs. -Bradley essayed, now and then, a deliberate if kindly severity,—as to -heels, as to scents, as to touches of rouge.</p> - -<p>“Oh, but I’m as careful, just as careful, Mrs. Bradley!” Dollie -protested. “I can’t walk in lower heels. They hurt my instep. I’ve a -very high instep and it needs support.” She was genuinely amazed that -any one could dislike her scent and that any one could think the rouge -unbecoming. She seemed to acquiesce, but the acquiescence was followed -by moods of mournfulness and even by tears. There was no capacity in her -for temper or rebellion, and she was all unconscious of giving a warning -as she sobbed, “It’s nothing—really nothing, Mrs. Bradley. I’m sure you -mean to be kind. Only—it’s rather quiet and lonely here. I’ve always -been used to so many people,—to having everything so bright and jolly.”</p> - -<p>She was not rapacious; she was not dissolute; she could be kept -respectable and even contented if she were not made too aware of the -contrast between her past existence and her present lot. With an air -only of pensive pride she would sometimes point out to Mrs. Bradley, in -the pages of those same<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> illustrated weeklies with which her -mother-in-law associated her, the face of some former companion. One of -these young ladies had recently married the son of a peer. “She <i>is</i> in -luck, Floss,” said Dollie. “We always thought it would come to that. -He’s been gone on her for ages, but his people were horrid.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Bradley felt that, at all events, Dollie had no ground for thinking -her “horrid”; yet she imagined that there lay drowsing at the back of -her mind a plaintive little sense of being caught and imprisoned. Floss -had stepped, triumphant, from the footlights to the registrar’s office, -and apparently had succeeded in uniting the radiance of her past and -present status. No, Dollie could be kept respectable and contented only -if the pressure were of the lightest. She could not change, she could -only shift; and although Mrs. Bradley felt that for herself, her life -behind her, her story told, she could manage to put up with a merely -shifted Dollie, she could not see how Jack was to manage it. What was -Jack to do with her? was the thought that pressed with a growing weight -on her heart. She could never be of Jack’s life; yet here she was, in -it, planted there by his own generous yet inevitable act, and by -hers,—in its very centre, and not to be evaded or forgotten.</p> - -<p>And the contrast between what Jack’s life might have been and what it -now must be was made more poignantly apparent to her when Frances Graham -came down to stay from a Saturday to Monday; Frances in her black, tired -and thin from Red-Cross work in London; bereaved in more, her old friend -knew, than dear Toppie’s death; yet with her leisurely, unstressed -cheerfulness almost unaltered,<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> the lightness that went with so much -tenderness, the drollery that went with so much depth. Dearest, most -charming of girls—but for Jack’s wretched stumble into “fairyland” last -summer, destined obviously to be his wife,—could any presence have -shown more disastrously, in its contrast with poor Dollie, how Jack had -done for himself? She watched the two together that evening, Frances -with her thick crinkled hair and clearly curved brow and her merry, -steady eyes, leaning, elbow on knee, to talk and listen to Dollie; and -Dollie, poor Dollie, flushed, touched with an unbecoming sulkiness, -aware, swiftly and unerringly, of a rival type. Frances was of the type -that young men married when they did not “do for themselves.” There was -now no gulf of age or habit to veil from Dollie her disadvantage. She -answered shortly, with now and then a dry, ironic little laugh; and, -getting up at last, she went to the piano and loudly played.</p> - -<p>“He couldn’t have done differently. It was the only thing he could do,” -Frances said that night before her bedroom fire. She did not hide her -recognition of Jack’s plight, but she was staunch.</p> - -<p>“I wouldn’t have had him do differently. But it will ruin his life,” -said the mother. “If he comes back it will ruin his life.”</p> - -<p>“No, no,” said Frances, looking at the flames. “Why should it? A man -doesn’t depend on his marriage like that. He has his career.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. He has his career. A career isn’t a life.”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it?” The girl gazed down. “But it’s what so many people have to -put up with. And so many haven’t even a career.” Something came into her -voice and she turned from it quickly.<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> “He’s crippled, in a sense, of -course. But you are here. He will have you to come back to always.”</p> - -<p>“I shall soon be old, dear, and she will always be here. That’s -inevitable. Some day I shall have to leave her to Jack to bear with -alone.”</p> - -<p>“She may become more of a companion.”</p> - -<p>“No; no, she won’t.” The bitterness of the mother’s heart expressed -itself in the dry, light utterance. It was a comfort to express -bitterness, for once, to somebody.</p> - -<p>“She is a harmless little thing,” Frances offered after a moment.</p> - -<p>“Harmless?” Mrs. Bradley turned it over drily and lightly. “I can’t feel -her that. I feel her blameless if you like. And it will be easy to keep -her contented. That is really the best that one can say of poor Dollie. -And then there will be the child. I am pinning all my hopes to the -child, Frances.”</p> - -<p>Frances understood that.</p> - -<p>Dollie, as the winter wore on, kept remarkably well. She had felt it the -proper thing to allude to Jack and his danger; and so, now, she more and -more frequently felt it the proper thing to allude, humorously if with a -touch of melancholy, to “baby.” Her main interest in baby, Mrs. Bradley -felt, was an alarmed one. She was a good deal frightened, poor little -soul, and in need of constant reassurances; and it was when one need -only pet and pity Dollie that she was easier to deal with. Mrs. Bradley -tried to interest her in plans for the baby; what it should be named, -and how its hair should be done if it were a little girl,—for only on -this assumption could Dollie’s interest be at all vividly roused; and -Mrs. Bradley more than ever hoped for a boy when she found Dollie<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a>’s -idle yet stubborn thoughts fixed on the name of Gloria.</p> - -<p>She was able to evade discussion of this point, and when the baby came, -fortunately and robustly, into the world on a fine March morning, she -could feel it as a minor but very real cause for thanksgiving that -Dollie need now never know what she thought of Gloria as a name. The -baby was a boy, and now that he was here Dollie seemed as well pleased -that he should be a commonplace Jack, and that there should be no -question of tying his hair with cockades of ribbon over each ear. -Smiling and rosy and languid, she lay in her charming room, not at all -more maternal—though she showed a bland satisfaction in her child and -noted that his eyes were just like Jack’s—yet subtly more wifely. Baby, -she no doubt felt, with the dim instinct that did duty for thought with -her, placed and rooted her and gave her final rights. She referred now -to Jack with the pensive but open affection of their shared complacency, -and made her mother-in-law think, as she lay there, of a soft and sleepy -and tenacious creeper, fixing tentacle after tentacle in the walls of -Jack’s house of life.</p> - -<p>If only one could feel that she had furnished it with a treasure! -Gravely, with a sad fondness, the grandmother studied the little face, -so unfamiliar, for signs of Jack. She was a helplessly clear-sighted -woman, and remembrance was poignantly vivid in her of Jack’s face at a -week old. Already she loved the baby since its eyes, indubitably, were -his; but she could find no other trace of him. It was not a Bradley -baby; and in the dreamy, foreboding flickers of individuality that pass -uncannily across an infant’s features, her melancholy and steady<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> -discernment could see only the Watson ancestry.</p> - -<p>She was to do all she could for the baby; to save him, so far as might -be, from his Watson ancestry and to keep him, so far as might be, Jack’s -and hers. That was to be her task. But with all the moulding that could, -mercifully, be applied from the very beginning, she could not bring -herself to believe that this was ever to be a very significant human -being.</p> - -<p>She sent Jack his wire: “A son. Dollie doing splendidly.” And she had -his answer: “Best thanks. Love to Dollie.” It was curious, indeed, this -strange new fact they had now, always, to deal with; this light little -“Dollie” that must be passed between them. The baby might have made Jack -happy, but it had not solved the problem of his future.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>A <small>WEEK</small> later the telegram was brought to her telling her that he had -been killed in action.</p> - -<p>It was a beautiful spring day, just such a day as that on which she and -Jack had first seen Dorrington, and she had been working in the garden. -When she had read, she turned and walked down the path that led to the -hazel-copse. She hardly knew what had happened to her; there was only an -instinct for flight, concealment, secrecy; but, as she walked, there -rose in her, without sound, as if in a nightmare, the terrible cry of -her loneliness. The dark wet earth that covered him seemed heaped upon -her heart.</p> - -<p>The hazel-copse was tasselled thickly with golden-green, and as she -entered it she saw that<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> the hepaticas were in flower. They seemed to -shine with their own celestial whiteness, set in their melancholy green -among the fallen leaves. She had never seen them look so beautiful.</p> - -<p>She followed the path, looking down at them, and she seemed to feel -Jack’s little hand in hers and to see, at her side, his nut-brown head. -It had been on just such a morning. She came to the stone bench; but the -impulse that had led her here was altered. She did not sink down and -cover her face, but stood looking around her at the flowers, the -telegram still open in her hand; and slowly, with stealing calm, the -sense of sanctuary fell about her.</p> - -<p>She had lost him, and with him went all her life. He was dead, his youth -and strength and beauty. Yet what was this strange up-welling of relief, -deep, deep relief, for Jack; this gladness, poignant and celestial, like -that of the hepaticas? He was dead and the dark earth covered him; yet -he was here, with her, safe in his youth and strength and beauty, -forever. He had died the glorious death, and no future, tangled, -perplexed, fretful with its foolish burden, lay before him. There was no -loss for Jack; no fading, no waste. The burden was for her and he was -free.</p> - -<p>Later when pain should have dissolved thought her agony would come to -her unalleviated; but this hour was hers and his. She heard the river -and the soft whisperings of spring. A bird dropped lightly unafraid from -branch to branch of a tree near by. From the woods came the rapid -insistent tapping of a woodpecker; and as in so many springs she seemed -to hear Jack say, “Hark, mummy,” and his little hand was always held in -hers. And everywhere telling of irreparable loss, of a<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> possession -unalterable, the tragic, the celestial hepaticas.</p> - -<p>She sat down on the stone bench now and closed her eyes for a little -while so holding them more closely—Jack and the hepaticas—together.<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a name="DAFFODILS" id="DAFFODILS"></a> -<img src="images/ill_pg_092-a.jpg" width="450" height="55" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h2>DAFFODILS</h2> - -<hr /> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"> -<span class="letra"> -<img src="images/ill_pg_092-b.jpg" -width="150" -height="129" -alt="T" -title="T" -/></span>HOUGH he knew that he was going to die, Marmaduke Follett as he lay in -the hospital on the French coast had never in his life been so happy. -Until these last days he had not been able to feel it in its -completeness. Of the great engagement where he had fallen he remembered -only the overwhelming uproar, the blood and mud; and after that, -torments, apathies, dim awakenings to the smell of ether and relapses to -acquiescent sleep. Now the last operation had failed—or rather, he had -failed to recover from it—and there was no more hope for him; but he -hardly suffered and his thoughts were emerging into a world of -cleanliness, kindness, and repose.</p> - -<p>The hospital before the war had been a big hotel, and his was one of the -bedrooms on the second floor, its windows crossed by two broad blue -bands of sea and sky. As an officer he had a room to himself. The men -were in the wards downstairs.</p> - -<p>One of his nurses—both were pleasant girls but this was the one who -with a wing of black hair curving under her cap reminded him of his -cousin Victoria—had put a glass of daffodils beside his<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> bed, not -garden daffodils, but the wild ones that grow in woods; and if she made -him think of Victoria how much more they made him think of the woods in -spring at Channerley!</p> - -<p>He was dying after a gallant deed. It was a fitting death for a Follett -and so little in his life had been at all fitted to that initial -privilege: it was only in the manner of his death that his life matched -at all those thoughts of Victoria and Channerley.</p> - -<p>He did not remember much of the manner; it still remained cloaked in the -overwhelming uproar; but as he lay there he seemed to read in the -columns of the London papers what all the Folletts were so soon to -read—because of him:—</p> - -<p>"His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to award the Victoria -Cross to the under-mentioned officers, non-commissioned officers and -men:—</p> - -<p>"Sec. Lt. Marmaduke Everard Follett. For most conspicuous bravery.</p> - -<p>“He was directed with 50 men to drive the enemy from their trench and -under intense shell-and machine-gun fire he personally led three -separate parties of bombers against a captured 325 yards of trench; -attacking the machine gun, shooting the firer with his revolver, and -destroying gun and <i>personnel</i> with bombs. This very brave act saved -many lives and ensured the success of the attack. In carrying one of his -men back to safety Sec. Lt. Follett was mortally wounded.”</p> - -<p>He felt himself smile, as he soberly spaced it out, to remember that the -youths at the office used to call him Marmalade. It was curious that he -most felt his present and his present transfigured self, when he thought -of Cauldwell’s office, where so<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> many years of his past had been spent. -When he thought of that, of the jocund youths, of the weary hours and -wasted years, it was to feel himself transfigured; when he thought of -the Folletts and of Channerley, to feel that he matched them; to feel at -last as if he had come home. What to the grimy, everyday world counted -as transfiguration, counted as the normal, the expected, to the world of -Channerley.</p> - -<p>He wondered, lying there and looking out past the daffodils, where -Victoria was; he had heard that she was nursing, too, somewhere in -France; and again, as he had smiled over the contrast of “Sec. Lt. -Marmaduke Everard Follett” and the “Marmalade” of Cauldwell’s office, he -smiled in thinking of the difference between Victoria and the nice young -nurse who, for all her resembling curve of hair, was also second-rate. -It would have been very wonderful to have been nursed by Victoria, and -yet his thought turned from that. There had never been any sweetness, -never even any kindness for him, in Victoria’s clear young gaze; when it -came to nursing, he could imagine her being kind to a Tommy, but not to -him, the dull, submerged cousin; and the nice though second-rate nurse -was very kind. He would rather die under her eyes than under Victoria’s.</p> - -<p>And he would rather think of Victoria as he had last seen her at the big -London dance to which, most unexpectedly, he had found himself asked -last spring—the spring before the war. He had decided, as with nervous -fingers he tied his white cravat,—how rarely disturbed had been that -neat sheaf lying in his upper drawer!—that he must have been confused -with some other Follett, for he<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> was so seldom asked anywhere, where he -would be likely to meet Victoria. However, it was a delight to see her -in her snowy dress, her beautiful hair bound with silver, and to feel, -as he watched her dancing, that she belonged, in a sense, to him; for -he, too, was a Follett.</p> - -<p>How much more did she belong to him now! And not only Victoria, but all -of them, these Folletts of his and the Folletts of past generations; and -Channerley, centre of all his aching, wistful memories. It had been for -him, always, part of the very structure of his nature, that beautiful -old house where he had spent his boyhood. Perhaps it was because he had -been turned out of the nest so early that he never ceased to miss it. -His thought, like a maimed fledgling, had fluttered round and round it, -longing, exiled, helpless.</p> - -<p>If, now, he could have survived, his eldest brother, he felt sure, must -have asked him oftener to stay at Channerley. It still gave him a pang, -or, rather, the memory of many pangs, to recall that Robert had not -asked him for two years, and had seemed to forget all about him after -that. They had all seemed to forget about him,—that was the trouble of -it,—and almost from the very beginning: Robert, who had Channerley; -Austin, who had gone into the army and was now in Mesopotamia; Griselda, -married so splendidly up in her northern estate; and Amy, the artistic -bachelor-girl of the family, whom he associated with irony and -cigarette-smoke and prolonged absences in Paris. Even cheerful Sylvia, -of South Kensington, with her many babies and K.C. husband, whom he -always thought of, for all her well-being, as very nearly as submerged -as himself,—even<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> Sylvia saw little of him and asked him only to family -dinners,—Mr. Shillington’s family, not hers,—at depressingly punctual -intervals.</p> - -<p>But Sylvia, the one nearest him in years, was the one who had forgotten -least, and she had, after her fashion, done her best for him. Confused -at study, clumsy at games, shy and tongue-tied, he had not in any way -distinguished himself at a rather second-rate public school; and to -distinguish himself had been the only hope for him. The Folletts had -never had any money to spare, and Eton and Oxford for Robert and -Sandhurst for Austin fulfilled a tradition that became detached and -terse where younger sons who could not distinguish themselves were -concerned. Still, he had always felt that, had his father lived, -something better would have been found for him than to be bundled, -through the instrumentality of Mr. Shillington, into a solicitor’s -office. There he had been bundled, and there he had stuck for all these -years, as clumsy, as confused as ever; a pallid, insignificant little -fellow (oh, he had no illusions about himself!) with the yellow hair and -small yellow moustache which, together with his name, had earned for him -his sobriquet.</p> - -<p>They had not disliked him, those direfully facetious companions of his. -<i>Noblesse oblige</i> was an integral part of his conception of himself, -however little they might be aware of his unvarying courtesy towards -them as its exercise. He suspected that they thought of him as merely -inoffensive and rather piteous; but shyness might give that impression; -they could not guess at the quiet aversion that it covered. He was aware -sometimes, suddenly, that in the aloofness and contemplative disdain of -his pale sidelong glance at them,<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> he most felt himself a Follett. If -his mind, for most practical purposes, was slow and clumsy, it was sharp -and swift in its perceptions. He judged the young men in Cauldwell’s -office as a Follett must judge them. In the accurate applying of that -standard he was as instinctively gifted as any of his race; and if he -knew, from his first look at her, that the nice young nurse was -second-rate, how coldly and calmly, all these years, he had known that -the young men who called him Marmalade were third-rate. And yet they -none of them disliked him, and he wondered whether it was because, when -he most felt disdain, he most looked merely timid, or because they -recognized in him, all dimly as it might be, the first-rateness that was -his inherently and inalienably.</p> - -<p>Just as the third-rate young men might recognize the first-rate but -dimly, he was aware that to the world the Folletts, too, were not -important. It was not one of the names, in spite of centuries of local -lustre, to conjure with; and he liked it all the better because of that. -They had never, it was true, distinguished themselves; but they were -people of distinction, and that was, to his quiet, reflective, -savouring, an even higher state. He sometimes wondered if, in any of -them, the centring of family consciousness was as intense as in himself. -If they were aloof about third-rate people, it was not because they were -really very conscious about themselves. They took themselves for -granted, as they took Channerley and the family history; and only Amy -was aware that some of the family portraits were good.</p> - -<p>The history—it was not of course accurate to call it that, yet it -seemed more spacious and significant<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> than mere annals—pored over -during long evenings, in faded parchments, deeds, and letters, was known -in every least detail to him. How the Folletts had begun, very soberly -but very decorously, in the fifteenth century, and how they had gone on: -rooting more deeply into their pleasant woodlands and meadows; -flowering, down the centuries, now in a type of grace—that charming -Antonia who had married so well at James the First’s court; and of -gallantry—a Follett had fallen at Naseby, and a Follett had fought at -Waterloo; or of good-humoured efficiency, as in the eighteenth-century -judge and the nineteenth-century bishop. And he, who was neither -graceful nor gallant nor good-humoured (sour and sad he felt himself), -never could resist the warming, revivifying influence of these -recognitions, stretching himself, sighing, smiling happily before his -Bloomsbury fire on a winter’s evening, as he laid down the thick pile of -yellowed manuscripts to think it all over and feel himself, in spite of -everything, a link with it all.</p> - -<p>Robert had always been very decent about letting him have and keep the -documents for as long as he liked.</p> - -<p>It was strange to think that he was never to see his Bloomsbury lodgings -again, and stranger, really, that a certain tinge of regret was in the -thought; for how, for years, he had hated them, place of exile, of -relegation, as he had always felt them! Yet he had come to be fond of -his little sitting-room, just because, to his eye, with its mingled -comfort and austerity, it was so significant of exile. If a Follett -couldn’t have what he wanted, that was all he would have—his rack of -pipes, his shelves of books, his little collection of<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> mostly marginless -mezzotints ranged along the dark, green walls. The room was a refuge and -did not pretend to be an achievement, and in that very fact might, to an -eye as sharp as his for such significance, suggest the tastes that it -relinquished. He had indeed all the tastes and none of the satisfactions -of Channerley.</p> - -<p>There it was; he had come back to it again, as, indeed, he had, in -spirit, never left it—never for a moment. He felt himself, lying there -in the hospital on the French coast, with the soft spring sea lapping -upon the beach under his window—he felt himself drop, drop, softly, -sweetly, deeply, back to his childhood. From his high nursery-window he -saw the dewy tree-tops,—the old hawthorn that grew so near the house, -and the old mulberry,—and the rooks wheeling on a spring sky so many -years ago. The dogs, at that early hour, just released, might be racing -over the lawns: idle, jovial Peter, the spaniel, and Jack, the plucky, -hot-tempered little Dandy-Dinmont.</p> - -<p>Below the lawns were the high grey garden walls, and above, rising a -little from the flagged rose-garden, were the woods where the daffodils -grew, daffodils like those beside him now, tall and small, their pale, -bright pennons set among warrior spears of green. Little bands of them -ran out upon the lawn from under the great trees, and one saw their gold -glimmering far, far along the woodlands. Oh, the beauty of it, and the -stillness; the age and youth; the smile and the security! How he had -always loved it, shambling about the woods and gardens; creeping -rather—he always saw himself as creeping somehow—about the dear, gay, -faded house! Always such an awkward, insignificant<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> little boy; even his -dear old Nanna had felt dissatisfied with his appearance, and he had -always known it, when she sent him down with the others to the -drawing-room; and his mother, she had made it very apparent, had found -him only that.</p> - -<p>He shrank from the thought of his mother; perhaps it was because of her, -of her vexed and averted eyes, her silken rustle of indifference as she -passed him by, that he saw himself as creeping anywhere where she might -come. He only remembered her in glimpses: languidly and ironically -smiling at her tea-table (Amy had her smile), the artificial tone of her -voice had even then struck his boyish ear; reading on a summer -afternoon, with bored brows and dissatisfied lips, as she lay on a -garden chair in the shade of the mulberry tree; querulously arguing with -his father, who, good-humoured and very indifferent, strolled about the -hall in his pink coat on a winter morning, waiting for the horses to be -brought round; his mother’s yellow braids shining under her neatly -tilted riding-hat, her booted foot held to the blaze of the great -log-fire. A hard, selfish, sentimental woman; and—wasn’t it really the -only word for what he felt in her?—just a little shoddy. He -distinguished it from the second-rate nicely: it was a more personal -matter; for his mother, though certainly not a Follett, was of good -stock; he knew, of course, all about her stock. It always grieved him to -think that it was from her he had his yellow hair and the pale grey of -his eyes; his stature, too, for she had been a small woman; all the -other Folletts were tall; but she had given him nothing more: not a -trace of her beauty was his, and he was glad of it.<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a></p> - -<p>It was curious, since he had really had so little to do with him, as -little, almost, as with his mother, how blissfully his sense of his -father’s presence pervaded his childish memories. He was so kind. The -kindest thing he remembered at Channerley, except his dear old Nanna and -Peter the spaniel. It used to give him a thrill of purest joy when, -meeting him, his father, his hands clasped behind his back after his -strolling wont, would stop and bend amused and affectionate eyes upon -him; rather the eyes, to be sure, that he bent upon his dogs; but -Marmaduke always felt of him that he looked upon his children, and upon -himself, too, as parts of the pack; and it was delightful to be one of -the pack, with him.</p> - -<p>“Well, old fellow, and how goes the world with you to-day?” his father -would say.</p> - -<p>And after that question the world would go in sunshine.</p> - -<p>He had always believed that, had his father lived, he would never have -been so forgotten; just as he had always believed that his father would -never have allowed one of his pack to be bundled into the solicitor’s -office. For that he had to thank, he felt sure, not only Sylvia’s -negative solicitude, but his mother’s active indifference. Between them -both they had done it to him.</p> - -<p>And he never felt so to the full his dispossession as in thinking of -Robert. He had always intensely feared and admired Robert. He did not -know what he feared, for Robert was never unkind. But Robert was -everything that he was not: tall and gay and competent, and possessing -everything needful, from the very beginning, for the perfect fulfilment -of his type. The difference between them had been<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> far more than the ten -years that had made of Robert a man when he was still only a little boy. -There had been, after all, a time when they had been a very big and a -very little boy together, with Austin in between; yet the link had -seemed always to break down after Austin. Robert, in this retrospect, -had always the air of strolling away from him—for Robert, too, was a -stroller. Not that he himself had had the air of pursuit; he had never, -he felt sure, from the earliest age, lacked tact; tact and reticence and -self-effacement had been bred into him. But his relationship with Robert -had seemed always to consist in standing there, hiding ruefulness, and -gazing at Robert’s strolling back.</p> - -<p>The difference from Austin had perhaps been as great, but it had never -hurt so much, for Austin, though with his share of the Follett charm, -had never had the charm of Robert. A clear-voiced and clear-eyed, -masterful boy, Austin’s main contact with others was in doing things -with them, and that sort of contact did not mean congeniality. Austin -had made use of him; had let him hold his ferrets and field for him at -cricket; and a person whom you found useful did not, for the time being, -bore you.</p> - -<p>But he had bored Robert always—that was apparent; and beautiful -Griselda, who was older than either of them, and Amy, who was younger. -Griselda had gazed rather sadly over his head; and Amy had smiled and -teased him so that he had seldom ventured on a remark in her presence. -Even fat little Sylvia, the baby, had always preferred any of the others -to him as she grew up; had only not been bored because, while she was -good-humoured, she was also rather dull. And at the bottom of his<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> -heart, rueful always, sore, and still patiently surprised, he knew that, -while he found them all a little brutal, he could not admire them the -less because of it. It was part of the Follett inheritance to be able to -be brutal, unconsciously, and therefore with no loss of bloom.</p> - -<p>And now, at last, he was not to bore them any longer; at last, he was -not to be forgotten. How could he not be happy,—it brought back every -blissful thrill of boyhood, his father’s smile, the daffodil woods in -spring, heightened to ecstasy,—when he had at last made of himself one -of the Folletts who were remembered? He would have his place in the -history beside the Follett who fell at Naseby. No family but is glad of -a V.C. in its annals. They could no longer stroll away. They would be -proud of him; he had done something for all the Folletts forever.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> nice young nurse came in. She closed the door gently, and, with her -smile, calm before accustomed death, and always, as it were, a little -proud of him,—that was because they were both English,—she took his -wrist and felt his pulse, holding her watch in the other hand, and asked -him, presently, how he felt. Only after that did she say, contemplating -him for a moment,—Marmaduke wondered how many hours—or was it perhaps -days?—she was giving him to live,—</p> - -<p>“A gentleman has come to see you. You may see him if you like. But I’ve -told him that he is only to stay for half an hour.”</p> - -<p>The blood flowed up to Marmaduke’s forehead.<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> He felt it beating hard in -his neck and behind his ears, and his heart thumped down there under the -neatly drawn bed-clothes.</p> - -<p>“A gentleman? What’s his name?”</p> - -<p>Was it Robert?</p> - -<p>“Here is his card,” said the nurse.</p> - -<p>She drew it from her pocket and gave it to him. It couldn’t have been -Robert, of course. Robert would only have had to come up. Yet he was -dizzy with the disappointment. It was as if he saw Robert strolling away -for the last time. He would never see Robert again.</p> - -<p>Mr. Guy Thorpe was the name. The address was a London club that -Marmaduke placed at once as second-rate, and “The Beeches, Arlington -Road,” in a London suburb. On the card was written in a neat scholarly -hand: “May I see you? We are friends.”</p> - -<p>It was difficult for a moment to feel anything but the receding tide of -his hope. The next thing that came was a sense of dislike for Mr. Guy -Thorpe and for the words that he had written. Friends? By what right -since he did not know his name?</p> - -<p>“Is he a soldier?” he asked. “How did he come? I don’t know him.”</p> - -<p>“You needn’t see him unless you want to,” said the nurse. “No; he’s not -a soldier. An elderly man. He’s driving a motor for the French Wounded -Emergency Fund, and came on from the Alliance because he heard that you -were here. Perhaps he’s some old family friend. He spoke as if he were.”</p> - -<p>Marmaduke smiled a little. “That’s hardly likely. But I’ll see him, yes; -since he came for that.”</p> - -<p>When she had gone, he lay looking again at the<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> blue bands across the -window. A flock of sea-gulls flew past—proud, swift, and leisurely, -glittering in the sun. They seemed to embody the splendour and -exultation of his thoughts, and, when they had disappeared, he was -sorry, almost desolate.</p> - -<p>Mr. Guy Thorpe. He took up the card again in his feeble hand and looked -at it. And now, dimly, it seemed to remind him of something.</p> - -<p>Steps approached along the passage, the nurse’s light footfall and the -heavier, careful tread of a man. An oddly polite, almost a deprecating -tread. He had gone about a great many hospitals and was cautious not to -disturb wounded men. Yet Marmaduke felt again that he did not like Mr. -Guy Thorpe, and, as they came in, he was conscious of feeling a little -frightened.</p> - -<p>There was nothing to frighten one in Mr. Thorpe’s appearance. He was a -tall, thin, ageing man, travel-worn, in civilian clothes, with a dingy -Red-Cross badge on the sleeve of his waterproof overcoat. Baldish and -apparently near-sighted, he seemed to blink towards the bed, and, as if -with motoring in the wind, his eyelids were moist and reddened. He sat -down, murmuring some words of thanks to the nurse.</p> - -<p>A very insignificant man, for all his height and his big forehead. -Altogether of The Beeches, Arlington Road. Had he turned grey, he might -have looked less shabby, but dark thin locks still clustered above his -high crown and behind his long-lobed ears. His eyes were dark, his -moustache drooped, and he had a small, straight nose. Marmaduke saw that -he was the sort of man who, in youth, might have been considered very -handsome. He looked like a seedy poet and some sort of minor<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> civil -servant mingled, the civil servant having got the better of the poet. -Marmaduke also imagined that he would have a large family and a harassed -but ambitious wife, with a genteel accent—a wife a little below -himself. His tie was of a dull red silk. Marmaduke did not like him.</p> - -<p>Mr. Thorpe glanced round, as if cautiously, to see if the nurse had -closed the door, and then, it was really as if more cautiously still, -looked at Marmaduke, slightly moving back his chair.</p> - -<p>“I’m very grateful to you, very grateful indeed,” he said in a low -voice, “for seeing me.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve come a long way,” said Marmaduke.</p> - -<p>“Yes. A long way. I had heard of your being here. I hoped to get here. I -felt that I must see you. We are all proud of you; more proud than I can -say.”</p> - -<p>He looked down now at the motoring-cap he held, and Marmaduke became -aware that the reddened eyes were still more suffused and that the mouth -under the drooping moustache twitched and trembled. He could think of -nothing to say, except to murmur something about being very glad—though -he didn’t want to say that; and he supposed, to account for Mr. Thorpe’s -emotion, that he must be a moving sight, lying there, wasted, bandaged, -and dying.</p> - -<p>“You don’t remember my name, I suppose,” said Mr. Thorpe after a moment, -in which he frankly got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.</p> - -<p>“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said Marmaduke very politely. He was glad to -say this. It was the sort of thing he did want to say.</p> - -<p>“Yet I know yours very, very well,” said Mr. Thorpe, with a curious -watery smile.<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> “I lived at Channerley once. I was tutor there for some -time—to Robert, your brother, and Griselda. Yes,” Mr. Thorpe nodded, “I -know the Folletts well; and Channerley, the dear old place.”</p> - -<p>Now the dim something in memory pressed forward, almost with a physical -advance, and revealed itself as sundry words scratched on the schoolroom -window-panes and sundry succinct drawings in battered old Greek and -Latin grammars. Robert had always been very clever at drawing, catching -with equal facility and accuracy the swiftness of a galloping horse and -the absurdities of a human profile. What returned to Marmaduke now, and -as clearly as if he had the fly-leaf before him, was a tiny thumb-nail -sketch of such a galloping horse unseating a lank, crouching figure, of -whom the main indications were the angles of acute uncertainty taken by -the knees and elbows; and a more elaborate portrait, dashed and dotted -as if with a ruthless boyish grin—such an erect and melancholy head it -was, so dark the tossed-back locks, so classical the nose and -unclassical the moustache, and a brooding eye indicated in a triangular -sweep of shadow. Beneath was written in Robert’s clear, boyish hand, -“Mr. Guy Thorpe, Poet, Philosopher, and Friend. Vale.” Even the date -flashed before him, 1880; and with it—strange, inappropriate -association—the daffodils running out upon the lawn, as no doubt he had -seen them as he leaned from the schoolroom window, with the Greek -grammar under his elbow on the sill.</p> - -<p>So that was it. Mr. Guy Thorpe, placed, explained, disposed of—poor -dear! He felt suddenly quite kindly towards him, quite touched by his -act of loyalty to the old allegiance in coming; and<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> flattered, -too,—yes, even by Mr. Thorpe,—that he should be recognized as a -Follett who had done something for the name; and smiling very -benevolently upon him, he said:—</p> - -<p>“Oh, of course; I remember perfectly now—your name, and drawings of you -in old schoolbooks, you know. All tutors and governesses get those -tributes from their pupils, don’t they? But I myself couldn’t remember, -could I? for it was before I was born that you were at Channerley.”</p> - -<p>There was a moment of silence after this, and in it Marmaduke felt that -Mr. Thorpe did not like being so placed. He had no doubt imagined that -there would be less ambiguous tributes, and that his old pupils would -have talked of him to the younger generation.</p> - -<p>And something of this chagrin certainly came out in his next words as, -nodding and looking round at the daffodils, he said:—</p> - -<p>"Yes, yes. Quite true. No, of course you couldn’t yourself remember. I -was more though, I think I may fairly say, than the usual tutor or -governess. I came, rather, at Sir Robert’s instance."—Sir Robert was -Marmaduke’s father.—“We had met, made friends, at Oxford; his former -tutor there was an uncle of mine, and Sir Robert, in my undergraduate -days, used to visit him sometimes. He was very keen on getting me to -come. Young Robert wanted something of a firm hand. I was the friend -rather than the mere man of books in the family.”</p> - -<p>"Poet, Philosopher and Friend"—Marmaduke had it almost on his lips, and -almost with a laugh, his benevolence deepened for poor Mr. Thorpe, so -self-revealed, so entirely Robert’s portrait of him.<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> Amusing to think -that even the quite immature first-rate can so relegate the third. But -perhaps it was a little unfair to call poor Mr. Thorpe third. The -Folletts would not be likely to choose a third-rate man for a tutor; -second was kinder, and truer. He had, obviously, come down in the world.</p> - -<p>“I see. It’s natural I never heard, though: there’s such a chasm between -the elders and the youngers in a big family, isn’t there?” he said. -“Griselda is twelve years older than I am, and Robert ten, you remember. -She was married by the time I began my Greek. You never came back to -Channerley, did you? I hope things have gone well with you since those -days?”</p> - -<p>He questioned, wanting to be very kind; wanting to give something of the -genial impression of his father smiling, with his “And how goes the -world with you to-day?” But he saw that, while Mr. Thorpe’s evident -emotion deepened, it was with a sense of present grief as well as of -retrospective pathos.</p> - -<p>“No; I never came,—that is—. No; I passed by: I never came to stay. I -went abroad; I travelled, with a pupil, for some years before my -marriage.” Grief and confusion were oddly mingled in his drooping face. -“And after that—life had changed too much. My dear old friend Sir -Robert had died. I could not have faced it all. No, no; when some -chapters are read, it is better to close the book; better to close the -book. But I have never forgotten Channerley, nor the Folletts of -Channerley; that will always remain for me the golden page; the page,” -said Mr. Thorpe, glancing round again at the daffodils, “of friendship, -of youth, of daffodils in springtime. I saw you there,” he<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> added -suddenly, “once, when you were a very little lad. I saw you. I was -passing by; bicycling; no time to stop. You remember the high road -skirts the woods to the north. I came and looked over the wall; and -there you were—in your holland pinafore and white socks—digging up the -daffodils and putting them into your little red-and-yellow cart. A -beautiful spring morning. The woods full of sunshine. You wouldn’t -remember.”</p> - -<p>But he did remember—perfectly. Not having been seen; but the day; the -woods; the daffodils. He had dug them up to plant in his own little -garden, down below. He had always been stupid with his garden; had -always failed where the other succeeded. And he had wanted to be sure of -daffodils. And they had all laughed at him for wanting the wild -daffodils like that for himself, and for going to get them in the wood. -And why had Mr. Thorpe looked over the wall and not come in? He hated to -think that he had been watched on that spring morning—hated it. And, -curiously, that sense of fear with which he had heard the approaching -footsteps returned to him. It frightened him that Mr. Thorpe had watched -him over the wall.</p> - -<p>His distaste and shrinking were perhaps apparent in his face, for it was -with a change of tone and hastiness of utterance, as though hurrying -away from something, that Mr. Thorpe went on:— -<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> -“You see,—it’s been my romance, always, Channerley—and all of you. -I’ve always followed your lives—always—from a distance—known what you -were up to. I’ve made excuses to myself—in the days when I used to go a -good deal about the country—to pass by Channerley and just have a -glimpse of you. And when I heard that you had done this noble -deed,—when I heard what you had done for England, for Channerley, for -us all,—I felt I had to come and see you. You must forgive me if I seem -a mere intruder. I can’t seem that to myself. I’ve cared too much. And -what I came for, really, was to thank you,—to thank you, my dear -boy,—and to tell you that because of you, life must be nobler, always, -for all of us.”</p> - -<p>His words had effaced the silly, groping fear. It was indeed, since his -colonel’s visit, the first congratulation he had had from the outer -world. The nurses, of course, had congratulated him, and the surgeons; -but no one who knew him outside; the kindly telegrams from Robert and -Sylvia did not count as congratulations. And in a way poor Mr. Thorpe -did know him, and though it was only from him, it had its sweetness. He -felt himself flush as he answered, “That’s very kind of you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no!” said Mr. Thorpe, shaking his head and swinging his -foot—Marmaduke knew that from the queer movement of his body as he sat -with very tightly folded arms. “Not kind! That’s not the word—from us -to you! Not the word at all!”</p> - -<p>“I’m very happy, as you may imagine,” said Marmaduke. And he was happy -again, and glad to share his happiness with poor Mr. Thorpe. “It makes -everything worth while, doesn’t it, to have brought it off at all?”</p> - -<p>“Everything, everything—it would; it would, to you. So heroes feel,” -said Mr. Thorpe. “To give your life for England. I know it all—in every -detail. Yes, you are happy in dying that England may live. Brave boy! -Splendid boy!”</p> - -<p>Now he was weeping. He had out his handkerchief<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a> and his shoulders -shook. It made Marmaduke want to cry, too, and he wondered confusedly if -the nurse would soon come back. Had not the half hour passed?</p> - -<p>“Really—it’s too good of you. You mustn’t, you know; you mustn’t,” he -murmured, while the word, “boy—boy,” repeated, made tangled images in -his mind, and he saw himself in the white socks and with the little -red-and-yellow cart, and then as he had been the other day, leading his -men, his revolver in his hand and the bullets flying about him. “And I’m -not a boy,” he said; "I’m thirty-four; absurdly old to be only a second -lieutenant. And there are so many of us. Why,"—the thought came -fantastically, but he seized it, because Mr. Thorpe was crying so and he -must seize something,—“we’re as common as daffodils!”</p> - -<p>“Ah! not for me! not for me!” Mr. Thorpe gulped quickly. Something had -given way in him—as if the word “daffodils” had pressed a spring. He -was sobbing aloud, and he had fallen on his knees by the bed and put up -his hand for Marmaduke’s. “I cannot keep it from you! Not at this last -hour! Not when you are leaving me forever!—My son! My brave son! I am -your father, Marmaduke! I am your father, my dear, dear boy!”</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind">I<small>T</small> was the stillest room. The two calm bands of blue crossed the window. -In the sunlight the gulls came flying back. Marmaduke looked out at -them. Were they the same sea-gulls or another flock? Then quietly he -closed his eyes. Stillness—calm. But something else was rising to him -from<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> them. Darkness; darkness; a darkness worse than death. Oh! death -was sweet compared to this. Compared to this all his life had been -sweet; and something far dearer than life was being taken from him. He -only knew the terrible confusion of his whole nature.</p> - -<p>He opened his eyes again with an instinct of escape. There were the -bands of blue, and, still passing in their multitudes, leaving him -forever, the proud, exultant sea-gulls. The man still knelt beside him. -He heard his own voice come:—</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“I never meant to tell you! I never meant to tell you!” a moan answered -him. “But—seeing you lying there!—dying!—my son!—who has given his -life for England!—And how I have longed for you all these years!—My -romance, Marmaduke—How could I be silent? Forgive me! Forgive me, my -boy. Yes, mine. My known children are dear to me, but how far dearer the -unknown son, seen only by stealth, in snatched glimpses! It is true, -Marmaduke, true. We were lovers. She loved me. Do not ask. Do not -question. We were young. She was very beautiful. It was springtime; -daffodils were in the woods. She said that she had never known any one -like me. She said that her life was hollow, meaningless. I opened doors -to her, I read to her. Browning—I read Browning,” he muttered on,<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> “in -the woods; among the daffodils. It was a new life to her—and to me. And -we were swept away. Don’t blame us, Marmaduke. If there was wrong, there -was great beauty—then. Only then; for after, she was cruel—very cruel. -She turned from me; she crushed and tore my heart. Oh!—I have -suffered! But no one knew. No one ever dreamed of it. Only she and I. -My God!—I see her in your hair and eyes!”</p> - -<p>It was true. It was absolutely true. Through his whole being he felt its -inevitability. Everything was clear, with a strange, black, infernal -clearness. His life lay open before him, open from beginning to end: -that beginning of tawdry sentiment and shame—with daffodils; and this -end, with daffodils again, and again with tawdry sentiment and shame.</p> - -<p>He was not a Follett. He had no part in the Folletts. He had no part in -Channerley. He was an interloper, a thief. He was the son of this -wretched man, in whose very grief he could detect the satisfaction—oh, -who more fitted to detect such satisfaction!—of his claim upon a status -above his own. He was all that he had always most despised, a -second-rate, a third-rate little creature; the anxious, civil, shrinking -Marmalade of Cauldwell’s office. Why (as the hideous moments led him on, -point by point, his old lucidity, sharpened to a needle fineness, seemed -to etch the truth in lines of fire upon the blackness), hadn’t he always -been a pitiful little snob? Wasn’t it of the essence of a snob to -over-value the things one hadn’t and to fear the things one was? It -hadn’t been other people, it had been himself, what he really was, of -whom he had always been afraid. He saw himself reduced to the heretofore -unrecognized, yet always operative, element in his own nature—a timid, -watchful humility.</p> - -<p>Oh, Channerley! Channerley! The wail rose in his heart and it filled the -world. Oh, his woods, his daffodils, his father’s smile—gone—lost -forever! Worse than that—smirched, withered, desecrated!<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a></p> - -<p>A hideous gibbering of laughter seemed to rise around him, and pointing -fingers. Amy’s eyes passed with another malice in their mockery; and -Robert would never turn to him now, and Griselda would never look at -him. He saw it all, as they would never see it. He was not one of them, -and they had always felt it; and oh,—above all,—he had always felt it. -And now, quite close it seemed, softly rustling, falsely smiling, moved -his loathsome mother: not only as he remembered her in youth, but in her -elegant middle years, as he had last seen her, with hard eyes and alien -lips and air of brittle, untouched exquisiteness.</p> - -<p>Suddenly fury so mounted in him that he saw himself rising in bed, -rending his dressings, to seize the kneeling man by the throat and -throttle him. He could see his fingers sinking in on either side among -the clustered hair, and hear himself say, “How dare you! How dare you! -You hound! You snivelling, sneaking hound! You look for pity from me, do -you!—and tenderness! Well, take this, this! Everything, everything I am -and have that’s worth being and having, I owe to them. I’ve hated you -and all you mean, always—yes, your fear and your caution and your -admiration and your great high forehead. Oh, I see it! I see it!—it’s -my own! And though I am only that in myself, then take it from me that I -hate myself along with you and curse myself with you!”</p> - -<p>It came to him that he was slowly panting, and that after the fever-fury -an icy chill crept over him. And a slow, cold smile came with it, and he -saw Jephson, the wit of the office, wagging his head and saying,<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> “Little -Marmalade take a man by the throat! Ask me another!”</p> - -<p>No; little Marmalade might win the V.C.; but only when he thought he was -a Follett. Was that what it all came to, really? Something broke and -stopped in his mind.</p> - -<p>He heard his father’s voice. How long ago it had all happened. He had -known for years, hadn’t he, that this was his father?</p> - -<p>“Marmaduke! Mr. Follett! What have I done? Shall I call somebody? Oh, -forgive me!”</p> - -<p>His father was standing now beside him and bending over him. He looked -up at him and shook his head. He did not want any one to come.</p> - -<p>“Oh, what have I done?” the man repeated.</p> - -<p>“I was dying anyway, you know,” he heard himself say.</p> - -<p>What a pitiful face it was, this weary, loosened, futureless old face -above him! What a frightened face! What long years of slow disgarnishing -lay behind it: youth, romance, high hopes, all dropped away. He had come -to-day with their last vestiges, still the sentimental, romancing fool, -self-centred and craving; but nothing of that was left. He was beaten, -at last, down into the very ground. It was a haggard, humiliated, -frightened face, and miserable. As he himself had been. But not even -death lay before this face. For how many years must it go on sinking -down until the earth covered it? Marmaduke seemed to understand all -about him, as well as if he had been himself.</p> - -<p>“Sit down,” he said. He heard that his voice was gentle, though he was -not aware of feeling anything, only of understanding. “I was rather -upset. No; I don’t want any one. Of course I forgive you. Don’t bother -about it, I beg.”</p> - -<p>His father sat down, keeping his swollen eyes on<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> the motoring-cap -which, unseeingly, he turned and turned in his hands.</p> - -<p>“Tell me about yourself a little,” said Marmaduke, with slow, spaced -breaths. “Where do you live? How? Are you fairly happy?”</p> - -<p>He knew that he was not happy; but he might, like most people with whom -life had not succeeded, often imagine himself so, and Marmaduke wanted -to help him, if possible, to imagine it.</p> - -<p>“I live near London. I used to do a good deal of University Extension -lecturing. I’ve a clerkship in the Education Office now.” Mr. Thorpe -spoke in a dead obedient voice. “A small salary, not much hope of -advance; and I’ve a large family. It’s rather up-hill, of course. But -I’ve good children; clever children. My eldest boy’s at Oxford; he took -a scholarship at Westminster; and my eldest girl’s at Girton. The second -girl, Winnie, has a very marked gift for painting; she is our artist; -we’re going to send her to the Slade next year when she leaves the High -School. Good children. I’ve nothing to complain of.”</p> - -<p>“So you’re fairly happy?” Marmaduke repeated. Oddly, he felt himself -comforted in hearing about the good and happy children, in hearing about -Winnie, her father’s favourite.</p> - -<p>“Happy? Well, just now, with this terrible war, one can’t be that, can -one? It is a great adventure for me, however, this work of mine, -motoring about France. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything I cared so -much about since—for years,” said Mr. Thorpe.<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> “It’s a beautiful -country, isn’t it? and the soldiers are such splendid fellows! One gets -a lot out of it. But happy? No, I don’t suppose I am. I’m pretty much of -a failure, and I started life with great imaginings about myself. One -doesn’t get over that sort of disappointment; one never really gets over -it in a way.” Mr. Thorpe was looking at him now, and it was as if there -were a kindliness between them. “Things have been rather grey and -disagreeable on the whole,” he said.</p> - -<p>“They can be very grey and disagreeable, can’t they?” said Marmaduke, -closing his eyes.</p> - -<p>He was very tired, and as he lay there quietly, having nothing further -to know or to suffer, having reached the very limits of conscious -dissolution, something else began to come to him. It seemed born of the -abolition of self and of the acceptance of the fact that he was dead to -all that had given life worth or beauty. It would have been very good to -be a Follett; though, he saw it now, he had over-prized that special -sort of goodness—with so much else from which he had been, as really, -shut out; but he was not a Follett; nor was he merely this poor, -insignificant father. He did not quite make out in what the difference -lay and he did not rejoice in it, for there was no rejoicing left in -him. But, even if the difference were only an acquired instinct (dimly, -the terms of his complacent readings in biology and sociology returned -to him), even if it were only that, not anything inherent and -transmissible, it was, all the same, his own possession; something that -he and the Folletts had made together; so that it was as true to say -that he had won the V.C. as to say that they had. The lessened self that -was left to him had still its worth. To see the truth, even if it undid -you, was worthy; to see so unwaveringly that it was good to be a Follett -even when you weren’t one, had<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> the elements of magnanimity; and to -accept the fact of being second-rate proved, did it not?—if you still -cared to prove it; he felt himself smile as gently at the relinquished -self as he had smiled at his father,—that you were not merely -second-rate.</p> - -<p>There was now a sound of stumbling movement; doors opening and shutting; -nurses, surgeons in the room; and his father’s face, far away, against -the blue bands, looking at him, still so frightened and so miserable -that he tried again to smile at him and to say, “It’s all right. Quite -all right.”</p> - -<p>At all events he had been decent to the poor old fellow. His thoughts -came brokenly, but he was still seeing something, finding something; it -was like a soft light growing. At all events, he had behaved as a -Follett would wish to behave even when brought to such a pass. No—but -it wasn’t quite that, either; it was something new. He had behaved as -any one decent should wish to behave. And the daffodils glimmering to -his vision seemed to light him further still. “We are as common as -daffodils,” came back to him. Daffodils were for everybody. Foolish -little boy who, on the distant spring morning in the woods of -Channerley, dug them up to take them to his own garden!</p> - -<p>He was there among them with his little red-and-yellow cart, and the -thrush was singing high above him, in the rosy topmost branches of an -elm.</p> - -<p>Beautiful woods. Beautiful flowers of light and chivalry. How the -sunshine streamed among them!</p> - -<p>“Dear Channerley,” he thought. For again he seemed to belong there.</p> - -<p>Gentle hands were tending him and, as he turned<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> his cheek on the -pillow, it was with the comfort—almost that of the little boy at -Channerley being tucked up in the warm nursery to go to sleep—of -knowing that he was dying, and that, in spite of everything, he had -given something to the name.<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a name="PANSIES" id="PANSIES"></a> -<img src="images/ill_pg_121-a.jpg" width="450" height="53" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h2>PANSIES</h2> - -<hr /> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"> -<span class="letra"> -<img src="images/ill_pg_121-b.jpg" -width="150" -height="158" -alt="“O" -title="“O" -/></span>F course it is a horrid little garden, but one gets so fond of one’s -own things, even when they are horrid,” said Miss Edith Glover, with her -gentle deprecatory laugh.</p> - -<p>She stood with her friend at the door of the conservatory that led from -the sitting-room to the oblong plot of garden—a small, middle-aged -woman, with soft brown eyes, and hair the colour of a faded leaf; her -wasted throat and transparent temples and faint yet feverish flush -marking her already with menacing symptoms.</p> - -<p>The conservatory was of the sort that crops out irrelevantly at the back -of the many suburban houses, like glaucous fungi; but in Miss Glover’s -little establishment, its shelves filled with neatly ranged boxes of -seedlings, with bundles of raffia, tidy baskets, and carefully garnered -labels, it was completely utilitarian, with never a fern or begonia to -recall its usual state. Miss Glover’s house was suburban, or nearly so, -for though it stood in secure detachment from other villas on the -southern slopes of a small Surrey town, the town, on its northern side, -spread into ugly patches of red brick that devoured the woods and fields -and<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> ran long tentacles almost up to London. Acacia Road was removed -from this peril of vitality, and its upper windows looked over pleasant -stretches of untouched hill and meadow.</p> - -<p>The Nook had been left to Miss Glover by an aunt five years ago, and to -her it was, from its porch before to its garden behind, a paradise pure -and simple, though she described her garden now, in showing it to -Florrie Lennard, so disparagingly. If she called it horrid, however, it -was only because, with her strong sense of other people’s claims and -opinions, she recognized that to Florrie, accustomed to grand week-ends -at big country-places, it must, <i>qua</i> garden, look very dim and meagre. -That it must also look, in its humility, very lovely, she took for -granted.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Lennard, however, standing with her on the conservatory step, her -robust silken arm protectingly and benevolently laid within hers, did -not contradict her, though her cheerful eyes roamed kindly over the -borders of pansies, the beds of mignonette, and the clumps of sweet peas -in the corners; but her kindness was for her friend rather than for the -garden, and she said, “You haven’t had strength, I expect, for doing -more with it.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve never had much strength,” said Miss Glover. “It doesn’t want much -hard work, luckily. The pansies go on from year to year and only need -dividing in the autumn, and then there are the bulbs, of course, in -spring; I have crocuses and daffodils and narcissi and some beautiful -tulips. The rest I do with penny packets. All those sweet peas and all -that mignonette came from two penny packets.” -<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> -“You can’t expect much for a penny, can you?” said Mrs. Lennard with -her rather jovial air; and now she stepped down onto the narrow strip of -lawn that had a bird-bath sunken in the middle and a rose-bush at each -corner, of the kind now seldom seen, known as Prince Charlie or Maiden’s -Blush—dark and small of foliage, with flat flowers that would be snowy -were they not tinged with a cold pink. They always made Miss Glover -think of an old Scotch ballad. Their flowering season was over, now, -however. The old Pyrus japonica that grew against the wall was also, -long since, over, though its fresh, vigorous green embossed the dull -bricks; but on the wall opposite, a Madame Alfred Carrière was throwing -out a second blooming, dreamy, melancholy and romantic as only she could -be. Madame Alfred Carrière made Miss Glover think of a Chopin waltz, and -she hoped that Florrie might at all events remark favourably on her -abundance. But Florrie hardly glanced at her. Pausing, as they paced the -lawn, to look with tolerant interest at the bird-bath, she observed,</p> - -<p>"I’ve just been staying with the Isaacsons in Hertfordshire. Such a -lovely place. They’ve a broad sanded walk leading from the house to the -rose-garden, as long as—well, to the end of this road, and it’s arched -with roses all the way, a regular roof of roses, the latest climbers; I -never saw such a sight. And their herbaceous border, even now, is a -blaze of colour. I wish you could see it. It would do you good. It did -<i>me</i> good, I know. I told Mrs. Isaacson I always feel a better woman -after a week-end in her garden. Flowers mean so much to me. I can’t get -on without them. I run down to the Isaacsons whenever, as I say to<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> her, -I need an æsthetic cocktail. Of course they’ve half a dozen gardeners -working from dawn till dewy eve. You can do pretty much what you want in -the way of gardens when you’re as rich as the Isaacsons. What it must -have cost them to make that sunken rose-garden!—all flagged between the -beds, with a sun-dial, and a fountain in the middle and bowers of roses -all about. They terraced the lawns, too, with flights of stone steps -leading down one from the other, and great white stone vases on the -pilasters simply foaming over, my dear, with pink geraniums. Against the -blue sky it’s dazzling.</p> - -<p>"Such nice people they are, too, the Isaacsons. Di, the eldest girl, is -marrying Lord Haymouth next week, you know. People says it’s a <i>mariage -de convenance</i>, of course, for she’s to have £50,000 and he’s without -the proverbial penny. But I happen to know it’s a love match: love at -first sight; a regular <i>coup de foudre</i>. I was with the Isaacsons at -Ascot this spring when they met, and I saw in a moment that Di’s fate -was sealed. Do you remember the big photo of Di in court dress on the -piano in the flat? No? Well, I should have thought it couldn’t have -escaped notice. Such a splendid young creature; dark, proud, glowing -beauty. I think, when they’re young, there’s nothing to beat a beautiful -Jewess. She has a gorgeous voice, too, Di; could have made her fortune -in grand opera. I’ve given her a gold cigarette-case with her monogram -in diamonds and rubies. It nearly broke me; but they’ve always been -simply sweet to me. She’s very fond of smoking. Smokes too much, her -mother and I tell her, though I’m afraid <i>I’m</i> not a very good example -to set before the young!"<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a></p> - -<p>Mrs. Lennard’s face, while she thus spoke, expressed her contentment -with the Isaacsons, with herself, the cigarette-case, and life in -general. It was large and ruddy and masterful, with aquiline nose and -small, jocund mouth creasing to the chin in a deep line that spoke of -good nature and ingenuous sensuality; the full throat supported by a -high lace collar, well boned up behind the ears; the prominent blue eyes -at once bland and beaming. She was tall, of a fine presence, her -handsome bosom thickly decorated with turquoise ornaments, her shoes of -glittering patent leather; and from her wrist dangled a purse of fringed -and woven gold—an offering to her from the proprietor of the lady’s -paper that, for many years, she had edited with so much <i>flair</i> and -ability.</p> - -<p>She had made a very good thing of her life, had Mrs. Lennard; and, -nearing the fifties as she was, she had amassed a small but secure -income and a large number of affluent friends; friends always engaged in -vigorous and costly pursuits that involved many rich toilettes, meals to -the sound of orchestras in sumptuous restaurants and constant motoring -from place to place. Among such friends poor Edie Glover had not -counted. She and Mrs. Lennard had been schoolmates in early days when -their fortunes, one as the daughter of a poor parson and one of a poor -doctor, were equally unpromising. But Florrie had married an ambitious -young journalist, typified always, in Miss Glover’s memory, from her one -rather dazed and shrinking impression of him, by extraordinarily smart -mustard-coloured spats and the weighty and imposing seal ring on his -finger; and, though early widowed, Florrie had followed along the paths -where he had<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> set her feet with an energy and shrewdness that he could -not have bettered.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, poor Edie—for so Mrs. Lennard always thought of -her—struggled through many years of waning youth to make her living, -and support her mother, as a music-teacher in London. Mrs. Lennard, even -when the tides of her own fortune ran low, never lost sight of her. She -had always been the kindest of friends, sowing the Glovers' dun-coloured -days with “complimentary” theatre or concert tickets and asking them -frequently to tea with her at her club. Even after Edie, now alone in -the world, had retired to Acacia Road and left youth and London behind -her, Mrs. Lennard, who had the air of fully possessing both, kept -constantly in touch. She had never before managed, it was true, but for -one half hour as she motored by on a winter’s day, to visit Acacia Road; -but it was to her flat in Victoria Street that Miss Glover always came -when called to London by mild necessities or pleasures. Florrie insisted -on it; and though, in some ways, Miss Glover would have preferred the -house of her cousin in Bayswater,—overflowing with children as it was, -and offering only the tiniest of back bedrooms on the top floor,—or the -villa of a school-mistress friend at Golder’s Green, it had always been -impossible to resist Florrie’s determined benevolence.</p> - -<p>“Nonsense, my dear Edie,” she would say. “Your cousin can’t want you. -You’ll only be in the way, with those dozens of children. And as for -Golder’s Green, what can you see of London from Golder’s Green?” -(Florrie overlooked the fact that for forty-odd years Miss Glover had -done nothing but “see” London.)<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a> “You’ll be worn out with tubes and -motor-buses if you go to Golder’s Green. Whereas with me you are ten -minutes from everywhere, be it dentist or dressmaker or concert, and -your bedroom’s waiting for you—Muriel Lestrange left me only last -Monday; and you can’t make me believe you’d not rather have your bath in -my lovely porcelain tub, with steaming hot water day and night, than in -one of those awful, antediluvian, blistered monsters, that fold you up -like a jack-knife—and the tin of tepid water hauled up four flights by -a slavey. I know my London, my dear, through <i>and</i> through, and any -pleasure here depends upon how you start your day; upon your bath and -your breakfast. I can’t offer much, but I can offer both of those, A -number one.”</p> - -<p>So she could. Miss Glover could not deny it, though loyally and -unheededly murmuring that the villa at Golder’s Green had also its -bathroom. It couldn’t, however, compare with Florrie’s, all snowy tiles -and glittering taps and ranged jars and bottles of salts and scents. -Florrie’s bathroom seemed to her always to be the very centre and symbol -of Florrie’s life—modern, invigorating, rejuvenating, at once -utilitarian and decorative. It was a sort of brilliant magician’s cave -from which all the rest radiated: the compact yet so sumptuous little -drawing-room with its baby-grand and its palm, its silver-framed -photographs, frilled crétonnes, and rose-coloured carpet; the -dining-room, even more compact, yet, in its sobriety, as -sumptuous—where the breakfasts always, in spite of familiarity, broke -upon Miss Glover as revelations of what coffee and rolls and kidneys and -bacon could be in the way of strength and heat and crispness; even the -pink silk quilt beneath which<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> she crept at night, and the little maid -who brought her early tea, looking, in her fluted caps and aprons, as -though she belonged to a theatrical troupe—all seemed emanations of -that magic centre where Florrie lay of a morning in hot, scented water -and read the paper and smoked a cigarette before emerging armed and -panoplied for the avocations and gaieties of the day.</p> - -<p>Yet it was not so much Florrie’s bathroom and breakfasts, or even -Florrie’s kindness, that overbore her protests as Florrie’s -determination, her way of knowing so much better than you yourself could -know what was not only good, but happy for you. There was never an -answer to be found to her; and though Florrie’s flat, with all its -sumptuousness, dazed and even tired Miss Glover a little, just as dear -Florrie herself sometimes dazed and tired her, she found herself -installed there always, feeling her own pursuits, her little -tea-parties, her concerts, her timid, bewildered shopping, to be very -humdrum and inappropriate as issuing from such a base of operations. The -only return she was able to make was to emboss Florrie’s sheets and -towels and table-linen with beautifully embroidered monograms, and she -had always a slight and pleasant sense of being, at all events, a -country mouse who had contributed its little offering of grain or honey -when she recognized these trophies of her craft on her bed and on the -table and in the bathroom.</p> - -<p>But the last time she had gone up that summer, only, now, three weeks -ago, she had found herself suddenly of a significance almost as great as -that of any of Florrie’s brilliant friends. To become significant to -Florrie one had either to be brilliant or<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a> piteous, and she was piteous. -Florrie had gone with her to the doctor’s, and it was Florrie, kind -Florrie, an arm about her shoulders and a breast spread to her tired -head, who had broken to her the verdict.</p> - -<p>She was menaced, gravely menaced.—Yes; it did not surprise her—she had -thought it might be that. She had seen her father and two sisters die of -it—And unless she could go away and spend a year in a Swiss open-air -cure, the doctor didn’t think she’d live through the winter.</p> - -<p>Seated on Florrie’s frilled sofa, while Florrie, all encompassing tact -and urgency, passed on the verdict, it was not of it that she first -thought. Her mind, perhaps in an instinctive recoil, fixed itself upon -the oddly insistent impression of pinkness that she was aware, suddenly, -of receiving. Florrie’s blouse, under her cheek, was a bright blur of -pink; and when she turned her eyes away from that they met, everywhere, -garlands of roses looped with knots of blue ribbon on a background of -white and pink stripes. Too much pink: this was the absurdly irrelevant -criticism that, dimly, but as if culminatingly, emerged. She must have -felt it as too pink for many years, but only now was she aware of it. -And then, with a sense of refuge, came the vision of her pansies: those -borders of white and purple pansies under the dull brick wall that she -had looked at so fondly that morning before starting for her journey. -But she would have to leave her pansies, then; not only for a season; -perhaps forever.</p> - -<p>It was in this form and in this roundabout way that the thought of death -became real to her; with pathos rather than poignancy and with yearning<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> -regret rather than fear. She did not feel afraid of dying. Her quiet -little faith that, though so still, was deep enough for all her needs, -had sunken wells of wordless security in her. She was not afraid; but -the thought of leaving her flowers, her garden, the skyey view from her -bedroom window, symbolized for her all the sadness of death. There was, -indeed, nothing else to regret much. Every one she had loved most dearly -was gone; and when all was said and done, and in spite of the peace of -the last five years, she was a battered, tired little creature, with few -of the springs of desire left in her. Her life, as she looked back on -it, seemed to have been spent, for the most part, in crowded buses on -wet evenings, with not enough lunch behind and not enough dinner before -her; in those, and in going up and down steps of strangers' houses. -There had been, of course, more than that; she had never, except when -her dearest young sister died, been very unhappy, and there had been -interests and alleviations always—beautiful evening walks across the -Park and relaxations over tea with a book before the fire in her -lodging-house sitting-room; but the past, when she called it up in an -image, seemed always to crumple into that jolting, rattling, wet, and -crowded omnibus. So there was not much strength now left in her for -resistance or regret; but she would do her best to live, and that really -meant that she would do her best not yet to leave her garden.</p> - -<p>When she was older, too old to dig a little, divide the pansies in -autumn and sow the penny packets in spring, too old to care for the -Madame Alfred Carrière or the Pyrus japonica, would be time enough to -go. But in coming back to it that evening,<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a> she knew how deeply, how -tenaciously she loved her garden. It was the only thing she had ever -owned in her life, the only thing she had ever made: her work and -creation; its roots seemed to go down into her heart; and she could not -feel that in heaven there would be old white roses and white and purple -pansies and mignonette and sweet peas that one had sown one’s self from -penny packets.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind">A<small>T</small> first, when Florrie told her, the verdict had seemed unescapable. She -had said, after the little silence in which she received it,—the -silence in which much had happened to her,—she had said, in a very -quiet voice that had surprised herself, “I’m afraid it’s no good, then, -Florrie dear. I can’t afford to go away.”</p> - -<p>Aunt Kate had left her only the house and its contents. She had saved -only the tiniest sum herself—just enough to yield an income that paid -for her food and light and coal. To pay for Jane, her good old servant, -to pay for her clothes and washing, to pay for the trips to London and -the crumpets and cakes that she gave her friends at tea in Acacia Road, -she had still to depend upon the pupils that, fortunately, she had found -in the small Surrey town. On three afternoons a week she sallied forth, -peacefully indeed, with no sense of anxiety or pressure, and made her -way to the houses of the doctor, the rector, the big London -manufacturer, and instructed their young daughters in the excellent -Munich method that she had imbibed in youth. With these delightfully -convenient strings to her bow she could manage perfectly.<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> But to give -them up and to pay for an open-air cure in Switzerland was outside the -bounds of her possibilities.</p> - -<p>So she explained, in the quiet voice, to Florrie; and it was then that -Florrie, revealing herself as a more wonderfully kind friend than even -in Miss Glover’s grateful eyes she had always been, said, the tears -suddenly hopping down her cheeks and making dark spots on the pink silk -blouse,—</p> - -<p>"Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Edie! What do a few pounds more or less -matter at a time like this? You <i>shall</i> go! It’s a question of life or -death. Now, not a word, my dear, and listen to me. <i>I’ll</i> send you. -It’ll be the proudest day of my life that sees you off. What’s all my -good luck worth to me if I can’t give a friend a helping hand when she -needs it? I can sell out some investments. I’ve more than enough, and -I’ll soon fill my stocking again. And you shall go as soon as we can get -you ready; and first class, my dear, all the way, boat <i>and</i> train. -Don’t I know the difference it makes—and getting off to sleep on the -way? Jane shall go with you to take care of you—oh, yes, she shall!—I -won’t hear of your going alone; and you’ll come back next spring a sound -woman.</p> - -<p>“I know all about those Swiss open-air cures,” Florrie rushed on.<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> -“They’re magical. Poor Lady Forestalls was at death’s door three years -ago—there she is—over there on the piano—that tall, regal-looking -woman with the Pekinese: worse than you she was, by far. And she went to -Switzerland and came back in six months' time, cured; absolutely cured. -Never a touch of it since. She does everything and goes everywhere. And -such scenery, my dear, such flowers! You’ll revel in it. And Julia -Forestalls told me that the people were so interesting. She made a -number of friends—Italian, German, Russian. You shall take my -tea-basket, my dear. Jane can carry it easily. It’s a gem; everything -complete and so convenient. It makes simply all the difference on a -journey if you can get a steaming hot cup of tea at any time you like, -day <i>or</i> night. I saved Cora Clement’s life with my tea-basket in -Venice; she says so herself. She got chilled to the bone on the lagoons. -Over there on the writing-bureau she is; American. Not a beauty, but -<i>jolie laide</i>, and dresses exquisitely—as you can see. She’s always -taken for a French-woman.”</p> - -<p>Miss Glover, even more than usual, felt to-day that dear Florrie dazed -and bewildered her a little; but the mere fact that Florrie’s tears had -dried so soon, that she could, so soon, be telling her about Lady -Forestalls and Cora Clement, was encouraging. Miss Glover felt that her -case was evidently but one among many to which Florrie had seen the -happiest endings—a comparatively unalarming affair; entirely -unalarming, though exceedingly engrossing, Florrie’s tone and demeanour -indicated, when taken in hand by such as she.</p> - -<p>And how she took it in hand! There was no use protesting against -anything. As always, Florrie made her feel that she knew better than she -herself could what was good for her. It was all arranged before they -parted that day, and Florrie had further smoothed her path by declaring -that nothing would suit her better, if Edie really felt fussed about the -money, than to take The Nook during her absence. “The very thing I -need,” said Florrie.<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a> “I’ve been thinking for some time that I must have -a little place near London to run down to for week-ends. And you’ve that -duck of a spare-room, too, I remember, where I can put up a friend; and -it’s so near town that people can motor down and have tea with me of an -afternoon. My dear, nothing could be more providential.”</p> - -<p>During the three weeks that followed, Florrie, in London, shopped for -her, decided on the clothes she would need and the conveniences that she -must take; and interesting parcels arrived at The Nook every morning. It -was strange and exciting to be made much of, strange and exciting to be -on a journey; she had not been out of England since that stay, in -girlhood, in Munich; and in spite of the shadow hanging over her, the -sense of haste lest she be overtaken, she felt the days of preparation -as almost happy ones. Jane, it was true, was rather gloomy about -everything, but even beneath her sombre demeanour Miss Glover felt sure -that she, too, was touched by the sense of adventure, for Jane had never -been out of England at all.</p> - -<p>And now the boxes were all packed and Miss Glover’s dressing-case stood -open, half filled, in her bedroom, waiting only for her sponge bag and -pin-tray and brush and comb to be added next morning, when she and Jane -and Florrie were to go up together to Victoria, and Florrie was to see -them off; and while Jane prepared her most festive tea, Miss Glover had -been showing Florrie all over her new domain on that August afternoon -when she had spoken of her garden as horrid. Florrie, in answer to her -shy request that she might, perhaps, if it wasn’t too much bother, sow -some mignonette and sweet peas for her next spring, had answered with -reassuring decision,<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a> “To be sure I will, my dear. I’ll take care of -everything and have it all waiting for you spick and span when you get -back.” And then Jane’s gong had summoned them in, and it had been -reassuring, too, to see how benignant were the glances that Florrie cast -about the little sitting-room while she stirred her tea and commended -Jane’s cakes. “Beeswax and turpentine for all the furniture once a week. -<i>I</i> know. And dusted every morning without fail.”</p> - -<p>Yes, it was safe in Florrie’s competent hands, dear little room. In her -heart of hearts, though she had no faintest flicker of criticism or -comparison except for that one strangely painful memory of the rush of -pinkness,—Miss Glover very much preferred her own room, shabby and -simple as it was, to Florrie’s; just as, though so well aware of the -relative insignificance of her garden, she knew that she would prefer it -to the Isaacsons', with its arches of roses and its geraniums in white -stone vases. She liked quiet, soft, gentle things; the ever-so-faded -ancient chintzes on her aunt’s chairs and sofa, showing here and there a -ghostly bird of paradise or a knot of nearly obliterated flowers, her -aunt’s absurd, faded, old-fashioned carpet,—fortunately faded!—and her -grandmother’s Lowestoft cups ranged above the mantelpiece. Everything -was in its place; her knitting-basket between her chair and the -fireplace; her beaded footstool before the best armchair, where Florrie -sat; the little table, with a bowl of white and purple pansies on it, -where lay the daily paper and the two books from the circulating -library. All were dear to her; all spoke of continuity with the past, of -long association, of quiet, small, peaceful activities; and as she -looked about she knew that her heart would<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> have sunk a little at the -thought of leaving them, had it not been for Florrie’s sustaining -presence.</p> - -<p>Florrie, while her second cup of tea was being made, drew forth and laid -beside the tea-tray, with an air of infinite sagacity, the coupons for -the reserved seats in the first-class carriage. “<i>I’ll</i> keep my eyes on -those,” said Florrie. It was almost as if they had been tickets for some -brilliant entertainment—as if, Miss Glover felt, she and Jane were -going to be taken to the opera rather than to Switzerland. It was owing -to Florrie that she had almost come to feel that Switzerland <i>was</i> the -opera.</p> - -<p>But that night, when they had gone upstairs and the house was still, the -sense of adventure deserted her. Sitting in her dressing-gown before her -mirror while, with hands that tired so easily, she brushed and braided -her hair, she felt, suddenly, very middle-aged, very lonely, ill, and -almost frightened. The look of her gaping dressing-case, as she glanced -round at it, was frightening, as was the emptiness of the mantelpiece, -from which the family photographs had all been taken to be packed, -together with the Bible and prayer-book from the table near her bed. It -was a room already deserted. It looked as it might look if she had died. -What, indeed, in spite of Florrie’s good cheer, if she were to die out -there, alone, away from everything and every one she knew? And, with a -curious impulse, rising to go and close the gaping dressing-case, she -realized that she had not said good-bye to anything. The morning had all -been spent in packing—in that and in preparations for Florrie’s -arrival; and all the afternoon Florrie had been with her, and she was to -be with her till her departure to-morrow. She would not again be alone -in her little<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> house; she would not again be alone in her garden. The -thought of her pansies came with a pang of reproach; it was as if she -had forgotten them, like children sent to bed without a good-night kiss.</p> - -<p>She drew her curtain and looked out. Yes; there they were. The moon was -shining brightly and the white pansies lay below like pools of milk upon -the ground. She looked at them for some moments, while the soft -fragrance of the night mounted to her and seemed with gently -supplicating hands to draw her forth; and then, cautiously—for Florrie -slept across the way—but with decision, she put on her heavy cloak over -her dressing-gown, wrapped a shawl about her head and shoulders, and -stole downstairs.</p> - -<p>The drawing-room was very dark; she felt her way swiftly through it past -the familiar objects, and the conservatory door opened on a flood of -silvery light. She saw the high, shining disk of the moon, and the great -black poplar tree that grew in the neighbouring garden seemed vast -against the sky. As she stepped out, she made herself think of Diamond -in “At the Back of the North Wind.” It was like stepping into a -fairy-tale; only something more sweet and solemn than a fairy-tale, as -that book was; something, for all its beauty, a little awful. But when -she looked down from the moon, the sky, the poplar, there was only -sweetness. The fragrance that had solicited her seemed now to welcome -her, to clasp and caress her. The pansies were all looking up at her. On -the wall Madame Alfred Carrière was more beautiful than she had ever -before seen her, her pale flowers and buds making a constellation -against the darkness.</p> - -<p>She walked round the path, looking at it all, so<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> glad that she had -come, smiling—a child in fairyland, or a spirit arrived in Paradise and -finding it strange yet familiar—as Paradise should be. Perhaps, she -thought, dying would be like that: a stepping out from the darkness into -something vast and solemn that would slowly gather about one into -well-known and transfigured shapes, into white pansies growing thickly -at one’s feet. She stooped in the moonlight and passed her hands over -their upturned faces. They were flowers entranced, neither sleeping nor -awake; and she felt, as her fingers touched their soft, dewy petals, as -if their dreams with their whiteness flowed into her. To leave them was -like leaving her very self, yet the parting now was all peace and -innocent acquiescence, like them, and she was still smiling as she -whispered to them, “Good-bye, darlings.”</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>S<small>WITZERLAND</small> was like the opera, and for her first months there Miss -Glover felt as if she watched it from a box—very much at the back and -looking past many heads at the vast display. Everything that Florrie had -said was true: the scenery was more magnificent than she could have -imagined, oppressively more, and the people, again oppressively, more -interesting. They were, these people, engaged all of them in trying to -keep alive, and, when they failed in that, in dying, dying under one’s -eyes from day to day; and in the publicity of such occupations there was -something as abnormal as was the size of the mountains. Some of these -people she came to know a little—those, usually, who had given up: the -dear little Russian girl who,<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> alas, died in December; the sulky, -affectionate French boy; and the large yet wasted German singer who made -Miss Glover think of a splendid fruit keeping still its shell of form -and colour while eaten away inside by wasps. Fraülein Schmidt liked to -have her play Schubert and Schumann songs to her, and still tried to -sing attainable passages here and there in a queer, booming, hollow -voice that made Miss Glover, again, think of the wasps imprisoned and -buzzing. But most of the people remained parts of the spectacle to her. -They engaged, when they were well enough, in winter sports; they talked -together of books she had never heard of, and of things she had never -thought of; and often, moreover, she could not understand what they -said, as her languages did not extend beyond rather simple French and -German, and Dante with a dictionary.</p> - -<p>The only other English person there was a young man who made her think -of the Prince Charlie roses; he was sombre and delicate and beautiful -and did not talk to anybody, sitting apart and reading all day long. -Miss Glover wondered a good deal about him, and watched him sometimes -from her place on the snow-sifted balcony when they lay there encased in -fur bags and buttressed with hot-water bottles. His name was Lord Ninian -Carstairs; and that was like the roses, too.</p> - -<p>Once, when they were alone on the balcony, their recumbent chairs near -one another, he lifted his eyes suddenly and found hers fixed upon him, -and perhaps their wistful and ingenuous absorption touched him, for, -flushing faintly,—he was a shy young man,—he asked if she were feeling -better.</p> - -<p>She said she couldn’t quite tell. It was difficult<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> to tell what one -felt, didn’t he find? Everything was so different; so exciting in a way; -and when one was excited one felt, perhaps, better than one was.</p> - -<p>Lord Ninian laughed shortly at that, and said that he didn’t feel -excited; he wished he could.</p> - -<p>“I’m depressed, too, sometimes,” said Miss Glover; and then he sighed.</p> - -<p>“One gets so abominably homesick in this hole,” he said.</p> - -<p>She had never thought of such splendour as being, possibly, to anybody, -a hole; but she knew what it was to feel homesick. They smiled at each -other when they met after that, she and Lord Ninian, and he lent her -magazines and books. When she heard that he had died,—she had not seen -him for a week and had feared for him,—she felt very, very sad and her -thoughts turned in great longing to Acacia Road and to her garden.</p> - -<p>She wanted very much to live to see her garden again; but she could not -help being frightened lest she should not; for, as the winter wore on, -it became evident to her, and all the more because every one else was so -carefully unaware of it, that one of the things that Florrie had -predicted was not to come true. She was not to return cured. She was not -going to get better. At first the slow burning of fever had seemed only -part of the excitement, but she could not go on thinking it that when it -began to leave her breathless, trembling, faint. By the time that the -miracle of the Alpine flower-meadows was revealed to her and she had -watched the snow recede and the jonquils and anemones advance, she knew -that if she wished to die at home she must soon go. They would not -consent to that at once. They said that the spring months were full of<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> -magic, and she was persuaded to stay on. They were magically beautiful -and she was glad to see them, but she longed more and more to see her -little garden. She dreamed sometimes of her pansies at night, and it -seemed to her once that as she stooped in the moonlight and touched them -she was cured; the fever fell from her; a cool white peace flowed into -her veins; and when she looked up from them, the night was gone and the -sun was rising over her Surrey hills.</p> - -<p>At the beginning of June they consented that she should go. They did not -tell her the truth, of course. They said that she might pass the summer -in England, since she wished so much to return there, and that she must -come back for next winter; but she knew that if her state had not been -recognized as hopeless they would not have let her go. It was hopeless, -and she summoned all her strength and resolution, that she might live -until she reached Acacia Road.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p>F<small>LORRIE</small> met her at Victoria. Florrie did not know that it was hopeless, -though she knew that it was not as yet, a cure; but from the way that -she controlled her features to a determined joviality Miss Glover could -infer her shock, her grief, her consternation. The glance, too, that -Jane and Florrie exchanged was revealing, had she been in need of -revelations.</p> - -<p>After a night in Florrie’s flat, however, she knew that she looked so -much better that poor Florrie, when she came to see her in the morning, -was quite erroneously cheered.<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> “<i>You’re</i> all right,” Florrie declared. -“The journey’s knocked you about a bit; but once we get you down to -Surrey, Jane and I, you’ll pick up in no time. After all, there’s no -place like home, is there?”</p> - -<p>Miss Glover, from her pillows, smiled. She felt very fond of kind -Florrie and sorry for her that she must, so soon, suffer sadness on her -account.</p> - -<p>It was difficult, in the train, to listen to Florrie’s talk. After her -fright of the day before, Florrie had cheered up so tremendously that -she talked even more than usual, of her friends, her enterprises, of how -she was going yachting that autumn with the Forestalls, and of how Di -Haymouth had just had a baby.</p> - -<p>“A splendid boy, and Mr. and Mrs. Isaacson are fairly off their heads -with pride and pleasure. Such a layette, my dear, you never saw! Real -lace through and through—and the cradle of a regular little prince! I -gave him a silver porringer for his christening; a lovely thing, all -heavy <i>repoussé</i> work with his initials on a shield at one side. Di say -it’s the prettiest porringer she ever saw.”</p> - -<p>It was difficult to listen to Florrie and to nod and smile at the right -moment when she was thinking of her garden and wondering if Florrie had -really remembered to sow the sweet peas and mignonette. Even if she -hadn’t, the Madame Alfred Carrière and the Prince Charlie roses would be -out, and the last tulips, and the pansies, of course. And it was such a -beautiful day, just such a day as that she had risen to look at when, in -her dream, the pansies had cured her.</p> - -<p>The drive from the station up to Acacia Road was a short one. The dear, -foolish little porch was there, the bow-window, the laurel-bushes. Her<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a> -own home. As she saw it she felt such a lift of the heart that it seemed -to her, too, that she might be going to get better after all. Florrie -and Jane helped her out and she and Florrie went into the sitting-room. -She looked round it, smiling, while she felt her happy, fluttering -breaths like those of some wandering bird put back into its own dear -cage again, safe, secure, bewildered a little in its contentment. She -was like such a trivial little cage-bird; she was meant for Acacia Road, -and not for Swiss mountains.</p> - -<p>Everything was the same: even her knitting-basket stood waiting for her, -and all that caught her eye with their unfamiliarity were the flowers, -the profusion of flowers, standing in bowls and vases everywhere; -perhaps almost too many flowers,—that was like dear, exuberant -Florrie,—and all pink.</p> - -<p>“Oh—how lovely they are!” she said, finding the fluttering breath fail -her a little. “How dear of you, Florrie, to have it all arranged like -this!”</p> - -<p>“They look welcoming, don’t they?” said Florrie, who laughed with some -excitement. “Will you rest, dear, or come into the garden?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, the garden, please. I’m not at all tired. I can rest later.”</p> - -<p>Florrie still led her by the arm. They went into the conservatory and -there came to her then the strangest, dizziest sense of pink—everywhere -pink!—shining in at her through the sea-green glass, bursting in at her -through the open door.</p> - -<p>For a moment she thought that her mind was disordered, and looked up -with large, startled eyes at Florrie; but, beaming as she had never yet -seen her beam, all complacency and triumphant benevolence,<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> Florrie -nodded, saying, “Now for your surprise, my dear. Now for your garden. -Just see what I’ve made of it to welcome you!”</p> - -<p>They stepped out. Pink. Pink everywhere, above, below, around one. The -paths were arched with swinging iron chains on which, already, the long -festoons advanced. The border, heaping itself up splendidly against the -wall, was splashed with white, yellow, blue and purple, a blaze of -colour indeed, but pink dominated, like the sound of trumpets in an -orchestra. It also made Miss Glover think, strangely, sickly, of the -sound of a gramophone. There was no lawn. The centre of the garden was -flagged, with a highly ornamental sun-dial in the middle and a white -garden seat and a wonderful white stone basin for the birds. There were -no Prince Charlie roses, no mignonette and sweet peas, there were no -pansies. Her garden had disappeared.</p> - -<p>“There!” said Florrie.</p> - -<p>She led her to the garden seat. From here Miss Glover, as she sank down -upon it, could see that the back of the house was also dappled with the -incessant colour.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it a marvel!” said Florrie.<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> “I hardly dared hope they’d grow as -they have, but Dorothy Perkins is a winner, and these latest climbers -run her close. I spared nothing, my dear, nothing—manure, bone-meal, -labour. The men were working here for a week last autumn. All the old -soil was carted away and a rich loam put in three feet deep. I put them -in big. I knew I could get them to take if I took enough pains over it. -Those chains will be covered in another month. I knew it would do you -more good than any open-air cure to find such a garden waiting for you. -I’d defy anybody to have the blues in this garden! In its little way -it’s just an epitome of joy, isn’t it? It’s done <i>me</i> good, to begin -with! I’ve been having tea out here every day in my week-ends and every -one who’s seen it and heard about my plan says I’m a regular old fairy -with a wand. Mrs. Isaacson motored down only last Saturday and thought -it was a perfect poem. And so it is, though I say it as shouldn’t.”</p> - -<p>Florrie had paused on the deepest breath of purest satisfaction, and the -time had come when Miss Glover must speak. She must find words to -express gratitude and astonishment. She must not burst into tears. She -felt that if she began to cry she would at once be very ill. She did not -want to be taken ill before dear, good, kind Florrie. And it was, of -course, a beautiful garden; far more beautiful than hers had ever been, -no doubt; yet it hurt her so—to find her garden gone—that she heard -her voice come in gasps as she said, “Dear Florrie—you are a wonderful -friend—you are indeed.—I can never thank you enough. It’s a miracle.”</p> - -<p>Florrie patted her shoulder—she had her arm around her shoulders.<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> “My -best thanks will be to see you happy in it, Edie dear, and getting well -and strong again in it. It’s a regular surprise-packet, this garden, let -me tell you, my dear. It’ll go on, that border, right up till November, -one thing after another: I thought it all out, pencil and paper and -catalogue in hand. I went over the whole colour-scheme with Mrs. -Isaacson—there’s no one who knows more about it. And since most of the -herbaceous things came from her garden, it didn’t cost as much as you’d -think. They’ve always heaps of plants left over when they divide in -autumn, and everything was at my disposal; and all the latest varieties, -as I needn’t say. Wait till you see the lilies—yes, my dear, I’ve found -room for everything; where there’s a will there’s a way is my motto, you -know—and the phloxes and the chrysanthemums.”</p> - -<p>She would never see them, though she was sure that they would all be -very beautiful; she would never see these latest varieties from Mrs. -Isaacson’s garden. And she would never see her own little garden again. -How wonderfully fortunate it was—the thought went through her mind -confusedly as she sat there, feeling herself droop against Florrie’s -shoulder—that she was not to live with Florrie’s and to go on missing -her own garden. How fortunate—but her thoughts swam more and more and -tears dazed her eyes—that she had not to say good-bye twice to her -pansies. She had died, then, really,—that was it,—on the moonlight -night when she had last seen them. And she had left the house to -Florrie, dear kind Florrie, and Florrie would go on having tea happily -under the festoons of roses.<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a name="PINK_FOXGLOVES" id="PINK_FOXGLOVES"></a> -<img src="images/ill_pg_147-a.jpg" width="450" height="64" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h2>PINK FOXGLOVES</h2> - -<hr /> - -<p class="nind"> -<span class="letra"> -<img src="images/ill_pg_147-b.jpg" -width="150" -height="131" -alt="T" -title="T" -/></span>HEY were only beginning to revert. Last summer they had stood, spires -of fretted snow tapering at the points to jade-coloured buds, at the -edge of the little copse where the garden path lost itself among young -larches, birches, hazels, and poplars, black and white. The sun set -behind the copse, spreading in the summer evenings a pale gold -background, and often when he went to look at his foxgloves and to -listen to the lonely song of the willow-wren, rippling, like a tiny rill -of water, from the heart of the wood, Aubrey Westmacott had felt that -there was something almost dangerous in such bliss as this. To breathe -this limpid air, to hear the willow-wren, to look at white foxgloves, -and to know himself free forever from the long oppression of London—if -he could have sung his wistful gratitude, his melancholy joy, the song -might have been like the bird’s.</p> - -<p>This year the change in the foxgloves had come as a complete surprise; -he was still a novice at gardening. He had left his beloved garden for a -week; regretfully, for he could not bear to lose a day of it—he was -like a lover with a bride, long pined for, who each day grows dearer and -lovelier;<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> but he had gone, because it seemed churlish to refuse the old -don friend at Cambridge—and when he returned, at evening, and had -walked down to the copse and had seen them standing there, so delicately -yet so decisively altered, the shock of the surprise had seemed all -delight. He had intended white foxgloves to rise, always, against the -copse; but then he had not known how lovely pink foxgloves could be. He -had never seen them of such a shade, each bell of palest rose brimmed -with shadows of mauve, and finely freaked within. Regiments of the white -flowers had remained steadfast, so that there could be no sense of loss, -and he had picked an armful of the pink ones and carried them back to -the house, feeling, as he looked at them against his shoulder, that he -would have liked to kiss them. He spent the remaining hours of dusk in -arranging them. He never allowed the parlourmaid to arrange the flowers. -That she saw him, tolerantly, if with a flavour of irony, as a very -eccentric gentleman, he was aware, just as he was aware, quite -cheerfully, that many of his kind neighbours found him a rather absurd -one. But one of the deepest joys this new life afforded him, after the -paternal bliss of seeing the darlings grow, was in disposing them about -the rooms, with a loving discrimination that Ridley’s skilled but cold -and conventional hands could never have accomplished.</p> - -<p>This evening he put the foxgloves in the drawing-room, a tall jar on the -bureau, a taller jar on the piano, and a group in the vast white Chinese -bowl, wedged cunningly into place with stones among the stems. Here he -could look at them next morning as he worked at his history. He always -worked<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> in the drawing-room, for there he had the morning sun, and, if -he could not see his massed and tiered herbaceous border, could look out -at the cherry tree and at the tiny squares of terraced lawns, dropping -from level to level, with their stone steps and low stone walls and -narrow jewelled bordering of flowers.</p> - -<p>There was a very nice little study behind the dining-room—it was from -the dining-room that one saw the herbaceous border, and he could -meditate future rearrangements and harmonies while he ate his -breakfast—but the study looked out on the stable shrubberies. He liked, -too, to feel himself encompassed by his treasures, old and new, while he -wrote of mediæval customs; his mother’s incompetent but loveable -water-colours, sketches of her old home, the grey, ancient, gabled house -among just such Cotswold slopes and uplands as his western windows -looked out upon, though his mother’s old home, passed long since to -alien hands, lay on the other side of the county; and his father’s -seafaring trophies, from China and Japan and far Pacific islands, and -all the lately acquired delightful solidities of Jacobean oak, and his -maturest choice in printed linen. Here, on their background of mullioned -window or dark wainscoting—such a gem of a little Jacobean house it -was—the pink foxgloves greeted him next morning, set among feathery -heads and sharp green spears of meadow grass, glimmering and poised on -tiptoe, like groups of softly blushing nymphs, and he stood for a long -time looking at them, his hands clasped behind his back.</p> - -<p>He was forty-six, a fragile little man, blanched and stooping from the -long years of imprisonment in<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> the Government office, from which the -undreamed-of inheritance had released him only three years ago, with -faded gold hair hanging across his forehead and a gentle face of stifled -dreams, the mouth slightly puckering as if in intentness on some task. -The eyes, of a dim yet dense pastel blue that told darkly in his faded -face, were intent, too, but not acute; they dwelt; they did not -penetrate. He wore a small, short moustache, and a pair of gold -<i>pince-nez</i> dangled at his coat button.</p> - -<p>Delicate as he had always been, and ineffectual, as he had always so -dejectedly been aware of being, he, too, with all his relatives, had -thought it very fortunate when, on leaving the university, he had -secured the tiny post in the Civil Service. There, he knew, he would -stay; he was not of the type that rises, and he had never during the -long years that followed rebelled consciously against his fate. He was, -he often told himself reproachfully, so very fortunate compared with men -far abler and more deserving than himself. He found that he could not -write, as he had hoped to do, after the conscientious hours at the -office. He read a great deal, and crept away to the country for every -week-end, sitting by meadow or river, like a dusty mouse let loose from -its trap and softly panting in the sunlight. He was often ill, and the -doctors always recommended a country life, but it was not on hygienic -grounds that he pined for limpid spaces and starry solitudes. There was -a soft passion in his blood, inherited from the mother whom he so much -resembled, for the sights and sounds and occupations of rurality. He -adored flowers. He often dreamed of them at night, and in waking hours -the thought of a garden of his own haunted him. Sometimes<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> he went to -stay with friends in their gardens; but this was an ambiguous joy; it -was like seeing the pink and white babies playing about their nurses and -perambulators in the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens, and having no -claim to kiss any of them. He loved children, too.</p> - -<p>And now he found himself transplanted to this wonderful fairy tale by -Uncle Percy’s legacy. He still, often, could hardly realize it. There -was a haze of dizzy delight over all the memory of the last three years; -the search for a house, the securing of Meadows, the furnishing and -ordering of his household—he who had lived in rooms in Kensington for -twenty-four years, ruled over by a flawlessly honest but relentless -landlady! To think that he could have other fish for breakfast than -finnan haddock, and other vegetables in winter than cabbage! This was a -minor but an emphatic pleasure.</p> - -<p>But above all, around all, the garden! He had planned and planted it -all, studying books, brooding over catalogues, making lists, writing -labels ever so neatly. The vegetables were given over to the gardener; -but his flowers, except for deep trenching—and oh, how deep, how rich, -he saw to it that it was! he tended single-handed. His seed-boxes, his -cold-frames, his tools and baskets, how he adored them all, and how -happy he was in any small personal economies, so that extravagance in -manure and bone-meal and leaf-mould should be well justified. The -history of mediæval customs was also a long-cherished ideal, but it -remained of secondary interest; his heart, always, was in the garden, -meditating mulchings, waterings, or hoeings. Every dream had come true, -had more than<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a> realized itself. Was it any wonder that he should feel -himself going softly in his amazed gratitude, should sometimes, as when -he listened to the willow-wren at evening, feel that such happiness was -dangerous.</p> - -<p>It had not seemed to flaw the happiness, it had seemed but to add a -sweeter undertone to it, melancholy yet blissful, that into the new -Paradise there should have stolen a new longing, and that, as of old, he -should find himself haunted by an unattainable loveliness. He thought of -this as he looked at the pink foxgloves, for they made him think of the -face of Leila Pickering. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said to himself, as he -turned to the mediæval history, for he had the habit, caught from his -long loneliness, of speaking much to himself and with a quaint -repetition of words that stole into his social speech, “it is she they -are like; she they are like. Lovely, lovely, like her.”</p> - -<p>Later in the morning, privileged as she was to interrupt even the -history, it was Mrs. Pomfrey who informed him that the strange, delicate -beauty was transitory, an unfixed type, and that, next year, or in a -very few years, the palely rosy nymphs would be purple.</p> - -<p>“They’ll revert. You can get pink ones, you know, from the seedsmen; -rosy carmine they call it; but not at all this colour. I’ve never seen a -colour quite like this. Your soil must do it. I’ve always thought the -soil of Meadows had magic in it.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Pomfrey was the late rector’s widow, and lived in a thicket of -roses half a mile away in the village. She was tall, black-robed, -majestic, and melancholy, with a deep voice and black eyes and a<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a> high, -hooked nose and large false teeth that shifted slightly and slightly -clashed together when she spoke. She had survived all emotions except -the grief of having to grow her roses on a clayless soil, and to this -grief she often returned. A girlhood friend of Aubrey Westmacott’s -mother, she had been his link with Windbury. His week-ends with her -there had been the very comets of his dark London sky, and for years he -had seen Meadows inadequately tenanted, with an eye of brooding love.</p> - -<p>“Oh! they’ll revert to purple, then,” he said, somewhat distressed; and -he repeated “purple, purple,” several times, as if to familiarize -himself with the sound and very sight of it, while Mrs. Pomfrey answered -him, “Give 'em time and they’ll all revert. You must dig 'em up and sow -again from year to year if you want to keep 'em pure.”</p> - -<p>“Not that I don’t care very much for the purple ones,” said Aubrey; -“they are most beautiful flowers, most beautiful; but it’s wild in -woods, that I like best to see them. It will be a business to replant; -dear me! It took me a day of hard work to establish my white ones in -that haphazard-looking little colony down there.”</p> - -<p>“Gardening is all hard work,” said Mrs. Pomfrey, “and all -disappointment, for the most part, too. It’s only the things you didn’t -expect to succeed that ever do, and any effect you particularly count on -is pretty sure to fail you.” She tempered her grimness by a slight, -bleak smile, however, for she and Aubrey Westmacott understood each -other and had the gardener’s soul, for which no work is too hard and no -disappointments too many.<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a></p> - -<p>“It will be very wonderful to have the intervals of pink to look forward -to, though,” Aubrey found the atonement. “They are singularly lovely, -aren’t they? Will you think me very silly, now, I wonder, or sillier -than you always think me?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t think you silly, my dear Aubrey,” Mrs. Pomfrey interposed, -“only guileless; you are very guileless; I’ve thought that ever since -you were taken in by that dreadful cook of yours, who had red hair, and -got drunk and rubbed the whitebait through a sieve.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” Aubrey continued, smiling his gentle, tentative smile, “my -foxgloves, at all events, can’t take me in, and since they are so very -unusual and so lovely I thought I’d ask a few people in to-day to see -them. The Carews, you know, and Barton, and Mrs. and Miss Pickering. And -you—if you can come. I’ll put it off till to-morrow, if that will -secure you, only the foxgloves may not be quite so lovely by then.”</p> - -<p>“I will come with pleasure, my dear Aubrey,” said Mrs. Pomfrey, “and -though nobody will appreciate your foxgloves as you do, we shall all -enjoy your tea.”</p> - -<p>“Miss Pickering cares very much for flowers, you know, very much. We’ve -talked a great deal about flowers,” said Aubrey, swinging his eyeglass -and nodding as he looked at his old friend.</p> - -<p>“Does she? She doesn’t know much about 'em though.”</p> - -<p>“No; all those years in India, and in towns. She has lived so much in -towns. Such an inappropriate life it seems for such an exquisite -creature.”</p> - -<p>“Does it?” said Mrs. Pomfrey. She added after<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> a moment, as if with -concession, “She is a very pretty girl.”</p> - -<p>Aubrey Westmacott was not acute. “Isn’t she?” he said eagerly. “A -beautiful and noble and lovely head, isn’t it? like a flower; she is -altogether like a flower, with her slenderness and height. Do you know,” -he went on, swinging his glasses more quickly, while he kept his -ingenuous eyes on his friend, “can you guess the flower she makes me -think of? In that pale pink dress, that pink dress she wore the other -day at the rectory garden party, and with that white hat lined with -pink. Can you guess?” His eyes overflowed with their suggestion.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Pomfrey moved hers from his face to the foxgloves. “Like those, I -suppose you mean.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Isn’t</i> she?” he repeated. “Now, isn’t it quite remarkable? You see it, -too.”</p> - -<p>“Yes; I see it,” said Mrs. Pomfrey. She studied the flowers and again, -after a deliberating pause, went on, “Do you think Mrs. Pickering is -like purple foxgloves?”</p> - -<p>Aubrey’s eyeglass tumbled from his hand. He was astonished, almost -indignant. “Mrs. Pickering?”</p> - -<p>“She looks like her daughter,” said Mrs. Pomfrey; “as much like her, -that is, as a purple foxglove looks like a pink one.”</p> - -<p>“I can imagine nothing more unlike a flower than Mrs. Pickering,” said -Aubrey, with gathered repudiation.</p> - -<p>“No; certainly; she’s not at all like a flower. She’s more like a -sparrow—something sharp and commonplace and civic. I only intended an -analogy, for she must have been a very pretty girl.” -<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> -“Nothing could be less sharp or commonplace or civic than Miss -Pickering.” Aubrey was now deeply flushed.</p> - -<p>“Oh, of course not, my dear Aubrey; she is very unusual looking,” Mrs. -Pomfrey again conceded. “And she is tall and her mother is short. Old -Colonel Pickering, too, was tall, I remember. I saw him once or twice -when they were living at Cheltenham the year before he died! a bleached, -dull, oppressed old man, a much better type than the wife; she ruled -him, I heard, with a rod of iron. One may be sure that she doesn’t rule -Miss Leila. She is a young lady with a will of her own, unless I am much -mistaken in her.”</p> - -<p>"A will of her own; yes, yes"—Aubrey eagerly, pathetically to Mrs. -Pomfrey’s ear, gathered up the ambiguous fragments—“and great firmness -of will; great decision of character; and the serenity, you know, the -sweet dignity that go with it, that so often go with it. You have -noticed her serenity, her dignity. And she is very silent—a great -contrast to her mother. I often wonder what brought them here. It’s very -fortunate for all of us; but Mrs. Pickering is, as you say, so civic, -yes, so commonplace, that I don’t understand what she can find in this -quiet place to please her. She certainly doesn’t care about her garden. -Those beds about The Cottage are very distressing; they distress Miss -Pickering.”</p> - -<p>“It’s quite clear to me why they came,” said Mrs. Pomfrey.<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a> “They can’t -afford London, and, I suppose, know nobody there if they could; and -there is more chance of a pretty girl like Miss Leila marrying well here -than there is in Cheltenham. She doesn’t hunt, it’s true; but the -hunting makes a difference, and there is a good deal going on in one -way and another. Mrs. Pickering hoped to capture Arthur Barton; she made -that very evident. But he has never looked at another woman since his -wife died, and never will, I imagine; at all events, he didn’t look at -Miss Leila.”</p> - -<p>Aubrey’s eyes, dwelling on her, expressed reprobation and almost horror. -“She tried to marry her daughter to Barton! That lovely child and -Barton! What a terrible woman!”</p> - -<p>“Miss Pickering must be a good twenty-five, my dear Aubrey, and I was -married at eighteen. No; I don’t like Mrs. Pickering, but I can see -nothing reprehensible in her determination to settle her daughter well -in life.”</p> - -<p>“But Barton! He is fifty! He must be fifty! He must be older than I am; -yes, very considerably older than I am.”</p> - -<p>“Well?” said Mrs. Pomfrey, and there was a mingled reluctance and -grimness in her smile, “and do you think of yourself as unmarriageable?”</p> - -<p>He ran his hand several times over his head and through his hair. He was -still flushed, but suddenly he became pale, swallowing quickly several -times.</p> - -<p>“Do you know—you have said something—you have made me think -something—put something before me. Yes; I must tell you, I must tell -you,” he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and fixing his eyes -on the wall above Mrs. Pomfrey’s head.<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a> “I love her; I love Miss -Pickering. You may think it absurd. I know I’m a dull old bachelor; -everything of that sort; but there it is. Ever since I saw her, a year -ago, when they first came. I never dreamed of anything else. A dull old -bachelor, nothing to offer, and twice her age. But I can’t help -wondering—it’s only a wonder—whether there might just be a chance for -me—if you don’t think my age, and all that, makes it impossible. What I -mean,” Aubrey finished, with a sort of quiet desperation, “is—could she -love me? It would have to be love with a girl like Miss Pickering. Am I -a man that a girl like that could love?”</p> - -<p>Tears now were in his eyes as he brought them back to Mrs. Pomfrey’s, -and seated upon the sofa, the pink foxgloves in the Chinese bowl beside -her, she looked back at him very gravely. She was so grave that for some -moments she was silent. Then, before speaking, she took out her -spectacles and polished them and put them on. She saw him quite well -without them. It was as if in emphasis of the gravity of the moment. -And, in the first place, she did not answer his question.</p> - -<p>“How much have you seen, my dear Aubrey, of this young lady?” she -enquired.</p> - -<p>He said, faltering, that he had seen a good deal of Miss Pickering -during this spring and summer. Mrs. Pickering had been very kind, had -asked him there quite often for tennis; and Miss Pickering had been far -more kind, for she had played with him and he was a wretched player, -though he was so fond of the game. “And we’ve had one or two little -walks. She came with me to the woods this spring and helped me to dig -anemone roots. Oh! I don’t pretend it’s anything at all; it’s only, I -know, her kindness; I never thought it anything else. But—if you really -don’t think me absurd for dreaming of it—?” He faltered to a long -gazing question.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Pomfrey now rose. She stood looking away<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> from him, then moved -towards the door. “My dear Aubrey,” she said, “I think of you what -anybody who knows you must think—that the woman who wins your love is -one of the most fortunate of women. Whether you are the kind of man that -a girl like Miss Pickering could love, I cannot say. I’ve really seen -very little of her. All that I know of her is that she is very pretty -and has nice quiet manners. If she marries you, she is, as I say, the -most fortunate of women.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Pomfrey stepped out into the little square, flagged hall. He -accompanied her to the garden gate, following her speechless, while, -lifting up her skirts, displaying large, flat-heeled shoes, she stepped -down from terrace to terrace. She paused at the last.</p> - -<p>“Your Alpine phlox is doing very nicely. You’ll find that by next year -it will have spread to a foot across,” she said. He had put in the -Alpine phlox the autumn before under her supervision. She added at the -gate, “By that time there may be a Mrs. Westmacott at Meadows.”</p> - -<p>Pale, almost tearful, he pressed her hand over the gate. “I can’t say -how I thank you,” he murmured.</p> - -<p>After a little while he was able to compose his thoughts and write his -notes. Thompson took them round, and before lunch he had his answers. -They could all come, except Mr. Barton, the dapper, fussy, kindly, -pepper-and-salt little squire, who lived in the beautiful big house just -over the nearest hill; he had gone up to London for the day.</p> - -<p>Aubrey very much enjoyed giving little tea-parties at Meadows. In London -he had not enjoyed them at all. He had given them when duty required<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a> -it, and he had sometimes been very extravagant and had taken a couple of -young girl cousins, up for the season, to a restaurant and a play. But -he had never enjoyed these occasions. He was shy and a poor talker, and -in London the demands upon one’s personality were too heavy to make his -entertaining a success. The demands upon one’s personality in the -country were so small and so easily satisfied; a garden talked for one -and entertained for one. All his neighbours, except Mrs. Pickering, -whose formal beds did not count, had gardens and were profoundly -interested in them. The mild, middle-aged Carews were authorities, and -to-day he remembered, with all the pressure of his new preoccupations, -that he must question them about that matter of mulching.</p> - -<p>At four-thirty he saw two parasols approaching along his box hedges—one -was black and one was rose-colour; his heart stood still when he saw it. -She would be wearing, then, the dress that made her look more than ever -like a pink foxglove. He went down the terraces to greet mother and -daughter at the gate.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Pickering was short and stout and blonde, her slightly rapacious -features—small aquiline nose, small smiling mouth, and small projecting -chin—embedded and muffled, as it were, in powdery expanses of cheek and -throat. She had an unsmiling, steel-blue eye, appraising, determined, -deliberate, under its level bar of dark eyebrow. She did not please -Aubrey. Her voice in especial, metallic yet glossy, as if with a careful -veneer, disturbed him. A gossiping lady of the neighbourhood had -informed him that Mrs. Pickering’s origins were quite lacking in -distinction and that in her<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> handsome girlhood she had stalked the -stupid Colonel—of a quite good family—and had brought him down, -resistless, at the first shot. These stories, for which he had not liked -his informant the more, seemed to hover in Mrs. Pickering’s glance and -smile, and her voice to preserve the flavour of many strategies and -triumphs. But Aubrey did not look for long at Mrs. Pickering. She -rustled in, dressed in her fashionable black and white, a long chain of -steel and brilliants crossing her buttressed bosom, a crest of plumes, -black and white, waving upon her head.</p> - -<p>Miss Pickering followed her mother. Tall, very tall, and poised with a -lovely grace, she was, but for the arresting darkness of brows and -lashes, fair; with the infantile fairness, the wild-rose tints, that to -the ingenuous male will always seem to vouch for a spiritual -exquisiteness to match. And she, too, had small, aquiline features, and -her hair was as golden as the heart of a wild rose. She did not smile, -like her mother; she was a serene young lady, and silent, as loveliness -should be.</p> - -<p>“This sweet place!” said Mrs. Pickering. “How charmingly you are -improving it, Mr. Westmacott; it looks prettier every time I see it.”</p> - -<p>“It will take years before it looks as I mean it to look,” said Aubrey, -leading them up the terraces. “That’s the joy of gardening, isn’t it? It -gives one something to plan for one’s whole future.” He smiled with a -slight appealingness at Miss Pickering. “I am afraid I make myself -rather foolish sometimes; I talk so much about my garden.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t wonder that you do,” said Mrs. Pickering;<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a> “it’s quite a little -Paradise.”</p> - -<p>In the drawing-room it was Mrs. Pickering who continued to talk. She -renewed her laments over the water-colours. "To think that these -beautiful old places should get into the hands of common middle-class -people!"—Aubrey had again to assure her that the people who had bought -his mother’s old home were very nice indeed.—And Mrs. Pickering said -that she doted upon his room, “So old-world, so peaceful!” and -expatiated on the view of the terraced lawns and further meadows from -the window. She made no comment on his foxgloves, and it seemed like a -presage of happiness when Miss Pickering, from her chair, remarked, -looking up at them, “How lovely your pink foxgloves are!”</p> - -<p>“You think so? You like them? Yes, yes, are they not lovely?” He was -delighted with her commendation.</p> - -<p>“It’s such a pretty idea, putting them with the grasses,” said Miss -Pickering. “I do like lots of flowers in a room.”</p> - -<p>He did not have an opportunity of speaking with her alone till after -tea. Then, when they had all gone into the garden—how it happened he -did not know, for he would not have dared arrange it—he found himself -walking down the path towards the copse with Miss Pickering, while -behind them, quite far already behind them, Mrs. Pickering paused and -exclaimed over the herbaceous border, Mr. Carew beside her. Mrs. Carew -and Mrs. Pomfrey had sat down under the trees near the house.</p> - -<p>“Would you like to see the pink foxgloves growing?” he asked her.<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> “They -are very beautiful growing—more beautiful, I think you’ll feel, than in -the house.”</p> - -<p>“I’d love to see them,” said Miss Pickering.</p> - -<p>They crossed the slip of meadow among the tall grasses and, “There,” -said Aubrey, pointing, with a faint smile, “there they are!”</p> - -<p>“<i>How</i> sweet!” said Miss Pickering, with her serene emphasis. They stood -to look.</p> - -<p>“Do you know,” said Aubrey, wondering at himself, but he felt upborne, -“that I find they look like you—the pink ones.”</p> - -<p>“Really?” She smiled now, turning her calm, blue eyes upon him. “That’s -very flattering.”</p> - -<p>“No, no; not flattering; not at all flattering,” said Aubrey. “Not at -all, not at all,” he repeated under his breath. He could say no more -just then. They walked on, his heart in a flutter.</p> - -<p>“Have you ever heard a willow-wren, Miss Pickering?” he asked suddenly.</p> - -<p>“A willow-wren? I don’t think so. I don’t know much about birds.”</p> - -<p>“It is usually singing in the wood at this hour. Would you care to come -and see if we can hear it?”</p> - -<p>“I’d love to. I wish you’d teach me all about birds,” said Miss -Pickering.</p> - -<p>His heart was thumping now. They entered the copse. It seemed to him, as -they passed them, that the foxgloves were tall angels set about Paradise -and welcoming him there. It was very still among the trees. Miss -Pickering walked lightly beside him. She, too, looked like an angel. -They reached a clearing, where an old fallen log lay, and here they sat -down. “We shall hear it, I think,” said Aubrey, “if we sit here -quietly.”</p> - -<p>Presently, in the stillness, the little bird began to sing its song, the -descending chromatic chain of liquid notes, melancholy and happy; the -song of his<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> very soul, Aubrey felt, and that the bird said for him all -that he could not say as, with head bent, he sat listening, the beloved -presence beside him. She was part of the song; and in it, as they -listened together, their very hearts were mingling. They knew each -other, he felt sure, very well.</p> - -<p>“How sweet!” she murmured, and he nodded, not able to look at her.</p> - -<p>There was a silence, and then the bird sang again. He raises his eyes to -hers now, and they turned to him and smiled. Her hand lay on the rough -bark of the log, and his was near it. Was it her hand that responded to -the unconscious appeal of his, or had he dared? He held it. That was the -bewildering, the transcending fact.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Pickering! Miss Leila—Leila,” he stammered. “May I tell you? -May I ask you? Can you care for me?”</p> - -<p>Her eyes still smiled, if very gravely. “Do you really love me?” she -murmured.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Leila!” he repeated. The willow-wren still sang, but all the little -chains of sound seemed to be woven into a mist about him, trembling, -shining. He held her hand to his lips. He wished to kneel before her. -This was Paradise.</p> - -<p>“It’s so very sudden,” said Leila Pickering. “I never dreamed you cared -till just now.”</p> - -<p>“Ever since I saw you first—ever since I saw your eyes. It has been -like the fragrance of my flowers at evening, like the moon rising on my -flowers. I did not dare to hope—you so young, so lovely;—life before -you.”</p> - -<p>“I think we can be very happy together,” said Leila Pickering.<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> “I knew -you were a dear from the first moment I saw you, too.”</p> - -<p>The willow-wren stopped singing now and flew away. In the distance, -then, he heard the liquid, dropping notes, and they sounded very sad. -His arm was around Leila Pickering, and she leaned her head on his -shoulder, so that in an ecstasy of wonder he felt the warm brightness of -her hair against his cheek. He had never heard her talk so much. She -told him that she had had such a dull, horrid life, so poor, knowing -such tiresome, second-rate people. And she did not get on at all well -with her mother.</p> - -<p>“Nobody has ever really understood me—till you came,” she said, sitting -upright now beside him, the lovely colour in her cheeks delicately -heightened, her eyes shining while she talked. She confided in him. She -loved him. They were betrothed—this was the blissful, culminating -thought that seemed to go in waves of music through him as he gazed at -her. He had ceased to hear the willow-wren’s melancholy little song. And -then he heard her say:</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to live in the country, you know. You won’t mind? Of -course I love it; but we can pay week-end visits, always;—you must know -such heaps of nice people; friends. And we’ll travel too—I long to see -the world. India doesn’t count. Only think, I’ve never been to Paris -except once—on a horrid, cheap trip, for a week. We never could afford -to do anything really amusing or buy any really nice things. My life has -been so frightfully dull, and I do want to stretch my wings and see lots -of people and entertain and go to plays, you know. I adore London. I’m -sure I shall be a good hostess.”</p> - -<p>It was as if a sword had transfixed him. He seemed to hear a great bell -booming—a great<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> London bell—Big Ben; he had always heard Big Ben from -his office in Whitehall, and there had been a jangle of bells in -Kensington, too, and a roar, a ceaseless roar. And he seemed to hear the -words “Dangerous, dangerous.” He had been too happy.</p> - -<p>He kept his mild, kind eyes of a pastel blue upon her, and he told -himself, while he wrestled, transfixed, that she must not guess; but, as -if pressed from his anguish, he heard himself murmuring helplessly, -though the gentle, fixed smile held his lips, “You don’t care for my -little place, then? You wouldn’t care to go on living at Meadows? It’s a -nice little place, Meadows—a nice little place; we could make it very -pretty, and we could have people here, as many as you wanted.”</p> - -<p>Had a note of pleading, almost desperate, crept in unawares? He saw her -calm eyes harden slightly, fixed on him. And he saw, then, tears rise in -them.</p> - -<p>“Oh! it’s so dull, so dull, down here!” she breathed. “It’s a darling -little place, Meadows—of course, of course I love it. I wish we could -afford to keep it, just to run down to for a quiet week-end now and -then; but you couldn’t, could you? And it’s far too small for -entertaining, isn’t it? And no one really smart cares to come and stay -with one if one has no shooting, nothing to offer. One can really <i>live</i> -in London—I’ve always felt that. You do care more for me than you do -for Meadows?” she finished with a smile, half appealing and half -challenging.</p> - -<p>And looking into the blue eyes, blurred and enlarged, like a child’s, -with their tears, he saw himself as mean and petty and selfish. He loved -her, and was it only as another flower to place among his flowers, -another treasure to place among his treasures,<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> a possession of his own, -without end or purpose for itself? He loved her, and, unimaginably, she -loved him and would marry him. Love must know pain and sacrifice—"pain -and sacrifice"—he seemed to hear himself repeating. This was a young -life, with its rights to life, and it must stretch its wings.</p> - -<p>He smiled at her and raised her hand again to his lips, saying, “Of -course I care more for you than for Meadows, dear Leila. Of course we -will live where you choose.”</p> - -<p>And very radiant now, rising and smiling down upon him, Leila Pickering -said,<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a> “You <i>are</i> a dear. I’m sure it’s best for us both; we’d get so -pokey here. I know we couldn’t afford Mayfair—I wouldn’t dream of that; -but I think a house in one of those little new streets near Cadogan -Square would be just right for us; don’t you?”</p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a name="CARNATIONS" id="CARNATIONS"></a> -<img src="images/ill_pg_168-a.jpg" width="450" height="49" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h2>CARNATIONS</h2> - -<hr /> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"> -<span class="letra"> -<img src="images/ill_pg_168-b.jpg" -width="150" -height="130" -alt="R" -title="R" -/></span>UPERT WILSON came into the studio where his wife, who had been out -sketching all the morning, was washing her paint-brushes, carefully -turning and rubbing them in a pot of turpentine. She wore her painting -apron, for Marian in the midst of her artistic avocations was always -neat and spotless; and, half turned from him as she was, she did not -look round as he entered. Rupert carried his stick, a rustic, ashen -stick of which he was very fond, and his Panama hat; he was going out -and Marian probably knew that he was going out, and where; this made it -more difficult to say in a sufficiently disengaged voice, “I’m just -going down to see Mrs. Dallas for a little while.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! are you?” said Marian. She continued to stir her brushes, and -though her wish, also, very evidently was to appear disengaged and -indifferent, she was not able to carry it out, for she added, as if -irrepressibly, “You need hardly have taken the trouble to come and tell -me that.”</p> - -<p>Rupert looked at her, and since she did not look at him, it was very -intently, as if to measure to the full the difference between this -Marian and the<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> Marian he had known and believed in. It was hard to -realize that his wife should show a trivial and unworthy jealousy and -should strike him such a blow; for that it was a blow he knew from the -heat in his cheek and the quickening of his pulse; but, as he looked at -her, standing there turned from him, her blue apron girt about her, her -black hair bound so gracefully around her head, the realization -uppermost in his mind was that Marian, since the second baby had come, -had grown very stout and matronly. He seemed to see it to-day for the -first time, as if his awareness of it came to emphasize his sudden -consciousness of her spiritual deficiency.</p> - -<p>When he had met and fallen so very deeply in love with Marian, she had -been, if not slender, yet of a supple and shapely form, with just -roundness and softness enough to contrast delightfully with her rather -boyish head, her air, clear, fresh, frank, of efficiency and swiftness. -He had, of course, found her a great deal more than clear and fresh and -frank; but, entangled as he had been in that wretched love-affair with -Aimée Pollard,—the pretty, untalented young actress who had so -shamefully misused him,—torn to pieces and sunken in quagmires as he -had been, these qualities in Marian had reached him first like a draught -of cold spring water, like dawn over valley hills. These were the -metaphors he had very soon used to her when she had applied her firm, -kind hands to the disentangling of his knots and her merry, steady mind -to tracing out for him the path of honourable retreat. He had found her -so wonderful and lovely and had fallen so much in love with her that his -ardour, aided by her quiet fidelity, had overborne all the<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> opposition -of her people. Foolish, conventional people they were,—their opposition -based, it appeared, almost unimaginably to his generous young mind, on -the fact that Marian happened to have money and that he had none, except -what he might make by his books; and also, though it was nearly as -unimaginable, on the fact that a good many of these people were in the -peerage. Marian, a year before he had met her, had broken away from the -stereotyped routine of their country life and had come to London to -study painting; and it was that Marian of the past who had seemed to -share to the full all his idealisms. They had married within three -months of their meeting.</p> - -<p>From such a dawn, white, fresh, blissful, to this dull daylight! from -such a Marian to this narrow-minded matron! Marian still had beauty. Her -clear eyes were as blue, her wide, pale lips as sweet; but she was a -matron. Her neck had grown shorter, her chin heavier; the girlish grace -of glance and smile seemed muted, muffled by their setting; there was no -longer any poetry in her physique. And as Rupert stood looking at her -and seeing all this, his sense of grievance, though he was unaware of -this factor in it, grew deeper.</p> - -<p>A little while passed before he said,—and it was, he felt, with -dignity,—“I really don’t know what you mean by that, Marian.”</p> - -<p>She had now finished her brushes and had taken up her palette. She began -to scrape the edges as she answered,—and her voice was not schooled, it -was heavy with its irony and gloom,—“Don’t you? I’m sorry.” -<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> -“I trust indeed that it doesn’t mean that you are jealous of my -friendship for Mrs. Dallas?”</p> - -<p>“Friendship? Oh, no; I’m not jealous of any friendship.”</p> - -<p>“Of my affection, then; of my love, if you like,” said Rupert. “You know -perfectly well what I feel about all that—and I thought you felt it, -too. It’s the very centre of my life, of my art; my books turn on it. -It’s the thing I have most of all to say to the world. Love isn’t a -measured, limited thing; its nature is to grow and give. My love for -Mrs. Dallas doesn’t touch your and my relation; it enriches it rather.”</p> - -<p>Marian scraped her palette and said nothing. He could see her cheek, the -cheek that ran too massively into her neck. Marian’s skin was white and -fine; a faint colour now rose to it; a faint colour was, in Marian, a -deep blush.</p> - -<p>To see her blush like that gave him an odd sensation. It was as if the -blush were echoed in his heart; he felt it grow and melt softly, and -there drifted through his mind a thought of Mrs. Dallas and of her -magic.</p> - -<p>Through the studio window, draped with its summer creepers, he could see -the two perambulators moored in the shade of the lime tree on the lawn. -The babies were having their afternoon sleep. He was very fond of his -children; and to feel, now, mingling with the strange, yearning glow, -this pause of contemplative fondness, was to feel himself justified anew -and anew aggrieved. The glow of tenderness seemed to envelope the babies -as well as Mrs. Dallas. And it shut out Marian.</p> - -<p>What had she to complain of? Was he not a tender husband and a loving -father? Could she suspect his love for Mrs. Dallas—it was she herself -who had forced him to use that word—of grossness or<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> vulgarity? It was -as high and as pure as his love for her.</p> - -<p>His love for Marian had evolved into the perambulators, and this -recognition, flitting unseasonably, vexed him with a sense of slight -confusion that made him feel more injured than before. It was true that, -theoretically, he held views so advanced as to justify, in true, -self-dedicating passion, all manifestations. Practice and theory in his -young life had been far apart; but the thought of passion, in connection -with Mrs. Dallas, had, as it were, been made visible by Marian’s blush; -and, slightly swinging his hat, slightly knotting his brows as he looked -at the matronly Marian, he groped for some new formulation of his creed, -since it was evident that however much he might love Marian it was no -longer passion he felt for her. One must perhaps allow that passions -could not be contemporaneous; but he had always combated this shackling -view.</p> - -<p>He stood there, gazing, trying to think it out,—a tall young man, well -made yet slightly uncouth, with ruffled, heavy locks and large intent -eyes. Something of the look of a not quite purely bred Saint Bernard -puppy he had; confiding, young and foolish, with his knotted brow and -nose a little overlong. And as he found himself unable to think it out -and as Marian still stood silent, scraping, scraping away at the palette -in an exasperating fashion, he said,—and now in an openly aggrieved -voice,—“I thought you liked her yourself; I thought you quite loved -her. You seemed to.”</p> - -<p>Now that he was losing his temper, Marian was regaining hers. Her voice -had all the advantage of quiet intentions as she answered,<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a> “I did like -her; I thought her very charming. I don’t dislike her now. But I’m -sorry to see a woman of her age behaving with so little dignity.”</p> - -<p>“A woman of her age! Dignity!”</p> - -<p>“She is at least forty-five.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t follow your meaning. Is a woman of forty-five cut off from -human relationships?”</p> - -<p>“From some, certainly; if she has any regard, as I say, for her dignity. -And a woman in Mrs. Dallas’s position ought to be particularly careful.”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Dallas’s position!” She really reduced him to disgusted -exclamations.</p> - -<p>“You know, Rupert, that there are all sorts of stories about her. You -know that Mrs. Trotter told us that her first husband divorced her on -account of Colonel Dallas.—Other stories, too.”</p> - -<p>"Upon my word! You astonish me, Marian! You heard all these vile tales -when we first came here,—from people, too, who you’ll observe, run to -Mrs. Dallas’s dinner-parties whenever they have the chance,—and you -didn’t seem to mind them much when you were going there almost every -day—and taking every one you knew to see her. What about your Aunt -Sophy—if you believed these stories?—An old dragon of conventionality -like your Aunt Sophy! You took her again and again, and arranged that -luncheon in London with her when you and Mrs. Dallas went up—so that -they should have another chance really to make friends. I remember you -used the expression, ‘really make friends.’ It’s odd to hear you talking -of stories at this late hour." -<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> -“I only talk of them because Mrs. Dallas has made me remember them. I am -quite as open-minded as you are about such things. I was just as ready -to think well of her—even if they were true. Why do you call them vile? -You wouldn’t think it wrong for a woman to leave her husband if she -didn’t love him, and to go with a man she did love. If Mrs. Dallas did -that, why is it vile to say so?—Aunt Sophy, as a matter of fact, said -it was a different story. And she was charmed with Mrs. Dallas, just as -I’d determined she should be, stories or no stories. I did all I could -for her, because I counted myself her friend and thought it a shame that -any one so charming should be handicapped in any way. But I didn’t -imagine that a friend would try to take my husband from me.” Marian -spoke with severe and deliberate calm.</p> - -<p>“I like that! I really do like that!” said Rupert, laughing bitterly. -“It’s really funny to hear you talk as if Mrs. Dallas could owe you -anything! I wish she could hear you! I wish we could have her -dispassionate opinion of that hideous old bore of an Aunt Sophy. It was -obvious enough that she put up with her simply and solely through -friendship for you. Do all you could for her! A woman who has hordes of -friends—charming, finished, cosmopolitan people of the world! Why, my -dear girl, it’s she, let me tell you, who has given you more chances -than you ever had in your life for meeting really interesting people! -They’re not the sort you’d be likely to meet at your Aunt Sophy’s, -certainly. They’d perish in her <i>milieu</i>!”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Dallas doesn’t perish in it,” Marian coldly commented.<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> “On the -contrary, I never saw her more alert. She didn’t seem to find Aunt Sophy -in the least a bore. She was very much pleased indeed to lunch there and -she has looked her up every time she’s gone to London since; moreover, -she’s going to stay with her at Crofts this autumn. It doesn’t look -like boredom.”</p> - -<p>“I wish her joy of Crofts! She’s a complete woman of the world, of -course, and she knows how to put up with all sorts and conditions of -bores. She’s taken on Lady Sophy because she’s your friend. It’s -pitiful—it’s unbelievable to see her so misjudged!—Take me from you! -I’ve never gone there but she’s asked me why you didn’t come. She still -sends you flowers pretty well every day. Those are hers, I see. I’m glad -that you’ve deigned to put them in water.”</p> - -<p>The tall sheaf of carnations, white and rose and yellow, that stood in a -jug on a shelf in the studio must, evidently, have come from Mrs. -Dallas’s garden. No other person grew such carnations. The garden at -Ashleigh Lodge, this pleasant country house that they had taken for the -six summer months, was not its strong point, and Mrs. Dallas had kept -them reinforced from her abundance. Rupert associated the carnations, -their soft and glowing colours, their formal grace and spicy sweetness, -with the whole growth of his devotion to Mrs. Dallas. He fixed his -indignant eyes on them now.</p> - -<p>“Of course I put them into water. I am going to arrange them and take -them into the drawing-room presently,” said Marian with her hateful -calm.<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> “But they give me no more pleasure. Nor does she. She is like -them. They are heartless flowers and she is a heartless woman. I see -quite plainly now what I didn’t see before. She’s that type,—the -smiling, calculating siren. She lives for admiration; she’s herself only -when she has someone at her feet, and she’s seen to it that you should -be,—though I’m bound to say that you haven’t made it difficult for her. -It fits in with all the stories.”</p> - -<p>Rupert, at this, turned away and went out. He thrust his hat firmly down -on his fair locks and swung his stick as he strode by the little -footpath through the woods. Bitter disappointment with Marian surged in -him, and hot anger, but above all an atoning tenderness that seemed -almost to break his heart in its longing to protect and justify the -woman so traduced by her. His head throbbed and drummed as he went. To -have it come to this! To have such hands laid on it—their love! their -silent, hidden love! That Mrs. Dallas returned his love he seemed to -see, with many other things, clearly, rapturously, if with trembling, -for the first time to-day. He saw it with Marian’s unworthiness; -Marian’s unworthiness had shown it to him; and now, exulting, he claimed -it. She loved him, veiling the depth in her vagueness, her aloofness, -her indulgent irony. His mind retraced, with yearning gratitude, the -steps of their relationship. No one had ever been to him what she was. -How she helped and lifted him! How juvenile and undiscriminating in -their happy acceptances were Marian’s appreciations of his work beside -Mrs. Dallas’s half-idle comments. He had read through to her, in -manuscript, all his last novel; and Marian had not seen it yet. He had -not wanted to read it to Marian; and she, besides, had been very busy -with her painting.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Dallas had listened to the novel almost every day, sitting in the -shade of her veranda, in her white dress, with the hands that, unless -she were gardening, seemed always exquisitely idle, yet<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a> that in their -idleness seemed to dream and smile;—he could see the white skin, the -delicate finger-tips, the pearls and rubies slipping down, and his heart -contracted with a pang and ecstasy as he saw himself holding her hand, -kissing it. He must kiss it, to-day, and he must tell her. For she -needed him; he was sure of it. She needed him terribly. If she lifted -him, yet how much, too, he could lift her, out of the lethargic shallows -and sullen quagmires of her life.</p> - -<p>She could not be happy with her husband. He felt himself shut his eyes -before the retrospect of what the disenchantments and disasters must be -that lay behind her. If she had taken great risks, with that heart of -highest courage he divined in her, if she had faced great sacrifices for -her present husband, what wonder that her loveliness was now clouded by -that irony and languor? She was not kind to Colonel Dallas; he could not -hide from himself that she was not kind to him; but, as he owned it, he -yearned over her with a deeper comprehension of tenderness, feeling his -rights the greater. How could she be kind to the selfish, complaining, -elegant old man?—for, to Rupert, Colonel Dallas’s fifty-five years -seemed old. She never said anything actually sharp or disagreeable to -him—even when he was at his most fretful and tiresome; but when he was -least so she was not any the kinder, and by her glances, by the -inflections of her cool and indolent voice in answering him, she -displayed to the full, to others and to himself, did he take the pains -to see it, how dull and how tiresome she found him. No; she was like a -weary, naughty child in this; and seeing her as a child, with a child’s -faults—and did it not prove how unblinded his love<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a> must be that he -should see it?—he felt himself fold her to his heart in a tenderness -more than a lover’s; a paternal passion was in it; he had known that it -must be in true love; he had said so in one of his books. How his books -would grow from his knowledge of her!</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind">H<small>E</small> had now passed through the woods and crossed the road and entered the -footpath that ran down to Woodlands, the small house encircled by birch -and fir woods where, for now some four or five years, the Dallases had -pitched their errant tent. One could reach it, also, by the road; but -Rupert always took this short cut that brought him out at a little gate -opening on the upper lawn. There was an upper and a lower lawn at -Woodlands; on the upper Colonel Dallas had a putting-green; the lower -was a tiny square surrounded by Mrs. Dallas’s beds of carnations. -Rupert, when he emerged upon the putting-green, could look down past the -red-tiled roofs and the white rough-cast walls of the house at the -carnations, massed in their appointed colours—from deep to palest rose, -from fawn and citron to snowy white—among flagged paths.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Dallas had told him, in one of her infrequent moments of -communicativeness, that during years of wandering as a soldier’s -wife—her first husband, also, had been a soldier—she had come to be -known as the woman who could make things grow anywhere. She had grown -flowers in sands and marshes. She had snatched it might be but the one -season of fulfilment from the most temporary<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> of sojournings—in China, -in India, in Africa. Sometimes only bulbs would grow; sometimes only -roses; but what she tried for, always, and had never attained in more -perfection than at Woodlands, was carnations. They were her favourite -flower and they atoned to her here, she said, for living in a house that -made her always think of an ornamental bottle of some popular -dentifrice, so red and white, so fresh and spick and span, and with such -a well-advertised air, was Woodlands. Her carnations were the only -things of which he had ever heard her speak with feeling. Rupert, as he -looked down at them from the upper lawn and descended the stone steps, -felt his heart beating violently.</p> - -<p>A veranda ran along the front of Woodlands, and Mrs. Dallas was sitting -on it, just outside her drawing-room windows. The shaded depths of the -room behind her glimmered here and there with the half-drowned -brightness of crystal, porcelain, lacquer,—the things, none very good -but all rather charming, that she had picked up for a song in the course -of her wanderings; and she sat there, rather like a siren indeed, at the -mouth of her cavern, its treasures seeming to shine in the translucent -darkness behind her as if through water. Rupert, remembering and -accepting the simile, saw her as a siren, a creature of poetry and -romance, though he recognized that her poetry, like her romance, was -hidden from the ordinary observer. Even to his eyes she always appeared -first and foremost as a woman of extreme fashion, and his other -perceptions of her were tinged with the half-tormenting, half-delicious -pungency of this one, for Rupert had known till now no women of -fashion.<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> He had passed his youth, until going to Oxford, in a -provincial town, where his father, an admirable and sagacious man, was a -hard-worked doctor; and his only glimpses of society had been in his -encounters, always displeasing to him, with Marian’s tiresome and -conventional kinsfolk and the few haphazard contacts in London that came -in the way of a young writer. Mrs. Dallas might embody poetry and -romance, but she also embodied luxury and the exercised and competent -economy that made it possible. She might have to live in small, gimcrack -Woodlands and do without a motor; but she had her maid. The slices of -bacon at breakfast were carefully computed; but the coffee was of the -best and blackest.</p> - -<p>To-day, as always when he had seen her, she seemed ready for any -possible social emergency. She could have stepped from her veranda, with -those wonderfully cut little white shoes, into the smartest of -garden-parties, or have received in her shimmering cavern the unexpected -visit of a royal personage; and her soft white linen with its heavy -Italian embroideries clotted, like thick cream, about the hem and wrists -and breast, would have been as exquisitely appropriate as it was to this -empty afternoon of reverie.</p> - -<p>She was a small, very shapely woman, soft and curved and compact. Her -coiffure would have looked old-fashioned in its artifice and elegance, -and with its “royal fringe,” were it not for its air of a rightness as -unquestionable as that of some foreign princess’s, who kept and did not -follow fashions. Mrs. Dallas’s face, too, was small and colourless and -slightly faded; her hair was of a lighter brown than her arched eyebrows -and her melancholy and<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> dissatisfied eyes; her eyelids, tinged with a -dusky mauve, drooped heavily and made her always look a little sleepy; -the smiling line of her full-lipped yet minute mouth was ironic rather -than mirthful. To have called it a bewitching or an alluring face would -have been to imply a mobility it did not possess; but it was potent -through its very passivity; it was provocative through its profound and -slumbrous indifference.</p> - -<p>There was certainly no hint of allurement in the glance she turned on -Rupert Wilson as he came round the corner of the veranda; it was, -indeed, even to his rapt preoccupation, a little harder in its quiet -attentiveness than usual; yet she smiled at him, and her smile was -always sweet, holding out a languid hand in silence and leaving it to -him to say, “You expected me.”</p> - -<p>It was hardly a question, and Mrs. Dallas gave it no answer. He had, -indeed, come to see her every day for many weeks now. But yesterday had -finished the novel, and to-day was almost the first they had had without -some definite programme of reading.</p> - -<p>Rupert sat down on the steps of the veranda at her feet and took off his -hat and looked out across the carnations; and since she said nothing, -he, too, was silent, and to his trembling young heart the silence was -full of new avowals.</p> - -<p>Colonel Dallas’s smoking-room also opened on the veranda, and as they -sat there he came out. He was a tall, heavy man, with large pale cheeks -drooping on either side of a white moustache, and a gloomy eye that -could become fretful. He cast now a glance that was only gloomy at his -wife and her companion.<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a></p> - -<p>“Beastly hot day,” he said, to her rather than to Rupert. “It’s worse in -the house than out, I think.”</p> - -<p>“Are you going over to the Trotters' for tea and croquet?” his wife -inquired.</p> - -<p>“To the Trotters'? Why should I go to the Trotters'?”</p> - -<p>“They asked you, and you accepted.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I certainly don’t feel inclined to endure that broiling walk for -the sake of <i>les beaux yeux</i> of Madame Trotter <i>et filles</i>. It’s a dull -neighbourhood, this, but the Trotters are, perhaps, when all’s done and -told, the dullest people in it.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve always seemed to get on particularly well with them, I’ve -thought,” said Mrs. Dallas, in the voice that when it seemed considerate -could contrive to be most disparaging. “It’s a pity not to go. You need -a walk. You can’t afford Carlsbad this year, you know.”</p> - -<p>“I need hardly be reminded of that,” said Colonel Dallas, and now it was -fretfully. “To run the risk of apoplexy on the road and to drink the -Trotters' foul Indian tea is hardly an equivalent. No; I shall practise -some putting shots, and perhaps, if it gets cooler towards evening, I’ll -go over to the links. The Trotters can manage without me.—What time do -the Varleys arrive?”</p> - -<p>“At seven-thirty. There’s no other train they could arrive by, as far as -I’m aware.”</p> - -<p>The colonel looked at his watch, drew his hat down over his eyes, and -went slowly away round the corner of the house.</p> - -<p>His wife’s eyes did not follow him, nor, it was evident, her thoughts.</p> - -<p>“It has been rather oppressive, hasn’t it?” said<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a> Rupert, glancing up at -her. “You haven’t been feeling it too much, I hope.”</p> - -<p>“Not at all. I like it. I think it’s only people who don’t know how to -be quiet who mind the heat,” said Mrs. Dallas. “This is the one time of -the year that one can sit out of doors in a thin dress, and I am very -grateful for it.” Even about small things Mrs. Dallas always seemed to -have her mind quite made up. Her likes and dislikes, for all the -inertness of her demeanour, were clear and unshifting. She sometimes -made Rupert feel himself amorphous, vague, uncertain; and this feeling, -though blissful, had yet its sting of sadness and anxiety.</p> - -<p>“Well, some people aren’t able to be quiet, are they?” he observed. “On -a day like this I always think of people in factories,—great, roaring, -clanking places with the sun gnawing at their iron roofs,—and the pale, -moist faces, the monotonously rapid hands.”</p> - -<p>“Do you?” said Mrs. Dallas. She often said that, in that tone, when he -gave expression to some enthusiasm or sympathy. She did not make him -feel snubbed, but always, when she said, “Do you?” she made him feel -young again, a little bewildered and a little sad. He imagined, to -explain it in her, that people’s thoughts did not interest her, her -woman’s intuition probing below their thoughts to their personalities. -It was he, himself, with his heart full of devotion, that interested -Mrs. Dallas. Yet it was not of him that she next spoke. “How is Marian?” -she asked. “Is she painting to-day?”</p> - -<p>He was aware that his face altered and that his colour rose. He had to -steady something, in his<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a> glance and in his voice, the pressure of his -new consciousness was so great, as he answered, “Yes, she’s been -painting all the morning.”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t seen her for some days now,” Mrs. Dallas remarked.</p> - -<p>“No.” The longing in him to confide in her, to pour out his grief and -his devotion, was so strong that for the moment he could find only the -simple negative.</p> - -<p>“I quite miss Marian,” Mrs. Dallas added.</p> - -<p>He looked down at the little foot placed on a cushion beside him, and he -said, “You’ve always been so kind, so charming to Marian.” He remembered -Marian’s words with a deepened wrath and tenderness.</p> - -<p>“Have I? I’m glad you think so. It’s been very easy,” said Mrs. Dallas.</p> - -<p>A silence fell.</p> - -<p>“May I talk to you?” Rupert jerked out suddenly. “May I tell you things -I’ve been feeling? I have been feeling so much—about you—about -myself.—I long to tell you.”</p> - -<p>“By all means tell me,” said Mrs. Dallas with great placidity; and one -could see that she had often made the same sort of reply to the same -sort of appeal.</p> - -<p>“You know what you have been to me,” said Rupert, turning on the step so -that he could look up at her. “You know how it’s all grown—beautifully, -inevitably. No one has ever been to me what you are.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Dallas’s sleepy eyes rested on him, and her delicate nostrils, -slightly dilating, might have been, though without excitement, inhaling -a familiar incense.<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a></p> - -<p>“I do love you so much,” said Rupert in a trembling voice, gazing at -her; “I do love you. You understand what I mean. You know me now and you -couldn’t misunderstand. I want to serve you. I want to help you. I want -you to lean on me and trust me—to let me be everything to you that I -can.” And as he spoke he stretched out his hand and laid it on her hands -folded in her lap.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Dallas let it lie there, and she looked back at him, not moved, -apparently, but a little grave. “No, I don’t think I misunderstand your -feeling,” she said after a moment. “Of course I’ve seen it plainly.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, I knew you did.—And that you accepted -it,—dearest—loveliest—best.” He had drawn her hand to him now and he -pressed his lips upon it. And as he kissed Mrs. Dallas’s hand, as that -imagined happiness was consummated, he felt his mind cloud suddenly, as -if in a cloud of fragrance, and, thought sinking away from him, he knew -only an aching sweetness, the white, warm hand against his lips, the -darkness of the glimmering room near by, and the scent of the -carnations, exhaling their spices in the hot sunshine. Closing his eyes, -he breathed quickly. And above him, a little paler, Mrs. Dallas, for a -moment, as if with the conscious acceptance of a familiar ritual, also -closed her eyes and breathed in, with the scent of her carnations, the -immortal fragrance of the youth and passion that, to her, could soon no -longer come. “Dear boy!” she murmured.</p> - -<p>They heard the step of Colonel Dallas descending from the upper lawn. -Rupert drew back sharply; Mrs. Dallas softly replaced her hand<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a> upon the -other in her lap. Her husband appeared, and he looked very fretful.</p> - -<p>“The sun is quite tropical. It’s impossible to play in it. We don’t get -a breath of air down in this hole.” He took out his watch—Colonel -Dallas was always taking out his watch. “What time is tea?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“At five o’clock, as usual, I suppose,” said his wife.</p> - -<p>“It’s only just past four,” said the colonel, with the bitterly resigned -air of one who loses a wager he had hardly hoped to win. “I shall go to -the Trotters'. It’s better than being baked in this oven. Their lawn is -shaded at all events.” He spoke as if there had been some attempt to -dissuade him from the alleviations of the Trotters' lawn.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know why you didn’t go half an hour ago,” said his wife. -“You’ve so often discovered that the sun is tropical on the upper lawn -at this hour.” And as the colonel moved off she added, “Just tell them -that I’ll have lemon-squash instead of tea, will you?”</p> - -<p>It was a rather absurd little interlude; yet it had its point, its -appropriateness; it fitted in with those thoughts of succour, and Rupert -tried, now, to recover them, saying, after the gate had closed upon the -colonel and keeping still at his little distance, “Are you very -unhappy?”</p> - -<p>How he was to help Mrs. Dallas except by loving her and coming to see -her every day and being allowed to kiss her and hold her hand he did not -clearly know, but it seemed the moment for returning to those offers of -service. He did not attempt to regain her hand. Mingling with the -rapture,<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> when the kiss and the scent of the carnations had blurred his -mind, there was also a sense of fear. He was different; and there was -more in his love than he had known.</p> - -<p>“Very unhappy? Not more than most people, I suppose. Why?” Mrs. Dallas -asked. Her tone was changed. Her moment of diffusion, of languor and -acceptance, was gone by.</p> - -<p>“Why?” Rupert felt the change and the question hurt him. “When that’s -your life?—This?”</p> - -<p>“By that, do you mean my husband?” Mrs. Dallas inquired kindly. “He’s -not my life. As for this—if you mean my situation and -occupation—having love made to me by a pleasant young man while I smell -carnations, I can assure you that there’s nothing I enjoy much more.”</p> - -<p>She did more than hurt him now; she astonished him. “Don’t!” he -breathed. It was as if something beautiful were being taken from him. -Instinctively he stretched out his hand for hers and again she gave it; -but now she looked clearly at him, a touch of malice in her smile, -though her smile was always sweet.</p> - -<p>“Don’t what?”</p> - -<p>“Don’t pretend to be hard—flippant. Don’t hide from me. Give yourself -to the real beauty that we have found.”</p> - -<p>“I have just said that I enjoy it.”</p> - -<p>“Enjoy is not the word,” said Rupert, in a low voice, looking down at -the hand in his. “It’s an initiation. A dedication.”</p> - -<p>“A dedication? To what?” Mrs. Dallas asked, and even more kindly; yet -her kindness made her more removed.<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a></p> - -<p>Her words seemed to strike with soft yet bruising blows upon his heart. -“To life. To love,” he answered.</p> - -<p>“And what about Marian?” Mrs. Dallas inquired. And now, still gently, -she withdrew her hand and leaned her cheek on it as, her elbow on the -cushions of her chair, she bent her indolent but attentive gaze upon -him. “I should have thought that dedication lay in that direction.”</p> - -<p>His forehead was hot and his eyes, hurt, bewildered, indignant, -challenged hers yet supplicated, too. “Please don’t let me think that -I’m to hear mean conventionalities from you—as I have from Marian. You -know,” he said, and his voice slightly shook, “that dedication isn’t a -limiting, limited thing. You’ve read my books and cared for them, and -understood them,—better, you made me feel, that I did myself,—so that -you mustn’t pretend to forget. Love doesn’t shut out. It widens.”</p> - -<p>“Does it?” said Mrs. Dallas. “And what,” she added, “were the mean -conventionalities you heard from Marian? I’ve been wondering about -Marian.”</p> - -<p>“She is jealous,” said Rupert shortly, looking away. “I could hardly -believe it, but she made it too plain. It seemed to take the -foundation-stones of our life away to hear her. It made all our past, -all the things I believed we shared, seem illusory. It made me feel that -the Marian I’d loved and trusted was a stranger.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Dallas contemplated his averted face, and as she heard him her -glance altered. It withdrew itself; it veiled itself; it became at once -less kind and more indolent.<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> “And you really don’t think Marian has -anything to complain of?” she inquired presently.</p> - -<p>“No, I do not,” said Rupert. “Nothing is taken from her.”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it? And if I became your mistress, would you still think she had -nothing to complain of?” Mrs. Dallas asked the question in a tone of -detached and impartial inquiry.</p> - -<p>How far apart in the young man’s experience were theory and practice was -manifested by the hot blush that sprang to his brow, the quick stare in -which an acute eye might have read an ingenuous and provincial dismay. -“My mistress?” he stammered. “You know that such a thought never entered -my head.”</p> - -<p>“Hasn’t it? Why not?”</p> - -<p>“You know I only asked to serve—to help—to care for you.”</p> - -<p>“You would think it wrong, then, to be unfaithful, technically, to your -wife?”</p> - -<p>“Wrong?” His brow showed the Saint-Bernard-puppy knot of perplexity. -“It’s not a question of wrong. Wrongness lies only in the sort of love. -Real love is sacred in all its expressions of itself; my ideal of love, -just because it includes that one, can do without it.”</p> - -<p>“But, on your theory, why should it do without it?” Mrs. Dallas, all -mildness, inquired.</p> - -<p>His mind was driven back to those questionings in the studio, when he -had thought of the incongruous yet allied themes of passion and -perambulators, and groped again, angrily, in the same obscurity. -“It’s—it’s—a matter of convenience,” he found, frowning;<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a> “it—it -wouldn’t work in with other beautiful things. It wouldn’t be -convenient.”</p> - -<p>“I’m glad to hear you find such a reasonable objection,” said Mrs. -Dallas. “There could hardly be a better one. It wouldn’t be at all -convenient. Though, I gather, if it could be made convenient, you still -think that Marian would have nothing to complain of.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know why you are trying to pin me down like this.” Rupert, -stooping, gathered some flakes of stone from the path and scattered them -with a sharp gesture that expressed his exasperation. “You know what I -believe. Love is free, free as air and sunshine. How can one stop one’s -self from loving? Why should one? And if our love, yours and mine, could -mean that complete relation, then, yes, the ideal thing, the really -ideal thing, would be for Marian to feel it right and beautiful and to -be glad that there should be two perfected and complete relations -instead of one. As it is, that inclusive vision isn’t asked of her.”</p> - -<p>“She’s not, in fact, to be asked to be a Mormon,” Mrs. Dallas remarked. -“All that she has to put up with is that her husband should be in love, -platonically, with another woman, and should have ceased to be in love -with her. It’s hard, you know, when some one has been in love with you, -to give it up.”</p> - -<p>“But I have not ceased to love Marian!” Rupert cried.<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> “Why should you -suppose it? My love for you doesn’t shut out my love for her. It’s a -vulgar old remnant of sexual savagery to think it does. A mother doesn’t -love one child the less for loving another. Why can’t people purify and -widen their minds by looking at the truth?—That jeer about Mormons is -unworthy of you. Marriage is a prison unless husband and wife are both -free to go on giving and growing. What does love mean but growth?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Dallas’s eyes had drifted away to her beds of carnations and they -now rested on them for a little while. Rupert took up his hat and fanned -himself. He was hot, and very miserable.</p> - -<p>“It always strikes me, when I hear talk like yours,” said Mrs. Dallas -presently, “that it is so much less generous and noble than it imagines -itself to be. It’s the man, only, who frames the new code and the man, -only, who is to enlarge himself and run two or three loves abreast.”</p> - -<p>“Not at all. Marian is precisely as free as I am to love somebody else -as well as me.”</p> - -<p>“As free? Oh no,” said Mrs. Dallas, laughing softly. “Theoretically, -perhaps, but not actually. Nature has seen to that. When women have -babies and lose their figures it’s most unlikely that they’ll ever be -given an opportunity to exercise their freedom. That fact in itself -should make you reconsider your ideas about love. Own frankly that they -apply only to men and don’t pretend to generosity. The only free women -are the <i>femmes galantes</i>; and you’ll observe that they are seldom -burdened with a nursery, and that they never grow fat.”</p> - -<p>She touched, with an accuracy malignant in its clairvoyance, his -subconscious awareness of Marian’s physical alteration. Something in him -shrank away from her in fear and indignation. She was trying to make him -see things from a false and petty standpoint, the standpoint of a woman -of the world, a mere woman of the world—that world of shameful -tolerances and cruel stupidities.<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> “I don’t know anything about <i>femmes -galantes</i>,” he said, “nor do I wish to. You misunderstand me if you -think that by love I mean sensuality.”</p> - -<p>With slightly lifted brows she looked out at the carnations; and had she -been angry with him he could have felt less angry with her. He was, -indeed, very angry with her when she remarked, tranquilly, “I don’t -think you know what you mean by love.”</p> - -<p>“I mean by love what Shelley meant by it,” Rupert declared.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">"True love in this differs from gold and clay,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">That to divide is not to take away.<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Love is like understanding that grows bright<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Gazing on many truths.<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">“I mean what all the true, great hearts of the world have meant by -it,—poetry, rapture, religion; and they can only be sustained, renewed, -created, by emotion, by passion, by sexual passion—if you like to call -it by a name you imagine to be derogatory.” He felt himself warmed and -sustained against the menace that emanated from her by the sound of his -own familiar eloquence.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Dallas still tranquilly contemplated the carnations. -<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> -“That’s the man’s point of view. The view of the artist, the creator. -Perhaps there’s truth in it. Perhaps he can’t write his poems and paint -his pictures without taking intoxicants. But it will never be the view -of the woman. Mary Shelley will never really like it when Shelley makes -love to Jane Clairmont; Marian will never like it when you make love to -me. They’ll try to believe it’s the ideal, to please him, when they are -the ones he is in love with; but when he is in love with other women -they won’t go on believing.”</p> - -<p>“That is their fault, their littleness, then. The wide, glorious outlook -is theirs, too, if they choose to open their eyes. I don’t accept your -antithesis for women,—humdrum respectability, roast mutton, milk -pudding, or dissipation. I don’t believe that when a woman marries and -becomes a mother she must turn her back on love.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Dallas at this began to laugh, unkindly. “Turn her back on love? No -indeed. Why should she? Hasn’t she her husband and children, to say -nothing of her friends, her father and mother, her sisters and brothers? -You idealists seem always to forget these means of expansion. By love -you mean simply and solely the intoxicant. Call it poetry and religion, -if you like, but don’t expect other people, who merely see that you are -intoxicated, to call it that.”</p> - -<p>He sat, trying to think. Idly, half absently, with languid fingers, she -seemed to be breaking his idols as though they had been silly little -earthenware figures, not good enough—here was the stab, the -bewilderment—for her drawing-room. And who was she to do it, this -remote, mysterious creature, steeped in the perfume of her passionate -past? He felt as he gazed at her that it was not only himself he must -defend against her.</p> - -<p>“It’s curious to me to hear you talk in this way.” He armed himself, as -he spoke, with all that he could muster of wisdom and of weight.<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a> “You -are the last woman I’d have expected to hear it from. You’ve made me -your friend, so that I’d have a right to be frank, even if you hadn’t -let me love you. What right have you to turn your back on all the -beauty and romance of life—to smile at them and mock them? You haven’t -allowed yourself to be bandaged and crippled by convention, I’m sure of -it. You have followed your heart—bravely, truly—out into life. You -have loved—and loved—and loved—I know it. It breathes from you. It’s -all you’ve lived for.”</p> - -<p>“And you think the result so satisfactory?” said Mrs. Dallas. She looked -at him now, and if it was with irony it was with sadness. She turned -from her question.<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a> “Well, if you like, I am one of the <i>femmes -galantes</i>; they are of many types, you know; I wasn’t thinking, when I -shocked you so, of the obvious, gross type. I was thinking of the woman -who corresponds to you—the idealist, the spiritual <i>femme galante</i>. -And, I’m convinced of it, for a woman, it doesn’t work. A man, if he is -a big man, or has a big life,—it isn’t always the same thing by the -way,—may have his succession of passions, or, as you’d claim,—and I -don’t believe it,—his contemporaneities; he has a context to frame them -in; they may fall into place. But a woman’s life can’t be calculated in -those terms of dimension. It is big enough for the emotion that leads to -marriage and to the loves that grow from that, the loves you think so -little of. It is an emotion that can’t be repeated over and over again, -simply because, in a normal life, it has grown into something else, -something even better, I should say: a form of poetry and rapture and -religion quite compatible with roast mutton and respectability. But the -women who miss the normal life and who try to live on the emotions, -they—well, I can only say that to my mind they always come to look -silly. Silly is the only word for them.”</p> - -<p>He stared at her. “You don’t look silly.”</p> - -<p>“Why should I?” Mrs. Dallas asked. “I’m not of the idealist type. I -don’t confuse intoxication with religion and think I have the one when -I’ve only the other. I may have missed the real thing, but I’ve not -repeated the emotion that ought to lead to it. You are quite mistaken in -imagining that I’ve loved and loved and loved. I haven’t. I have allowed -other people to love me. That, as you’ll own, is a very different -matter. I am hard and cold and disillusioned. I am not soft and yearning -and frustrated. Why should I look silly?”</p> - -<p>He stared at her, and his heart was flooded with pain. What was she, -then? What was her feeling for him? What had she meant? As she spoke and -as he looked at her, the veil of romance dissolved from about her and he -saw her for the first time with her own eyes,—devoid of poetry, a hard, -cold, faded, worldly woman. Yet she was still a Sphinx, strange and -alluring, and still he struggled against her, for her, saying hotly, -though his heart was chilled, “If it’s true, you’ve hurt -yourself—you’ve hurt yourself horribly, through fear of looking silly.”</p> - -<p>“No, I’ve not hurt myself,” said Mrs. Dallas.<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> “I’ve been hurt, perhaps; -but I’ve not allowed my hurts to repeat themselves too often. Some -things in life should be unique and final. The people who don’t keep -them so become shoddy. Marian, for instance, is neither hard nor cold, -nor shoddy either. You have made one of the mistakes that idealists are -always making in imagining that she was humdrum respectability and that -I was poetry and rapture and religion.—Oh, it’s no good protesting. If -I had a double chin and thin hair you’d never have wanted to help my -soul, however unhappy I was. And if Marian had sat about in carefully -chosen clothes and looked mysterious and not let you feel sure that she -cared about you, you would probably have remained in love with her. So -please own that you have been mistaken and that on the one side is love, -the love that Marian feels for you, although she knows you; because she -knows you; and on the other is illusion, intoxication, sensuality; yes, -my dear Rupert, such as you felt when I let you kiss my hand a little -while ago.”</p> - -<p>He sat, sullen, even sulky, half turned from her, and again he stooped -and gathered up the flakes of stone and tossed them away down the path.</p> - -<p>The clink and chink of ice and glass was heard approaching through the -drawing-room, and the maid stepped out bearing the tray, which she set -down on a wicker table before her mistress. The tall crystal jug, veiled -in frosty rime, showed tones of jade and chalcedony, and fillets of -lemon peel threaded it like pale, bright enamel. This gem-like beaker, -the plate of golden cakes, with the scent of the carnations, with Mrs. -Dallas’s little foot on its cushion, with her rings of pearl and ruby, -had all been part of the magic she had meant to him. The very sound of -the ice, dully yet resonantly chinking, brought a suffocating sense of -nostalgia. It was over, all over. He was disenchanted. She was cruel to -him, to him who had loved her. She had cut into him and killed bright, -ingenuous, trustful things. And, in a placid voice, she asked him if he -would have some cake, and filled his glass.</p> - -<p>He took it from her and drank it off in silence.<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> The icy, aromatic -liquid seemed an antidote to that other intoxicant she had mocked. Irony -flowed through his veins; a bitter-sweet sense of vengeful maturity. -When he set down the glass, he looked up at her, and he felt himself -measuring his sword against the stiletto of an adversary.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ve had my lesson,” he said. “I’ve been a generous but deluded -idealist, it seems, in imagining that men and women are equals in their -claims on life. Since I’m an artist, I have a right to my raptures, I -take it. And poor Marian must be jealous with reason. Well, well; it’s -an odd morality to hear preached.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Dallas still sipped her lemonade and she quietly considered him. -She said nothing, and even after she had finished and set down her glass -she sat for still a little while in silence.</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry I’ve seemed to preach,” she then remarked, “and I certainly -think that Marian has every reason to be jealous. What more did I say? -That a man isn’t as ridiculous and undignified as a woman when he falls -in and out of love-affairs on the condition that he has a big life? That -was it, wasn’t it?”</p> - -<p>“That was it, and I’m glad to have your assurance that I am in no danger -of being ridiculous or undignified.”</p> - -<p>“Do you mean,” said Mrs. Dallas, looking at him, “that you think yours -such a big life?”</p> - -<p>It had been, before, his heart, its tenderness, its devotion and -dedication, that she had cut into; it was into something deeper now, -something more substantially and vitally at the centre of his life, -something of which his heart and all its ardours were but tributaries. -He was to learn that self-love<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> could bleed with a fiercer, darker gush. -The blood, as if foretelling his ordeal, sprang to his forehead as he -looked back at her.</p> - -<p>“I have my art,” he said, and he disdained any pretended humility; he -spoke with pride and even with solemnity. “I live for my art. I don’t -think that I am an insignificant man.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you?” said Mrs. Dallas. It was with an unaffected curiosity that -her eyes rested on him, and it sank into him, drop by drop, like poison. -“Not insignificant, perhaps,” she took up after a moment.<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a> “That’s not -quite the word, perhaps. You are very intelligent and appreciative and -good-hearted. I don’t suppose one can be quite insignificant if one is -that. But—do you call it art, your writing? I wonder. Oh, you are quite -right to live for it, of course, just as other men do for stock-broking -or fox-hunting or print-collecting, or anything else that employs their -energies or satisfies their tastes or brings in money; but, to count as -art, a man’s activities must mean more than just his own satisfaction in -them, mustn’t they? You write careful, intelligent, sentimental little -books; but I can’t feel that the world would be any the poorer if you -were to take to stock-broking or fox-hunting instead. No, it doesn’t -seem to me, my dear Rupert, that your life is nearly large enough for a -succession of love-affairs. It’s all right when one is young and looking -for a mate; experiments are in order then; but you’ve found your mate, -and you’ll soon be not so very young, and if on the strength of your art -you imagine yourself entitled to unseasonable intoxications, you’ll -become, in time, an emotional dram-drinker, one of those foolish old -inebriates we are all familiar with, and you’ll spoil yourself for what -you were meant to be and can be,—a devoted husband and an excellent -<i>père de famille</i>.”</p> - -<p>Stretched on his rack, broken, bleeding, Rupert stared at her. Who was -this woman, this cruel, ambiguous woman who watched his agony with -deliberating, drowsy eyes? There came into his mind the memory of a -picture seen in childhood, some sentimental print that had strongly -impressed his boyish sensibilities. A corner of a Roman amphitheatre, a -rising tier of seats; sham architecture, sham Romans, no doubt, and a -poor piece of claptrap, looked back on from his maturity; but the face -of the Roman woman, leaning so quietly forward under its gold tiara, to -watch, unmoved, the tormented combatants below, was it not like this -face? Yes, she was of that stony-hearted breed, unaltered by the -centuries.</p> - -<p>The torment of his humiliation snatched at anger for a veil. He said, -smiling, “You have been very successful till now in concealing your real -opinion of me.”</p> - -<p>“Have I concealed it?”</p> - -<p>“My work certainly seemed to be of absorbing interest to you.”</p> - -<p>“I listened to it; yes.”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t imagine you’d stoop to feign interest. I didn’t imagine you’d -take such pains to allure and flatter a commonplace young <i>père de -famille</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Did I take pains to allure and flatter him?”</p> - -<p>“From the first!—From the very first!—That day we met!—My God!” Even -now he could not help feeling himself, seeing himself, as one of his own -heroes; and, for a moment, he bent his head upon his hands—as they -would have done had a<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a> calamity as unimaginable as this befallen them. -“That first day!—The apple-blossoms framing you! You stood under your -white parasol in our orchard—and you smiled at me!”</p> - -<p>“I generally do at agreeable-looking young men when I see that they -admire me,” Mrs. Dallas commented.</p> - -<p>“Oh, don’t pretend!—Don’t hide and shift!” He lifted fierce eyes; “It -wasn’t only that. You seemed to care. You seemed to need me. You made it -easy—inevitable. You came—and came; and you asked me here again and -again.”</p> - -<p>“Not 'me,'—'us,'” Mrs. Dallas amended suavely. She was looking at him, -all this time, with that thoughtful, poisonous curiosity; and as he now -sat, finding for the moment no words, his fury baffled by her quiet -checkmating, she went on,<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> “And afterwards I let you come alone because I -saw that you admired me, and that is always pleasant to me. When, at -first, as you say, I showed myself so affable, it was because I liked -Marian. I do still like her; more than I ever liked you, my dear Rupert; -if you are good-hearted and intelligent, she is more so, and she has -more sense of humour than you have, and doesn’t take herself so -seriously. And, to be quite frank, since we are talking it all out like -this, I not only liked Marian, but saw that she could be of use to me. -I’ve had, in some ways, a tiresome, tangled life, and things haven’t -always gone as I wanted them to go, so that I don’t let opportunities -for strengthening and straightening here and there pass me by. Through -Marian I met several people I wanted to meet and make sure of. People -useful to me. I think Marian quite understood and quite wanted to help. -She would. She is of my world in a sense you aren’t, you know, my dear -Rupert. And, in my idle way, I did take a good deal of trouble to be -agreeable to her. It all turned out exceedingly well and I was very -grateful to Marian. That’s one reason, you see, why I felt to-day that -our little flirtation was going too far and must be put a stop to. I -don’t want Marian to be jealous of me; it would be distinctly -inconvenient. But there is more in it than that. I wouldn’t have put -myself to this bother and talked things out like this if it hadn’t been -because of my liking for Marian. It makes me angry to see that you don’t -know how lucky you are to have such a wife. I want you to see how very -lucky you are. I want you to see yourself as others see you,—a very -unimportant young man, without position and without money, married to a -quite unusually delightful girl who has both. This isn’t the young man’s -fault, of course; one wouldn’t like him the less for it; but one does -expect him to be aware of his own felicity. One does expect him to feel -that, at present, his wife is too good for him. I don’t mean in the -conventional sense; one wouldn’t ask him to recognize that; but in the -sense of worth and charm and distinction, for those are the things he -supposes himself to care for.”</p> - -<p>She had, while she spoke of the “young man” thus impartially, turned her -eyes from him, and they rested again on the beds of carnations. The sun -had sunk behind the hill, and though the bright soft colours were -unshadowed, they all lay in a different light and seemed to glow coolly -in their own radiance, like jewels.</p> - -<p>Rupert rose. His anger had passed from him.<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a> He no longer felt Mrs. -Dallas to be an antagonist; but he felt her to be a stranger; and he -felt himself to be a stranger. A sense of fear and loneliness and -disembodiment had fallen upon him while he listened to her. He held out -his hand to her. “Good-bye,” he said. “I think I must be going.”</p> - -<p>She took his hand and looked up at him with the gaze so remote, so -irrevocable. “Good-bye,” she said; “I hope to see you and Marian some -day soon, perhaps.”</p> - -<p>The words, with their quiet relapse on convention, made him feel himself -in a new world. He had been thinking of final, fatal things, things dark -and trenchant; she showed him compromise, continuity, commonplace good -sense; and, dispossessed, bereft as he was, something in him struggled -to place itself beside her in this alien atmosphere, to make itself a -denizen of the new since he had forever lost the old world.</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, I’ll tell her,” he said. And as he released her hand he found, -“Thank you. I’m sure you meant it all most kindly.”</p> - -<p>“It’s very nice of you to say so,” said Mrs. Dallas, smiling.</p> - -<p>It was the world of convention; yet with all his bewildered groping for -clues and footholds, he felt, dimly, as a glimmer before his eyes or a -frail thread in his hands, that the smile was perhaps the most sincerely -sweet that he had ever had from Mrs. Dallas. It was as if she saw his -struggle and commended it.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind">H<small>E</small> walked away, up the steps, across the putting-green and out into the -woods. He went slowly as<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> he began the gradual ascent. He felt very -tired, as though he had been beaten with rods, and there was in him a -curious mingling of confusion and lucidity, of pain and contemplation. -The present and the future were curtained with shame, uncertainty, and -dismay; but the past was vivid, and, like a singular, outgrown husk, he -seemed to look back at that Rupert on the veranda, so blind, so bland, -so fatuous, and to see him as Mrs. Dallas had seen him.</p> - -<p>Beyond the curtain was Marian. He knew that he went towards Marian as if -towards safety and succour; yet all was opaque before his eyes, for who -was it that Marian was to succour but that fatuous Rupert? and was it -for such as he that he could seek support? How could he go to Marian and -say, “I have been given eyes to see you as you are; help me, now, to be -blind again to what I am.” No; he could not, if he were to follow his -glimmer and hold his thread, seek succour from Marian.</p> - -<p>When he reached the house he went into the drawing-room and found her -sitting there in a cool dress, a book upon her knee. She did not see him -as he entered quietly and he stood for some moments in the doorway -looking at her.</p> - -<p>She had been crying; her cheeks were white and her eyelids heavy; but -though this perception came to him with a blow of feeling, it did not, -for the moment, move him from his contemplation of her, with all that it -brought of new and strange to the familiar.</p> - -<p>She was strange, though she was not a stranger, as he had become to -himself. He noted the black curves of her hair, the ample line of her -bosom, the gentle, white maternal hand laid along the<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> book. On a -cabinet, above her head, he saw that she had very beautifully arranged -the white, rose and yellow carnations. It was like her to do this -justice to her rival’s gift; like her to place them there not only -faithfully but beautifully. And as she sat, unaware of him, in the -luminous evening air, he felt her to be full of enchantment and this -enchantment to centre in the hand laid along the book. His eyes fixed -themselves on the hand. It seemed a symbol of the Marian of grace and -girlhood whom he had loved with such ardent presage of eternal faith, -and of this Marian sitting quietly in her saddened and accepted life, -not changed except in so far as she was yet more worthy of fidelity. He -saw that she had passed through her ordeal and transcended it; he saw -that she would never again show him jealousy; and he saw that as the old -Marian he had, perhaps, forever lost her. A lover must always show -jealousy. This was a wife, maternal and aloof.</p> - -<p>He came into the room and she looked round at him. Her eyes, altered by -weeping, were mild and alien. They were without hostility, without -accusation; deliberating, gentle; the eyes of a wife. “Did you have a -nice afternoon?” she asked laying down her book. “It’s been delicious, -hasn’t it?”</p> - -<p>Quite as irrevocably as Mrs. Dallas she made the world that he must -enter. She, too, in her different way, a way founded on acceptance -rather than rejection, showed him compromise and continuity. And nothing -that Mrs. Dallas had said to him cut into him so horribly as to see -Marian show him this new world.</p> - -<p>An impulse came to fall on his knees beside her, bury his head in her -lap, and pour out all his<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> griefs. But already, and for Marian’s sake, -now, he had learned a better wisdom. To fall and weep and confess would -be, again, to act like one of his own heroes; and Marian, in her heart, -knew all that there was to know of that old Rupert. He must make her now -know, and make himself know, a new Rupert.</p> - -<p>He sat down opposite her and, smiling a little, he said, “Mrs. Dallas -has done with me.”</p> - -<p>“Done with you!” Marian repeated. Her faint colour rose.</p> - -<p>“Quite,” said Rupert, nodding; “in any way I’d thought she had me.”</p> - -<p>“Do you mean,” said Marian, after a moment, “that she’s been horrid to -you?”</p> - -<p>“Not in the least, though it felt horrid. She merely let me see that I’d -been mistaken.”</p> - -<p>“Mistaken? In what way?”</p> - -<p>“In almost every way. In my ideas about myself, and about life, and -about her.—It wasn’t, for one thing, me she liked in particular, at -all. It was you.”</p> - -<p>Marian’s flush had deepened. “She seemed to like you very much indeed.”</p> - -<p>“Only frivolously; not seriously. She showed me to-day how silly I’d -been to think it anything but frivolous. She made me see that I’d been a -serious ass.”</p> - -<p>Marian sat looking at him. She was startled, and on his -behalf—wonderful maternal instinct!—she was angry; yet—he saw it all -in the sweet, subtle alteration of her face—she was happy, half -incredulously yet marvelously happy. And as he saw her happiness, tears -came to Rupert’s eyes and he felt himself, deeply and inarticulately, -blessing Mrs.<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> Dallas. She had been right. This was something “even -better.”</p> - -<p>“She’s an exceedingly clever woman,” he said, smiling at Marian, though -she must see the tears. “And an exceedingly first-rate woman, too. And -I’ll always be grateful to her. The question is,”—he got up and came -and stood over his wife,—“I’ve been such an ass, darling. Can you -forgive me?”</p> - -<p>He had found her hand as he questioned her and he held it now up to his -cheek closing his eyes, how differently!</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind">M<small>RS</small>. D<small>ALLAS</small>, after her young friend had left her, sat on for quite a -long while on the veranda. The concentration of her recent enterprise -effaced itself from her eyes and lips. Her glance, steeping itself again -in indolent and melancholy retrospects, fell into a reverie. Once or -twice, putting up a languid hand, she yawned.</p> - -<p>When the whole garden lay in coolness, she went in and got her gardening -apron and gloves and basket of implements. It was an ideal moment for -layering her carnations. Tripping out again on her little high-heeled -shoes, she placed her kneeling-mat before a splendid plant and set to -work. She scorned complicated aids. A box of long hairpins were her -chief allies, and a sharp knife. Deftly she selected a blue-gray shoot -and stripped the narrow leaves, sharply cut a transverse slit into the -tender stalk, firmly bent and pinned the half-severed spray into the -heaped earth where it was to make new roots and establish itself in a -new life. And, as she did so, her mind reverting to thoughts of Rupert<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> -and of her rough usage of him, a simile came to her that made her smile, -her hard and not unkindly smile. She did not regret it, though -unquestionably she had had her own moment of reluctance and of loss. It -had hurt him terribly, no doubt, as, if they had feeling, it must now -hurt her carnations to be cut and bent and pinned. But “It might be the -making of him,” Mrs. Dallas thought.<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a name="STAKING_A_LARKSPUR" id="STAKING_A_LARKSPUR"></a> -<img src="images/ill_pg_208-a.jpg" width="450" height="45" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h2>STAKING A LARKSPUR</h2> - -<hr /> - -<p class="nind"> -<span class="letra"> -<img src="images/ill_pg_208-b.jpg" -width="150" -height="142" -alt="A" -title="A" -/></span>S a matter of fact (one has often to take one’s stand on fact when -thinking about Vera), it’s I who am the gardener; it’s I, that is to -say, who draw the plans and compute the cost and give the orders and see -that the men carry them out. I often lend a hand at carrying them out, -too, for I love planting seedlings and staking plants and tweaking out -weeds here and there when I’ve the chance. That wonderful blue border -Vera had on the south terrace last summer,—it was just going over when -the war broke out,—I put in all the new blue larkspurs myself, three -hundred of them,—the larkspurs that Mrs. Thornton was to remind me -of,—and I designed and planted and with my own hands helped to lay out -the dream-garden, Vera’s special garden. It was she, certainly, who had -had the idea, standing on the site of the little, old, abandoned sunken -garden in its circle of stone wall and cypresses, and saying, “I see a -dream-garden here, Judith; a place where one can come and sit alone and -dream dreams.” She often has charming ideas, Vera, but she knows nothing -about gardening. I sound already as if I were crabbing her, I know; and -perhaps I am. Certainly I never think of her<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a> relation to her garden -without a touch of irony, and this story, which begins in the -dream-garden, isn’t to her advantage. It was there that I felt my first -definite irascibility in regard to Vera and little Mrs. Thornton, and -felt the impulse, as far as I was able, to take Mrs. Thornton under my -wing.</p> - -<p>It’s a rather clipped and confined wing, and yet I can do pretty much as -I choose at Compton Dally; I don’t quite know why, for Vera doesn’t -exactly like me. Still, she doesn’t dislike me, and I think she’s a -little bit afraid of me; for I am as definite and determined as a pair -of garden shears, and my silence is often only the good manners of the -dependant, and Vera knows it.</p> - -<p>I am her cousin, an impecunious cousin, my mother a sister of her -father’s, old Lord Charleyford, who died last year. Vera herself was -very impecunious until she married Percival Dixon; impecunious, but -always very lovely and very clever, and she was on the crest of every -wave, always, and never missed anything, except ready money and a really -good offer, even before Percival Dixon came along—he came <i>via</i> South -Africa—and gave her all the money that even she could spend, and bought -back Compton Dally for her. Compton Dally had been in the family for -hundreds of years, and it was our grandfather, Vera’s and mine, who had -ruined us all and finally sold it. It was everything for Vera to get it -back, even if she had to take Percival Dixon with it; and I confess that -for Compton Dally I could almost have taken Percival Dixon myself; but -not quite, even for Compton Dally.</p> - -<p>Well, she has always been fairly decent to me; not as decent as she -might have been, certainly,<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a> but more decent than I, at all events, -expected, whatever may have been poor mother’s hopes and indignations. I -always thought mother unfair; there was no reason why Vera should go out -of her way to give me a good time, and it showed some real consideration -in her to have suggested, when mother died and while Jack was reading -for the bar, that, until he and I could set up housekeeping in London -together, I should come and be her companion and secretary and general -odd-job woman; and for people like Vera to show any consideration is -creditable to them. I am five years older than Jack, and our plan has -always been to live together. I intend, of course,—though Jack at -present doesn’t, dear lamb!—that he shall marry; but until then I’m to -live with him and take care of him and help him with his work. All this -if he ever comes back again. He is fighting at the front as I write, so -that it remains to be seen whether I’m to go on always with Vera. If -Jack doesn’t come back I shan’t find it more difficult than anything -else. We have always been all in all to each other, he and I; but that -is quite another story and one that will never be written. This one is -neither about Jack nor me, but about Vera and her garden and little Mrs. -Thornton and her husband and her clothes.</p> - -<p>Vera had thrown open Compton Dally to wounded Tommies and wounded -officers, and the Thorntons came in that way. He’d only been back from -the Boulogne hospital for a week, was badly crippled, and had a very -gallant record. Most of Vera’s officers before this had been colonials -who had no homes to go to. The Thorntons weren’t colonials, but they had -no home and were very<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> poor, so that the arrangement for them to spend -six weeks or two months at Compton Dally while Captain Thornton got back -his strength—as far as he was able to get it back, poor man!—seemed an -admirable one.</p> - -<p>They came on a hot June afternoon both very tired, while we were all -having tea on the west terrace. The Tommies—there were over a dozen of -them, with two Red Cross nurses to take care of them—had their tea in -the billiard-room, which is made over to them for their games and meals -and almost constant gramophone, and the accurate laughter of Harry -Lauder is wafted out to us on various music-hall strains at most hours -of the day. He was laughing loudly and richly as the Thorntons arrived. -After tea Vera led them about the garden. Vera’s garden is merely a part -of her toilette, and plays almost as important a part as her clothes in -her general introduction of herself; and that she intended to introduce -herself gracefully to Captain Thornton was evident; and that I was to -pilot Mrs. Thornton, I had known after Vera’s glance at her imitation -Panama hat, her blue linen skirt, of an obsolete cut and a bad one at -that, and her white blouse, shrunken in washing. Vera placed her swiftly -as dull and dowdy, and it was my part, always, to pilot the dowdy and -the dull.</p> - -<p>I don’t mind that, however; even now, after three years of it, I always -enjoy going over Compton Dally and the gardens with newcomers. It’s such -a beautiful old place, so grave and so serene, its splendid Tudor front -lifted high on stone terraces, and its courts and corners behind -breaking out into all sorts of unexpected and enchanting antiquities. It -symbolizes, if you begin with the<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> Saxon arches in the cellars, the -whole history of England, and means so much more than any person who has -ever lived there, or who ever will live there, can ever mean. It’s worth -the sacrifice of generations of younger sons and myriads of marriageable -daughters. What could they all do better than to keep it going? I always -recalled this when I wondered how Vera could have married Percival -Dixon, and felt almost as much satisfaction as she could feel in the -fact that two robust little boys, still at their preparatory school, -stood reassuringly behind her and Percival; the elder, too, a thorough -Compton, with hardly a trail of Dixon apparent on his ingenuous young -countenance. I have the whole history of Compton Dally at the tips of my -fingers, and if people give me an opening and show that they care about -it, I can talk to them for hours as I take them round, feeling, for my -little part and share in it, that, even if Vera weren’t as decent as she -is, I should put up with a great deal to stay in it and take care of it.</p> - -<p>We didn’t go about the house to-day. The Thorntons saw the big -herbaceous border and the rose-garden, the rock-garden, tinkling with -its little rivulet, the moat, and the lime-tree alley; and then Vera, -trailing her gossamer draperies along the flagged path between the -cypresses,—for Vera, even at this epoch of shortened petticoats, -manages always to trail,—murmured, as I’ve heard her murmur, when she’s -at Compton Dally, at least once a week, “And this is my dream-garden, -where I come and sit alone and dream dreams.”</p> - -<p>She led Captain Thornton down among the cypress boughs. He had a -splinted leg and an unaccustomed crutch, and found the steps a -difficulty;<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a> but Vera put a hand under his elbow and let him lean -heavily on her shoulder, and he reached the dream-garden without, I -hope, too many twinges.</p> - -<p>It is really very lovely. I don’t like hearing it called a dream-garden, -naturally; but I do feel always, when I come into it, that it is like -sinking into the stillness and magic of a happy dream. The gypsophila -wasn’t out yet, but it made a mist, like drowsiness; white peonies, grey -santolina, white roses and silver sea-thistle, the dreamy spires of -white foxgloves, low, purple pansies, and tall irises, white and grey -and purple—these, in their twilight colours, were massed against the -grey stone walls, and there were four bay-trees in stone urns at the -corners. The beautiful old stone seat (I found it in Brompton Road, but -it might have been made for Compton Dally three hundred years ago in -Italy) was heaped with grey and purple cushions. In the centre rose the -fluent shaft of the fountain, falling, with a musical rustle and murmur -into the stone basin where pale goldfish move among the water-lilies.</p> - -<p>We sat down, and Vera went on to say, as always:</p> - -<p>“The other gardens are for friends. I plan them for them. I see them -there. This is for loneliness, for my very self; and to me it is the -heart of the whole, as solitude should be the heart of life.”</p> - -<p>Vera, as a matter of fact (you see, the phrase recurs constantly), is -never alone. If she is wan and strange and wistful, it isn’t from -dreaming dreams, but from not having enough sleep and doing five times -too many things and seeing five times too many people in the day. Vera, -too, I may say it here, isn’t in the least an ass, though she may, on<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a> -occasions she finds suitable, talk like one. Occasions are often -suitable, so that, as I once told her, she’s in danger of making a habit -of it. She looked at me, when I told her this, with the pausing, -penetrating, ironic gaze she is so capable of, and finally, with a -slight grimace, said, “I’ll be careful, Judith.”</p> - -<p>I have moments of feeling fond of her and this was one of them. She is -careful; I’ve very rarely heard her talk like an ass when the occasion -was unsuitable; but so many people are stupid that these are rare, and I -foresee that, as she gets on and sinks by degrees into the automatism -that overtakes so many artificial people, it may become a habit, just as -the touch of rouge on her pale lips is already becoming more emphasized.</p> - -<p>Captain Thornton, I saw at once, as she did,—for she saw most -things,—was not stupid; but he was very simple. There was a certain -bewilderment on his handsome, sturdy face, wistfulness rather than -delight, such as a soul newly arrived in Paradise might feel, unable to -forget the passes of death and the companions left behind in suffering. -He wasn’t forgetting; I felt that as I looked at him. So many of them -forget. Vera, I am sure, hardly ever remembers what it all really -means—all these wounded heroes. Perhaps it is natural that she -shouldn’t; she has no one near in it.</p> - -<p>Captain Thornton gazed about him quietly, and from the garden looked -back at the angel who had led him there. Of course Vera must have looked -like an angel to him. I haven’t described Vera, and she is difficult to -describe. To say that she is pale and dark, with attenuated features and -dwelling, melancholy eyes, is only the beginning of it.<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> Of course she -is getting on now,—she is nearing forty-five,—but she’s still lovely; -her smile makes me think of a pearl dropped in wine, and behind the -melancholy of her eyes is that well of waiting irony. She looks as soft, -as tenderly encompassing, as a summer night; but she is really sharp, -sharp, sharp. Thwart or vex her, and out leaps the stiletto; or, rather, -it would be more exact to say, out come the claws. But women of the Vera -type will always, to young men like Captain Thornton, be angels pure and -simple. I don’t suppose, for one thing, that he’d ever talked intimately -with any one quite like her. He came, I was to learn, from a remote -country rectory where the great ladies of the neighbourhood had been -unfashionable, matter of fact, and clothed for the most part in tweed -and leather, and none of them would have been likely to make much, -before the war, of a young soldier. Vera was making much of him, and a -fashionable angel is an angel doubly equipped. He would not know what it -was that made her so strange in her sweetness; but fashion of that -achieved and recondite kind is like a soft incense wafted around a -woman. She is first, everywhere, always, without an effort; and people -who are first, if they also look like angels, win hearts as easily as -they run and twist their fingers among their ropes of pearls, as Vera -was doing now. She always wore her pearls; they fell together in a milky -heap in her lap, and long earrings glimmered in the shadows of her hair.</p> - -<p>Vera’s way of talking, too, is like a spell. Her voice is rather like -the fountain, so low, so inarticulate, yet so expressive. She murmurs -rather than speaks, with now and then a pause that is almost a<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> soft -gurgle. Sometimes it exasperates me to hear her, but sometimes even -cross-grained I am charmed.</p> - -<p>The voice purled and rippled and gurgled over Captain Thornton now. He -sat on Vera’s farther hand, and Mrs. Thornton sat between Vera and me. -Already, at tea-time, Mrs. Thornton had interested me. She had remained -silent without seeming shy. Superficially, no doubt, she was dowdy, and -superficially she looked dull, or, as I saw it, dulled; and dull and -dowdy is what at tea they all put her down for. It’s curious, how in a -group of highly civilized people, a newcomer, without a word or glance -exchanged between them, is in a moment assessed and placed and -relegated. Everybody was going to be very kind to Mrs. Thornton, that I -saw, and everybody was going to relegate her; only the highly civilized -can manage the combination.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thornton, from one point of view, had a pallid, podgy little face, -with wide lips and short nose and a broad, infantile brow above eyes -singularly far apart. All the same, and the more I looked at her the -more I saw it, it was a delicious face; squared here, stubborn there, -sweet by turns and glances. And she was of the loveliest colour, with a -skin silver-white, and thick, shining, pale-gold hair, and eyes of a -deep, dense, meditative blue. All her attributes, however, were -invisible to Vera, and I was fully prepared for the glance with which, -over Mrs. Thornton’s imitation Panama, she presently said to me: -<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a> -“Darling, do take Mrs. Thornton round the water-garden. It’s so lovely -at this hour. Captain Thornton must wait for it till to-morrow. He’s too -tired to go farther now.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thornton got up at once, with her air of vague acquiescence in -anything proposed, and I led her up and out and down the lime-tree alley -and through the copse, where Vera, in spring, has her wild garden, to -the banks of the river, the clear, wandering little stream, bridged and -islanded, golden in the afternoon light under its willows and reflecting -irises and meadow-sweet.</p> - -<p>“Now we can sit down,” I said, and on a bench under a willow we did sit, -Mrs. Thornton with an involuntary sigh of weariness. “I expect your -husband will soon get all right here,” I said presently. “It’s such good -air. Is his leg badly damaged?”</p> - -<p>“Well, you see, he can already get about quite well with it,” said Mrs. -Thornton; “but I’m afraid he’ll never be able to do any of the things he -most cares for again—riding and cricket, and his soldiering, of course. -He will have to give up the army. I am afraid it’s afterwards one will -begin to feel all the things that one must give up. Just now all that I -can think about is that he has come back alive. Have you any one out -there?” she asked.</p> - -<p>I told her about Jack and how he had got a commission at the beginning -of the war and gone out in January.</p> - -<p>“It must be even more of a wrench to have them go when they aren’t -already in the army,” said Mrs. Thornton. “A soldier’s wife ought not to -feel it so much of a wrench. I’m afraid I did, though.”</p> - -<p>I saw already that Mrs. Thornton had taken to me. It was natural that -she should. I had taken to her quite tremendously, and she must have -felt it; and, besides, a great many women do feel confidence in me at -once. I, to be sure, look like anything<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> but an angel, though I, like -Vera, have small, pale features and dark hair. But mine’s not a -melancholy or mysterious face. My eyebrows dip together over my nose, -and my mouth is at once placid and irascible. I look, in my straight, -austere clothes,—the silver buckles on my shoes and the fob of old -trinkets at my waist for all adornment,—like a cross between a young -priest in his soutane and a Blue-Coat boy; and I think it is the boyish -woman, curt and kind and impersonal, who gains the confidence of others -of her sex.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know that it was more of a wrench,” I said. “I expect that you -and I felt pretty much the same sort of thing on that Victoria platform -when we said good-bye to them. What do you and your husband intend -doing, now that he has to give up his profession?”</p> - -<p>“Well, we had thought of having a chicken-farm somewhere. We are both so -fond of the country, and I’ve a cousin who has a chicken-farm, and I’ve -helped her with it, and she has made it pay. Even if Clive’s leg stays -so bad, I am very strong. But we’ve had, really, no time yet to talk -things over.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t look very strong,” I observed, “but that may be because you -are over-tired. You look very tired. I should say that you got up at six -this morning, and raced around London shopping in the heat, and packed, -and had no lunch, and a journey on top of it all. So no wonder you are -tired.”</p> - -<p>“How clever of you!” Mrs. Thornton cried, laughing.<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> “That is exactly -what I have been doing. And I’ve been in a Belgian refugee hostel ever -since Clive went, and that is tiring, though it keeps one going, too. -Don’t you find it difficult just to go on from day to day?” She was -leaning forward on her knee now to look up into my face while I knitted. -“I mean, when one wakes in the morning, for instance, to think that one -has to get up and brush one’s teeth and do one’s hair and all the rest -of it. It seems impossible when what one is feeling is that one wants to -be chloroformed till it is all over. It was then that the hostel was so -sustaining; one had to get up whether one felt like it or not.”</p> - -<p>“I know; yes,” I said, nodding. “I’ve work, too, though it’s not so -sustaining as a hostel. I’m my cousin’s secretary, and we have all these -Tommies now; they take up a good deal of time. It must be curious, -having it all over, all that weight of anxiety.”</p> - -<p>“It is, it is,” said little Mrs. Thornton, eagerly, with her look of -gratitude for finding some one with whom to talk about it. “It’s almost -like losing a limb. I feel crippled, as well as Clive. Isn’t it absurd? -But it’s almost like loss. And one is dazed with the relief of it.”</p> - -<p>“How long have you been married?” I asked.</p> - -<p>“Only a year and a half,” she told me, and that Clive’s mother and hers -had been great friends, and that she had often gone to stay with his -people in the country, so that she had always known him. Her mother had -died when she was a child and her father only two years ago. She had -lived in London with her father, who had been an artist. She was just -twenty. And after she had told me about herself, she asked me about -Jack, and I found myself telling her all about him and about those plans -of ours for living together in London if he ever comes back.<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a></p> - -<p>The party at Compton Dally was small, and they were all there (except -Sir Francis who was an old family friend and who was paying a long -visit), to help Vera with her Tommies. The only other officer besides -Captain Thornton was poor Colonel Appleby, a pale, frightened, -middle-aged man invalided home with nervous shock. At dinner that night -Lady Dighton, who is the embodiment of lassitude and acquiescence, had -him, and Mrs. Travers-Cray had Sir Francis, and Vera had Captain -Thornton, so that Percival fell to the share of Mollie Thornton, and I -wondered how she liked him. If she was already feeling herself out of -it, to have Percival at dinner wouldn’t make her feel herself in; quite -the reverse. Percival’s appearance is always summed up to me by the back -of his head: the wedge of fat, red neck above his high collar, the -sleek, glittering black hair, and the rims of his red ears curving -forward on each side. The back of his head seems really as -characteristic as the front, though that is jovial and not unkindly. -Percival looks sly over his food, and looks over his wine like the sort -of man who is going to tell a story that no one else will find at all -amusing. He told Mollie several such stories that night, I inferred, -though she was evidently neither shy nor shocked; it was in the quality -of her smile that I read her kindly endurance.</p> - -<p>Milly, Vera’s girl, just seventeen and just promoted to late dinner, sat -on Mollie’s other hand and did not, as far as I observed, address her -once during the meal. But, then, Milly never makes efforts unless they -are plainly useful. All Vera’s beauty had been spoiled in her by the -Dixon admixture, and yet she is a most engaging-looking<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a> little minx, -with broad, bold, black, idle eyes and a blunted nose, auburn hair and a -skin of roses and carnations. Vera had seen to that. Poor Vera is quite -fond of the child, a half-vexed, half-ironic constantly rebuffed -tenderness. But Milly says to me, “Mother is such a bore, you know,” and -likes me far better, who make no claim upon her and who, she must feel, -like her very little. She will soon take flight, however, when a -sufficiently advantageous occasion presents itself. The war has been a -sad blow to her projects, and what I like in Milly is the fact that she -has never uttered a word of complaint as to the shattering of her -girlish gaieties. However, to get back to Mollie Thornton, I don’t think -she could have enjoyed her companions at dinner.</p> - -<p>After dinner I go and amuse the Tommies and talk to the nurses until -bedtime, but, before I went, I observed that Vera, after her wont with -the detrimental belongings of a guest, had placed Mollie in a corner -with a book and the urgent, smiling murmur: “By a friend of mine. Quite, -quite beautiful. I know you’ll love it.” It is a book called “Spiritual -Control,” with a portrait of its author, who is a stock-broker, a sleek, -stalwart, satisfied person whom Vera characterizes, why I can’t think, -except that she had him once to stay after hearing his lecture, as her -“friend.” A great many people find the book inspiring; Vera, as a matter -of fact, doesn’t, and she found Mr. Cuthbert Dawson a terrible bore. It -was plain from her giving poor Mrs. Thornton “Spiritual Control” to -read, where she placed her.</p> - -<p>When I came back an hour later she was still in her corner with -“Spiritual Control,” but she wasn<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a>’t reading it. She had drawn the -curtain at the window where she sat, and was looking out at the -splendid, dramatic moonlight. Sir Francis and Colonel Appleby were -reading the evening papers, Lady Dighton and Leila Travers-Cray talked -together while they knitted, Milly had disappeared, and at the farthest -end of the great room, on its farthest sofa, Vera, pale and pearly, was -talking to Captain Thornton.</p> - -<p>“Well,” I said, “how is your spirit? Is it more controlled?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thornton looked up at me, and after a moment her smile of -understanding merged into one of friendly enjoyment.</p> - -<p>“How do you manage,” she said, “to be so austere in the daytime and so -splendid at night? You make me think of a Venetian princess in that -brocade.”</p> - -<p>“It is nice, isn’t it?” I said. “And made by the littlest of -dressmakers. I’m clever at clothes. But tell me how you like Mr. -Cuthbert Dawson.”</p> - -<p>“Well, he is very cheerful and sincere,” said Mrs. Thornton, kindly; -“but I don’t seem to get much out of it. I’m really too tired and stupid -to read to-night.”</p> - -<p>“And it’s time your husband was in bed,” I said. “One of the nurses is -coming for him.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thornton looked down the long room at her husband.</p> - -<p>“If only I’d had the Red Cross training,” she said, “I could have taken -care of his leg then. I suppose I mustn’t ask to be allowed to. Isn’t it -quite early?” she added. “He’s enjoying the talk with Lady Vera.” -<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a> -“It’s half-past ten, and we are strict with our invalids. Here is nurse -now. I’ll come up with you and see that you are comfortable.”</p> - -<p>No one could have said that there was any creature comfort lacking in -Mrs. Thornton’s reception at Compton Dally. Captain Thornton, as the -invalid, had a larger room, but Mrs. Thornton’s room, next it, was quite -as charming a one, pink and grey, with old French prints and hangings of -<i>toile de Jouy</i>. She went up to the prints for a moment of silent -appreciation before turning to me with a sigh, half pleasure and half -wistfulness.</p> - -<p>“How lovely everything is here! Papa would have been in rapture over -those Cochins. I shall enjoy my sleep to-night.” And then,—it was her -only sign of awareness,—“I suppose I’m to be allowed to go and say -good-night to Clive when nurse has done with him.”</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p>My study at Compton Dally, where I type and write and do accounts, opens -on the west terrace, and from my bureau I seemed, at most hours of the -days that followed, to have a view of Mollie Thornton’s little figure -wandering, as it were, on the outskirts, not plaintive,—there was never -a touch of plaintiveness,—but passive. With her sewing or knitting or a -book she sat a good deal under the shade of the cedar that stands at the -corner of the terrace, and she spent a good deal of time drifting up and -down the vistas of the lawns and park watching birds, a binocular in her -hand. She was certainly a most comfortable person to relegate, since she -never looked melancholy and usually contrived to seem occupied, and -Vera, when she passed behind her on the terrace on her<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> way to the -dream-garden, Captain Thornton beside her, would pause and put her hand -on her shoulder and say, “Happy, dear?” in the most dulcet tone. And -when Mrs. Thornton, lifting those meditative eyes, answered, “Yes, thank -you,” Vera, all bland benevolence, would say, “That’s right,” and pass -on. Leila Travers-Cray and Lady Dighton sometimes exchanged a few -friendly remarks with her, and she read the morning papers to Colonel -Appleby when his eyes hurt him; but she was relegated far, far away, as -completely as any human being could be who could in any way count as a -guest.</p> - -<p>I was very busy and had not much time to be with her, though all the -time I had was hers; but I knew accurately what she was feeling. I -related it always with that dreadful Victoria platform, with those -moments of pain and yet of rapture which we had both known, when we had -felt ourselves, in our suffering, stand for England, lifted up in -accepting sacrifice to the august and beautiful spirit that claimed our -dearest. One would expect, after that transcendent suffering, to find as -transcending a joy; but how was joy possible to a young wife caught into -what might be to her husband a fairyland or a paradise, but to her was a -cruel and complicated machine where her only part was to turn round with -the other wheels and pretend to like it? I knew that it must not be -taken too seriously. It was only to last for six weeks, and then she -would have her Clive back again; yet while it lasted it must make the -months of suffering passed through seem happy by comparison. There had -then been nothing between them but distance and the fear of death; and -now everything<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> was between them—everything Vera stood for; her house, -her friends, her smile, her pearls, her dream-garden.</p> - -<p>On morning after morning I saw Vera leading him away to it, with her -armful of books, and Chang, her Pekinese, trotting at her heels. I -perfectly understood Vera’s state of mind in regard to Captain Thornton. -There was no occasion for commonplace jealousy. He merely made her feel -cheerful and rejuvenated. Everything she had to show and tell him was -new to him. She became new to herself, poor old Vera! and gained from -the quiet regard of his sane and simple eyes—handsome eyes under -straight, dark brows—a sense of freshness and worth in everything. She -liked him better than any of the wounded heroes she had yet had. Some of -them had been merely stupid, and one or two had been gloomy, sardonic -men—men of her own world, to whom nothing she had to say would seem -new. Clive Thornton was neither stupid nor sardonic, and he was simple -enough to accept Vera’s fancy tricks—her talk of dreaming dreams and -solitude—as part of an angel’s manner, and he was just clever enough to -be able to appreciate anything she had to say. I could quite see how -endearing Vera must find his steady gaze and his considering silences. -Even with my vigorous espousal of his wife’s side I never felt angry -with him. His not seeing that she was unhappy was part of the same -innocence that made him not see that Vera was a cat. Mollie, besides, -took quite as much care to conceal her unhappiness as Vera to behave -like an angel. It never crossed his mind that his wife was relegated; it -never crossed his mind that they were separated. He did not<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> feel -separated; they were both, as far as he knew, in fairyland together. And -yet I knew it might not all be so trivial and transient as it seemed. A -new standard was being formed for him; a new idea of what it was to be -an angel. It was possible that all unconsciously he would no longer -think of Mollie as one when he left Compton Dally; and when I took this -in I began to gather up my weapons.</p> - -<p>I found Mollie one afternoon sitting on the bench under the willow-tree -where we had had our first talk. She had her knitting, but her hands -were still, and she was gazing before her at the water. If she were not -a tragic figure, it was only because there are some things sadder than -tragedy. She had faced everything, been through everything, she had gone -down into the Hades where so many of us were still living, and now she -found herself baulked and menaced by commonplace daylight. Tragedy is, -in some ways, an easy thing to bear.</p> - -<p>“Well, what are you doing here by yourself?” I asked her, advancing. -There was a look on her face, startled and steadied, that showed me what -she had been thinking about in the fancied security of her solitude. But -she managed at once the vague smile that concealed so much, and said -that she had been, as usual, resting. “I seem to find out every day more -and more how tired I was,” she added.</p> - -<p>“You didn’t care to go with the others, motoring?” I took my place -beside her. “You’d have liked Marjorams. It’s a lovely old place. Some -people think it beats Compton Dally, though, naturally, I’m not one of -them.”</p> - -<p>“I’m sure you’re not,” said Mollie, laughing a<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> little. “That was one of -the things that first struck me about you—how you loved it. I felt that -you were a fiercely loyal person.”</p> - -<p>“I think I am—narrow loyalties, but fierce ones,” I said. “But you -haven’t answered my question.”</p> - -<p>“About motoring? I don’t care much about it, you know. And there really -wasn’t room enough for me.”</p> - -<p>I knew there hadn’t been; but I was deliberately eschewing tact.</p> - -<p>“Has Captain Thornton gone?” I inquired, knowing, also, that he hadn’t.</p> - -<p>“No; Lady Vera is reading to him in the flagged garden,” said Mollie in -the voice that showed me how little she had to learn about spiritual -control. “Lady Vera is going to take him out for a run in her two-seater -before dinner. He enjoys that a great deal more than the big car.”</p> - -<p>“It’s far pleasanter, certainly,” I agreed. And I went on: “They are -reading, you mean, in the dream-garden. You mustn’t forget that it’s a -dream-garden—where one goes to be alone.”</p> - -<p>She looked round at me quickly, and after a moment I saw that she -faintly coloured. She said nothing, leaving it to me to follow up my -graceless gibe. I was quite ready to follow it up.</p> - -<p>“As a matter of fact,” I said, knitting the loops along the side of my -heel, “Vera hardly ever is alone there. It’s always, with Vera, a -<i>solitude à deux</i>. She’s not at all the sort of woman for real solitude. -She is the sort of woman who likes to feel, or, rather, to look lonely -and not to be alone.”</p> - -<p>To this, after a pause, Mollie said: -<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> -“She is very charming; Clive finds her very charming.” And, forced to -it, apparently, by my crudity, she added, “Aren’t you fond of her, -then?”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m not; not particularly,” I said. “Especially not just now. Vera -is not at her best, to my mind, when she is being angelic to young -married men.”</p> - -<p>Mollie Thornton now blushed deeply.</p> - -<p>“I am perfectly contented that she should be angelic to Clive,” she -said.</p> - -<p>“You are very loyal,” I returned. “But you’ll own that he is getting -more out of it than you are. It’s a place, Compton Dally, for wounded -heroes rather than for a wounded hero’s wife.”</p> - -<p>“Do you mean,” she asked after a moment, “that I oughtn’t to have come?” -She had indeed owned to everything in the bewilderment of the question. -I laughed at it.</p> - -<p>“Oughtn’t to have been with your husband at a time like this! Even Vera -could hardly ask that, could she? And that’s my quarrel with her; that -it’s the time of all times that you should be together and that she -never lets you see him, practically.”</p> - -<p>She looked away, and after a moment I saw that her eyes had filled with -tears.</p> - -<p>“He hasn’t an idea of it,” she said at last.</p> - -<p>“That fact doesn’t make you happier, does it?”</p> - -<p>“He thinks I’m as happy as he is. He thinks that we are together in it -all, and that she is an angel to me, too,” said Mollie. “She always is -an angel to me when she sees me.”</p> - -<p>“All men are rather stupid when it comes to knowing whether their wives -are happy,” I remarked.<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> “I think your Clive is a great dear; but I like -you best because you see things he doesn’t. You, for instance, see that -Vera isn’t an angel, though she may look like one.”</p> - -<p>“He has no reason to think anything else, has he?” said Mollie, and I -saw that I had brought her to the point to which I had intended to bring -her. “I don’t let him guess that I’m not happy; it would be horrid of me -if I did, for it would only mean that he’d feel at once that we must go -away, and all this loveliness would be over for him. A stuffy little -flat in Bayswater isn’t a very alluring alternative; and that’s where -we’d have to go—to my aunt’s—till Clive was better.”</p> - -<p>“How you’d love the stuffy flat! How glad you’d be to be there with him! -And, to do him justice, how happy he’d be there with you! He will be in -a month’s time. The only question is, the month. No, Vera isn’t an -angel. If she were an angel, she’d have seen to it that you were happy -here, too. But when it comes to being nice to other women,—really nice, -I mean,—she can be a cat. And what I’d like very much to see now is -what she’d make of it if you could show her that you could look like an -angel, too. It’s so much a matter of looks.”</p> - -<p>“Make of it? But I couldn’t look like an angel.”</p> - -<p>“You could look like a rival; that’s another way of doing it. You could -look like another woman of her own sort. You could make her see you. She -simply doesn’t see you now. I suspect that if Vera saw you and saw that -you were charming, she’d show her claws. I’d like Captain Thornton to -see her showing her claws.”</p> - -<p>In silent astonishment, her blue eyes fixed upon me, Mollie gazed.<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a></p> - -<p>“No, I don’t hate Vera, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I said. “I -like you, that’s all, and I don’t intend that she shall go on making you -unhappy.”</p> - -<p>“But I don’t want Clive made unhappy,” Mollie said. “I can’t imagine -what you mean; but, whatever it is, I don’t want it. I couldn’t bear all -this to be spoiled for him. I couldn’t bear it not to be always, for -him, a paradise.”</p> - -<p>It was my turn to gaze at her, and I gazed penetratingly.</p> - -<p>“And what if it all came to mean that you yourself, because of it, were -never to be more to him than a second-rate paradise? What if she were to -spoil you for him?”</p> - -<p>I brought out the cruel questions deliberately, and for a moment Mollie -faced them and me.</p> - -<p>“Why do you say that? How cruel to say that!” she murmured, and then -suddenly she bowed her head upon her hands. “It’s been my terror. I’m -ashamed of myself for thinking it. And now—you see it!”</p> - -<p>I put my arm around her shoulders.</p> - -<p>“I’m not cruel. I only want us to see things together. I don’t really -think they’d ever come to that; and, at all events, he would never know -that they had.”</p> - -<p>“But I should,” Mollie said. -<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> -“Yes, you would. And it’s horribly true that real things can be spoiled -and blighted by false things. I’ve often seen it happen. You do see the -danger, and you must take up the burden, my dear, of being cleverer than -your husband, and save him along with yourself. If Vera were what she -looks and seems to him, he might be right in feeling that he found in -her something he couldn’t find in you. You must show him that she isn’t -what she looks and seems and you must show him that you can be a -first-rate paradise, too.”</p> - -<p>“In a little flat in Bayswater! On a chicken-farm! No, it can’t be done. -Paradises of this sort don’t grow in such places,” poor Mollie moaned.</p> - -<p>“You can keep up the real paradise in them—the one he has already—when -you get there. The point is that you must show him now that you can look -like this one here. And the way to look it is to dress it. I’m sure -you’ve realized the absolutely supreme importance of dress for women of -the paradise type—the women you see here, all these sweet ministering -angels to the Tommies and the young husbands. I don’t mean to say that, -with the exception of Vera, they’re not as nice as you are in spite of -being well dressed; but I do mean that if they dressed as you do they’d -not be women of the paradise.”</p> - -<p>Mollie’s hands had fallen, and she was gazing again with eyes childlike, -astonished, and trusting.</p> - -<p>“But, Judith, what do you mean?” she asked. “Dress? Of course you all -dress beautifully. Haven’t I loved simply looking at you all, as if -you’d been the most exquisite birds? But how could I do it? I haven’t -the money; I never have had. If one has no money, one must be either -æsthetic or dowdy, and I’ve always prefered to be dowdy.” -<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> -“Yes, I saw that; I liked you for that. There’s hope for the dowdy, but -none for the æsthetic; the one is humble, and the other is complacent. -Your clothes express renunciation simply—and the summer sales. But -though it is a question of money, some women who have masses of money -never learn how to dress. They remain mere dressmakers' formulas; and -others, with very little, can’t be passed by. They count anywhere. -You’ve noticed my clothes. I’ve hardly any money, yet I’m perfect. All -my clothes mean just what I intend them to; just as Vera’s mean what she -intends, and Mrs. Travers-Cray’s and Lady Dighton’s, and Milly’s, for -Milly already is as clever as possible at knowing her thing. But you’ve -abandoned the attempt to intend. You’ve sunk down, and you let the winds -rake over you. You’ve always made me think of a larkspur, that blue and -silver kind, all pensive grace and delicacy; but you’re a larkspur that -hasn’t been staked. Your sprays don’t count; they tumble anyhow, and no -one sees your shape or colour. Last night, for instance—that -turquoise-blue chiffon: not turquoise, and not that sort of chiffon.”</p> - -<p>“I know it. I hated it,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Of course you did, and so does any one who looks at you in it.”</p> - -<p>“But I couldn’t afford the better qualities,” she appealed. “And in the -cheaper ones I couldn’t get the blue I wanted, the soft Japanese blue.” -<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a></p> -<p>“No, you couldn’t. And you thought it wouldn’t show if you had it made -up on sateen. It always does show. No, it needs thought and time and -computing, too much time, too much thought, to say nothing of too much -money for many women, of course; for them it wouldn’t be worth it. There -are other things to do than to live in paradise. But for you it is worth -it; to show him that you can look like an angel, and to show him that -Vera can look like a cat. No, <i>I’ll</i> show him; mine is the -responsibility. It’s worth it, at all events, to me. I’ll put in the -stakes, and tie you and loop you and display you. You’ll see. I told you -I’d a clever little dressmaker. That’s an essential. And we’ll scrape up -the money. You shall be dressed for once as you intend.”</p> - -<p>She was bewildered, aghast, tempted, and, on the top of everything, -intensely amused. Her face was lighted as I’d never seen it before with -pure mirth, and it looked like still, silver water that becomes suddenly -glimmering, quivering, eddying, and sunlit. She was charming thus -lighted. It was a sort of illumination of which Vera’s face is -incapable; her gaiety is always clouded with irony.</p> - -<p>“It is all too kind, too astonishing, too funny for words,” Mollie said. -“Of course I should love to be well dressed for once, and I can’t see -why I shouldn’t avail myself of your little dressmaker now,—especially -now, since, as you tell me, I offend through my dowdiness. And I do -really need some new clothes. I’m wearing out my trousseau ones, you -know. Yes; wasn’t it a horrid little trousseau? But, don’t you see,” and -the sunlight faded, “I can’t be a real, not a real angel, not a real -paradise. It’s much deeper. It’s a question of roots. It’s the way they -smile, the way they walk, the way they know what they want to say and -what they don’t want to say.”</p> - -<p>I nodded. “You know, too, and you’d say it, if people saw you and cared -to hear what you said.”</p> - -<p>“That would help, of course. I’ve never felt so stupid in my life as -here. But, oh, it’s deeper!” said Mollie.<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a> “I don’t belong to it. How -they all make me feel it! I’m an outsider; and why should I pretend not -to be?”</p> - -<p>“It wouldn’t be pretending anything to dress as you’d like to dress. No -one who <i>sees</i> is an outsider now a days, if they can contrive to make -themselves seen. That’s the whole point. And there’s nothing you don’t -see. You see far more than Vera does. Don’t bother about the roots. Take -care of the flowers, and the roots will take care of themselves; that’s -another modern maxim for you. Your flowers are there, and all that we -need think of now is how to show them. Wait. You’ll see. We’ll go to -London to-morrow,” I said; “and this very evening we’ll have a talk -about your hair.”</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p>You may be sure that I was on the spot to see a week or so later my -larkspur’s début as an angel. We were all assembled in the drawing-room -before dinner, and she was a little late, as I, not she, had intended -that she should be. It was precisely the moment for a mild sensation. -The day had been hot and long. Everybody, apart from being anxious,—for -everybody was anxious, Sir Francis and Mrs. Travers-Cray with sons at -the front and Lady Dighton’s husband in the Dardanelles—apart from that -ever-present strain, everybody to-day was a little jaded, blank, and -tired of one another. There reigned, as a symptom, that silence that in -the moments before dinner falls sometimes upon people who know each -other too well for surmise or ceremony. They stood about looking at the -evening newspapers; they picked up a book; they sat side by side, -knitting without speaking. Vera, sunken in a deep chair near my sofa, -yawned wearily. No one, in fact, had anything to look to before bedtime -except the stimulant of the consommé or a possible surprise in the way -of sweets.<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a></p> - -<p>I had known that I could count upon Mollie not to be self-conscious when -she appeared in her new array, but I hadn’t counted upon such complete -and pensive simplicity. Her eyes were on me as she entered, her husband -limping behind her, and they seemed to ask me, with a half-wistful -amusement, if she came up to my expectations. She far surpassed them. I -never saw a woman to whom it made more difference. “It,” on this -occasion, was blue—the blue of a night sky and the blue of a sky at -dawn, the blue, too, of my larkspurs, lapping at the edges here and -there, as delicately as filaments of cloud crossing the sky, into white. -It made one think, soft, suave triumph that it was, of breezes over the -sea at daybreak and of a crescent moon low on a horizon and of white -shores and blue Grecian hills; at least it made me think of these -things, it and Mollie together; and with it went the alteration of her -hair—bands of folded gold swathed round and round her little head. No -one but myself had ever seen before that Mollie had the poise and -lightness of a Tanagra figure nor that the shape of her face was curious -and her eyes strange and her skin like silver; but I knew, as she -advanced down the long room, that Vera, sunken in her chair, saw it all -at last, drank in every drop of it, with an astonishment that, though it -expressed itself in no gesture, I was able to gauge from her very -stillness, her concentration of stillness, as she watched the relegated -becoming visible at last. It’s not pleasant for anybody to have to own -that they’ve been blind and made a mistake, and Vera was specially fond -of discovering oddity and charm and of claiming and displaying and -discussing a discovery. And here was oddity and charm which<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a> she had not -only failed to discover, but had helped to obscure. Mollie was indeed -visible, and every eye was on her as she drifted quietly forward in the -evening light and sat down beside me. She was mine, and no one else’s; -that was quite evident, too.</p> - -<p>That Captain Thornton had received something of a revelation was also -evident, though it had not probably amounted to more than seeing, and -saying, that Mollie was looking awfully well; but it expressed itself in -the fact that, instead of joining Vera, as was his wont, he came and sat -down next to Mollie on my sofa. We began to talk, and, though the -watching pause was prolonged for yet another moment, the others then -began to talk, too. It was as if, not quite knowing what had happened to -them, they were all a little cheered and exhilarated; as if they’d had -their consommé and as if the sweet had been altogether a surprise. A -spectacle of any sort has this effect upon a group of jaded people. Only -Vera kept her ominous silence.</p> - -<p>Dinner was announced, and we all got up. Percival, with a new alacrity, -approached Mollie,—he almost always had Mollie,—the others paired off -as usual, and Vera rose to Captain Thornton’s arm. It was then that she -said, smiling thoughtfully upon Mollie:</p> - -<p>“Aren’t you doing your hair in a new way, dear?”</p> - -<p>I saw from Mollie’s answering smile that she was still ingenuous enough -to hope that she might win Vera’s approval with that of the others, the -hope, too, that while Clive might think of herself as a first-rate -angel, he should never see Vera as a cat.<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a></p> - -<p>“It is new,” she said. “I’ve just learned how to; Judith showed me. Do -you like it?”</p> - -<p>Leaning on Captain Thornton’s arm, Vera, with gently lifted brows, -rather sadly shook her head.</p> - -<p>“I suppose I don’t care about fashions. It’s very fashionable, isn’t it? -But I loved so that great, girlish knot. People’s way of doing their -hair is part of their personality to me. Judith cares so much about -fashion, I know. Do you care about fashion, Captain Thornton? Do you -like this fashionable way? You know, I can’t help always thinking that -it makes women’s heads look like cheeses; in napkins, you -know—Stiltons.”</p> - -<p>It was the first scratch. Mollie, though with a little startled glance, -took it with all mildness, making no comment as Percival led her away, -Percival remarking that it was, he thought, a ripping way of doing her -hair; and I, as I went out manless, heard Captain Thornton, behind me, -saying, in answer to Vera’s murmurs:</p> - -<p>“Yes; I see; I see what you mean. But, do you know, all the same I think -it’s most awfully becoming to Mollie. It brings out the shape of her -face so.”</p> - -<p>“What a <i>dear</i> little face it is!” said Vera, rapidly leaving the -cheese.</p> - -<p>It all worked like a stealing spell. There was nothing marked or sudden -in it. No one, I think, except Vera, was aware that his or her attitude -to little Mrs. Thornton had changed. She had become visible, that was -all, and they became aware that she was not only worth looking at, but -worth talking to. At dinner that night old Sir Francis fixed his -eye-glass to observe her more than once and after dinner he joined her -in the drawing-room<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> and talked with her till bedtime. It turned out -then that he had known her father and actually possessed one of his -pictures; had been a great admirer. Next morning he was walking with her -on the terrace before breakfast. Mollie in a blue lawn, as sprightly as -it was demure, her casque of golden hair shining in the sunlight. Lady -Dighton asked her that afternoon to come motoring with her and the -Tommies, and in the evening I heard Mrs. Travers-Cray, while she and -Mollie wound wool together, telling her about her two boys at the front. -The only person who didn’t see more of Mollie was Captain Thornton; but -that, I felt sure, was because Vera was determined that he shouldn’t.</p> - -<p>It was not for a day or two that I was able to compare notes with -Mollie.</p> - -<p>“Well,” I said, joining her on the terrace before dinner, “<i>ça y est</i>.”</p> - -<p>“It’s extraordinary,” said Mollie. “Everything is different. I myself am -different. I feel, for one thing, as if I’d become clever to match my -clothes. It would be almost humiliating to have the mere clothes make so -much difference and every one change so to me unless I could really feel -that I’d changed, too.”</p> - -<p>“You’re staked. I told you how it would be.”</p> - -<p>“And I owe it all to you. It’s a wonderfully sustaining feeling to be -staked; secure, peaceful. Such a funny change, Judith, is little Milly! -Have you noticed? She came up to me when I was walking this afternoon -and linked her arm in mine, and in ten minutes was confiding in me all -about her perplexed love-affairs, as if we’d been old friends.” -<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a> -“Yes, she would. She loves to tell people about her love-affairs.”</p> - -<p>“But I couldn’t have imagined that she was really so ingenuous; for, in -a sense, she is ingenuous.”</p> - -<p>“Exceedingly ingenuous when she isn’t exceedingly sophisticated; I think -one often sees the mixture. The only thing you must be prepared for with -the Milly type is that in a week’s time she may forget that she ever -confided in you and, almost, that she ever knew you. Her ingenuousness -is a form of presumptuousness.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I think I saw that. I’m beginning to see so many things—far more -things than I’ll ever have use for on a chicken-farm, Judith.” And -Mollie laughed a little.</p> - -<p>“And what does your husband say?” I asked.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ve not seen much of him, you know. But I’m sure he likes it -awfully, the way I look.”</p> - -<p>“Only Vera won’t let him get at you to tell you so.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, he sees enough of me to tell me so,” said Mollie, smiling: “only it -takes him time to come to the point of saying things, and it’s true that -we haven’t much time.”</p> - -<p>“And she hasn’t given you any more scratches before him?”</p> - -<p>“Not before him.” Mollie flushed a little. “It <i>was</i> a scratch, wasn’t -it? I don’t think he saw that it was.”</p> - -<p>“He will see in time. And it’s worth it, isn’t it, since it’s to make -him see?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I can bear it. She’s rather rude to me now when he isn’t there, -you know; but it’s really less blighting to have some one see you enough -to be rude to you than to see you so little that they are affectionate. -Yet I hope she won’t be too rude.”</p> - -<p>“She can hardly bear it,” I said.<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a></p> - -<p>It was the next morning that Vera showed me how little she was able to -bear it. She had kept me singularly busy, as if afraid that I might wave -a magic wand even more transformingly, and she came into the study where -I was writing invitations for a garden-fête in aid of the Red Cross -fund, and after giving me very dulcetly a long list of instructions, she -went to the window and looked out for some silent moments at Mollie -sauntering up and down with Sir Francis under the blue bubble of her -parasol.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you dressed her when you took her up to town that day,” she -then remarked.</p> - -<p>I had wondered how long Vera could keep under cover and I was pleased to -see her emerge.</p> - -<p>“Well, hardly that,” I said, marking off with my pen the names of the -people on my list who were away and not to be counted on for help with -the bazaar. “She badly needed some clothes and couldn’t afford expensive -places; so I took her to my little woman. She was able to carry out -Mollie’s ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, hasn’t she? She knows -so exactly what suits her.”</p> - -<p>“Carry out her ideas? She hasn’t an idea in her head. Carry out yours, -you mean, you funny creature. I can’t conceive why you took the pains to -dress up the deadly little dowd.” Vera drummed with her fingers on the -window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and -they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray, -sweet, impassive, honey-coloured woman, was one of the few people for -whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard.</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’re mistaken there, Vera, just as you’ve been mistaken about her -looks,” I said, all dispassionate<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> limpidity. “She has heaps of ideas, I -can assure you, and I saw it from the beginning; just as I saw that she -was enchanting looking.”</p> - -<p>“Enchanting! Help! Help! That little skim-milk face, with those great -calf’s eyes! Who is the poor dear martyr thing who carries her eyes on a -plate? St. Lucia, isn’t it? She makes me think of that—as much -expression. You may have succeeded in making her less of a dowd, but -you’ll never succeed in making her less of a bore.”</p> - -<p>“Well, Mrs. Travers-Cray doesn’t find her a bore,” I remarked, casting a -glance of quiet, satisfied possessorship at the group outside.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Leila always was an angel,” said Vera, “and your little protégée -has made a very determined set at her.”</p> - -<p>“Sir Francis is an angel, too, then. He delights in her; that’s -evident.” It was perhaps rather indiscreet of me to goad Vera like this, -but I could not resist taking it out of her and rubbing it into her, and -I knew that Sir Francis would vex her almost as much as Mrs. -Travers-Cray. “And look at Milly,” I added. “You can’t say that Milly is -an angel. The fact is that Mrs. Thornton is a very charming young woman, -and that if you don’t see it you are the only person who doesn’t.”</p> - -<p>“Another person who doesn’t see it is her husband,” said Vera. She was -determined not to show that she was angry, but I could see how angry she -was.<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> “Sir Francis, of course, old goose, thinks any one charming if they -are young and dress well and look at him with appealing eyes. It is her -husband I’m really sorry for. It’s evident that he never spoke to a -civilized woman in his life till he came here. He doesn’t show much -signs of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It’s -pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first -curate’s daughter they find round the corner. And now that she’s pushing -herself forward like this, he is done for.” Vera, I saw, was very angry -to be goaded so far.</p> - -<p>“Surely she is the more interesting of the two,” I blandly urged. -“Neither of them has a spark of ambition if it comes to pushing; they’ll -be quite happy on their chicken-farm. But if it were a question of -getting on and getting in with the right people, it would, I imagine, be -she rather than he who would count. This last day or two has made that -evident to my mind. In her soft, strange way little Mollie is unique, -whereas he is only an honest young soldier, and there are thousands more -just like him, thank goodness!”</p> - -<p>Vera at this turned her head and looked at me for a moment. After all, -even if I wasn’t angry, I, too, had given myself away. And it evidently -pleased her to recognize this—to recognize that she wasn’t being -worsted merely by Mollie’s newly revealed charm, but by my diplomacy as -well. And it is rather a good mark to Vera, I think, that I don’t -believe it ever crossed her mind for a moment that she had the simplest -method of speedy vengeance in her hands—had simply to send me packing. -Of course we should both have known that to use such a method would have -been to reveal one’s self as crude and vulgar; yet a cattish woman who -is very angry may easily become both. Vera didn’t. There are things I -always like about her.</p> - -<p>She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling -with cousinly good-humour:<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a></p> - -<p>"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that, -Judith darling—how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he doesn’t. -You are so essentially a woman’s woman, aren’t you? I suppose it’s just -because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don’t feel -drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you, -of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their -hair and the colour of their ties. You’re a first-rate woman’s woman, I -grant you, and you’re very clever and you’ve succeeded in foisting your -little friend on silly Sir Francis and on Leila Travers-Cray, and it’s -all rather dear and funny of you, and I’ve quite loved watching it all -and seeing you at work; but you won’t succeed in foisting Mrs. Thornton -on her husband, and he’ll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out -whether he’s anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found -him,"—and Vera now spoke with a simple candour,—“quite, quite a dear; -with a great deal in him—sensitiveness, tact, flavour. So much could -have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and -started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who doesn’t -know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? No; -I’m afraid Mrs. Mollie, after she’s left your hands, Judith dear, will -tumble quite, quite flat again. <i>Would</i> you mind, darling, getting all -the invitations off to-day? We mustn’t be slipshod about it. And don’t -forget to write to the merry-go-round man, and to Mark Hammond to see if -he’ll sing.” So, having delivered what she hoped might be a somewhat -stinging shaft at my complacency, Vera trailed away.<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a></p> - -<p>If I hadn’t so goaded her I don’t believe, really, that she’d have taken -the trouble that she did take to prove herself right and me wrong. There -had been, before this, little conscious malice or intended unkindness. -But now the claws were out. During the next day or two it at once -justified and infuriated me to watch the manifold little slights and -snubs of which poor Mollie was the victim, the dexterity with which, -while seeming all sweetness, Vera essayed to belittle and discompose -her, to display her as ignorant or awkward or second-rate. Only a woman -can be aware of what another woman is accomplishing on these lines, and -though Captain Thornton once or twice showed a puzzled brow, her skill -equalled her malice, and he never really saw. I was prepared for it when -Mollie came to my study one morning and shut the door and said:</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid I can’t stand it any longer, Judith.”</p> - -<p>“It has been pretty bad,” I said. “She’s been so infernally clever, -too.”</p> - -<p>“Our time is really nearly up,” said Mollie, “and I’m trying to think of -some excuse for getting Clive to feel we’d better go before it comes. -Only now she’s telling him that I am jealous of her.”</p> - -<p>Pen in hand, I leaned back and looked up at my poor little accomplice. -This, I recognized, was indeed Vera’s trump-card, but I certainly hadn’t -foreseen that she would use it.</p> - -<p>“Has he told you so?” I asked. -<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> -“Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t, could he? But I know it. Men are very -transparent, aren’t they, Judith? He is always urging me to see more of -her, and telling me that she is so kind, so clever, such a dear, and -that I’d really think so, too, if I’d try to see more of her. And when -I say that I’m sure she is, and that I hope I shall see more of her, he -thinks—I can see it—that I’m only playing up, and between us, her and -me, he is rather wretched and uncomfortable. What shall I do, Judith? -You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures, -she was really sneering at father’s, and when I tried to -answer,—because I felt I had to answer about that,—making me seem so -rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he didn’t -understand. And it’s all the time like that. I have to pretend not to -see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns -everything against me.”</p> - -<p>“Be patient. Give her a little more time,” I said. “She’ll run to earth -if you give her a little more time.”</p> - -<p>“But it is so horrid, between Clive and me, Judith: if I say what I -think to him, he will only see it as jealousy, so even with him I have -to pretend, and it makes me feel as if I were growing to be like her, -and I can’t bear it.”</p> - -<p>I meditated while poor Mollie dried her eyes, to which the irrepressible -tears had risen. “Ask him if he can’t arrange for you to see more of -her,” I said presently.</p> - -<p>She looked at me with a general trust, yet a particular scepticism.</p> - -<p>“But she will make that seem as if I were trying to force myself on -them; because she’s always with him, isn’t she?” -<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a> -“Only now because she keeps him, not because he wants to stay. I’m quite -sure that he wants to be more with you. I think you can manage it, -Mollie. Just say, when he next urges: 'Oh, but I’d love to, Clive. Only -you must tell me when. Perhaps sometime you’d take me to the -dream-garden when you think she’ll be there and that she’d care to have -me, and then, when you get us started, you could leave us. You could go -and take Judith for a stroll.' Something of that sort.”</p> - -<p>She eyed me sadly and doubtfully.</p> - -<p>“I’ll try whatever you tell me to try, but I feel afraid of her. I feel -as if she cared, really cared, to do me harm.”</p> - -<p>“She’s been proved wrong,” I said, “and I’ve rather rubbed it in; but at -the worst, Mollie, she can never harm you now as there was danger of her -doing. It’s better, far better, you’ll own, for your husband to think -you’re jealous and a naughty angel than for him to think you’re a -second-rate one.” With this aphorism, for the time being, she had to be -contented. I myself felt sure that the hour of reckoning was to come.</p> - -<p>It was next afternoon, after lunch, Vera being engaged in the -drawing-room with visitors, that I met Captain Thornton on the lawn with -his wife. Mollie was very large-eyed and rather pale, and I inferred -from her demeanour that she had taken a step or made a move of some -kind.</p> - -<p>“Do come with us, Miss Elliot,” said Captain Thornton. “I’m just taking -Mollie along to the dream-garden. She wants to have a little talk, all -to herself, with Lady Vera, and Lady Vera told me to wait for her there -till these people were gone; so it’s just the thing. And you and I can -leave them together, do you see? People never get really to know each -other unless they are alone together, do they?”</p> - -<p>“No, they don’t,” I replied.<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a> “Though sometimes they never get to know -each other when they are alone together,” I couldn’t resist adding; but -as I saw a slight bewilderment on his honest face I indulged in no -further subtleties, and made haste to add, “Does Vera know that you were -going to arrange a meeting?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, not a bit of it. That’s just the point,” said the guileless young -man. “I want her to think that it’s all Mollie’s doing, you know; -because she’s got it into her head that Mollie doesn’t really care about -her. Funny idea, isn’t it? As if Mollie could be like that to any one -who’s been as kind to us as Lady Vera has! But I’m sure that if they -have a few quiet talks it will all come right. Mollie is so -undemonstrative; I told her that. It needs time for her to get used to -anybody.”</p> - -<p>Mollie, her arm within her husband’s, cast across his unconscious breast -a grave, deep glance upon me as he thus quoted his defence of her. What -was she to do with Vera, the glance perhaps asked me, too, now that she -was to have her? What account of the interview would Vera serve up to -Clive? Was not her last state to be worse than her first? I tried, in my -answering glance, to reassure and sustain, yet I myself felt uncertainty -about this fulfilment of my counsel.</p> - -<p>We reached the dream-garden. Vera and Captain Thornton had been there -for most of the morning, and books and papers were piled on the seat -where the grey and purple cushions denoted attitudes of confident -tête-à-tête.</p> - -<p>Captain Thornton and I talked about the war, and I saw, with a mild, -reminiscent irony, remembering Vera’s sting, that he was perfectly -prepared to give me every opportunity for judging him. I<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> felt, indeed, -though Vera had so absorbed him, that he had never cared to talk about -the war with her. She and the other angels were there to help one to -forget, but with me he was glad to remember. It was I who heard Vera’s -swift footfall approaching. Captain Thornton, stooping to mark out with -books and pencils the plan of a battle, had, I think, almost forgotten -the coming interview, and until Vera appeared among the cypresses, -flushed above her pearls, he remained unaware. She stood there at the -top of the steps for a moment, looking down at us, at Captain Thornton -and me, our heads so close together, and at Mollie in her blue and with -her unrevealing little face, and I saw from her expression, as she took -us all in, that she had not been succeeding so well with Captain -Thornton as Mollie and even I had feared. It was a smouldering -irritation against him that flared up with her anger against Mollie and -me.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” she said, a dreadfully significant monosyllable on Vera’s -competent lips. It expressed surprise and weariness and the slight -embarrassment of the civilized confronted with the barbarian. “Oh!” she -repeated, and she descended the steps, Chang trotting after her with his -countenance of quizzical superciliousness. “I’m so very, very sorry.” -She did not look at any of us now; her voice was exceedingly -inarticulate and exceedingly sweet.<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. -It’s the other gardens that are for my friends. I’m charmed always to -see them there. And there are so many other gardens, aren’t there? But -this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to -be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired.”</p> - -<p>We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those -weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook -them into place.</p> - -<p>“It’s my fault,” Clive stammered. “I mean—I didn’t understand. I -thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know -you better, and I suggested this.”</p> - -<p>Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang -sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. “I’m very, very -sorry,” she gurgled, with oh, such vagueness! “It’s my one corner. My -one place to be alone. I don’t see people here unless I’ve asked them to -come.” She took up a review and opened it, and her eyes scanned its -pages.</p> - -<p>We were dismissed,—“thrown out,” as the Americans say,—and we -retreated up the steps, Mollie helping Clive, and down the flagged path -and out into the lime-tree alley.</p> - -<p>It was a display so complete that it left me, indeed, a little abashed -by the success of my manœuvres, while at the same time I felt that I -mustn’t let Captain Thornton discern the irrepressible smile that -quivered at the corners of my mouth. When we were out on the lawn he -turned his startled eyes on me.</p> - -<p>“Really, you know, I’d no idea, Miss Elliot—what?” He appealed to me.</p> - -<p>“That Vera could lose her temper?” I asked.</p> - -<p>Clive continued to stare.</p> - -<p>“It comes to that, doesn’t it? What else can it mean?” He looked now at -his wife.<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> “To speak like that to you, Mollie! And when she’s been saying -she wanted so awfully to make real friends with you.”</p> - -<p>Mollie, I saw, was dismayed. The triumph had been too complete. She -could not keep up with it.</p> - -<p>“I am sure that Lady Vera is very badly overwrought about something,” -she said. “She wanted particularly to be alone and she found us there, -and it put her on edge.” Actually she was trying to patch up his fallen -angel for him.</p> - -<p>“But she told me to wait there for her.—Sent me off to wait for her -when those people came,” said Clive. “It seems to me that it was you she -minded finding. And yet she’s been going on about your never coming to -talk to her. She’s been going on about it like anything.” He caught -himself up, blushing, and I saw that Vera was all revealed to him. I -hardly needed to pluck another pinion from her, though I didn’t resist -the temptation to do so, saying:</p> - -<p>“You see, Vera is rather jealous. She can’t bear sharing things—her -friends of her dream-garden. She liked to have you there, but she didn’t -like to have Mollie there. Did she tell you she wanted to make friends -with Mollie? She’s never taken any pains to show it, has she?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, please, Judith!” Mollie implored.</p> - -<p>“But he sees it all now, Mollie, so why shouldn’t I say it?” I inquired. -“Her point has been, Captain Thornton, to keep you in and to keep Mollie -out, and she very nearly succeeded in doing it.”</p> - -<p>“Please, Judith! It’s not only that. She’s been such a real friend to -you, Clive! I’m sure she is overwrought about something, and it will be -all right when you next meet her.” But Mollie pleaded in vain.</p> - -<p>“I’m hanged if it will be all right!” said Captain Thornton.<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a></p> - -<p>Vera made no attempt to reinstate herself. It was part of her strength -never to try to recover what was lost. She kept up appearances, it is -true, but that was for her own sake rather than in any hope, or even -wish, to regain his good opinion. When we all met at tea, she came -trailing in, with Chang under her arm, and as she sank into her place, -diffusing the suavest unconsciousness, she said to Mrs. Travers-Cray:</p> - -<p>“Charlie Carlton’s been killed, have you heard? This war is something -more than I can bear.”</p> - -<p>Charlie Carlton, as I knew, was a cousin of the recent callers and a -most remote friend of Vera’s; but it was the best that she could do for -the occasion, and all that she was inclined to do, though a melancholy -smile, as impersonal as it was impartial, was turned more than once on -Captain Thornton and Mollie as she inquired whether they liked sugar in -their tea or had enough cream. She had made their tea for six weeks now, -and after the first week she had never forgotten that they both liked -sugar and both disliked cream. But she thus washed her hands of intimacy -while keeping up the graces of hostess-ship. They might have arrived -that afternoon.</p> - -<p>Mollie and her husband rose beautifully to the situation, for their last -two days at Compton Dally; that is, Mollie rose, for the husband at such -times has only to follow and be silent. I don’t think that she could -have shown a grace and a distance as achieved as Vera’s had it not been -for those charming clothes of hers. You must have something to rise from -if you are to float serenely above people’s heads; otherwise you merely -stand on tiptoe, very uncomfortably. Mollie and Vera might have been<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a> -two silken balloons, passing and repassing suavely in the dulcet summer -air. And on the last day Vera’s sense of dramatic fitness prompted her, -evidently, to the most imperturbable <i>volte-face</i>: she showed to Mollie -a marked tenderness. To Captain Thornton she was kind, perfectly kind, -but that she found him rather dull was evident. It might have been -Mollie with whom she had spent all those hours in the dream-garden.</p> - -<p>“Must you really go, dear?” she asked.</p> - -<p>Mollie said that she was afraid they must. She had heard from her aunt, -who was waiting to take them in, and, owing to all Vera’s kindness, -Clive was now quite strong again. Vera did not insist.</p> - -<p>“I’ve <i>so</i> loved getting to know you!” she said, holding Mollie’s hand -at the door of the motor on the morning of their departure. “It’s been -<i>such</i> a pleasure. You must often, often come to Compton Dally again. -<i>Good</i>-bye, dear!”</p> - -<p>But Mollie knew, and Vera knew that she knew, that never again would -they be asked to Compton Dally. Meanwhile, if the war isn’t over and -Jack hasn’t come back, I’m to go and stay with them next spring on the -chicken-farm.<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a name="EVENING_PRIMROSES" id="EVENING_PRIMROSES"></a> -<img src="images/ill_pg_253-a.jpg" width="450" height="51" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h2>EVENING PRIMROSES</h2> - -<hr /> - -<p class="nind"> -<span class="letra"> -<img src="images/ill_pg_253-b.jpg" -width="150" -height="154" -alt="I" -title="I" -/></span>T had been a hot day and there seemed to be thunder in the air, but she -was afraid there would be no rain that night. The abandoned garden -needed it sadly; though, as she reflected, rain would encourage weeds -rather than the few remaining flowers. Poppies had sown themselves -everywhere, degenerates of the Shirleys which, three years ago, had -spread their silken cups in the large bed at the foot of the lawn. Their -withered stalks cracked beneath her steps in the paths and glimmered -under the unpruned branches of the cordon apple trees. There were -thistles, too, sorrel, and tall nettles, a matted carpet of bindweed and -groundsel in the little kitchen-garden, once so neat, and, of course, as -poor Charlie had predicted, the Michaelmas daisies had eaten up nearly -everything in the herbaceous border. That was one of the last questions -he had written to her: “How are my pink phloxes? Have the Michaelmas -daisies smothered them?” They had. It was the season at which the -phloxes should be in fullest flower, but not one was to be seen; the -dense, fine foliage of the daisies had advanced in a wall of green -nearly to the border’s edge.</p> - -<p><a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a>It was still oppressively warm. A toad hopped indolently away and -paused at the box edging, lying up against it, his front feet extended, -as if so wearied by the heat that he took his chances of discovery. She -stopped to look at the clumsy creature, in which so little of nature’s -accurate grace was expressed; and as she stood there, a sudden rustle in -the box betrayed another inhabitant—this time a baby hedgehog which, -too young for fear, moved busily about among the flat dandelion plants -that rosetted the path, and even, encountering the tips of her shoes, -stopped to examine them carefully before moving on again. The baby -hedgehog would have amused Charlie. He had always been delightful about -animals; he and the boys had always had that great interest in common.</p> - -<p>Yes, the bird-boxes were still there. She could see one in the big apple -tree and one fixed to the porch of the house, under the rose. How well -she remembered the frantic delight that hailed the hatching of the first -brood of tits. And the day when Charlie had deemed it prudent to -withdraw the door for a peep at the beautifully fitted mosaic of bright -little heads and bodies within, lifting up Giles in his holland pinafore -for a long, blissful gaze. Six years ago that must have been.</p> - -<p>The light was altering now, and when she turned at the end of the path, -a great moon had risen across the lane and seemed to hang in the -branches of the walnut tree that grew in the field beyond. A great, -shining, heavy moon, and mournful, it seemed to her; her desolate -thoughts, she was aware, lending their colour to everything. Heavy, -mournful, desolate; that was the rhythm of her own steps passing along -in the twilight, pursued by the<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a> unformulated consciousness that lay -behind all these pictures of the past; pausing at last, as if to let the -dogging sorrow overtake her, as she came to where, near the -summer-house, against the wall, the evening primroses grew.</p> - -<p>It was years since Charlie had first planted them there, and she had -said to herself at the time that they would never be rid of them, -tenacious, recurrent things, sowing themselves patiently, and coming up -loyally even when there was no one to wish them well. She felt touched -by their presence; for though she had always found them untidy and -uninteresting, she saw, really now for the first time, that they could -be beautiful. Homely, loyal flowers; yet—was it the invading sense of -sorrow colouring them, too?—a little uncanny, showing at this neutral -hour of mingled dusk and moonlight their pale, evident gold; becoming -conscious, as it were, becoming personal at the time when other flowers -became invisible. Not that it was a sinister uncanniness; not that of -ghosts; of fairies, rather; the very strangeness, sadness, sweetness of -the moon, to which, from them, she lifted her eyes. And they reminded -her of something, but what, she could not say. Not of Charlie. There had -never been anything strange or sad about Charlie, except the fact, -pursuing her now in his deserted garden, that he was dead and would -never see it again.</p> - -<p>It was a year to-day since he had been killed, and she had come down to -the country with the sense of commemoration. She wanted, alone in the -little place so full of thoughts of him, to find him, to recall him; and -she had been doing that at every turn. Yet the evening primroses shining -there<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a> brought a pang deeper than any vision of him. They, though so -homely, seemed to personify loneliness; they seemed to be missing -something; and although she was desolate because Charlie was dead, -because he would never again delight in his garden, it was, in a sense, -for him rather than for herself that she sorrowed, and, in a sense, she -did not miss him at all.</p> - -<p>She stood still in the path, her hands clasped behind her, her head -bent, a personification of widowhood in her thin black draperies, her -intent, memorial poise. And she could have said of herself with truth -that, during all this year, she had known only a widow’s sad -preoccupations. There had been the settling of business matters; lawyers -and bankers to interview; planning for the boys, with school-masters to -visit; and the tending of bereaved relations—Charlie’s dear old parents -clung to her. But now, on the day of his death, it was as if for the -first time she had had leisure, at last, to realize that, with it all, -she had never had the widow’s heart. She had grieved over him; she had -longed to do all for him that could be done—there was nothing new in -that; but it was far worse than not being heartbroken: it was the sorry -fact that she did not even miss him. He had left, as it were, no -emptiness behind him.</p> - -<p>She had lifted her head and looked round the garden, trying, in the -physical fact of absence, to summon the spiritual void. How he had -planned, dug, planted it; pruned his fruit trees; placed his anemones in -leaf-mould, his bulbs on sand. She saw his kindly, handsome figure -everywhere; his brown cheek, good grey eye, and close-cropped, tawny -hair. A manly, simple creature; the salt of<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> the earth, as honest as the -day—oh, she saw it all; she had said it to herself a hundred times; and -there had, indeed, been nothing one could say against Charlie. But then, -as a wife, there had been nothing to say against her, either; he had -been perfectly happy with her—the happiest creature, even in the manner -of his death. He had been killed instantaneously, while walking, on a -sunny day, beside his men along a road in France. Every letter she had -had from his brother officers over there spoke of his gaiety and good -spirits. The war itself had, on the whole, meant happiness to him, for -all his gravity over certain of its tragedies. But he had been almost as -grave over mischances with his Boy Scouts, and it had all remained for -him an immense, magnificent form of boy-scouting.</p> - -<p>Dear, good Charlie! Yet—was it possible that something of the old -long-conquered exasperation could still, at this hour, thrust itself -into her memories? He had not been quite boyish enough to justify his -lightness and make it loveable. That had been the final fundamental -trouble in their mistaken marriage; she had not been able to mother him. -He had not been appealing, beguiling, endearing, like a child. Not like -a child; not boyish, fatherly, rather; even, playfully didactic, and -assuming always that theirs was a completely reciprocal marital -intimacy. It had not been his fault, of course. She had been too clever -ever to let him guess how stupid she found him. She felt the possessive -arm laid about her shoulders for an evening stroll; saw the wag of his -premonitory finger as he raised himself from a border to call out a -jocose reprimand; heard the chaff with which, before friends, he counted -her mistaken opinions.<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a></p> - -<p>And it had been when they were alone, especially at dinner,—Charlie -across the table from her in his faultless black and white,—that the -pressure of their distance had been most difficult to protect him from. -He talked then, and she had to answer adequately. He was fond of talk, -and, while the most uncritical of Conservatives, was full of solutions -for old ills. He took Trade-Unionists, Home-Rulers, and Dissenters -playfully and held them up to kindly ridicule. “You can laugh most -people out of their nonsense,” was one of Charlie’s maxims; and if they -didn’t respond to the treatment,—he had tried it unsuccessfully on the -village cobbler who preached in the tin chapel on Sunday,—he suspected -them of being rather wicked.</p> - -<p>In the first year of their marriage she had paid him the compliment of -disagreement, or, at least, discrimination. She had, until her marriage, -thought of herself as a Conservative; to be counted one by Charlie -disturbed her sense of rectitude. But Charlie opposed, became puzzled, -and finally aggrieved. He bothered and bothered and argued and argued, -with the air of trying to bring an erring child to reason. “Now look at -it in this light,” he would say. Or, “Try to see the thing squarely, -Rosamund”; and would turn upon her irrelevant batteries from the -<i>Spectator</i>. She had at last the sensation of flying, battered and -breathless, from his platitudes, and found, soon, her only refuge in -duplicity. After that, through all the years of their married life, -Charlie, she knew, thought of their evening hours alone together as -exceedingly pleasant and successful. He wasn’t one of your fellows who -doze over the <i>Field</i> with a cigar after dinner. He had a clever wife -and he appreciated her and<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> was proud—in spite of feminine aberrations -affectionately recognized and checked—of what he called her -“intellects.” He called his father and mother his “respected -progenitors” and his stomach was never other than “Little Mary.” And -while he talked and expounded and made his unexacting jests, Rosamund -knew that her silences had no provocation, her smile no irony.</p> - -<p>So it had gone on—so it might have gone on for the normal span of life. -The only insecurity that had threatened her careful edifice was the -question of the boys. The boys were like herself, or, rather, like her -adored and brilliant father—proud, sensitive, ardent little creatures, -tender-hearted and frightfully intelligent. Physically, too, they were -of a different race from Charlie, with thick brown locks, passionate yet -gentle eyes, and full, small, closely closing mouths. As boys, Charlie -had fairly well understood them,—he got on well with the average -boy,—as persons, never; and though as boys, at least as little boys, -they got on beautifully with him, they had, as persons, almost at once -understood him, even when they were too young to evade or hide from him. -If they had not been so young, they would, already, then, have hurt him -often.</p> - -<p>And for her the boys at once complicated everything. It had been easy, -in one way, to yield in non-essentials, though she was woman enough to -cry her eyes out when Charlie had taken Philip and Giles, at the -earliest age, to have their dear Jeanne-d’Arc heads close-cropped in -pursuit of the ideal of manliness; easy, comparatively, to steel her -heart when timid little Philip, blanched with terror, was made to ride -at six. Charlie had been<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> right about that,—how glad she had been to -own it!—for Philip had, in a week’s time, forgotten his fears. But she -and Charlie had come near quarrelling over Giles’s rag-doll Bessie. -Giles was only three and adored Bessie, and Charlie had tossed her in -the air, mocked her, and held her up by the toe while Giles sobbed -convulsively.</p> - -<p>“Do you really want our boys to be milksops, Rosamund?” he had asked, -as, refusing to argue, she took the doll from him, placed her in Giles’s -arms, and kept them both on her lap, pressed within her arms, her head -bent down over them so that she need not look at her husband. He had -gone away vanquished, and Giles had kept his Bessie, until, in the -course of nature, she had dropped away from him.</p> - -<p>Worse than this came one day when Charlie had found Philip in a corner -writing poetry. He had not been altogether pleased by the children’s -literary tastes. To grind dutifully at Latin and Greek was one thing, -and he was fond of a tag from Tennyson. But he had never cared to read -Keats and Shelley when he was a kid. He took the copy-book out of -Philip’s reluctant hands and, turning from page to page, read out, in -mock-dramatic tones, the derivative, boyish efforts, which yet, to her -ear, had every now and then their innocent, bird-like note of reality.</p> - -<p>“And now this—'To a Skylark,'” said Charlie, laying a restraining, -affectionate hand on Philip’s shoulder, wishing him to rise superior to -vanity and join in the fun, once it was pointed out to him.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“‘Glad creature from the dew upspringing<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And through the sky your path upwinging!’<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">Up, up, pretty creature!”<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a></p> - -<p>Philip, twisting round under his father’s arm, burst into tears of rage, -tore the book from his hand and struck him.</p> - -<p>It had been a terrible moment, and Rosamund, reduced as she almost was -to Philip’s condition, had never more admired her husband, who, turning -only rather pale, had walked away, saying, “I think you’ll be sorry for -that when you think it over, old fellow.” That he had been astonished, -cut to the quick, she had seen, feeling it all for him at the moment of -her deepest feeling for Philip.</p> - -<p>“I’m not sorry! I’m not sorry!” Philip had sobbed, rushing to her arms -and burying his head on her breast. “I’m not sorry! He’s stupid! stupid! -stupid!”</p> - -<p>“Hush, hush,” she had said—what a horrid moment it had been! “That is -wrong and conceited of you, Philip. You must learn to take a little -chaffing. You know how your father loves you.”</p> - -<p>“It’s not conceited! It’s not conceited to care about what one tries to -do. You know it’s not. <i>You’re</i> not stupid!” the boy had sobbed.</p> - -<p>Alas, it had been only four years ago; only a year before the war! Even -then, at nine, Philip had been old enough, when he recovered from his -weeping, to know that he had hurt her most, had made things difficult -for her; and he had been sorry about his father, too, going to him -bravely with a tremulous, “Please forgive me, father.” “That’s all -right, old boy,” Charlie had said. It <i>was</i> all right, too, in a sense. -It left not a trace in the sweetness of Charlie’s nature. It was Philip -who had been shaken, frightened to the very core, by what his own -outburst had revealed to himself and<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a> to her. The boy would always have -felt affection for his father; but he, too, would soon have protected -him; he, too, would hardly miss him.</p> - -<p>The moon had now risen far up out of the walnut branches, and flooded -the garden with sorrowful brightness. Poor, poor Charlie! was that all -it came to, then, for him? this deserted garden and a wife and children -who hardly missed him? Why, was it not the very heart of his tragedy for -her to see that they would be happier without him? “And he <i>was</i> a -dear,” she said to herself, remembering with an almost passionate -determination kind, trustful looks and the happy love of fifteen years -ago.</p> - -<p>She had been standing still all this while, near the evening primroses; -but now, with the great sigh that lifted her breast, she moved forward -again, and a bird, disturbed in its rest, flew out from the thick tangle -of honeysuckle at the entrance to the summer-house, startling her. As -she stopped, her eyes drawn to the spot, she saw, suddenly, that a pale -figure was sitting in the summer-house, closely shrunken to one side; -hoping in its stillness,—that was apparent,—to remain undiscovered. -Ever since she had entered the garden it must have been sitting there; -and ever since she had entered the garden it must have been watching -her. But why? How strange!</p> - -<p>Dispelling a momentary qualm, she stooped her head under the honeysuckle -and entered; and then, clearly visible, with her pale hair and face,—as -pale, as evident as an evening’s primrose,—the girl sitting there, -wide-eyed, revealed, with her identity, that haunting analogy of a -little while ago. Of course, it came in a flash now, that was what they -reminded her of. Long ago she had<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> thought—conceding them their most -lovable association—that Pamela Braithwaite looked like an evening -primrose.</p> - -<p>“My dear Pamela,” she said, almost as gently as she would have said it -to a somnambulist; for, like the flowers, again, she was sad, even -uncanny; although Pamela’s uncanniness too,—sweet, homely -creature,—could never be sinister. She put a hand upon her arm, for the -girl had started to her feet.</p> - -<p>“Oh—do forgive me, Mrs. Hayward!” Pamela gasped. Sad? It was more than -that. She was broken, spent with weeping. “I didn’t know you were -coming. I sit here sometimes in the evenings. I thought you wouldn’t -mind.”</p> - -<p>“My dear child, why should I mind? I’m thankful to you for coming to the -sad little place. It’s much less lonely to think about, for you have -always been so much of our life here.”</p> - -<p>This, she knew, was an exaggeration; but she must be more than kind to -such grief as this: she must find some comfort, if that were possible.</p> - -<p>And to feel herself accepted, welcomed, did give comfort; for, sinking -again on the seat, bending her face on her hands, Pamela sobbed, “Oh, -how kind you are!”</p> - -<p>“Poor child, poor, poor child!” said Rosamund. She was only five years -older, but she felt as a mother might feel towards the stricken girl. -She put an arm around her, murmuring, “Can you tell me what it is? Don’t -cry so, dear Pamela.”</p> - -<p>Pamela Braithwaite had been a girl of eighteen when they had come, in -the first year of their marriage, to Crossfields. The Braithwaites lived -a mile away, near the river, a large, affectionate, desultory<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a> family, -in a large, dilapidated house. Already Pamela mothered the younger -brood, and mothered the widowed father as well—a retired tea-planter, -who had brought from Ceylon some undefined but convenient complaint that -enabled him to pass the rest of his days wrapped in a number of coats, -eating very heartily, and, as he expressed it, “sitting about.” A -peaceful, idle man, legs outstretched in sun or firelight, hat-brim -turned down over his eyes (he had a curious way, even in the house, of -almost always wearing his hat), pipe between his teeth; good-looking, -too, tall and fair, like his daughters, and with a touch in his -appearance, though not in his character, of amicable distinction.</p> - -<p>Pamela, except for a brother already married and in Ceylon, was the -eldest, with a long gap between her and the group of younger brothers, -of whom Rosamund thought mainly as a reservoir of Boy Scouts until they -had had to be thought of as a reservoir of volunteers. There were three -or four younger sisters, too, some of whom had married and some of whom -had gone forth into the world—always with an extreme light-heartedness -and confidence—as companions or secretaries. These again were hardly -individualized in Rosamund’s recollection, except for the fact that, -since Pamela was always making blouses or trimming hats for them, she -had become aware that it was Phyllis who wore pink and Marjory blue.</p> - -<p>But whoever went, Pamela always stayed; and even when the war broke upon -the world, with Frank, the Braithwaite baby, just old enough to enlist, -and Phyllis and Marjory at once enrolling themselves as V.A.D.'s, Pamela -remained rooted.<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a> Who, indeed, had she gone, would have taken care of -Mr. Braithwaite, and of the brothers and sisters home on leave, and of -the garden earnestly dedicated to potatoes, or the small family of -Ceylon nephews and nieces deposited continually in her charge by their -parents?</p> - -<p>Poor little Pamela! She had had a burdened life; the assiduities of -maternity and none of its initial romance. With her large, clear eyes, -very far apart, she had always a wistful look; but it was that of a -child watching a game and waiting for its turn to come in, and no -creature could have given less the impression of weariness or routine. -For she had remained, even at thirty-three, the merely bigger sister; an -atmosphere of schoolroom tea and the nurture of rabbits and guinea-pigs -still hanging about her; her resource and cheerfulness seeming concerned -always with the organizing of games, the care of pets, and the soothing -of unimportant distresses. Tall, in her scant tweed skirts, her -much-repaired white blouse, her slender feet laced into heavy boots, -gardening gloves on her hands, so Rosamund had last seen her, a year -ago, just before Charlie had been killed, when she had straightened -herself from moulding potatoes in the lawn borders and had come forward -with her pretty smile to greet her visitor and take her in to tea. Frank -had been killed since then, as well as Charlie, but at that time, for -both households, the war was splendid adventure rather than sorrow.</p> - -<p>Mr. Braithwaite, in the sunny, shabby drawing-room, had stumbled up -among his wrappings, to point out to her his accurate flags, advancing -or retreating on the many maps that were pinned upon the walls. Frank’s -last letter had been read<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> to her, and Dick’s and Eustace’s; and Pamela -had come in and out, helping the maid with the tea (the Braithwaite -maids were always as cheerful and desultory as the family, and Rosamund -never remembered seeing one of them who had not her cap askew or her -cuffs untied), standing to butter the bread herself, the side of the -loaf before cutting the slice, after her old schoolroom fashion; her -discreet yet generous use of the butter—the crust covered to a nicety -and no lumps on the crumb—seeming to express her, as did the pouring -out of the excellent tea, drawn to a point and never over, and the -pleasant, capacious cups with their gilt rims and the immersed rose -which, as one drank, discovered itself at the bottom.</p> - -<p>A sweet, old-fashioned, homely creature; like the evening primroses; -like them, obliterated, unnoticed in daylight; and like them now, -becoming visible, becoming personal, even becoming tragic at this -nocturnal hour; for was this really Pamela, sweet, prosaic Pamela, -sobbing so broken-heartedly beside her? How meagre, intellectual, and -unsubstantial her own grief seemed to Rosamund as she listened, almost -aghast, her arm about Pamela’s shoulders; and her instinct told her: “It -is a man. It is some one she loves—not Frank, but some one she loves -far more—who is dead. It is something final and fatal that has broken -her down like this.” And aloud she repeated: “Can you tell me, Pamela -dear? Please try to tell me. It may help you to tell.” Her own heart was -shaken and tears were in her own eyes.</p> - -<p>Between her sobs Pamela answered,<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a> “I love him—I love him so much. He is -dead. And sometimes I can’t bear it.”</p> - -<p>Rosamund had never heard of a love-affair. But these years of war had -done many things, had found out even the hidden Pamelas.</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know.—My poor child!—I never heard. Were you engaged?”</p> - -<p>She had Pamela’s ringless hand in hers.</p> - -<p>“No! No! It wasn’t that. No—I’ve never had any one like that. No one -ever knew. He never knew.” Pamela lifted her head. Her face seemed now -only a message emerging from the darkness; shadowed light upon the -shadow, it was expression rather than form. “May I tell you?” she said. -“Can you forgive my telling you—here and now,—and to-night, when -you’ve come to be with him? It was Mr. Hayward I loved. I’ve always -loved him. He has been all my life. Ever since you first came here to -live.”</p> - -<p>Rosamund gazed at her, and through all her astonishment there ran an -undertone of accomplished presage. Yes, that was it, of course. Had she -not been feeling it, seeking it all the evening?—or had it not been -seeking her? Here it was, then, the lacking emptiness. Desolate voids -seemed to open upon her in Pamela’s shadowy eyes. She tightly held the -ringless hand and felt, presently, that she pressed it against her heart -where something pierced her. Was it pity for Pamela? or for Charlie? -This was his; had always been his. And Pamela, who had had nothing, had -lost everything. “My dear!” she murmured.</p> - -<p>“Oh, how kind you are!” said Pamela. She sat quiet, looking down at -their two hands held against Rosamund’s heart. And with all the -austerity of her grief she had never been more childlike in Rosamund’s -eyes. Like a child, once the barriers of<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> shyness were down and trust -established, she would confide everything.</p> - -<p>Rosamund knew how it must help her to confide. “Tell me if you will,” -she said. “I am glad you loved him, if it has not hurt you too much. You -understand, don’t you, that I must be glad—for him?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, oh, yes; I understand. How beautiful of you to see it all!—Even -though it’s so little, it is his; something he did; and so you must -care. But I don’t think there’s much to tell; nothing about him that you -don’t know.”</p> - -<p>“About you, then. About what he was to you.”</p> - -<p>“That would simply be my whole life,” said Pamela. “It’s so wonderful of -you to understand and not to blame me. So many people would have thought -it wrong; but it came before I knew what it was going to be, and I never -can feel that it was wrong. He never knew. And even if he had, it -couldn’t have made any difference. It must be because of that that I can -tell you. If you hadn’t been so happy, if it hadn’t been so perfect—for -you and him—I don’t think that I could have told. I should just have -rushed away when you came in and hidden from you.”</p> - -<p>“Why?” asked Rosamund after a moment. She heard something in her own -voice that Pamela would not hear.</p> - -<p>“I don’t quite know why,” said Pamela; “but don’t you feel it too? -Perhaps if it hadn’t been so perfect, even my little outside love might -have hurt you—or troubled you—to hear about. But I see now that you -are the only person in the world who could care to hear. It is a comfort -to tell you. I am so glad you came.” Pamela turned her eyes<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a> upon her -and it was almost with her smile. “When I see you like this I can -believe that he is here, listening with you, and sorry for me, too.”</p> - -<p>How like an evening primrose she was! Rosamund could see her clearly -now: the candid oval of the face, the eyes, the innocent, child forehead -with thick, fair hair falling across it.</p> - -<p>“Yes. Go on,” she said, smiling back.</p> - -<p>She was not worthy of Pamela, and poor Charlie was not worthy of her; -but no human being is worthy of a flower. And though so innocent, she -was not stupid; subtlety like a fragrance was about her as she said, -“You can comfort me because you have so much to comfort with.”</p> - -<p>“So much grief, or so much remembered happiness?”</p> - -<p>“They go together, don’t they?” said Pamela. “Every sort of fulness. But -I needn’t try to get it clear. You understand. I always thought that -perhaps people who had fulness couldn’t; now I see that I was mistaken.”</p> - -<p>“Have you been very unhappy, dear child?”</p> - -<p>"Until now? While he was here? Oh, no, I have been lonely. Even before -he came, even though my life was so crowded, it was rather lonely. I -never had any one of my own, for myself. But afterwards, even if I felt -lonely, I was happy. At least, after just at first. Because, just at -first, it was miserable, for I couldn’t help longing to see him more and -to have him like me more, and that made me understand that I was in love -with him, and I was frightened. I can’t explain clearly about it, even -to myself. But I was very, very unhappy. Perhaps you remember the time -when I was twenty, and got so run down, and they sent me to<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> Germany to -my old governess—the only time I ever went away from home, out of -England. It was a miserable time. I tried not to think of him and not to -care. But I had to come back, and he was there, and I knew I couldn’t -stop caring, and that all I could do about it was to try to be better -because of him,—you know,—and make people happier, and not think of -myself, but of him and them. And everything changed after that. I was -never frightened any more, and though perhaps it wasn’t exactly -happiness, it was, sometimes, I believe, almost better. I can’t explain -it, but what I mean is in some poetry. I never cared much about poetry -till he came. Then I seemed to understand things I’d never understood -before, and to feel everything that was beautiful. -<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a> -“You remember how dear he was to us all—to the boys and me. I always -shared in everything they did. Every bit of this country is full of him; -I could never bear to go away and leave it. I want always to stay here -till I die.—Flowers and birds—wasn’t he wonderful about them? And our -walks in the woods! He saw everything, and made us see it. I never woke -in the morning without thinking, Will he come to-day? What will he say -and do? I was never tired of watching him and listening to him. All his -little ways—you know. When I pleased him,—sometimes I saw the bird we -were watching for first, or caught my trout well,—it was a red-letter -day. And in big things—to feel I should have pleased him if he’d known. -It was he who helped me in every way, without knowing it. And I took -more and more joy in you. At first I had felt dreadfully shy with -you—and afraid of you. You were so clever, with all your books and -music and friends, and you didn’t seem to need anything. But afterwards -you were so kind, that, though I was always shy, I was not frightened -any longer. I used to think about you so much, and imagine what he felt -about you—and you about him.—You won’t mind my saying it, I know. -Perhaps you remember the way I used so often, in the evenings, to walk -past with the children, and say good-night over the wall. That was to -see you and him walking together. You were so beautiful! You are far and -far away the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. I always noticed -everything you wore, and how your hair was done. I was glad when you -took it down from the knot and had it all at the back, as you do now. -And the lovely pale blue dress, with the little flounces—do you -remember?—a summer dress of lawn. I did love that. And the white linen -coats and skirts, and the big white hat with the lemon-coloured bow. -Your very shoes—those grey ones you always had, with the low heels and -little silver buckles. No one had such lovely clothes. And the way you -poured out tea and looked across the table at one. Always like a -beautiful muse—you don’t mind my saying it?—a little above everything, -and apart, and quietly looking on.—How I understood what he felt for -you! I felt it, too, I think, with him.”</p> - -<p>Yes, dear flower and child, she had: offering to Charlie that last -tribute of a woman’s worship, the imaginative love of the woman he -loves; cherishing the cruelly sweet closeness of that piercing -community. How she had idealized them both. How she had idealized -Charlie’s love. Charlie had never seen her like this. Charlie had never -dreamed of her as a muse, above, apart, and quietly watching.<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a> Why, with -Pamela’s Charlie she herself could almost have been in love!</p> - -<p>“What did you talk about, you and he,” she asked, “when you were -together?” Their sylvan life, Pamela’s and Charlie’s, was almost as -unknown to her as that of the birds they watched. She had almost a soft -small hope that perhaps Pamela could show her something she had missed. -“Did you ever talk about poetry, for instance?”</p> - -<p>“No; never about things like that,” Pamela answered. “He talked more to -the boys than to me; he talked to us all together—about what we were -doing. But I used to love listening to him when he came and talked to -father. Politics, you know; and the way things ought to be done. He was -a great deal discouraged, you remember, by the way they <i>were</i> being -done. All those unjust taxes, you know. He wanted, he used always to -say, to <i>give</i> to the poor himself; he <i>loved</i> taking care of them. But -he hated that his money should be taken from him like that, against his -will. And he always, always foresaw the war; always knew that Germany -was plotting, and how England swarmed with spies. He thought we ought to -have declared war upon her long ago and struck first.—I’m rather glad -we didn’t, aren’t you? because then, in a way, we should have been in -the wrong rather than they; but of course he felt it as a statesman, not -like an ignorant woman.—You think Germany plotted, too?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, oh, yes.” How glad Rosamund was to be able to think it, to be -able, here, with a clear conscience, to remember that, on the theme of -Germany’s craft and crime, she and Charlie had thought quite -sufficiently alike.<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a> “But I am with you about not striking first.”</p> - -<p>“Are you really?” There was surprise in Pamela’s voice. She did not -dwell on the slight perplexity. “Of course, he always worsted father if -he disagreed. It was rather wicked of me, but I couldn’t help enjoying -seeing father worsted. He’d never thought things out, as Mr. Hayward -had. But that’s what he talked about—things like that—and you.”</p> - -<p>“Me?” Rosamund’s voice was gentle, meditative—her old voice of the -encounters with Charlie. How she could hear him through all Pamela’s -candid recitative!</p> - -<p>"He was always thinking about you. ‘My wife says so and so. My wife -agrees with me about it. I brought my wife last night to see it as I -do.’ Oh, you were with him in everything! It was so beautiful to see and -hear! I used to imagine that the Brownings were like that—after I read -their lives. He was a sort of poet, wasn’t he? Any one so loving and so -happy is a sort of poet—even if they don’t write poetry. Down in the -meadows one day, when we were watching lapwings, he and I and the -boys,—he wanted to show us a nest; you know how difficult they are to -find,—you passed up on the hillside, with Philip and Giles. We could -see you against the larchwood, they in their holland smocks and you in -white, with the white-and-yellow hat. I shall never forget the way he -stood up and smiled, his eyes following you. 'There’s Rosamund and the -progeny,' he said.—You know the dear, funny way he had of saying -things."</p> - -<p>Yes—she knew it. Yet tears had risen to Rosamund’s eyes. Dear old -Charlie; dear, old, tiresome Charlie! The tears had come as she saw him -standing to look after her and his boys; but there was<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a> nothing more, -nothing that she could give to Pamela, not one crumb of enrichment from -what Pamela believed to be her great store. Pamela had seen all—and -more than all—that there was to see.</p> - -<p>In her own silence now she was aware of a growing oppression. She was -too silent, even for one mute from the depth and sacredness of memory. -Might not such silence seem to reprove Pamela’s flooding confidence? She -struggled with her thoughts. “The lapwings?” she heard herself -murmuring. “I remember his showing me a nest. How he loved birds and how -much he knew about them! Weren’t you with us on the day we put up all -the nesting-boxes here? Do you remember how he planned for the placing -of each one, each bird to have its own appropriate domain? It was a -lovely day, in very early spring.”</p> - -<p>“Oh—<i>do</i> you remember that?” How Pamela craved the crumb was shown by -her lightened face; it was almost happy, as it turned to Rosamund, with -its sense of recovered treasures. "Very early spring—March. Snowdrops -were up over there,—and there,—and there were daffodils at the foot of -the wall. You were in blue: a frieze coat and skirt of Japanese blue, -with a grey silk scarf and a little soft grey hat with a blue wing in -it; and you said,—you were standing just over there, near the -pond,—‘We can always count on tits.’—But you did get robins, too, and -thrushes in the big boxes; and then the splendid year when the -nut-hatches came to the box down in the orchard. And you were tying up -one box, but it was too high and he came and did it for you. I can see -you both so plainly, your hands stretching up against the sky.<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a> Tall as -you are he was taller; his head seemed to tower up into the branches. -Such a blue sky it was! And afterwards we had tea in the drawing-room, -and the tea wasn’t strong enough for him, and you liked China and he -Indian tea. And you teased him and said that you had always to make him -the little brown pot all for himself. He said, ‘Tea never tastes so -right as out of a brown pot.’ There were white tulips growing in a bowl -on the tea-table. And then you played to us. And you sang—‘I need no -star in heaven to guide me.’—He was so fond of that. Oh, do you remember -it all, too?"</p> - -<p>All—all. Rosamund, though her tears fell, felt her cheek flushing in -the darkness. How often he had asked for "I need no star in heaven to -guide me"! How often she had sung it to him, rejoicing so soon, while -she threw the proper tumultuous fervour that Charlie loved into the -foolish air, in the atoning thought that already Philip’s favourite was -“Der Nussbaum” and that even little Giles asked for “the sheep song,” -the bleak, beautiful old Scottish strain: “Ca' the yowes to the knowes,” -with its sweetest drop to “my bonnie dearie.” “Oh—give us something -cheerful!” Charlie would exclaim after it.</p> - -<p>“I remember it all, dear,” she answered; and there was silence for a -while.</p> - -<p>“How do you bear it?” Pamela whispered suddenly.</p> - -<p>The hour, the stillness, the hands that held her, drew her past the last -barrier. Her broken heart yearned for the comfort that the greater loss -alone could give. What was the strength that enabled his wife to sit -there so quietly, so gently, so full of peace and pity?<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a></p> - -<p>Rosamund felt herself faltering, stumbling, as she heard the inevitable -question, and knew, as it came, that even Pamela’s heavenly blindness -might not protect her, unless she could be very careful, from horrid -loss or suspicion. To touch with a breath of her daylight reality that -silver world of recollection would be to desecrate. Could she hold her -breath and tread softly while she answered? Yes, surely. Surely she, who -had hidden through all the years from Charlie, could hide from Pamela, -although Pamela already was nearer than Charlie and knew her better than -he had ever done. All the old strength and resource welled up in her, -protecting this lovely thing, as, after the long moment, not looking at -Pamela, but into Charlie’s garden, she found the right answer.</p> - -<p>“You see, dear, it is so different with me. You have only your memories. -I have the boys—his boys—to live for.”</p> - -<p>It was right. It was the only answer. She heard Pamela’s long, soft -breaths, full of a gentle awe, and felt her hand more tightly clasped. -Once the right step was taken, it was easier to go on:</p> - -<p>"I want to tell you why I am so glad to have found you here, Pamela -dear. You’ll understand, I think, when I say that motherhood lives in -the present and future, and is almost cruel, cruel to everything not -itself, for it forgets the past in the present. Do you see,"—she found -the beautiful untruth,<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a>—“he is so much in them for me, that I might -almost forget him in them—forget to mourn him, as one would if they -were not there. So do you see why it comforts me to know that, while I -must go on into the future with them, you will be keeping him here and -remembering?”</p> - -<p>She could look at Pamela now, in safety, and she turned to her, finding -rapt eyes upon her.</p> - -<p>“Come here often, won’t you, when I’m away as well as when I’m here. We -must make it all look again as it did when he was with us—flowers and -trees and bird-boxes. You will help me in it all and you will think of -him here and love him. I know what happiness you meant to him—more than -he was aware of. You were a beautiful part of his life. You say you were -always, for him, only together, with the boys. That is only partly true. -He used often to speak of you to me, the little passing things people -say of any one they are very fond of and take for granted. He -appreciated you and counted upon you. I came here so sad, Pamela, so -burdened. I’ve never been sadder in my life than I was to-night as I -walked here. And you have lifted it all. It makes all the difference to -know that you are here, in his garden, remembering him. More difference -than I can say.”</p> - -<p>It was an unutterable gratitude that, with her tears, with love and pity -and reverence, welled up in her, seeing what Pamela had done. The garden -was no longer empty, and Charlie not forgotten. In the night of his -death and disappearance this flower had become visible. Always, when she -thought of him, she would think of evening primroses and of Pamela, so -that it would be with tenderness, with the understanding, homely, -unexacting, consecrating, that Pamela gave; Pamela herself becoming a -gift from Charlie; emerging from the darkness, evident and -beautiful,—almost another child whose future she must carry in her -heart; though the only gift she could give her now, in return for all -that she had given, was the full and free possession<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a> of the past, -where, outside the garden wall, she had been a wistful onlooker. She -felt that she opened the gate, drew Pamela in, and put into her keeping -all the keys that had weighed so heavily in her unfitted hands.<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"><a name="AUTUMN_CROCUSES" id="AUTUMN_CROCUSES"></a> -<img src="images/ill_pg_279-a.jpg" width="450" height="49" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /> -</p> - -<h2>AUTUMN CROCUSES</h2> - -<hr /> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="nind"> -<span class="letra"> -<img src="images/ill_pg_279-b.jpg" -width="150" -height="102" -alt="“W" -title="“W" -/></span>HAT you need is a complete change, and quiet,” said his cousin -Dorothy.</p> - -<p>Guy, indeed, in spite of his efforts to keep up appearances, was a -dismal figure. He had been passing the teacups and the bread and butter, -enduring all the jests about sugar-rations and margarine, and enduring, -which was so much worse, the complacencies over the approaching end of -the war. His haggard face, narrow-jawed and high-foreheaded, expressed -this endurance rather than any social amenity, and he was aware that -Aunt Emily could hardly feel that the presence of her poet and soldier -nephew added much to her tea-party. Indeed, the chattering, cheerful -women affected his nerves almost as painfully as did the sound of the -motor-buses when—every day it happened—he stopped on the curb, after -leaving his office in Whitehall, and wondered how long it would take him -to summon courage to cross the street. He felt, then, like breaking down -and crying; and he felt like it now when they said, “Isn’t it all <i>too</i> -splendid!”</p> - -<p>Cousin Dorothy was as chattering and as cheerful<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> as the rest of them, -and she had every reason to be, he remembered, with Tom, her <i>fiancé</i>, -ensconced in Paris, safe after all his perils. Dorothy, though like -everybody else she had worked hard during the war, had seen nothing and -lost nothing. And she had never had any imagination. All the same, he -was thankful when she rescued him from the woman who would talk to him -idiotically about his poetry (she evidently hadn’t understood a word of -it), and took him into a quiet nook near the piano.</p> - -<p>It might, then, have been mere consanguinity, for he had never before -found intimacy possible where Dorothy was concerned; or it might have -been a symptom of his state (his being at Aunt Emily’s tea-party at all -was that!); but, at all events after admitting that Mrs. Dickson had -been boring him, he found himself presently confessing his terrors about -the motor-buses, his terror of the dark, his sleeplessness and general -disintegration. His nervous laugh was a concession to Dorothy’s possible -misunderstanding; but as he went on, he felt himself almost loving her -for the matter-of-factness she infused into her sympathy. After all, -even good old Dorothy wasn’t stupid enough to suspect him of cowardice; -and although, from a military point of view, he had made such a mess of -it (invalided home again and again on account of digestive complaints, -and finally, last spring, transferred to his small official post in -London), to any one, really, who had at all followed his career, it -would be apparent that no one could have stuck harder to the loathly -job. He had felt it that, and only that, even while, prompted by pride, -he had made his effort to enlist, in the first months of the war. It had -been<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a> with a deep relief that he had found himself at once rejected and -free to stay behind, free to serve humanity with his gift rather than -with his inefficiency; for he took his poetic vocation with a youthful -seriousness. And when, later on, through one of the blunders of medical -examinations, he was drawn into the net of conscription, no one could -have denied that he marched off to the shambles with unflinching -readiness.</p> - -<p>Dorothy, he saw, took courage all along for granted: “It’s simply a case -of shell-shock,” she said, as if it were her daily fare; “you’re queer -and jumpy, and you can’t stand noise. It’s quite like Tommy.”</p> - -<p>He couldn’t associate Tommy, short-nosed, round-headed, red-eared Tommy, -with anything of the sort, and said so in some resentment. But Dorothy -assured him that for some months—just a year ago—Tommy had been at -home on sick leave, and really bad enough for anything. “He suffered in -every way just as you do.”</p> - -<p>Guy was quite sure he hadn’t, but he did not want to argue about it. For -nothing in the world would he have defined to Dorothy what he really -suffered.</p> - -<p>“It’s country air you need; country food and country quiet,” Dorothy -went on. “You <i>can</i> get away?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes; I can get away all right. Old Forsyth is most decent about it. -He was telling me this morning that I ought to take a month.”</p> - -<p>“I wonder if Mrs. Baldwin could have you at Thatches,” Dorothy mused. -“Tommy got well directly.”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Baldwin?” His voice, he knew, expressed<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a> an unflattering -scepticism, but he couldn’t help it. “Is she at home—an institution?” -He saw Mrs. Baldwin, hatefully tactful, in a Red Cross uniform. “No, -thank you, my dear.”</p> - -<p>“Of course not. What do you take me for?” Dorothy kept her competent -eyes upon him. “It’s not even a P.G. place—at all events, not a regular -one, though of course you do pay for your keep. She has very narrow -means and takes friends sometimes, and, since the war, it’s just -happened—by people telling each other, as I’m telling you—to be -shell-shock cases rather particularly. It’s a lovely country, and a -dear, quaint little cottage, and she does you most awfully well, Tommy -said.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t like the idea of settling down like that on a stranger.”</p> - -<p>"But she wouldn’t be a stranger. You’d go through me, and I feel as if I -knew her already through Tommy. He said he was at home at once. ‘Cosy,’<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">was how he expressed it. And you get honey on your bread at tea and</span><br /> -cream in your coffee at breakfast, and all sorts of delightful things -<i>en casserole</i>, that she cooks with her own hands, quite equal, Tommy -said, to the French. And, Tommy knows, <i>now</i>, you see."</p> - -<p>“It’s Mrs. Baldwin herself who frightens me. She frightens me more than -the motor-buses in Whitehall.” -<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a> -“That’s just what she won’t do. She’s perfectly sweet. Cosy. -Middle-aged. A widow. Her nice old father lives with her, and Tommy -liked him so much, too. You help her to garden, and with the bees, you -know. And the old father plays chess with you in the evenings. There’s a -stream near by where you can fish if you want to. It’s late for that, -of course; but Tommy got some quite good sport; he was there at just -this time of year. And he said that it was most awfully jolly country, -and that the meadows all about were full of autumn crocuses.”</p> - -<p>“Autumn crocuses? In the fields? I’ve never seen them wild.”</p> - -<p>“They do grow wild, though, in some parts of England. They are wild -there. Tommy particularly wrote about them. He said one walked down to -the stream among the autumn crocuses.”</p> - -<p>Dorothy was baiting her hook very prettily, and he gloomily smiled his -recognition of it. “They do sound attractive,” he owned. He hadn’t -imagined Tom a man to notice crocuses, and he was the more inclined to -trust his good impressions further. After all, apart from Mrs. Baldwin -and her father, the country, with honey, cream, and autumn crocuses, was -a happy combination, if he had been in condition for feeling anything -happy.</p> - -<p>What would Dorothy have thought of him, could she have known that, while -they talked, her rosy, bonnie face kept constantly, before his haunted -eyes, dissolving into a skull? Faces had a way of doing this with him -since his last encounter with the war in the spring. And all the people -talking in the room squeaked and gibbered. How could they go on talking? -How could they go on living—after what had happened? How could he? The -familiar nausea rose in him even as he forced himself to smile and say, -“Well, could she have me—Mrs. Baldwin?”</p> - -<p>He could not have made an effort to find a place for himself. Such -efforts, he felt sure, would have landed him at some God-forsaken -farmhouse<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> miles from the station, where the beds were damp and the meat -tough; or, even worse, at a Bournemouth hotel, amid orchestras and -people who made a point of dressing for dinner. But, if some one found -it for him, he would let himself be pushed off.</p> - -<p>“I’m sure she could,” said Dorothy with conviction. “I have her address -and I’ll write to-night and tell her all about you: that you’re a rising -poet, and that your friends and relations will be <i>so</i> grateful if -she’ll do for you what she did for Tommy.”</p> - -<p>He had an ironic glance for her “rising.” His relations—and Aunt Emily -and her brood were the nearest left to him—had never in the least taken -in his standing or realized that he was, among people who knew, looked -upon as completely risen. At the same time, sunken was what he felt -himself; drowned deep; too deep, he sometimes thought, for recovery. His -last little volume had been like a final fight for breath. He had -written most of it over there, after Ronnie’s death and before his own -decisive breakdown, and he knew it a result as much of his malady as of -his war experience.</p> - -<p>He wondered now, anew, whether these people had really read the poems. -If they had, it only showed how impervious to reality they must remain. -And there had actually been one, written after one of his leaves, called -“Eating Bread-and-Butter,” that should indeed have embarrassed them, had -they remembered it, inviting them to eat it with him in a trench with -unburied comrades lying in No-Man’s Land before them. His head, as he -thought of that,—from unburied comrades passing to unburied -friends,—gave a nervous,<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a> backward jerk, for he had told himself before -that he <i>must</i> stop thinking in certain directions; and indeed the poems -had helped to exorcise the obsession at the time when they had been -written.</p> - -<p>All the same, it was very strange—such a poet at such a tea-party. He -had plunged into Aunt Emily’s tea-party as he plunged nowadays into -anything that presented itself as offering distraction. And now, as he -said, “Well, if you’ll put it through, I’ll go, and be very grateful to -you,” he felt that he was making another plunge into Mrs. Baldwin’s -cottage.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p class="nind">I<small>T</small> was a pretty cottage he found, as, on the September evening, his -station fly drew up at the wicket-gate. They had come a long way from -the station, and, after leaving a small village, the winding lane, too, -had seemed long. He saw, nevertheless, as he alighted, that the rustic -building, old stones below and modern thatch above, could not be far -from the central group of which it formed an adjunct; for it had been -contrived, by devices dear to the heart of the week-ender, from two or -three labourers' cottages thrown into one and covered all over with the -capacious and brooding thatch. “Quaint,” Dorothy’s really inevitable -word, altogether expressed it, from the box hedges that ran on either -side of the flagged path, to the pale yellow hollyhocks beside the door.</p> - -<p>A round-cheeked country girl, neatly capped and aproned, opened the door -on a square, rush-matted hall; and beyond that he saw a room full of the -sunset, where a table was being laid and from which Mrs. Baldwin came -out to greet him.<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a></p> - -<p>She was not tall, and had thick, closely bound braids. He had dreaded -finding himself at once dealt with as a case; but Mrs. Baldwin’s manner -was not even that of one accustomed to paying guests. Her murmur of -welcome, her questions about his journey, her mild directions as she led -him up to his room, "Be careful at this landing, the level of the floor -goes up and the beam comes down so low,"—were rather those of a shy and -entirely unprofessional hostess.</p> - -<p>He thought, as soon as he took in his room, with its <i>voile-de-Gènes</i> -hangings and dear old furniture, that he pleased her by saying, “What a -delicious room!” and even more when, on going to the wide, low, -mullioned window, its panes open to the west, he added, “And what a -delicious view!” There were meadows and tall hedgerow elms, and, running -in a tranquil band of brightness, the stream that reflected the sky.</p> - -<p>She did not say that she was glad he liked it, but her very gentle smile -at the welcome it all made for him was part of the welcome. What she did -say was, with the little air of shy preoccupation, while she wrung her -finger-tips together, those of one hand in those of the other, “I think -the water’s very hot. I have a rather young little maid. You’ll tell me -if you want anything. Are three blankets and the down quilt enough? The -nights are rather cold already.”</p> - -<p>He said that three would be perfect, secure, from his glance at the -deep, comely bed, that they would be beautifully thick and fleecy.</p> - -<p>“Then you’ll come down to us when you are ready.” She stood in the door -to look round again.<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a> “Matches here, you see; biscuits in the little -earthenware box; and the spirit-lamp is in case you should wake in the -night—you could make yourself a cup of cocoa? Everything is -there—cocoa, milk, and sugar. It usually sends one off again directly.”</p> - -<p>It was all the slightly shy hostess rather than the businesslike soother -and sustainer; and, no, it wasn’t a bit cosy. He repudiated that word -indignantly, while he washed—the water <i>was</i> very hot, admirably hot; -there was a complacency about cosy, and Mrs. Baldwin had no complacency, -though she was, for all her shyness and the unconscious gestures of -physical nervousness, composed. Her hands, he remembered, recalling -their little trick,—he had noticed it in the hall,—were like a -child’s; not the hands of a practical housewife. Yet, from the look of -that bed (yes, thank heaven, a box-spring mattress!), from the heat of -the water, and, above all, the deft and accessible grouping of the -spirit-lamp and its adjuncts, she proved that she knew how to make one -comfortable.</p> - -<p>There were the meadows and—going again to the window, he wondered -leaning out,—could he see the autumn crocuses? Yes, surely; even at -this evening hour his eyes distinguished the pale yet delicately -purpling tint that streaked the pastoral verdure. What a delicious -place, indeed! He stood, absorbed in looking out, until the maid came to -say that supper would be ready in five minutes.</p> - -<p>The long room, the living-room,—for it combined, he saw, all social -functions,—also faced the meadows at the back of the house, and the -primrose coloured sunset still filled it as he entered. Mrs. Baldwin was -busying herself with the table, and an old gentleman with a very long -white beard rose, with much dignity, from the grandfather’s chair<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a> near -a window-seat. Mr. Haseltine, so his daughter named him, had more the -air of seeing the visitor as a P.G., perhaps even as a shell-shock -patient; but he was a nice old man, Guy felt, although his beard was too -long. He wore a brown velveteen jacket, and Guy surmised that he might -have been a writer or scholar of some not very significant sort.</p> - -<p>“Yes, we think ours a very favored nook indeed,” he said, as Guy again -praised the prospect. “Yes; three cottages. Very happily contrived, is -it not? There is a clever builder in the next town. He kept the old -fireplace, you see; that end was a kitchen and the beams are all the old -ones. Three gardens, too, thrown into one; but that is entirely my -daughter’s creation. Pig-styes used to be in that corner.”</p> - -<p>Guy looked out at the squares of colour, the low beds of mignonette, the -phloxes, larkspurs, and the late sweet-peas a screen of stained-glass -tints against the sky. Where the pig-styes had been was a little -thatched summer-house with rustic seat and table. The bee-hives were -just outside the hedge, at an angle of the meadow. Mr. Haseltine -continued to talk while Mrs. Baldwin and the maid came in and out, -carrying tea and eggs and covered dishes.</p> - -<p>“I hope you don’t mind high tea,” she said. “It seems to go with our -life here.”</p> - -<p>He felt that high tea was his favourite meal. There was a big white -earthenware bowl on the table, filled with sweet-peas. “Where do you get -the old-fashioned colours?” he asked her. “I thought the growers had -extirpated them; one sees only the long-stemmed ones nowadays, with the -tiresome artistic shades.”</p> - -<p>He pleased her again, he felt sure, and she told<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> him that she always -saved the seed, liking the old bright colours better, too.</p> - -<p>He was glad that he had come, although Mr. Haseltine’s beard was too -long and he feared that he would prove talkative in the worst way, the -deliberate and retaining way. He liked the smell of everything,—a -mingling of sweet-peas, rush-matting, and China tea,—and the look of -everything; good, unpretentious old oak furniture, fresh, if faded, -chintzes, and book-lined walls; and he presently liked the taste of -everything too.</p> - -<p>“I feel already as if I should sleep to-night,” he said to Mrs. Baldwin.</p> - -<p>She sat behind the tea-urn a little distracted, if anything so mild -could be called distraction, by the plunging movements of the little -maid as she moved about the table. “That will do nicely, Cathy,” she -said. “We can manage now. You can bring in some more hot water if I -ring.—Oh, I do hope you’ll sleep. People usually sleep here.”</p> - -<p>She was hardly middle-aged, though, after Dorothy’s bright browns and -pinks, Tommy might well have thought her so. Many years older than -Dorothy, of course, yet how many he could not in the least compute. -There was an agelessness, with something tough and solid, about her; she -was as little slender as she was stout; she might, with her neutral -tints,—hair, skin, dress,—have looked almost the same at sixty as she -did now. She wasn’t pale, or sallow, or sunburned; yet her complexion -seemed so to go with her hair that the whole head might have been carved -in some pleasantly tinted stone. Only her eyes gave any depth of -difference; gentle eyes, like a grey-blue breadth of evening. She had a -broad, short face and broad,<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a> beautifully drawn lips, and looked almost -mysteriously innocent.</p> - -<p>Guy took her in to this extent, swift as he was at taking people in, and -sensitive as he was to what he found. He felt sure—and the depth of -comfort it gave him made him aware of all the reluctances Dorothy’s -decision had overborne—that she hadn’t the ghost of a method or of a -theory. Shell-shock people had merely happened to come and had happened -to get well quickly. He even gathered, as the peaceful evening wore -on,—Cathy clearing, placid lamps lighted, the windows still left open -to the twilight—that she didn’t really think very much about her cases, -in so far as they were cases and not guests. Having done her best in the -way of blankets, hot water, and spirit-kettles, and seen them settled -down into the life she had made for herself,—and not at all for -them,—she went her own way, irresponsible and unpreoccupied.</p> - -<p>To-night she didn’t attempt to entertain him. It was Mr. Haseltine, at -supper, who kept up the conversation, and with the air of always keeping -it up, with even the air, Guy imagined once or twice, of feeling it -specially his part to make amends, in that sort of resource, for his -dear daughter’s deficiency. She was, Guy saw, very much his dear -daughter; but he felt sure that it had never entered the old gentleman’s -head that any one would find her interesting when he himself was there.</p> - -<p>After supper she was occupied for a little while at her desk, adding up -figures, it appeared, in house-books; for she came to her father and -asked him if he would do a column for her. “It has come out differently -three times with me,” she confessed, but without ruefulness.<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a> “I’m so -dull at my accounts!”</p> - -<p>Guy, as Mr. Haseltine fumbled for his large tortoise-shell eyeglasses, -offered to help her, and then came over and sat beside the desk and did -the rest of the sums for her. She was tidying up for the month, she told -him, and always found it rather confusing. “It’s having to put the -pennies, which are twelves, into pounds, which are twenties, isn’t it?” -she said, and thanked him so much.</p> - -<p>But this could hardly be called entertaining him, nor could it, when he -accompanied her across the lane in the now deepening dusk, to shut up -her fowls. After that, there was the game of chess, during which Mrs. -Baldwin absented herself a good deal, helping Cathy, Guy imagined, with -the beds and hot-water bottles; and at nine-thirty they all lighted -their candles and went upstairs.</p> - -<p>Bedtime had been, for many months, his most dreaded moment. The door -shut him in and shut away the last chance of alleviation. There was -nothing for it but to stretch himself haggardly on his couch and cling -to every detail in the day’s events, or in the morrow’s prospects, that -might preserve him from the past. To fight <i>not</i> to remember was a -losing game, and filled one’s brain with the white flame of insomnia. He -had found that it was when, exhausted by the fruitless effort, he -suffered the waiting vultures to settle upon him, abandoned himself to -the beaks and talons, that, through the sheer passivity of anguish, -oblivion most often came.</p> - -<p>To-night, from the habit of it, his mind braced itself as he came into -the room, and he was aware, as he had been for nearly a year now, that -Ronnie’s face was waiting, as it were, on the outskirts of -consciousness, to seize upon him. But, after he had<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a> lighted the candles -on his dressing-table and the candles on the mantelpiece, taken off his -coat, and started undressing, he found that his thoughts, quite -effortlessly, were engaged with his new surroundings, old Mr. -Haseltine’s beard and eyeglasses occupying them, and the clucking noise -he made in drinking the glass of hot ginger and water that had been -brought to them on a tray while they played; Mrs. Baldwin’s accounts, -her fowls, and the colour of her eyes. He decided that the colour was -Wedgwood, or perhaps periwinkle blue—some very dense, quiet colour.</p> - -<p>As he moved about the room, this protective interest came to him from -the little objects he made acquaintance with: the round Venetian box, -dim gilt and blue and red, on the chest of drawers in which he found a -handful of tiny shells—shells, no doubt, that Mrs. Baldwin had picked -up during a seaside outing; the faded old blue leather blotter on the -writing-table, marked E. H., which had probably been hers since maiden -days (and did E stand for Ethel or Edith or Ellen?); the pretty -lettering in fine black script of the writing-paper so pleasantly -stacked; the dear old Dutch coffee-pot and jug on the mantelpiece, and -the bowl of mignonette that she, of course, had arranged. He sank his -face into its fragrance, and peace seemed breathed upon him from the -flowers.</p> - -<p>He was wondering, as he got into bed, with a glance, before he blew out -the candle, at the birds and branches, the whites and blacks and roses -of the <i>voile-de-Gènes</i>, whether he would find the autumn crocuses open -in the meadows next morning; it had looked like the evening of another -fine day. Then, the candle out, his thoughts, for a little<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a> while, were -tangled in the magical dreamland of the <i>voile-de-Gènes</i>, and the breath -of the mignonette seemed to lie upon his eyelids with a soft compulsion -to peace, until, all thought sliding suddenly away, he dropped into -delicious slumber.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p class="nind">H<small>T</small> found the crocuses open, before breakfast. Only Cathy was in the -living-room, sweeping, when he crossed it, though he thought he heard -Mrs. Baldwin in the kitchen. A robin was singing on a spray over the -summer-house. The sky arched pale and high; and though there was no mist -in the air, its softness made him think of milk.</p> - -<p>From the garden he passed into the meadows, and, almost at once, saw, -everywhere, the fragile, purple flowers about him, if purple were not -too rich a word for their clear, cold tint. Lower down, near the stream, -they made him think of the silver bobbins set playing by great rain -drops when they fall heavily upon wide, shallow pools of water; and they -seemed to grow even more thickly in the farther meadow beyond the wooden -bridge. A sense of bliss was upon him as he walked among the flowers. He -had never seen anything more lovely, and all but the darker buds were -open, showing pale golden hearts to the sun.</p> - -<p>Yet, by the time that he had crossed the bridge, leaning on the high -rail to look down into the limpid, sliding water, he knew that it could -never stay at that or mean that for him. He had seen fields of flowers -in France, and, while the horrors there had been enacted, these fields -of crocuses, year after year, had bloomed. What they meant for his mind<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a> -was the unbridged chasm between nature and the sufferings of man. Only -when one ceased to be a man, ceased to remember and to think, could such -a day, such sights, bring the unreasoning joy.</p> - -<p>Walking back, he saw, as he approached the house, that Mrs. Baldwin was -standing at the garden-gate, and, bare-headed, in the linen dress of -pale lavender, she made him at once think of the crocuses, or they of -her. Their gentleness was like her, their simplicity, and something, -too,—for he felt this in her,—of unearthliness. More perhaps, than any -other flower they seemed to belong to the air rather than to the ground, -and, with their faint, pale stalks, their fragile petals unconfined by -leaf or calyx, to be rising like emanations from the sod and ready to -dissolve in mist into the sunlight.</p> - -<p>“You’ve had a little walk?” Mrs. Baldwin asked him as they met.</p> - -<p>He said he had been looking at the crocuses. “Are they really crocuses?” -he questioned. “I’ve never seen them wild before.”</p> - -<p>“They’re not real crocuses,” she said, “though those grow wild, too, in -a few places in England. These flowers are always called autumn crocuses -hereabouts; but they are really, botanically, meadow saffron; and they -grow wild in a great many places. You see they are not so dark a purple -as the wild crocus, and they are much taller, and the petals are more -pointed. Much more beautiful flowers, I think.”</p> - -<p>“Meadow saffron. That’s a pretty name, too. But I think I’ll go on -calling them autumn crocuses. They were one of the reasons that made me -want to come here,” he told her.<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a></p> - -<p>They were leaning on the little garden-gate looking over the meadows.</p> - -<p>“Really? Did you hear about them?”</p> - -<p>He told her what Dorothy had said, passed on from the appreciative -Tommy, and she said again, “Really!” and with surprise, so that, -laughing a little, he said that he believed she would never have thought -of Mr. Barnet as an appreciator of crocuses. She laughed a little, too, -confessing to a community of perception where Tommy was concerned, and -remarked that it was very nice of him to have cared. “What he talked -about,” she said, “was the food. He was never done praising my coffee. -It’s time for coffee now,” she added.</p> - -<p>Guy, as they went in, said that, after all, if that was what Tommy -talked about, he wondered that his caring for the crocuses should have -surprised her, for he was sure that the one was almost as poetical as -the others. It was poetical, indeed, as she made it, in a delightful and -complicated apparatus, glass and brass and premonitory scented steam; -and the milk was as hot as the water had been, and there was cream. “How -do you manage it, in these days?” he asked. But she said that it wasn’t -wickedness and bribery, really: she and Cathy skimmed it from the milk -that was brought from the nearest farm.</p> - -<p>He realized that he was himself talking about the food just as Tommy had -done; just as the chattering women at Aunt Emily’s tea-party had done; -just as everybody, of course, had been doing in England ever since food -became such an important matter. But it was Mrs. Baldwin who made him do -it; for though unearthly, she was deliciously prosaic. He felt that anew -when he heard her going<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a> about the house in her low-heeled little shoes, -with Cathy. They did, evidently, all the work, and how fresh, composed, -and shining everything was. The living-room, with its happy southern -windows, its tempting writing-tables, its flowers and books, was an -embodiment of the poetry that only such prose can secure.</p> - -<p>Guy, while Mr. Haseltine sat behind his rustling <i>Times</i>, strolled -before the shelves, surprised, presently, at their range of subject. -Surely not Mrs. Baldwin’s, such reading; hardly, he thought, Mr. -Haseltine’s. He took down a volume of Plotinus and found, on the -fly-leaf, “Oliver Baldwin,” written in a small, scholarly hand. That -explained it, then. Her husband’s. The Charles d’Orleans, too, the -Fustel de Coulanges, the Croce, and the Dante, with marginal notes. He -had been a man of letters, perhaps. Of the dozen books he took down to -examine, only one was initialled “E. H.,” and that, suitably, was -<i>Dominique</i>. But it had been given her by “O. B.”</p> - -<p>As in the garden, presently, he and the old gentleman walked up and -down, smoking, Guy asked him, with the diffidence natural to the -question, whether his son-in-law, Mrs. Baldwin’s husband, had been -killed in the war; though he couldn’t imagine her a war-widow. One -didn’t indeed think of her in connection with marrying and giving in -marriage—that was part of the unearthliness; yet widowhood, permanent -widowhood, seemed a suitable state. She was not girlish, nor was she -wifely. She was widowed, and it had happened, he felt sure, in spite of -his question, long ago.</p> - -<p>As he had expected, his companion replied, “Ah, no; he died eight, nine -years since.” And Mr.<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a> Haseltine then went on to tell, taking the war as -the obvious interest, and not without the satisfaction that Guy had so -often met and so often loathed, that he had lost dear ones. “Children of -my eldest son. Fine lads. Brave boys. One in the first month—at the -Marne; the other only last year, flying. Yes; I’ve done my bit,” said -Mr. Haseltine, with the fatuity that he was so plentifully companioned -in displaying.</p> - -<p>“Bit.” Odious word. His “bit.” Why his? Had any one written a poem on -the formula coming from the lips of those for whom others had died? A -scattered, flagellating line or two floated through Guy’s mind. -Something about barbed wire came in. He wondered how old Mr. Haseltine -would have felt about his “bit,” hung up on that and unable to die. He -wondered where the fine lads now lay. No more coffee for them, with -cream in it; no more robins singing; no more strolling smokes among -mignonette in the sunlight. How they were forgotten, already, except for -trophies, for self-glorification to display! How pleased, how smug this -rescued, comfortable world! Something of his distaste attached itself -even to Mrs. Baldwin when she next appeared. Something irritating him in -her peacefulness. She, too, had seen nothing and lost nothing. But, at -all events, she wouldn’t, he knew that, take any stand on the two -nephews to claim her “bit.” There was nothing fatuous about Mrs. -Baldwin. The slight distaste still lingered, however, and he found -himself wondering once or twice, during the day that passed, in spite of -it, so pleasantly, whether she wasn’t, for all his idealizing similes, a -stupid as well as a sweet woman. It was not because of filial -self-effacement that she<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> let her father do all the talking at meals: it -was simply because she had nothing to say, and the good old boy was -quite right in taking his responsibility for granted. The person who -could talk was the responsible person. Her mind, though so occupied, was -quite singularly inactive and, he was sure, completely uncritical. She -didn’t find her father in the least a bore, or suspect that anybody else -might find him so. She did find, Guy felt sure, satisfaction in all her -occupations. He heard her laughing—a quiet little laugh—with Cathy in -the kitchen; and in the afternoon, when he helped her to prick out -seedlings, her attentive profile—as, after he had dug each hole, she -dropped in the little plant, pressed the earth about its roots, and -fixed it in its place—made him think of the profile of a child putting -its dolls to bed. They planted three beautiful long rows, and Guy was -quite tired by tea-time, for though they had high tea at half-past six, -they were not deprived of the precious afternoon pause, taking place as -it did at the unaccustomed but pleasing hour of four.</p> - -<p>After tea she went to see some people in the village, Mr. Haseltine -dozed in his chair, and Guy took a long walk.</p> - -<p>So the days went on, and at the end of a week he was able to write to -Dorothy and tell her that he was sleeping wonderfully and that Mrs. -Baldwin’s cottage was all that she had pictured it. By the end of the -week he had even grown rather attached to Mr. Haseltine, and he enjoyed -playing chess with him every evening; and sometimes they had a game in -the afternoon when tea was over. The undercurrent of irritation still -flowed, but he had learned to put up with the old gentleman and to<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a> -circumvent his communicativeness, and in the case of Mrs. Baldwin he -more and more felt that she was the sort of person to whom one would, -probably, forgive anything. It had become evident to him that what might -be dulness might also be unawareness. That was a certain kind of -dulness, it was true, but it didn’t preclude capacity for response if -the proper stimulus were applied. It amused him to note that if none of -the nearly inevitable jars of shared life seemed ever to occur between -her and her father, it was simply because, when a difference arose, she -remained unconscious of it unless it were put before her. Nothing could -have been less in the line of selfishness; it was she who thought of -him, of his comfort and happiness, and who ordered her life to further -them; he, in this respect, was passive; but Guy felt that the poor old -boy often brooded in some disconsolateness over small trials and -perplexities that a companion more alert to symptoms would have -discerned and dispelled at once. Mr. Haseltine even, sometimes, confided -such grievances to the P.G.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to bother Effie about it,” he said;—E. had stood for -Effie-<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a>-“she’s a dreamy creature and very forgetful. But it’s quite -evident to me that the rector and his wife have been expecting to be -asked to tea to meet you. I’ve just been talking to them in the lane, -and I saw it plainly. They had asked us to bring you before you arrived, -hearing we were to have another guest,—they’ve always been most kind -and neighbourly in helping us to entertain our new friends,—and I -really don’t know why Effie should have got out of it. I usually have to -remind her, it’s true. But I sometimes get tired of always having to. -She doesn’t care for them herself; but that’s no reason why you might -not. We have few enough interests to offer visitors.”</p> - -<p>Guy was glad to have escaped the rectory tea, though he did not say this -in assuring Mr. Haseltine that the entertainment offered at Thatches was -absolutely to his taste. He was completely out of place at any rectory; -he could imagine no rector who would not find his poems pernicious; but -he felt that there was justice in Mr. Haseltine’s contention. He <i>might</i> -have cared for them. As it was, Mr. Haseltine was brought once again to -reminding her. It was evident then that she was ready to please anybody -or everybody.</p> - -<p>“Ask them? Ought I to ask them?”</p> - -<p>“My dear, it’s ten days since they sent their invitation. They spoke -again—and it’s the second time—of having been so sorry not to see us, -when I met them yesterday, in the lane. I don’t know why you did not -go.”</p> - -<p>“I thought it would bore Mr. Norris, father. He came here for quiet, you -know. But would it bore you?” she asked Guy. “They are very nice. I -don’t mean that.”</p> - -<p>“It’s certainly very pleasant being quiet,” said Guy; “but if Mr. -Haseltine likes having them, I assure you that people don’t frighten me -in the least.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, not on my account,” Mr. Haseltine protested. “I see our good -friends continually. It is of them I am thinking, as well as of Mr. -Norris. He might find them more interesting than you do, Effie, and they -will, I fear, be hurt.”</p> - -<p>Now that it was put before her, Mrs. Baldwin did it every justice, -rising from the breakfast-table,<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a> where she had just finished, to go to -her desk, and murmuring as she went, “I hadn’t thought of that. They -might be hurt. So, if it <i>won’t</i> bore you, Mr. Norris.”</p> - -<p>And the Laycocks were asked, and did indeed bore Guy sadly.</p> - -<p>It was on the night after their visit—Mr. Laycock had questioned him -earnestly about his personal impressions of the war and to evade him had -been wearying—that Guy, for the first time, really, since he had come, -found sleep difficult and even menaced. It was because of that, he felt -sure, looking back on it, that the curious occurrence of the next day -took place—curious, and, had it taken place in the presence of any one -else, embarrassing. But what made it most curious was just that; he had -not felt it embarrassing to break down and sob before Mrs. Baldwin.</p> - -<p>The morning had begun badly. The breakfast-table papers had been full of -the approaching victory. Mr. Haseltine read out passages from the -<i>Times</i> as he broke his toast and drank his coffee. He had reiterated -the triumph of his long conviction, and Mrs. Baldwin had murmured -assent. “All’s well with the world,” was the suffocating assurance that -seemed to breathe from them both. “All’s blue.” Was hell forgotten like -that? What if the war were won? Of course, it had to be won—that was an -unquestioned premise that had underlain his rebellions as well as Mr. -Haseltine’s complacencies since the beginning. But what of it? No -victory could redeem what had been done.</p> - -<p>He went out into the garden, to be away from Mr. Haseltine, as soon as -he could, and took a book into the summer-house; and it was here, a -little<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a> later, that Mrs. Baldwin, seeing him as she passed, her -garden-basket on her arm, paused to ask him, with her smile of the shy -hostess, if he were all right. She didn’t often ask him that, and he saw -at once that his recent recalcitrancy to rejoicing had pierced even her -vagueness. He knew that he still looked recalcitrant, and he was -determined not to soften the overt opposition rising in him; so he -raised his eyes to her over his book and said that he was not, perhaps, -feeling very fit that morning.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Baldwin hesitated at the entrance to the summer-house. She looked -behind her at the garden and up at the roses clustering over the lintel -under the thatch; she even took out her scissors, in the uncertainty -that, evidently, beset her, and snipped off a dead rose, and she said -presently, “It was all that talk about the war, wasn’t it—when what you -must ask is to forget it.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t ask that at all,” said Guy. “I should scorn myself for -forgetting it.” She glanced in again at him, mildly. “I want to forget -what’s irrelevant, like victory,” he said; “but not what is relevant, -like irremediable wrong.”</p> - -<p>Her awareness had not, of course, gone nearly as far as this. She kept -her eyes on him, and he was glad to feel that he could probably shock -her. “You see,” he found himself saying, “I saw the wrong. I saw the -war—at the closest quarters.”</p> - -<p>“Yes—oh, yes,” Mrs. Baldwin murmured. -<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a> -“For me, tragedy doesn’t cease to exist when it’s shovelled underground. -If one goes down into hell, one doesn’t want to forget the fact—though -one may hope to forget the torments and horrors; one wants, rather, to -remember that hell exists—and to try and square life with that -actuality.”</p> - -<p>There was silence after this for a moment, and he imagined that she was -very much at a loss. Her next words seemed indeed to express nothing so -much as her failure to follow—that and a silliness really rather -adorable, had he been in a mood to find it anything but exasperating. -“But, still—hell doesn’t exist, does it?” she offered him for his -appeasement.</p> - -<p>Guy laughed. “Doesn’t it? When things like this war can happen? How -could it ever have existed but in men’s hearts? It’s there that it -smoulders and, when its moment comes, leaps out to blast the world.”</p> - -<p>He could talk to her like this because she was too simple to suspect in -him a poetical attitudinizing; any one else would of course suspect it. -Guy was even aware that to any one else that was what it would have -been. She looked kind and troubled and as much as ever at a loss. She -didn’t know at all how to deal with the patient, and she was evidently -uncertain what to do, since it might seem heartless to go away and leave -him to his black thoughts, yet intrudingly intimate to come and sit down -beside him. Nothing could be less intimate than Mrs. Baldwin. It was he, -of course, who was tasteless in talking to her in a vein appropriate -only to intimacy.</p> - -<p>“Don’t bother over me,” he said, offering her the patent artifice of a -smile. “I’m simply a bad case. You mustn’t let me trouble you. You must -just turn your back on me when I’m like this.”</p> - -<p>It was not poetic attitudinizing now; there was in his voice a quaver of -grief and she responded to it at once. -<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a> -“Oh, but I don’t like to do that. I do wish I could be of some help. I -see you haven’t slept, for you look so tired, as you did when you first -came. And Mr. Laycock did bore you. It’s wrong of people to talk to you -about the war.”</p> - -<p>For the first time he saw in the eyes fixed upon him, pity, evident pity -and solicitude. And before it he felt himself crumble suddenly. He saw -all the reasons she had for pitying him, did she but know. He saw -Ronnie’s face again; he saw his own haunted night and his own grief. He -wanted her to see it. “Oh—one can’t be guarded like that,” he murmured; -“I must try to get used to it. But—I didn’t sleep; that’s true. I’m so -horribly afraid of not sleeping. You can’t imagine what it is. I’ve the -most awful visions.” And leaning his elbows on the table, he put his -hands before his face and began to cry.</p> - -<p>She stood there; he did not hear her move at first; and then she entered -and sat down on the seat beside him. But she said nothing and did not -touch him. He had had in all the tumult of his disintegration, a swift -passage of surmise; would she not draw his head upon her shoulder, like -a mother, and comfort him? But that would have broken him down heaven -knew how much further.</p> - -<p>He cried frankly, articulating presently, “It’s my nerves, you know; -they have all gone to pieces. I lost my friend; my dearest friend. For -months I didn’t sleep.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Baldwin’s silence was not oppressive, or repressive either. He -heard her hands move slightly on the basket she held on her knees and -the soft chafing in the folds of her linen bodice that her breathing -made. It was an accepting stillness and<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a> it presently quieted him; more -than that, it enabled him at last to lift his head and look at her -without feeling ashamed of himself. Oddly enough, he knew that he, -perhaps, ought to be. He <i>could</i> have helped himself. There had been an -element of wilfulness in his breakdown; he had wanted her to see; but, -even had she known this about him, he would not have felt ashamed. She -was so curiously a person with whom one could not associate blames and -judgments. She was an accepting person.</p> - -<p>She wasn’t looking at him, but out at the sweet, bright, autumnal little -garden; and as her eyes came to him, he felt them full of thought; felt, -for the first time, sure that, whatever she might be, she was not dull.</p> - -<p>He could not remember, looking back at the little scene, that she had -said a single further word. He did not think that he had said anything -further. He was helping her, a little while after, to prune the Aimée -Vibert rose that had grown with great unruliness over the little -tool-house near the kitchen door. “It will really pull it down unless we -cut out some of these great branches,” she had said, as, equipped with -stout gloves, they had worked away together, unfastening the tangled -trails and stretching them out on the ground. So displayed, the Aimée -Vibert was drastically dealt with, and it was midday before they -finished fastening the thinned and shortened shoots into place.</p> - -<p>She had said nothing further; but he believed that, for the first time, -her thought really included him. He had been put before her. She was -different afterwards. He had become an individual to her, and had ceased -to be merely the paying guest.<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a></p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p class="nind">T<small>HE</small> third week came. There was rain, rather sad September rain, for a -day or two. They sat in the evenings before the wide fireplace where -logs blazed. Mrs. Baldwin, at his suggestion, read aloud to them Fabre’s -<i>Souvenirs Entomologiques</i>. She read French prettily, better than he did -himself, and he was a little chagrined once or twice to find that she -knew it better, priding himself on his French as he did. He had lived -for a year in Paris, with Ronnie, before the war.</p> - -<p>The horrors of the grim, complicated underworld revealed by the French -seer distressed him. Mrs. Baldwin did not feel them as he did, feeling -the marvels rather than the horrors, perhaps. She laughed a little, -rather callously, at the ladies who devoured their husbands, and seemed -pleased by the odious forethought of the egg-laying mothers. She shared -Fabre’s humorous dispassionateness, if not the fond partiality which, -while it made him the more charming, didn’t, Guy insisted, make his -horrid wasps and beetles a bit more so. As usual, she vexed him a -little, even while, more and more, he felt her intelligent; perhaps she -vexed him all the more for that.</p> - -<p>“She’s so devilishly contented with the world,” he said to himself -sometimes, even while he smiled, remembering her laughter.</p> - -<p>Old Mr. Haseltine fell asleep one night while she read, and to be -together there before the fire, the old man sleeping beside them, made -them nearer than they had ever been before. Guy was aware of this -nearness while he listened and while he<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a> watched her hand, short, like a -child’s (and her face was so short) support the book, and her eyelashes -dropping down the page or raised to a fresh one.</p> - -<p>When he went to his room that night, he stood still for a long time, his -candle in his hand, listening to the soft beat of the rain against the -window. He was hardly ever now afraid of being alone, or of the dark, -and he stood there musing and listening, while he still seemed to see -Mrs. Baldwin’s hand as it held the book, and her reading profile. Her -life seemed to breathe upon him and he rested in it. He slept -deliciously.</p> - -<p>“Did you know that I write?” he asked her next day. He had wondered -about this once or twice before.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes; your cousin, in her letter, you know, told me that you wrote,” -said Mrs. Baldwin.</p> - -<p>They were in the living-room after midday dinner, and alone. She looked -up at him very kindly from the papers and letters she was sorting at her -desk.</p> - -<p>“You’ve never heard of my effusions otherwise, though?” He put on a -rueful air. “Such is fame!”</p> - -<p>“Are you famous?” Her smile was a little troubled. “I don’t follow -things, you know, living here as I do.”</p> - -<p>“You read the papers. I <i>have</i> had reviews: good ones.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t read them very regularly,” she admitted. “And I so often don’t -remember the names of people in reviews, even when I’ve liked what is -said of them. Have you any of your poems here? Perhaps you’ll let me -read them.”</p> - -<p>He felt, with the familiar chagrin, that she would never, of herself, -have thought of asking him.<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a></p> - -<p>“Yes, my last volume. It’s just out.”</p> - -<p>He was going for a walk in the rain with Mr. Haseltine that afternoon. -There was an old church in the neighbouring village that his friend -wanted him to see. Mrs. Baldwin had letters to write. “Will you have -time to look at it while we are out?” he asked.</p> - -<p>Although she had shown so little interest in him, he was eager, -pathetically so, he felt, that she should read and care about his poems. -She said that it was just the time: her letters would not take long. And -so he ran up to his room and got the little book for her: <i>Burnt -Offerings</i>.</p> - -<p>All the time that he was walking with Mr. Haseltine and seeing the -church, and the old manor house that took them a half mile further, he -wondered what she was thinking about his poems.</p> - -<p>By the time they had returned the rain had ceased. A warm September -sunlight diffused itself. Veils lifted from the stream and trailed upon -the lower meadows. The sky grew clear and the leaves all sparkled. They -found that Mrs. Baldwin had had her cup of tea, for it was past four; -but all had been left in readiness for them, the kettle boiling; and -after Guy had swallowed his, he went out and saw her walking down among -the crocuses.</p> - -<p>“Oh, you are back?” she said when he joined her. “I wanted to be there -to give you your tea. Was it all right?”</p> - -<p>“Perfectly,” he said. “We put in just your number of spoonfuls.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Baldwin wore her little knitted jacket and had put on her white, -rubber-soled canvas shoes against the wet; but her head, with its thick, -close braids, was bare to the sunlight.<a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a></p> - -<p>“I had to come out as soon as it stopped raining,” she said; “and I’m -afraid I simply forgot to look out for you and father.”</p> - -<p>Her gentleness had always seemed contentment; this afternoon it seemed -happiness, and he had never seen her look so young. He wondered if she -were going to take him so dreadfully aback as not even to mention his -poems; if she had simply forgotten them, too. Already her demeanour, -unclouded, almost radiant, inflicted a wound; she had either forgotten, -or she had cared little indeed, since she could look like that. But, -after he had commented, consentingly, on the lovely hour, she went on -with a change of tone, a voice a little shy, “I’ve read the poems. Thank -you so much for letting me see them.”</p> - -<p>“You read all of them?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I didn’t write my letters.”</p> - -<p>“I hope you read them, then, because you cared for them.”</p> - -<p>She didn’t answer for a moment, walking along and placing the small -white feet carefully among the crocuses. “They are very sad,” she then -said.</p> - -<p>He was aware, after an instant of adjustment to the blow, that she made -him very angry. Terrible, his poems, searing, scorching; wicked, if one -would; but not sad.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” he murmured; and he wondered if the divided feeling she had from -the first roused in him had been this hatred, not perhaps of her, but of -her unvarying acquiescence, her untroubled inadequacy.</p> - -<p>“They interested me very much,” she said, feeling, no doubt, that, -whatever he was, he was not pleased.<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a> “They made me see, I mean, all the -things you have been through.”</p> - -<p>“Sad things, you call them. You know, I rather feel as if I’d heard you -call hell sad.”</p> - -<p>She looked up at him quickly, and it was now she who was taken aback -and, as she had been the other day, at a loss. And, as on the other day, -she found the same answer, though she offered it deprecatingly, feeling -his displeasure. “But hell doesn’t exist.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you think anything horrible exists?”</p> - -<p>They turned at the end of the meadow. It seemed to him, although he felt -as if he hated her, that they were suddenly intimate in their -antagonism. He would force that antagonism, and its intimacy, upon -her—to its last implication.</p> - -<p>“Horrible? Oh, yes, yes!” she said, startled, and that was, he reflected -grimly, to the good. “But it would have to be irretrievable, wouldn’t -it, to be hell?” she urged.</p> - -<p>“Do you suggest that it’s not irretrievable? You own it’s horrible. -Irretrievably horrible, I call it. And that’s what I call hell. Yet all -that you can find to say of my poems is that they are sad.”</p> - -<p>She hesitated, feeling her way, hearing in the recurrent word how it had -rankled. “I meant sad, I think, because of you; because you had suffered -so much.”</p> - -<p>“You seem always to imply that one might <i>not</i> have suffered!” And -thrusting aside her quickly murmured, “Oh, no, no!” he went on:<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a> “I can’t -understand your attitude of mind. Do you realize at all, I sometimes -wonder, what it has all meant, this nightmare we are living in—we, that -is, to whom it came? Can you imagine what it was to me to see boys, dead -boys, buried stealthily, at night, under fire? Boys so mangled, so -disfigured—you read that poem, 'Half a Corpse'?—that their mothers -wouldn’t have known them; featureless, dismembered boys, heaped one upon -the other in the mud. Has your mind ever dwelt upon the community of -corruption in which they lie, as their mothers' minds must dwell? I do -not understand you. I do not understand how you can dare to call such -things sad.”</p> - -<p>His own wrath shook and yet sustained him, though he knew a fear lest he -had gone too far; but in her silence—they had reached the other end of -the meadow and turned again in their walk—he felt that there was no -resentment. It was as if she realized that those who have returned from -hell cannot be asked to stop and pick their words with courtesy, and -accepted his vehemence, if not his blame; and again, when she spoke at -last, he felt that her bewilderment had settled into thought.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I can imagine,” she said. “But no, I don’t think that my mind has -dwelt on those things. If I were their mothers, I don’t think that my -mind would dwell, as you say. Something would burn through. There are -other kinds of suffering—better kinds; they help, I believe. And, for -that kind, it is worse, but is it so much worse than in ordinary life? -That is what happens all the time when there is no war; dreadful changes -in the dead; and burials. They are not quite so near each other in a -churchyard, and their graves are named; but do you think that makes it -easier to bear?”</p> - -<p>He felt now as if it were insult she was offering him.</p> - -<p>"You deny all tragedy to war, then? It’s all to you on a level with an -Elegy in a Country Churchyard, with curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths?<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a> You read 'His Eyes,'"—Guy’s voice had a hoarser -note, but, mingled with the sincerity of what, at last, he knew he was -to tell her, the very centre of his sick heart, went a surface -appreciation of what he had just said and of how curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths would go into a bitter poem one day,—"you read that -poem of mine at the end of the book. ‘His Eyes’ is about myself and my -friend Ronnie Barlow, the artist; you never heard of him, I know. He -hung, with shattered legs, dying, just in front of us, on the barbed -wire, for three days and nights. When he could speak, it was to beg to -be shot. We tried to get to him, four, five times; it was no good. There -was barbed wire between, and the Germans spotted us every time. He died -during the third night, and next morning I found him looking at me—as -he had looked during these three days—his torment and his reproach. And -so he went on looking until the rats came and he had no more eyes to -look with. Will you tell me that that is no worse than the deaths died -in the parishes of England? Will you tell me that it’s the sort of death -died by the cheery, mature gentlemen who ate their dinners and slept -warm and dropped a tear—while they did their ‘bit’ in their Government -offices—over the brave lads saving England?"</p> - -<p>He had taken refuge from Ronnie in hatred of those whom, in the poem, he -called his murderers, and his voice was weighted with its fierce -indictment. In the pause that followed he had time to wonder if she -found him, at last, intolerable. She walked beside him, still looking -down, and it might well have been in a chill withdrawal. He almost -expected to hear her, in another moment, find the<a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a> conventional phrase -with which to leave him. But no,—and in his own long sigh he recognized -the depth of his relief,—she was not going to punish him with -convention; she was not going to leave him. And what she said at last -was, “I’m so sorry! Please believe that I’m so very, very sorry! -Only—why do you speak, and write, as though it were some one’s fault?”</p> - -<p>Ah, here then, at last, they had come to it, the barrier, on one side of -which he stood with his hell and she on the other in her artificial -paradise.</p> - -<p>“I write it and speak it because it is the truth,” he said. “Millions of -innocent creatures, of gifted, beautiful creatures, like my friend, have -been slaughtered, tortured, driven mad, because of greasy, greedy -wire-pullers in their leather chairs at home.”</p> - -<p>“In this war, too?”</p> - -<p>“In this war preëminently.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t feel that the crime was Germany’s?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, of course!” his laugh sneered the facile acquiescence. “Let us put -it on Germany, by all means. We’ll sleep the sounder! Certainly, I grant -it to you freely—Germany struck the match and lighted the fuse.”</p> - -<p>“And weren’t we all responsible for the fuse—you and I, I mean, as much -as the people in the leather chairs?” There was no irony in her -repetition.<a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a> “The people who fought, as much as the people who didn’t -fight? Wasn’t the fuse simply our conception of our national safety? of -our national honour? That is what I feel so sad about your -poems,—though I should never have wanted to explain it,—that you are -so wrong, so ungenerous, so vindictive.”</p> - -<p>In all his life it had rarely been his lot to know such astonishment. -Astonishment came first; and then the deep, deep hurt that rose, wave -after wave, within him. Was this, then, what she felt for him—only -this? Hadn’t he told her about Ronnie—her alone of all the world? -Should not that have made her reverent of him, and pitiful? Should a man -who had endured such griefs receive such blows? Waves of colour, too, -flooded his face and tears rushed to his eyes. He thought, when he was -able at last to gather thoughts together, that it should now be for him -to find the conventional phrase and leave her. But, glancing again at -her profile, finding it, though singularly pale, so much more gentle -than severe, the impulse dropped. He was not strong enough for -convention. He was shaken, shattered; too weak even for -self-preservation.</p> - -<p>He walked, miserable, and his mind full of a whirling darkness, beside -her, determining only that she should be the first to speak again. She -was. She had quite come out of her shyness,—if it had ever been -that,—and though it was with something faltering, something that was, -he made out, sorry for them both in the predicament to which, after all, -he, and not she, had brought them, it was more than all with resolution -that she said,— -<a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a> -“I am so sorry if I seem presumptuous. But you asked me. And your poems -aren’t the first I’ve read. So many young men, who have been so brave, -like you, and who have been through it all so that they have the right -to speak, seem to feel more than anything that hatred, not against -war,—we all hate war,—but against people, some groups of people, they -make responsible. There are bad and selfish people everywhere,—among -poets, I feel sure, just as much as among statesmen; but hasn’t this war -proved—since everybody has gone—that no one group is bad and selfish; -that there are men in every group who have been glad to die for their -country? I know I have no weight with young men like you; I am not a -person of any importance for opinion; but how I wish that I could make -you believe that you ought not to write like that—with hatred in your -heart. Can great poetry be written out of hatred? And it’s not only -yourself it hurts: it hurts other people; harms them, I mean. It spreads -a mood of darkness and fever just when they are so in need of light and -calm. And for the mothers, for people who have lost, cruelly, those whom -they loved as much, perhaps even more, than you loved your friend—do -you not see how your poems must sicken them? Do you not see that it all -becomes just that—a community of corruption? You imprison them, force -them back into their helpless suffering; when what they pray for is -strength to rise above it and to feel all the goodness and love that has -been given for them; to feel what is beautiful, not what is horrible; so -as to be worthy of their dead.”</p> - -<p>As he listened to her,—and with a slow revulsion of all his nature, as -if, against his very will and mind, she moved his heart to breaking with -something passionate that spoke in her words,—an overwhelming -experience befell him.</p> - -<p>The crocuses beneath their feet, her sunlit shape beside him, her voice, -as she spoke to him thus, with her very soul, blended together in a -rising wave of light, or music, piercing, sweeping him,<a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a> lifting him up -to some new capacity, leaving the old inert and dangling, lifting and -still lifting him, until at last, as if with a great, emerging breath, -he came into a region bright and fair, whence, looking down on the dark -and tattered past, he saw all life differently, even Ronnie’s death, -even Ronnie’s eyes. Ronnie was with him, with Mrs. Baldwin, in the -bright stillness.</p> - -<p>Upborne, sustained, like a swimmer in some strange, new element, he -seemed to gaze down through its golden spaces at the inert, alien -darkness that had been himself. “Rubbish! Rubbish!” he seemed to hear -himself say. Yet all was not left behind; all was not rubbish; else how -could he be here, with her, with Ronnie? It was bliss to see himself as -he had been, since something else was so immeasurably secure. Oh—could -one stay always like this! This was to taste of everlasting life. His -longing, as if with a cry, a grasp from the swimmer, marked the soft -turning of the tide. He sank, but it was sweetly, if with a strange, an -infinite sadness, a sadness recorded, accepted, while he sank, as making -forever the portion of the temporal consciousness. And the bliss still -stayed in the acceptance, and purple ripples seemed to glide back -rhythmically as the crocuses swam before his eyes. It had all been only -an instant then, for her last words came to him as if she had but spoken -them and he heard his own voice murmuring, as if from very far away, -“Perhaps you are right.”</p> - -<p>The ripples stayed themselves. He looked down at the crocuses and saw -Mrs. Baldwin’s white shoes standing still among them. Lifting his eyes, -which felt heavy, he found her looking at him with attention, with -anxiety.<a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a></p> - -<p>“It’s nothing,” he tried to smile. “Nothing at all. I mean—you’ve done -me good.” He saw that she hadn’t an idea of how she had done it.</p> - -<p>“Do take my arm,” she said. “I ought to have remembered that you are not -strong yet.”</p> - -<p>He took her arm. Perhaps he needed it. His normal consciousness was -gathering about him once again, but no longer with the old close -texture. It was all more permeable to light—that was how he tried to -put it. And he heard his voice go on, “You see—what it all amounts -to—oh, I’m not thinking about the poems, I know that you must be -right—it’s not what you say, is it? It’s something far more right than -what you say. But I love you. That’s why you can do it to me. I wonder I -didn’t see it before. You made me angry with your peacefulness. I didn’t -understand. I needed your peace. You, you were what I needed. You will -forgive my speaking? Surely you’ll understand. Perhaps you feel you -hardly know me, while you are like my life. Is it possible that some day -you might love me back and marry me?”</p> - -<p>He had used the words that came. They were the words of the normal -consciousness. How else could he ask her to keep him always near her so -that he might never lose that sense of paradise?</p> - -<p>But she had stopped still and had drawn her arm from his. Was it -possible that after what she had done to him, for him, she could see him -only thus? “Oh, no,” she said. “No. No.” Never had he seen a human face -express with such ineffable gentleness such repudiation. And she -repeated it, as if he had given her too much to bear; as if for her own -reassurance; as if to efface even the memory<a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a> of his words: “No; no; -no!” She began again to walk towards the house.</p> - -<p>Had it not been for the initiation that had passed he knew so clearly -now, in all unawareness from her spirit to his, he would have felt to -the full the shame of his rejection, the deserved shame. For he was a -stranger and she had given him no right to believe that she even liked -him. But he could feel no shame. Had he really thought that she could -love him? Had it not been only that he wanted to tell her that he loved -her, and had wanted her, as it were, to keep him safe? He found himself -trying to explain this to her,—not pleading,—only so that she should -not be angry. “I had to tell you. You’d done me so much good. Everything -came different. Really, I’m not so presumptuous. I never meant to ask -anything.”</p> - -<p>But she was not angry. “Forgive me,” she said. “I hardly know what I am -saying. You so astonished me. Forgive me. But I don’t feel as if I knew -you at all. Please don’t think me reproaching you. I begin to -understand. You are not at all strong. It was like the other day when -you cried, I mean—I feel sure you think you care for me; but you -couldn’t have said it, when we know each other so little, if you had -been well.”</p> - -<p>She was putting it aside, for his sake, as an aberration, and he really -smiled a little as he shook his head.<a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a> “No; really, really, it’s not -that; not because I’ve been on edge and ill. It was something that came -to me from what you are; something that’s been coming ever since I saw -you. I know that I am nothing to you; but for a moment, just now, it -seemed, when I had received so much, that you must know what you had -given; it seemed that a person to whom so much could be given, could -not be so far away. But even then I saw quite clearly what you saw in -me; a vain, pretentious, emotional creature; insincere, too, and proud -of my suffering. I am that. But I had never seen it before. And when it -came to me from you and, instead of crushing me, lifted me up, I knew -that I loved you.—No; I won’t try to explain. Only you do forgive me? -You will let me go on as if it hadn’t happened? I promise you that I’ll -never trouble you again.”</p> - -<p>Oh, the gentleness, the heavenly gentleness! It breathed through him -like the colour of the crocuses, although she was as impersonal, as -untouched, and as mysterious as they. He was nothing to her—nothing; -but she stood before him, looking at him, and though she gave nothing -but the gentleness, he knew that he received all that he needed. It was -enough that she was there.</p> - -<p>“But it’s <i>I</i> to be forgiven—<i>I</i>,” she repeated. “Of course we will go -on. Oh, you look very tired. Please take my arm again. I spoke so -strangely to you. But—but—” She had flushed: for the first time he saw -the colour darken her face as if with a veil of pain, and in her voice -was the passion, deeper, stiller, that he had heard a little while ago -and that had enfranchised him. “I am married—I mean, my husband is -dead, but I am married. Perhaps you don’t understand. Perhaps you will -some day, if you should lose some one you love and feel them still your -very life. We were like that. He is always with me.”</p> - -<p>They had said nothing more as they walked up the meadow to the house, -his arm in hers. He had<a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a> no sense of loss; rather, from her last words -to him, came a sense of further gain. She would be like that. He saw now -that her peace, against which he had pressed and protested, was -something won, was depth, not emptiness. She, too, had lost and -suffered. She was made dearer to him, more sacred. As for his love, it -did not belong—he had seen this even before she told him why—to this -everyday world to which he had returned. But it was everything to have -found it, with that other world, and to know that there it had its -being, its reality, forever. What was it that had enlarged, transformed -his life, but that very certitude of an eternity where all good was -secure? He could not explain it to himself in any words. Words were the -keys of temporality. But he had seen, if only for the few shining -moments, that Ronnie was not lost; that nothing had been in vain.</p> - -<p>If he found no difficulty, it was evident to him that Mrs. Baldwin felt -none, and he was glad to believe that this might be because he showed -her so completely, in his candid contentment, that he would never -trouble her again. She was not more kind to him; but she took, perhaps, -even more care, as if feeling that she had miscalculated something in -his recovery. She inaugurated a glass of hot milk, instead of spiced hot -water, at bedtime, and a rest on the sofa, with a rug, before the midday -dinner. “You will look so much better when you go back than when you -came,” she said.</p> - -<p>For the time of going back drew near, and he did not dread it, though -loving Thatches and all it meant more and more with every day. But of -course, even in the temporal world, he was not to lose Thatches. That -was quite understood between<a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a> them. The P.G. would be welcome whenever -he cared to come.</p> - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p class="nind">H<small>E</small> was playing chess on the afternoon before his departure. Tea was over -and Mrs. Baldwin had gone out. Guy had noticed that she had been perhaps -a little stiller than usual that day, when he had seen her, and that he -had seen her little. The game did not go very well; they were neither of -them keen on it; and when the old gentleman had won an easy victory, he -leaned back in his chair, the board still on its little table between -them, and said, “Poor Effie! She’s still in the church, or in the -churchyard, I expect.”</p> - -<p>Guy felt the shock of a great surprise. Strangely enough, though Mrs. -Baldwin had spoken of her husband and of his death, and though his books -were there, he did not associate him with Thatches, nor with the -churchyard. And with the word, “churchyard,” a painful anxiety rose in -him.</p> - -<p>“Is it an anniversary?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” Mr. Haseltine nodded, sighing and rubbing his hand over his head. -“September twenty-ninth. I’d forgotten myself till just a little while -ago. Oliver died on this day. Her husband. Poor Effie!”</p> - -<p>“They lived here?” Guy asked. He had imagined that it had been after her -bereavement that she and her father had found and made a home of -Thatches.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes. They lived here. All their married life,” said Mr. Haseltine.<a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a> -“Ten years or so. It was a great love-match. They were very happy. I -never saw a happier couple—until the end.”</p> - -<p>“Did anything part them?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Haseltine had put his hands into his pockets and was gazing at the -board as if with a painful concentration, and though he shook his head -he answered, “It was the malady. Cancer, you know. Cancer of the face. -Such a handsome fellow, too: beautiful, bright, smiling eyes; beautiful -mouth. All gone. All disfigured, cruelly disfigured, and with horrible -suffering.”</p> - -<p>Guy felt his breath coming thickly. “Was it long?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Yes. Long. Eighteen months, I think. Morphia did little good at last. -He couldn’t swallow; could hardly speak; begged to be killed and put out -of his torment. She was with him in it all. She never left him, day or -night; nor could he have borne it if she had. Nothing quieted him except -her hand in his. But at the end,” said Mr. Haseltine, pushing away the -table and rising, “at the end, it attacked his brain and then he raved -at her. She couldn’t go into the room at the last.”</p> - -<p>The old man, with step lagging, as if weighted, walked away to the -window and stood looking out, while Guy, at the table, felt his heart -turn to stone.</p> - -<p>“Poor Effie!” Mr. Haseltine repeated after a little while. He came back -into the room and moved up and down, pausing to look at the books and -pictures.<a name="page_323" id="page_323"></a> “She has never been the same since. For a long while we were -afraid she couldn’t live. She hardly slept for months; and when she did -sleep, she used to wake crying, crying, always for him. When she became -stronger, she used to walk up and down those meadows, sometimes for -hours at a time. Very gentle; no complaint; always ready to talk to -people, to go on with things as best she could; but changed; completely -changed. We speak very little of him; but when we do, it’s quite -naturally. She goes to the church sometimes, and there are always -flowers on his grave; but I don’t think she has any orthodox beliefs; I -don’t know that she has any beliefs at all. Still, she seems helped. She -is a very dear, unselfish woman; a dreamer, she was always a dreamer; -but always meaning well; and she does good in her quiet way. And I think -she likes this plan of having people come and stay and seeing after -them; especially now that they are so often people who have had a bad -time. Dear me, dear me!” Mr. Haseltine again shook his head, stationed -again at the window and looking out. “You would hardly have recognized -her had you seen her ten years ago. She had bright hair and a charming -colour; and full of gaiety and mischief. You’d hardly believe it now.”</p> - -<p>“I’m so sorry,” Guy heard himself saying. He remembered that those were -the words Mrs. Baldwin had used to him about Ronnie.</p> - -<p>“Yes, it’s very sad,” said Mr. Haseltine. “Life is certainly very -difficult for some of us, and Effie has had her share. Somehow one -doesn’t remember it when one is with her. I only recalled the day by -chance.”</p> - -<p>Guy was walking in the meadows when Mrs. Baldwin returned. He saw her in -the garden, reading the letters that the evening post had brought, and -his first impulse was to remove himself as speedily as might be from her -sight, to cross the bridge and the farther meadow, and turn into the -lane that led away from it. But then he saw, as he stood irresolute, -that she was coming down to him, and he stood there, helpless, watching -her<a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a> approach in the soft radiance of the late afternoon. She wore one -of the lavender-coloured dresses and the little knitted jacket. In her -hand were the opened letters. Her face was tranquil. She was, of course, -unaware of what had happened to him.</p> - -<p>She joined him. “You are having your last look at the crocuses?”</p> - -<p>It was their last look together. That, of course, was why she had come, -full of care and of kindness.</p> - -<p>“Yes. Yes. My last look for the year.” He heard that his voice was -strange. And his heart seemed to lie like a cold hard block in his side.</p> - -<p>“Aren’t you feeling well?” she asked.</p> - -<p>He walked beside her in silence. What could he say? But how was it -possible not to tell her?</p> - -<p>They had turned towards the sunset and came now to the bridge. She was -looking at him, with solicitude. He stopped before they crossed.</p> - -<p>“I must say something to you,” broke from him. “I must. I can’t go away -without your knowing—my shame—my unutterable remorse.”</p> - -<p>She looked at him with the look he knew so well. Kindly, firmly, if with -anxiety, she prepared to hear him thrust some new torment upon her.</p> - -<p>“Shame? Remorse?” she murmured.</p> - -<p>“About my poems. About my griefs. What I’ve said to you. What I’ve given -you to bear. I thought I’d borne so much. I thought you unfeeling, -without experience. I thought I’d been set apart—that all of us had -been set apart, who suffered in the war. Stop me at once if you won’t -hear it from me. But your father told me, just now, about your husband’s -death.”</p> - -<p>She became very pale. She looked away from him, but she said nothing.<a name="page_325" id="page_325"></a></p> - -<p>“That’s all,” said Guy after a long silence. He saw that there was -nothing more to tell her. She had understood.</p> - -<p>“Let us walk up and down,” said Mrs. Baldwin.</p> - -<p>They crossed the bridge. He saw the stream sliding brightly below them -between the old, black planks. In the farther meadows the crocuses grew -more thickly and opened widely their pale purple chalices.</p> - -<p>“We have all suffered,” said Mrs. Baldwin. “You mustn’t have remorse or -shame. Nothing is harmed between us.”</p> - -<p>The horrible stricture around his heart relaxed, and as they went very -slowly up and down he felt his throat tighten and tears rising, rising -to his eyes. He could not keep them back. He wasn’t really quite strong -enough for this. They fell and fell, and from time to time he put up his -hand to brush them away.</p> - -<p>“We have all suffered,” Mrs. Baldwin repeated gently.</p> - -<p>“Some, more! some, more!” he said brokenly. “Some, most of all!”</p> - -<p>They came back to the bridge, but though they crossed over, they did not -pass out through the high gate that barred the other end. The gate was -closed, and Guy stopped at it and leaned on it and put his face on his -hands. Mrs. Baldwin stood at the gatepost beside him, her hand holding -it and her head leaned against her hand.</p> - -<p>“He would have liked you,” she said. “He was so interested in young men, -young poets. He was not old himself; and he wrote, too, did you know? -All those books in the living-room are his. He used to work there. I -will give you his two books if you <a name="page_326" id="page_326"></a>care to have them. They were thought -very good; I think you will like them.—It was because of the crocuses -we came here,” she went on. “We found them one September, just like -this, and the three little ruined cottages, and we knew at once that we -must live here. He so loved them. When he was very ill—but before the -very end when nothing could come to him any longer, when he was quite -shut away—he used to lie at the window and look out at them—that big -window above the living-room.”</p> - -<p>Divinely she was helping him. It was as if, taking him by the hand, she -led him again away from his darkness and into her own light.</p> - -<p>Yes, brokenly it came to him, it was there, secure; how won, he knew -not. Through her he had found it; but that was because her feet had -passed before him up the calvary. She had gone through everything; and -she knew everything.</p> - -<p>And, to his new hearing, something of the infinite weariness of that -ascent was in her voice when she next spoke, although it was a voice as -peaceful as the evening air around them. “Are they not beautiful?” she -said.</p> - -<p>He raised his head and looked at the flowers through his tears. They had -never been so beautiful. “They make me think of you,” he told her.</p> - -<p>“Do they?” Mrs. Baldwin still leaned her head against her hand, still -looked out over the meadows. “But there are so many of them,” she said.<a name="page_327" id="page_327"></a><a name="page_328" id="page_328"></a> -“So many. That is what I feel first of all about them. I could not think -of them as like one person. Multitudes. Multitudes.—And so silent! They -make me think always of the souls of the happy dead.”</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p class="c"><span class="eng">The Riverside Press</span><br /> -<small>CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS<br /> -U. S. A.</small></p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="padding:2%;border:2px solid gray;"> -<tr><td align="center">Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">embody the <span class="errata">spendour</span>=> embody the splendour {pg 105}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">in spite of <span class="errata">Florre’s</span> good cheer=> in spite of Florrie’s good cheer {pg 136}</td></tr> -</table> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/back.jpg" width="362" height="550" alt="image of the book's back cover" title="" /> -</p> - -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - -***** This file should be named 40650-h.htm or 40650-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/6/5/40650/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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mode 100644 index b85433b..0000000 --- a/old/40650-h/images/title.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/40650-h/images/title_lg.jpg b/old/40650-h/images/title_lg.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 65418ed..0000000 --- a/old/40650-h/images/title_lg.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/40650.txt b/old/40650.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fc3d036..0000000 --- a/old/40650.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9858 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -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/license - - -Title: Christmas Roses and Other Stories - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: September 2, 2012 [EBook #40650] -[Last updated: December 20, 2012] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -CHRISTMAS ROSES -AND OTHER STORIES - -BY -ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK -(Mrs. Basil de Selincourt) -_Author of "Tante," "The Third Window," etc._ - -BOSTON AND NEW YORK -HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY -The Riverside Press Cambridge -1920 - -COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANNE DOUGLAS DE SELINCOURT - -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - - - -CONTENTS - -CHRISTMAS ROSES 1 - -HEPATICAS 63 - -DAFFODILS 92 - -PANSIES 121 - -PINK FOXGLOVES 147 - -CARNATIONS 168 - -STAKING A LARKSPUR 208 - -EVENING PRIMROSES 253 - -AUTUMN CROCUSES 279 - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -Christmas Roses - - -I - -THEY were coming up everywhere in their sheltered corner on the -wall-border, between the laurustinus and the yew hedge. She had always -loved to watch their manner of emerging from the wintry ground: neck -first, arched and stubborn; heads bent down as if with held breath and -thrusting effort; the pale, bowed, folded flower, when finally it rose, -still earthy, still part, as it were, of the cold and dark from which it -came; so that to find them, as on this morning, clear, white, -triumphant, all open to the wind and snow, was to renew the sense of the -miraculous that, more than any other flower, they always gave her. More -than any other flower, they seemed to _mean_ to come, to will and -compass it by the force of their own mysterious life. More than any -other flower, winter piled upon their heads, unallured by spring and the -promise of sunlight, they seemed to come from the pressure of a gift to -bring rather than a life to seek. She thought always, when she saw them, -of Christmas bells over snowy fields, in bygone centuries; of the Star -in the East, and of the manger at Bethlehem. They were as ancient as -that tradition, austere and immaculate witnesses in an unresponsive -world; yet they were young and new, always; always a surprise, and even -to her, old as she was, bereft and sorrowful, a reminder that life was -forever a thing of births, of gifts, of miracles. - -They did not fail her this morning when she came out to them, and she -thought, as she stopped to look at them, that one was not really old -when, in the shock of sheer happiness, one knew childhood again and its -wonder. Yet, as she worked among them, cutting away dead leaves and -adjusting sprays of evergreen so that the rains should not splash them -with mud, it was a new analogy they brought; and, for the first time, -measuring her resource after the appeal Tim's letter had made upon it, -she reflected that the Christmas roses were rather like herself. She, -too, in this wintry season of her life, was still determined and -indomitable. Widowed and childless, with many mournings in her heart, -griefs and devastations in her memory, she, too, was a force, silent and -patient; and it was this that people still found in her. For the appeal -always brought the answer. She had felt herself, so often, benumbed into -lethargy, and, yielding to the mere mute instinct of self-preservation, -had so often folded herself up and lapsed into the blank darkness of her -grief (her husband's death, so many years ago; and Miles's, and little -Hugh's, and her dear, dear Peggy's). But it had always been to hear -herself, as if in a dream, called to from the outside world, and to feel -herself, in answer, coming up again, rising, if only to snows and -tempests, in a renewal of life which brought with it, always, a renewal -of joy in life. - -For months now, since August, she had been sunken in the last grief--it -must be--that could come to her; for Miles was the last, of her own, who -had remained--Peggy's youngest boy. The oldest, already a soldier, had -been killed in the first months of the war, and, after all his years of -peril, it had seemed as if Miles was to escape. But, cruelly, just at -the turning of the tide, when victory had become assured, he had been -shot down, and in his crashing fall through the air she had felt the end -of everything, Peggy dying again with him; for Peggy, too, had died like -that, crashing and falling and dragged, in a horrible hunting accident. -There seemed, now, nothing more left to suffer, and nothing more to live -for, either, unless it were her poor Tim; and it had, exactly, been -Tim's letter that had driven her out to wrestle with the elements, after -her wont in any disturbance or perplexity, so that she could think over -what he told her while she wielded her trowel and fork on the convenient -wall-border. - -She had, on rising from the breakfast-table, sent Tim a wire: "I shall -expect her. Writing later," and had then called to Parton to bring her -old warm coat, her hood with its satin lining, and her buckled galoshes. - -Parton was accustomed to her mistress's vagaries in regard to gardening, -and made no comment on the enterprise except to express the hope that it -would not snow again. Parton, in spite of her youth a most efficient -combination of parlourmaid and lady's-maid, was devoted to her mistress; -the little pat and tweak she gave to the bow of the hood, and the -gentleness with which she adjusted the galoshes, expressed a close yet -almost reverential relationship. - -It was not freezing, and under the light fall of snow the ground was -soft. Mrs. Delafield found herself enjoying the morning freshness as she -tidied and weeded, and had her usual affectionate eye for the -bullfinches nipping away at her plum-buds and the tits and robins at the -little table spread with scraps for them near the house; while all the -time Tim's letter weighed on her, and the problem it presented; and as -she pondered on it, and on Rhoda, her niece, Tim's only child, her firm, -square, handsome, old, white face was not devoid of a certain grimness. - -Mrs. Delafield was very handsome, perhaps more handsome now than she had -been in youth. Her brow, with the peak of thick white hair descending -upon it, her thick black eyebrows and her rather thick, projecting nose, -were commanding--almost alarmingly so to those who in her presence had -cause for alarm. The merely shy were swiftly reassured by something -merry in her gaze and by the benevolent grace still lingering on her -firm, small lips. She had square eyes clearly drawn, and with an oddity -in their mountain-brook colouring, for one was brown and one was freaked -with grey. Her form was ample and upright, and in all her gestures there -was swiftness and decision. - -It was of Tim she thought at first, rather than of Rhoda, the cause of -all their distresses. But she was not seeing Tim as he now existed, -bleached, after his years of India, invalided, fretted by family cares, -plaintive and pitiful. She saw him as a very little boy in their distant -Northern nursery of sixty years ago, with bright curls, ruddy cheeks, -and the blue eyes, candid and trusting, that he still kept; standing -there, bare-armed and bare-legged, in his stiff, funny little dress of -plaid, before the fire-guard, while nurse, irate, benevolent figure, cut -bread and butter for breakfast. Dear little Tim! still her younger -brother; still turning to her, as he had always done, for counsel or -succour in any stress or anxiety. It was nothing new that the anxiety -should be about Rhoda; there was nothing, even, that had surprised her -in Tim's letter; yet she knew from the sense of urgency and even -breathlessness within her that the blow which had been dealt him could -not leave her unaffected. She could, after all, still suffer in Tim's -suffering. And even before she had let her thoughts dwell decisively on -Rhoda, she had found herself thinking, while the grimness settled on her -face, "I shall know how to talk to her." - -She had always known how to talk to the moody young beauty; that was why -Tim had sent off this letter of desperate appeal. She never quite saw -why Rhoda had not, from the first, felt in her merely an echo of her -father's commonplace conventionality and discounted her as that. Rhoda -had never, she felt sure, guessed how far from conventional she was; how -much at heart, in spite of a life that had never left appointed paths, -she knew herself to be a rebel and a sceptic; no one had ever guessed -it. But there had always been between her and Rhoda an intuitive -understanding; and that Rhoda from the first had listened and, from the -first, had sometimes yielded, proved that she was intelligent. - -Mrs. Delafield saw herself so accurately as Rhoda must see her. The -terse, old-fashioned aunt in the country residence--yes, dear Fernleigh, -square and mid-Victorian, with its name, and its creepers, its -conservatory, and its shrubberies, was so eminently a residence; and she -had never wanted to alter it into anything else, for it was so that she -had found it when, on her mother-in-law's death, she and the young -husband of so many years ago had first gone there to live. Rhoda must -see her, her hair so smooth under its cap of snowy net, her black -gowns--stuff for morning wear, silk for evening--so invariable, with the -frills at neck and wrists, thick gold chains and the dim old brooches -that went with them, as belonging almost to an epoch of albums on -centre-tables, of Mendelssohn's sacred songs, and archery tournaments; -an epoch of morning family-prayers and moral categories, where some -people still believed in hell and everybody believed in sin. She didn't -think that Rhoda had ever seen through all these alienating appearances -to the reality she herself knew to be so different; but it had always -been evident that she felt it through them; that she was at ease with -her aunt, candid, even if angry, and willing, even when most silent and -recalcitrant, to come down to Fernleigh, when her distracted parents -could deal with her no longer, and to "think things over," as they put -it to her, imploringly. - -Mrs. Delafield could see Rhoda thinking things over from a very early -age, from the earliest age at which recalcitrancy could count as -practically alarming. She could see her walking slowly past this very -border at the time that she had determined to go on the stage,--she had -only just left the hands of her devastated governesses,--pausing now and -then to examine unseeingly a plant, her hands clasped behind her, her -dark, gloomy, lovely, young head brooding on the sense of wrong, and, -even more, no doubt, on plots and stratagems. Her aunt had always -watched her, while seeming, in the most comfortable manner possible, to -give her no attention; noting everything about her,--and everything -counted against poor Tim's and Frances's peace of mind,--from the -slender, silken ankles to the tall column of the proud young throat; all -of it, every bit of Rhoda, so determined by an insatiable vanity, which -was the worst of her, and by a sardonic pride, which was the best. - -Rhoda, to do her further justice, was even more wonderful in the eyes of -her admirers than in her own. Her consciousness was not occupied so much -with her own significance as with all the things due to it; and it was -upon these things, and the methods of obtaining them, that she brooded -as she walked. "Naughty girl," had been her aunt's unexpressed comment; -and perhaps one reason why Rhoda had found it comfortable, or, at least, -composing, to be with her, was that it was a relief to be seen as a -naughty girl rather than as a terrifying portent. - -Mrs. Delafield had determined at once that Rhoda should not go on the -stage, though not, really, because Tim and Frances had begged her to -dissuade the child. She could perfectly imagine having wished to go on -the stage herself in her young days; and it was this consciousness, -perhaps, that made her so fair to Rhoda's desire. She had taken her -stand on no conventional objection; she had not even argued with Rhoda; -she had simply been able to make her feel, bit by bit, that she hadn't -one little atom of talent. - -It had been the same thing, really, when Rhoda had announced her -intention of marrying a dreadful young man, a bad young man,--Mrs. -Delafield knew where to apply her categories,--who had a large studio -where he gave teas and painted small, disagreeable pictures. They were -clever pictures; Mrs. Delafield was aware of this, though Tim and -Frances saw them only as disagreeable; and the young man, if bad, was -clever. Mrs. Delafield had travelled up to town several times in this -emergency, and had even accompanied Rhoda to the studio, where a young -lady with bare legs and feet was dancing, with more concentration than -spontaneity, before a cigaretted audience. Oddly enough, after this -visit, it had been much easier to make Rhoda give up Mr. Austin Dell -than it had been to make her give up the stage. Mrs. Delafield had -merely talked him over, very mildly, him and his friends, asking here -and there a kindly question about one or a slightly perplexed question -about another. It had been Rhoda herself who had expressed awareness of -the second-rate flavour that had brooded so heavily over dancer and -audience, not leaving Mr. Dell himself untouched. On the point of Mr. -Dell's income Mrs. Delafield soon felt that Rhoda knew -misgivings--misgivings as to her own fitness to be a needy artist's -wife. She made no overt recantation, but over her tea, presently, agreed -with her aunt that it was a pity to dance with bare feet unless the feet -were flawlessly well-shaped. "She is such a little fool, that Miss -Matthews!" Rhoda had remarked. And after this there was no more talk of -Mr. Dell. - - -II - -When, in the second year of the war, poor Tim and Frances, dusty, jaded, -nearly shattered, but appeased at last, were able to announce the -engagement of their daughter Rhoda to the unexceptionable Niel Quentyn, -Mrs. Delafield's special function seemed ended; but, looking back over -her long intercourse with her niece, she knew that Rhoda had felt her a -relief rather than an influence; that she had made things easier rather -than more difficult to her; that, in short, she had always successfully -appealed to the girl's intelligence rather than to what poor Tim and -Frances called her better self; and it was of Rhoda's intelligence, and -of what possible pressure she might be able to bring to bear upon it, -that she thought finally, as she worked at her border and waited for the -fly that was to bring Rhoda's baby and its nurse from the station. - -She had not been able to rejoice with her brother and his wife over -Rhoda's match. She who had measured, during her years of -acquaintanceship with her, her niece's force, had measured accurately, -in her first glance at him, Niel's insignificance. He was good-looking, -good-tempered, and very much in love; but caste, clothes, code, and the -emotion of his age and situation summed him up. He had money, too, and -could give Rhoda, together with a little handle to her name, the dim, -rich, startling drawing-room in which her taste at once expressed -itself, and a pleasant country house, where, as he confided to Mrs. -Delafield, he hoped to inspire her, when the war was over, with his own -ardour for hunting. - -Rhoda was far too clever to quarrel with such excellent bread and -butter; but what could he give her more? for Rhoda would want more than -bread and butter; what food for excitement and adventure could he offer -her indolent yet eager mind and her nature, at once so greedy and so -fastidious? Mrs. Delafield asked herself the question, even while she -watched Rhoda's wonderful white form move up the nave at her splendid, -martial wedding; even while poor Frances wept for joy and "The Voice -that breathed o'er Eden" surged from the organ; and she feared that Niel -was getting far more than he had bargained for and Rhoda far less. - -The first year, it was true, passed successfully. Poor Frances, who had, -fortunately, died at the end of it, had known no reason for abated -rejoicing. She lived long enough to see the baby, little Jane Amoret, as -Rhoda persisted in calling the child; and she had welcomed Niel home -once on leave--Niel as much infatuated as ever and trying to take an -intelligent interest in Picasso. It was since then, during the past -year, that Tim's letters had expressed a growing presage and appeal. -Moved by the latter, and only a short time before her own grief had -overtaken her, she had gone up to London and stayed with him for a few -days, and had taken tea with Rhoda. - -At Rhoda's it had been exactly as she expected. The drawing-room was -worthy of its fame; so worthy that Mrs. Delafield wondered how Niel -afforded it--and in war-time, too. Rhoda, as she often announced, was -clever at picking up things, and many of the objects with which she had -surrounded herself were undoubted trophies of her resource and -knowledge. But all the taste and skill in the world didn't give one that -air of pervading splendour, as of the setting for a Russian ballet, in -which the red lacquer and the Chinese screens, the blacks and golds and -rich, dim whites were, like Rhoda herself, sunken with her customary air -of gloomy mirth in the deepest cushions and surpassingly dressed, merged -in the soft, unstressed, yet magnificent atmosphere. It was the -practical side of matters--the depth of good, dull Niel's purse measured -against the depth of Rhoda's atmosphere--that alarmed Mrs. Delafield, -rather than Rhoda herself and Rhoda's friends, of whom poor Tim had so -distressingly written. - -There were many suave and merry young men, mainly in khaki, and various -ladies, acute or languorous, who had the air of being as carefully -selected as the chairs and china. There were tea and cigarettes, and an -abundance of wonderful talk that showed no sign of mitigation on account -of her mid-Victorian presence; though, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, -musing on the young people about her, no one could say, except their -clever selves, how much mitigation there might not be. Like Rhoda, no -doubt, they felt her reality through her mid-Victorianism. Her small -black bonnet with its velvet strings, and her long, loose jacket trimmed -with fringe, would not restrain them beyond a certain point. Yet she -suspected that they had a point, and she wondered, though the question -did not alarm her, where it could be placed. - -They talked, at all events, and she listened; at times she even smiled; -and since by no possibility could her smiles be taken as complicities, -she was willing that they should be taken as comprehensions. Rhoda's -friends, though so young, were chill and arid, and the enthusiasms they -allowed themselves had the ring of provocation rather than of ardour. -Yet she did not dislike them; they were none of them like Mr. Dell; -and, though so withered by sophistication, they had at moments flashes -of an uncanny, almost an ingenuous wisdom. - -The occasion had not alarmed her, and she had found but one moment -oppressive, that of the appearance--the displayal, as of a Chinese idol, -indeed, or a Pekinese spaniel (Rhoda had three of these)--of poor little -Jane Amoret. She rarely disliked her niece, even when feeling her most -naughty; but she found herself disliking her calculated maternity, with -its kisses, embraces and reiterated "darlings." Jane Amoret had eyed her -gravely and, as gravely, had held out her arms to her nurse to be taken -back when the spectacle was over. Jane Amoret's attire was quite as -strange as her mother's drawing-room, and Rhoda had contrived to make -her look like a cross between an Aubrey Beardsley and a gorgeous, -dressed-up doll Madonna in a Spanish cathedral. - -On returning to Tim, Mrs. Delafield found that she could not completely -reassure him, but she laid stress, knowing it would be, comparatively, a -comfort, on Rhoda's extravagance, eliciting from him a groan of "I -know!--I know!--Poor Niel's been writing to me about it!--Dances; -dinners; gowns. One would say she had no conscience at all--and at a -time like this!" But he went on, "That's nothing, though. That can be -managed when Niel gets back--if he ever does, poor fellow!--and can put -his foot down on the spot. You didn't see him, then? He wasn't -there--the young man?" - -Tim had never before spoken definitely of a young man. - -"The young man?" she questioned. "There were a dozen of them. Of -course, she'll have a special one: that's part of the convention. Rhoda -may cultivate--like all the rest of them--every appearance of lawless -attachment; but you may be sure, dear Tim, that it's only a pose, a -formula, like the painted lips and dyed hair, which doesn't in the least -mean they are demi-mondaines." - -"Painted lips? Dyed hair? Demi-mondaines?" Tim had wanly echoed. "Do you -really mean, Isabel, that Rhoda paints and dyes?" - -"Not her hair. It's too lovely to be dyed. But her lips,--why, haven't -you seen it?--ever since she was eighteen. It is all, as I say, a pose; -a formula. They are all afraid of nothing so much as of seeming -respectable. I imagine that there's just as much marital virtue at large -in the world nowadays as when we were young.--Who is the young man?" she -had, nevertheless, ended. - -"My dear, don't ask me!" Tim had moaned, blanched and battered in his -invalid's chair. (Why wouldn't he come down and live with her? Why, -indeed, except that, since Frances's death, he had felt that he must -stand by, in London, and watch over Rhoda.) "I only know what I've -heard. Amy has talked and talked. And everybody else is talking, -according to her." Amy was Frances's sister, a well-meaning, but -disturbing woman, with a large family of well-conducted, well-married, -unpainted, and unfashionable daughters. "She is here every day about it. -They are always together. He is always there. The poet--the new young -poet. He has a heart or a chest or a stomach--something that has sent -him home and that keeps him safe at Whitehall, while poor Niel fights in -France. Surely, Isabel, you've heard of Christopher Darley? Wasn't he -there? Young. Younger than Rhoda. Black hair. Big eyes. Silent." - -Silent.--Yes, there had been, beside Jane Amoret, one silent person in -Rhoda's drawing-room. And she had been aware of him constantly, though, -till now, unconsciously. Very young; very pale; aloof, near a window, -with an uncalculated aloofness. She reconstructed an impression that -became deeper the further she went into it. Thick backward locks that -had given his forehead a wind-blown look, and a gaze now and then -directed on herself, a gaze grave, withdrawing, yet scrutinizing, too. - -"Yes; I think, now that you describe him, I must have seen him," she -murmured; while a curious alarm mounted in her, an alarm that none of -Rhoda's more characteristic circle had aroused. "He wasn't living by a -formula of freedom," she reflected. "And he wasn't arid." Aloud she -said, "He looked a nice young creature, I remember." - -"He writes horrible poems, Amy says; blasphemous. There they are. I -can't understand them. He casts down everything; has no beliefs of any -kind. Nice? I should think that's the last adjective that would describe -him." - -She had picked up the unobtrusive volume and found herself arrested; not -as she had been by the memory of the young man's gaze, nor yet in the -manner that Tim's account indicated; but still arrested. Very young--but -austere, dignified, and strange, genuinely and effortlessly strange. So -a young priest might have written, seeking in close-pressed metaphysical -analogies to find expression for spiritual passion. She stood, puzzled -and absorbed. - -"No, it isn't blasphemous," she said presently. "And he has beliefs. -But surely, Tim dear, surely this young man can't care for Rhoda." - -How could a young man who wrote like that about the mystic vision care -for Rhoda? - -"Not care for Rhoda!" Tim's voice had now the quaintest ring of paternal -resentment. "The most beautiful young woman in London! Why, he's head -over heels in love with her. And the worst of it is that, from what Amy -sees and hears, she cares for him." - -"It's curious," Mrs. Delafield said, laying down the book. "I shouldn't -have thought he'd care about beautiful young women." - -And now Tim's letter, on this December morning, announced that Rhoda had -gone off with Christopher Darley; and Mrs. Delafield could find it in -her heart, as she worked and pondered, to wish that her dear Tim had -followed Frances before this catastrophe overtook him. - -"Good heavens!" she heard herself muttering, "if only she'd been meaner, -more cowardly, and stayed and lied--as women of her kind are supposed to -do. If only she'd let him die in peace; he can't have many years." - -But no: it had been done with _le beau geste_. Tim had known nothing, -and poor Niel, home for his first peace leave, had come to him, -bewildered and aghast, with the news. He had found a letter waiting for -him, sent from the country. Tim copied the letter for her:-- - - DEAR NIEL: - - I'm sure you felt, too, that our life couldn't go on. It had become - too unsatisfactory for both of us. Luckily we are sensible people - nowadays, and such mistakes can be remedied. You must mend your - life as I am mending mine. I am leaving you, with Christopher - Darley. I am so sorry if it seems sudden; but I felt it better that - we should not meet again. - - Yours affectionately - - RHODA - -"If only the poet hadn't had money, too!" Mrs. Delafield had thought. -For this fact she had learned about Mr. Darley in London. Rhoda would -never have abandoned that drawing-room had she not been secure of -another as good. - -Tim wrote that nothing could have been manlier, more generous, than -Niel's behaviour. He was willing, for the sake of the child, to take -Rhoda back, reinstate her, and protect her from the consequences of her -act; and what Tim now begged of his sister was that she should see -Rhoda, see if, confronting her, she could not induce her to return to -her husband. Meanwhile Jane Amoret would be dispatched at once with her -nurse to Fernleigh. Tim had written to his child in her retreat, and had -implored her to go to her aunt. "I told her that you would receive her, -Isabel," so Tim's letter ended; "and I trust you now to save us--as far -as we can be saved. Tell her that her husband will forgive, and that I -forgive, if she will return. Let her see the child. Let that be your -appeal." - -Poor, darling Tim! Very mid-Victorian. "Forgive." Would "receive" her. -The words had an antediluvian ring. With what battledore and -shuttle-cock of mirth and repartee they would be sent sailing and -spinning in Rhoda's world. All the same, she, who was mid-Victorian in -seeming rather than in reality, would make other appeals, if Rhoda -came. Already she could almost count the steady heads of her intentions -thrusting up as if through the ground. Even in Rhoda's world repartee -and mirth might be displayed rather than acted upon, and Rhoda might -find herself, as a result of _le beau geste_, less favourably placed for -the creation of another drawing-room than she imagined. That, of course, -was the line to take with Rhoda; and as she reflected, carefully now, on -what she would say to her,--as she determined that Rhoda should not -leave her until she had turned her face firmly homeward,--the sound of -wheels came up the road, and outside the high walls she heard the -station fly drawing up at her gates. In another moment she was welcoming -Jane Amoret and her nurse. - - -III - -SHE had not seen the child for five months now, and her first glance at -her, for all its sweetness, brought something of a shock, revealing as -it did how deeply she cared for the little creature. She was not a -child-lover, not undiscriminatingly fond of all examples of the -undeveloped, though her kind solicitude might have given her that -appearance. Children had always affected her, from the cradle, as -personalities; and some, like the mature, were lovable and some the -reverse. Jane Amoret had already paid her more than one visit--she had -been more than willing that Rhoda should find her a convenience in this -respect; and she had, from the first, found her lovable. But the five -months had brought much more to the mere charm of babyhood. She was now -potent and arresting in her appeal and dignity. She sat in her nurse's -arms, her eyes fixed on her great-aunt, and, as Mrs. Delafield held out -her hands to her, she unhesitatingly, if unsmilingly, answered, leaning -forward to be taken. - -She was a pale, delicate baby, her narrow little face framed in -straightly cut dark hair, her mournful little lips only tinted with a -rosy mauve; and, under long, fine brows, her great eyes were full of -meditativeness. Rhoda, though now so richly a brunette, had, as a baby, -been ruddy-haired and rosy-cheeked, with eyes of a velvety, submerging -darkness. Jane Amoret's grey iris rayed out from the expanded pupil like -the corolla of a flower. There was no likeness between the child and her -mother. Nor was there anything of Niel's sleepy young countenance, with -its air of still waters running shallow. - -Mrs. Delafield, something of a student of heredity, saw in the little -face an almost uncanny modern replica of her own paternal grandmother, -whose pensive gaze, under high-dressed powdered hair, had followed her -down the drawing-room in the home of her childhood. In Jane Amoret she -recovered the sense of that forgotten romance of her youth--the -wonderful, beautiful great-grandmother with the following eyes. Had they -not, even then, been asking something of her? - -"It isn't everyone she'll go to, ma'am," said the nurse, as they went up -the path to the house, Mrs. Delafield carrying Jane Amoret. - -Nurse was a highly efficient example of her type--crisp, cheerful, a -little glib. Mrs. Delafield had never warmly liked her, and felt -convinced now, that in spite of her decorous veneer of reticence, the -servants' hall would be enlightened as to the whole story before many -hours were over. Well, it could not be helped. - -They went up to the big nursery overlooking the walled garden at the -back of the house, where, since the morning's post and its -announcements, a great fire of logs had been blazing. Nurse made but one -respectful, passing reference to Rhoda. The country air would do Lady -Quentyn good. She had, nurse thought, over-tired herself of late. What -else she thought, Parton and the others were soon to hear hinted. And as -Rhoda's calculated maternity had chilled her aunt on that day five -months ago, so she was chilled now to think that Rhoda should have had -more taste in the choice of her drawing-room than in that of her baby's -nurse. - -While, in the next room, the unpleasing woman was unpacking her own and -Jane Amoret's effects, Mrs. Delafield was left alone with the child. She -had found, on a shelf, a box of well-worn blocks, and seating herself in -the low, chintz-covered wicker chair beside the fire, she placed them, -one by one, before Jane Amoret, who, on her white wool rug, gave them a -gentle attention. She had been too young for blocks on her last visit. - -The old chair, as Mrs. Delafield moved in it, leaning down, creaked -softly, and she remembered, a curious excitement stirring under all -these recoveries of the past, that it had been condemned as really too -decrepit when Peggy had been a baby. Yet the threat had never been -carried out. It had gone on through Peggy's babyhood and through the -babyhood of Peggy's children, and, unused for all these years, here it -gave forth again just the plaintive yet comfortable sounds which, even -more, it seemed, than another baby's presence, evoked Peggy and her own -young maternity. - -The chair, the blocks, the firelight playing on the happy walls, with -their framed Caldecotts and Cherry Ripes and Bubbles, all evoked that -past, filling her with the mingled acquiescence and yearning of old age. -And Jane Amoret evoked a past far, far more distant. Peggy had not been -like the great-grandmother. None of them had ever reincarnated that -vanished loveliness. But here, mysterious and appealing, it was before -her; and it seemed to brush across her very heartstrings every time -that, from the blocks, the child lifted the meditative grey of her eyes -to her great-aunt's face. - -Far too mysterious, far too lovely, far too gentle, this frail -potentiality, for any uses ever to be made of it by Rhoda, by Niel, or -by nurse. And the yearning became a yearning over Jane Amoret. - -Yes, there the edifice rose, block by block--her deft, deliberate -fingers placed them one after the other, under Jane Amoret's eyes, -absorbed in this towering achievement. The miniature Alhambra finished, -she sat and gazed, and her little chest lifted in a great sigh of wonder -and appeasement. Then, her baby interest dropping, she looked round at -the flames, and, for a little time, gazed at them, while her -great-aunt's hand moved softly to rest upon her head. It seemed then, as -if in answer to the rapt and tender look bent above her, that Jane -Amoret's eyes were again raised and that she stretched up her arms to be -taken. - -"She really loves me," said Mrs. Delafield, as touched and trembling as -a young lover. She lifted her, pressing the little body against her -breast; and, as Jane Amoret gave herself to the enfolding, a thought -that was as sharp and as sudden as a pang flashed through her -great-aunt's mind. "I can never give her up." - -What came to her first, as she sat there, Jane Amoret's head leaning -against her, was the thought of Christmas roses. It was a gift, a -miracle. And to what depths of loneliness the gift had been given; with -what depths of life she answered it! But she was breathless while she -tried to think, knowing something terrible in her own swift acceptance; -seeing for the first time something lawless and perilous in her own -nature. Never in her life had she betrayed a trust; never broken a law. -Yet often, through the years, she had paused, contemplative and -questioning, to gaze at something her mirror showed her, an implication -that only she could see, a capacity never realized. And what she saw -sometimes, with discomfort and shrinking, in those freaked eyes, those -firm lips, was an untamed wildness that had come to her from much -further back than a great-grandmother; something predatory and reckless, -perhaps from the days of border robbers, and Highland chiefs whose only -law was their own will. - -She knew now what were the faces waiting to seize upon her accusingly. -Not Rhoda's. She swept Rhoda and her forfeited claim aside. Let her stay -with her poet, since that was what she had chosen. It was Niel and poor -Tim who looked at her aghast. But another face hovered softly and -effacingly before them; a pale young face with rosy-mauve lips and -following eyes that said, "They will never understand me. This is what I -was trying to tell you, always. I knew that I was coming back. This is -what I was asking you to do." - -It was superstition; it did not deceive her for a moment. Desire -dressing itself in a supernatural appeal. Absurd and discreditable. But, -in all truth and honour, wasn't there something in it? Wasn't there a -time, once in a blue moon, for lawlessness, when it came as a miracle? -Whom would she harm, really? What could his paternity mean, really, to -drowsy young Niel? And could she not salve Tim's wounds? - -The only thing that could count,--she came to that at last, feeling the -child, with sleeping, drooping head and little hands held within her -hand, already so profoundly her own,--the only thing was Jane Amoret -herself. Had she a right to keep her from what was, perhaps, her chance -of the normal, even if the defective, life? Wasn't even a bad and -foolish mother better than no mother at all, and an untarnished name -supremely desirable? She struggled, her eyes fixed on the fire, her hand -unconsciously closing fast on the little intertwined hands within it. -And with the face of the great-grandmother came again the thought of the -Christmas roses, of the gift, the miracle. - -She had not sought anything. She had not even chosen. It was rather as -if Jane Amoret had chosen her. She need not make an effort to keep the -gift. She need merely make no effort to give it back. If Rhoda came (oh, -she could but pray that Rhoda would not come!), she need not find the -right words for her. She had only to remain the passive spectator of -Rhoda's enterprise and not put out a hand to withdraw her from it. And, -thrusting, feverishly, final decisions from her, her mind sprang out -into far projects and promises. She could, with a will, live for twenty -more years yet and fill them full for Jane Amoret. Niel must not lose -his child, evidently. She would arrange with Niel. He had always liked -her and turned to her. Let this be his home, and welcome. But of course, -he would marry again. She could persuade him not to take Jane Amoret -from her to give to a step-mother. Niel would be easy. - -And Tim, now, must come, of course. Tim should, with her, enjoy Jane -Amoret to the full. What a happy childhood she could make it! It was, to -begin with, quite the happiest nursery she knew, this long-empty nursery -of hers. In a few years' time Jane Amoret would be old enough to have -her own little plot in the garden--Peggy's plot; and a pony like Peggy's -should come to the empty stables. She saw already the merry, instructed -girl she would choose as Jane Amoret's governess: some one young enough -to play out of lesson hours; some one who would teach her to know birds -and flowers as well as history and Latin. She would keep Jane Amoret's -hair cut like this,--it was the only point in the child's array in which -her taste was Rhoda's,--straight across the forehead and straight across -the neck, until she was fifteen, and she should wear smocked blue linen -for morning and white for afternoon, as her own children had done. With -good luck, she might even see Jane Amoret married. - -Actually, she was thinking about Jane Amoret's marriage, actually -wondering about the nice little eldest boy at the manor,--while her arms -tightened in instinctive maternal anxiety around the sleeping -baby,--when Parton, doing her best not to look round-eyed, announced -Lady Quentyn. - - -IV - -SHE knew, as she waited for Rhoda to come up, that something she had -forgotten during this last half-hour--perhaps it was her -conscience--steeled her suddenly to the endurance of a test. Tim had -worded it, "Let her see the child. Let that be your appeal." Would it -not appease her conscience to stand or fall by that? It should be her -appeal. But the only one. - -Jane Amoret had waked, and now, dazed but unfretful, suffered herself to -be placed again on the rug among the blocks, one of which Mrs. Delafield -put into her hands, bidding her build a beautiful big house, as -great-aunt had done. The anguish of her own suspense was made manifest -to her in the restless gesture with which, after that, and while she -waited, she bent to put another log on the fire. - -Rhoda's soft, deliberate rustle was outside. In another moment she had -entered, and the effect that Mrs. Delafield dreaded seemed produced on -the spot; for, arrested at the very threshold, almost before her eyes -had sought her aunt's, Rhoda stared down at the child with knotted, with -even incredulous brows. - -"Oh! He's sent her already, then!" she exclaimed. - -What did the stare, the exclamation, portend? - -"Yes. He sent her, of course, as soon as he came back." - -"But why?--until our interview is over?" - -"Why not? She'd been alone for a week." Mrs. Delafield spoke with the -mildness which, she determined, should not leave her. "Niel, of course, -wanted to have her cared for." - -Rhoda, during this little interchange, had remained near the door; but -now, perceiving, perhaps, that she had come near to giving herself away, -she cleared her brows of their perplexity and moved forward to the fire, -where, leaning her velvet elbow on the mantelpiece, she answered, drily -laughing; "Oh! Niel's care! He wouldn't know whether the child were fed -on suet-pudding or cold ham! She's not alone, with nurse. There's no one -who can take such care of her as nurse. I knew that." And she went on -immediately, putting the question of Jane Amoret's presence behind her -with decision, "Well, poor Aunt Isabel, what have you to say to me? -Father wrote that you would consent to be the go-between. He absolutely -implored me to come, and it's to satisfy him I'm here, for I really -can't imagine what good it can do." - -No; Mrs. Delafield had grasped her own security and her own danger. It -had not been in remorse or tenderness that Rhoda's eyes had fixed -themselves upon her child, it had been in anxiety, lest Jane Amoret's -presence should be the signal of some final verdict against her. She had -come because she hoped to be taken back; and if there was all the needed -justification in Rhoda's callousness, there was an undreamed-of danger -in her expectation. - -"Well, we must see," Mrs. Delafield remarked; and already she was -measuring the necessities of Rhoda's pride against the urgencies of -Rhoda's disenchantment. It was Rhoda's pride that she must hold to. -Rhoda, even if she had come, had only come to make her own terms. - -"Did you motor over?" she asked. "You are not very far from here, are -you?" - -No train could have brought her at that hour. - -"Twenty miles or so away," said Rhoda. "I was able to hire a motor, a -horrible, open affair with torn flaps that let in all the air, so that -I'm frozen." - -Her loveliness did, indeed, look a little pinched and sharpened, and -there was more than the cold drive to account for it. But she was still -surpassingly lovely, with the loveliness that, once you were confronted -with it, seemed to explain everything that might need explanation. That -was Rhoda's strongest card. She left her appearance to speak for her and -made no explanations, as now, when, indeed, she had all the air of -expecting other people to make them. But her aunt only said, while Jane -Amoret, from her rug, kept her grave gaze upon her mother, "Won't you -have some hot milk?" - -"Thanks, yes, I should be glad of it," said Rhoda. "How lucky you are to -have it. We are given only condensed for our coffee at the hotel. It's -quite revolting." And after Mrs. Delafield had rung, and since no -initiative came from her, she was, in a manner, forced to open the -conversation. "Niel has only himself to thank," she said. "He's been -making himself too impossible for a long time." - -"Really? In what way? Perhaps the hard life over there has affected his -temper." - -Mrs. Delafield allowed herself the irony. Rhoda, indeed, must expect -that special flavour from her. - -"Something has certainly affected it," said Rhoda, drawing a chair to -the fire and spreading her beautiful hands before it. "I'm quite tired, -I confess,--horrid as I'm perfectly aware it sounds to say it,--of -hearing about the hard life. Life's hard enough for all of us just now, -heaven knows; and I think they haven't had half a bad time over there, -numbers of them--men like Niel, I mean, who've travelled comfortably -about the world and never had the least little wound, nor been, ever, in -any real danger, as far as I can make out; at least, not since he's had -the staff work. It's very different from my poor Christopher, who rotted -in the cold and mud until it nearly killed him. There would be some -point in his talking of a hard life." - -This was all very illuminating, and the bold advance of Christopher won -Mrs. Delafield's admiration for its manner; but she passed it over to -inquire again, "In what way has Niel been making himself impossible?" -The more impossible Rhoda depicted him, the easier to leave her there, -shut out by his impossibility. - -"Why, his meanness," said Rhoda, her cold, dark eyes, as she turned them -upon her aunt, expressing, indeed, quite a righteous depth of -reprobation. "For months and months it's been the same wearisome cry. -He's written about nothing but economy, fussing, fuming, and preaching. -It's so ugly, at his time of life." - -"Have you been a little extravagant, perhaps? Everything is so much more -costly, isn't it? He may well have been anxious about your future, and -the child's." - -It was perfectly mild, and the irony Rhoda would expect from her. - -"Oh, no he wasn't," said Rhoda, now with her gloomy laugh. "He was -anxious about his hunting. I don't happen to care for that primitive -form of amusement, and Niel doesn't happen to care about anything else; -certainly he doesn't care about beauty, and that's all I do care about. -So in his view, since, precisely, life has become so costly, beauty had -to go to the wall and I mustn't dress decently or have a decently -ordered house. I haven't been in the least extravagant," said Rhoda. -"I've known what it is to be cold; I've known what it is to be hungry; -it's been, at times, literally impossible to get food and coal in -London. Oh, you don't know anything about it, Aunt Isabel, tucked away -comfortably down here with logs and milk. And if Niel had had any -appreciation of the position and had realized at all that I prefer being -hungry to being ill-dressed, he would have turned his mind to cutting -down his own extravagances and offered to allow me"--and now, for an -instant, if velvet can show sharpness, Mrs. Delafield caught in the -sliding velvet eye an evident edge of cogitation, even, of -calculation--"at least two thousand a year for myself. Money buys -absolutely nothing nowadays." - -So there it was, and it amounted to an offer. Or, rather, it amounted to -saying that it was the sum for which she would be willing to consider -any offer of Niel's. Mrs. Delafield, measuring still Rhoda's pride -against Rhoda's urgency, mused on her velvet garments, the fur that -broadly bordered her skirts, slipped from her shoulders, and framed her -hands. Poor Tim had been able to give his daughter only a few hundred a -year, and Niel's hunting must indeed have been in danger. Rhoda's pride, -she knew, stood, as yet, between herself and any pressure from the -urgency; she could safely leave the offer to lie and go on presently to -question, "And you'll be better off now?" - -Inevitably unsuspecting as she was, Rhoda, all the same, must feel an -unexpectedness in her attitude, and at this it was with a full, frank -sombreness that she turned her gaze upon her. Anything but a fool she -had always been, and she answered, after the moment of gloomy scrutiny, -"Don't imagine, please, Aunt Isabel, that because I speak openly of -practical matters I left Niel to get a better establishment. I left him -because I didn't love him. I was willing to sacrifice anything rather -than stay. Because it is a sacrifice. I took the step I've taken under -no illusion. We are too uncivilized yet for things to be anything but -difficult for a woman who takes the step, and the brave people have to -pay for the cowards and hypocrites." - -This, somehow, was not at all Rhoda's own note. Mrs. Delafield felt sure -she caught an echo of Mr. Darley's ministrations. She was glad that -Rhoda should receive them: they would sustain her; and since she was -determined--or almost--that Rhoda should stay with Mr. Darley, it was -well that she should receive all the sustainment possible. - -"It certainly must require great love and great courage," she assented. - -Rhoda's eyes still sombrely scrutinized her. "I didn't expect you to see -it, I confess, Aunt, Isabel." - -"Oh, but I do," said Mrs. Delafield. - -The milk was now brought and Rhoda began to sip it. - -"As for my being better off, since you are kind enough to take an -interest in that aspect of my situation," she went back, "Christopher -hasn't, it's true, as much money as Niel. But our tastes are the same, -so that I shall certainly be very much better off. We shall live in -London--after Niel sets me free." And here again she just glanced at her -aunt, who bowed assent, murmuring, "Yes; yes; he is quite willing to set -you free; at once."--"And until then," Rhoda went on, as if she hadn't -needed the assurance,--second-rate assurance as, Mrs. Delafield felt -sure, she found it,--"and until then I shall stay in the country. -Christopher has his post still at the Censor's office, and won't, I'm -afraid, get his demobilization for some time. He translates things, you -know. So we are going to find a little old house, for me,--we are -looking for one now,--and I shall see a few friends there, quite -quietly, and Christopher can come up and down, until everything is -settled. I think that's the best plan." - -Rhoda spoke with a dignity that had even a savour of conscious -sweetness, and, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, was running herself very -completely into her corner. - -There was silence now for a little while. Rhoda finished her milk, and -Jane Amoret, gently and unobtrusively moving among her blocks, -succeeded, at length, in balancing the last one on her edifice and -looked up at her great-aunt for approbation. - -"Very good, darling. A beautiful house," said Mrs. Delafield, leaning -over her, but with a guarded tenderness. What a serpent she had become! -There was Rhoda's jealousy to look out for. She might imagine herself -fond of Jane Amoret, if she saw that some one else adored her. - -"She's quite used to you already, isn't she?" said Rhoda, watching them. -"I wonder what you'll make of her. She strikes me as rather a dull -little thing, though she's certainly very pretty. She's rather like -Niel, isn't she? Though she certainly isn't as dull as Niel!" She -laughed slightly. "All the same,"--and Mrs. Delafield now, in Rhoda's -voice, scented the close approach of danger, and was aware, though she -did not look up to meet it, that Rhoda's eyes took on a new -watchfulness,--"All the same I must consider the poor little thing's -future. That is, of course, my one real difficulty." - -"Was it? In going away? In having left her, you mean?" Mrs Delafield -prayed that her mildness might gloss, to Rhoda's ear, the transition to -conscious combat that her instinctive change of tense revealed to her -own. "Oh, but you need not do that. Don't let that trouble you for a -moment, Rhoda. I will take charge of her--complete charge. I can do it -easily. My house is empty, and the child will be a companion to me. I -don't find her dull. She is a dear little thing, so good and gentle. You -need really have no anxiety." - -"Oh, I see." Rhoda was gazing at her earnestly. "Thanks. That's -certainly a relief. Though all the same I don't suppose you'd claim that -you could replace the child's mother." - -"Yes. I think so, Rhoda. A mother who had left her for a lover." - -Mrs. Delafield kept her eyes fixed on the fire. Rhoda stood up and -leaned her back against the mantelpiece. She could no longer control the -manifestations of her impatience and her perplexity. - -"That would be your view, of course; and father's; and Niel's. It's not -mine. I consider the responsibility to be Niel's." - -"Well, whosesoever the responsibility, the deed is done, isn't it?" -Mrs. Delafield observed. "I'm not arraigning you, you know. I'm merely -stating the fact. You have left her." - -Rhoda's impatience now visibly brushed past these definitions. "You say -that Niel is ready to set me free. I took that for granted, of course. -It's only common decency. But that's hardly what father could have meant -in imploring me to come to--you. He told me nothing--only implored, and -lamented. And, since I am here, I'd like some information, I confess." - -It was the first step away from pride, and it was a long one. And Mrs. -Delafield knew that with it came her own final turning-point. Here, at -this moment, she must be true to Tim and Niel, or betray their trust. -And here no less--for so it seemed to her--she might, in betraying them, -take the law into her own hands and promise herself, and them, that, in -breaking it, she would make something better. Yet she did not feel these -alternatives, now, at war within her mind. She knew that they were -there, implicit, but she knew them already answered. Rhoda had answered -for her; and Jane Amoret had answered. It took her, however, a moment to -find her own answer, the verbal one, and while she looked for it, she -kept her eyes on the fire. - -"Your father wants you to go back," she said at last. "Niel is willing -to take you back. That is the information I had for you. Not for a -moment because he would accept your interpretation of responsibility, -and not for a moment because of any personal feeling for you; which must -be a relief to you. Merely for your sake, and the child's. But I don't -know how to plead such a cause with you, Rhoda. I understand you, I -think, better than your father does. I've always seen your point of view -as he could never see it, and I see it even now. So that I should feel -that I asked you something outrageous in asking you to go back to your -husband when you love another man. If you should want to go back, that -would be a very different matter--if, by chance, you feel you've made a -mistake and are tired, already, of Mr. Darley." - -She had time, in the pause that followed, the scales pulsing almost -evenly--it was as if she saw them--between Rhoda's pride and Rhoda's -urgency, to wonder at herself. And most of all to wonder that she -regretted nothing. She kept her eyes on the fire, but she knew that -Rhoda, very still, scrutinized her intently. The sharply drawn tension -of the moment had resolved itself, to her imagination, into a series of -tiny ticks, as if of the scales settling down to the choice, before -Rhoda spoke. Then what she found to say was, "That's hardly likely, is -it?" - -"I felt it impossible, you will be glad to hear," said Mrs. Delafield. -"No one who understands you could suspect you, whatever your faults, of -two infidelities in the space of a fortnight." - -And now again there was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of -the flames up the chimney and the soft movements of Jane Amoret among -her blocks. - -Rhoda turned away at last, facing the fire and looking down at it, her -hands on the edge of the mantelpiece, her foot on the fender; and she -presently lifted the foot and dealt the logs a kick. - -It was all clear to Mrs. Delafield. She was tired of her poet, or, at -all events, did not, in the new life, find compensations enough. She -had come, hoping to have her way made clear for a reentry, dignified, if -not triumphant, into the old life. And here she was, in her corner, her -head fairly fixed to the wall. - -Meanwhile, what had become of the mid-Victorian conscience? What had, -indeed, become of any conscience at all, since she continued to regret -nothing? She even found excuses, perfidious, no doubt, yet satisfactory. -It had been the truth she had given Rhoda--the real truth, her own, if -not the truth she owed her, not the truth as Tim and Niel had placed it, -all confidently, in her hands. But since it was preeminently not the -truth that Rhoda had come to seize, she was willing, now that she had -fixed her so firmly, to give her something else, and she really rejoiced -to find it ready, going on presently and with a note of relief that -Rhoda's ear could not fail to catch:-- - -"Not only from the point of view of dignity one couldn't suspect it of -you, Rhoda, but--I want to say it to you, having had my glimpse of Mr. -Darley--from the point of view of taste. If you were going to do -anything of this sort,--and I don't need to tell you how deeply I -deplore it nor how wrong I think you,--but if you were going to do it, -you couldn't have chosen better. He is gifted; he is charming; he is -good. I saw it all at once." - -There was her further truth, and really it was due to Rhoda. Rhoda, at -this, faced her again and, highly civilized creature that she was, it -was with her genuine grim mirth. - -"Upon my word, Aunt Isabel!" she commented. "You are astonishing." - -"Am I? Why?" asked Mrs. Delafield, though she knew quite well. - -"Why, my dear? Because you are over sixty years old and you wear caps. I -expected to find dismay, reproach, and lamentations--all the strains of -poor old father's harmonium; to have you down on your knees begging me -to return to the paths of virtue. And here you are, cool and unperturbed -and, positively, patting us on the back; positively giving us your -blessing. Well, well, wonders will never cease! Yes, he is charming, no -one can deny that; and good and gifted, too. But to think of your having -spotted it so quickly! Why, you only saw him once, if I remember, and I -don't remember that you talked at all." - -"We didn't. I only saw him once." - -"And it was enough! To make you understand! To make you condone!--Come, -out with it, Aunt Isabel, you wicked old lady! I see now why I've always -got on so well with you. You _are_ wicked." - -"To make me understand. I won't say condone." - -"You needn't say it. You've said enough. And certainly it is a feather -in Christopher's cap. But he is the sort of person one falls in love -with at first sight." - -"So I see." - -"And so do I," said Rhoda, still laughing. But her slightly avenging -gaiety dropped from her after the last sally, and turning again to the -fire, and again kicking her log, she said, almost sombrely, "He -absolutely worships me." - -Was not this everybody's justification? Mrs. Delafield seized it, -rising, as on a satisfying close. - -"Will you stay to lunch?" she asked. - -"Dear me, no!" Rhoda laughed. "I must get back to Christopher. And the -motor is there waiting. So you'll write to father and tell him that I -came here and that you advised me to stick to Christopher." - -"Advised? Have I seemed to advise, Rhoda? Do you mean"--it was, Mrs. -Delafield knew, the final peril--"that you had considered not sticking -to him?" - -Rhoda continued to laugh a little, drawing up her furs. - -"Rather not! It couldn't have entered my head, could it, either from the -point of view of dignity or of taste--as you've been telling me? You -have been very wonderful, you know! Tell father, then, if you like, that -you gave us your blessing." - -"I'll tell him," said Mrs. Delafield, "that I'm convinced you ought not -to go back to Niel." - -"I see,"--Rhoda nodded, and their eyes sounded each other, -curiously,--"though father thinks I ought." - -"Of course. That's why you're here." - -"Father would have gone down on his knees to beg me." - -"Yes. Down on his knees. Poor Tim!" - -She was horribly frightened, but she faced Rhoda's grim mirth deliberate -with gravity. And Rhoda, whatever she might have seen or guessed, -accepted her defeat; accepted the dignity and taste thrust upon her. - -"Father, in other words, isn't a wicked old gentleman as you are a -wicked old lady. I see it all, and it's all a feather in Christopher's -cap. Well, Aunt Isabel, good-bye. Shall I see you again? Will you come -and call when I'm Mrs. Darley? I don't see how, with a clear conscience, -you can chuck us, you know." - -"Nor do I," Mrs. Delafield conceded, after only a pause. "I don't often -go to London, but, when I do, I shall look in upon you, if you want me -to." - -"Rather!" Rhoda, now gloved and muffled, had fallen back on her normal -rich economy of speech. "You'll be useful as well as pleasant. And -Christopher will adore you, I'm sure. I'll tell him that you think him -charming." - -"Do," said Mrs. Delafield, following her to the door. - -She had forgotten even to kiss Jane Amoret good-bye. - - -V - -Still Mrs. Delafield knew no remorse. Rather, a wine-like elation filled -her. She thought of her state of consciousness in terms of wine, and -ordered up from her modest cellar a special old port, hardly tasted -since her husband's death, and, all alone, drank at lunch a little glass -in honour of Jane Amoret's advent. Also, though elated, she was -conscious of needing a stimulant. The scene with Rhoda had cost her more -than could, at the moment, be quite computed. - -What it had won for her she was able to compute when, after lunch, she -went upstairs to look at Jane Amoret asleep in her white cot. She did -not feel like a robber brooding in guilty joy over ill-gotten booty. She -could not feel herself that, nor Jane Amoret booty. Jane Amoret was -treasure, pure heaven-sent treasure, her flower of miracle. Christmas -roses had been in her mind since morning, and the darkness, the -whiteness of the child, as well as her beautiful unexpectedness, made -her think of them anew; her gravity, too; something of melancholy that -the flowers embodied; for they were not smiling flowers--gazing rather -at the wintry sky in earnest meditation. - -Jane Amoret's black lashes lay upon her cheek, ever so slightly turned -up at the tips, and her great-aunt, leaning over her, felt herself -doting upon them and upon the little softly breathing profile embedded -in the pillow, a bud-like, folded hand beside it. - -"Little darling, we will make each other happy," she whispered. - -Rhoda had passed from their lives like a storm-cloud. - -Jane Amoret was still sleeping, and she had gone downstairs to the -little morning-room where, since the war, she had really lived, to -settle with herself what she must say to Tim, when there came a ringing -at the front-door bell. The morning-room, at the back of the house, like -the nursery, overlooked the southern lawn and the walls of the -kitchen-garden; but she could usually hear if a motor drove up, and, in -her still concentration upon the empty sheet lying before her on the -desk, she was aware that there had been no sound. It was too early for a -visitor, too early for the post, and she looked up with some curiosity -as Parton came in. - -"It's a gentleman, ma'am, to see you," said Parton; and her young, -trained visage showed signs of a discomfiture deeper than that Rhoda's -coming had evoked. "Mr. Darley, ma'am; and he hopes very much you are -disengaged." - -Mrs. Delafield had, as a first sensation, that of sympathy with Parton. -Parton evidently knew all about it and was evidently in distress lest -her face betrayed her knowledge. In her effort to maintain her own -standards of impassivity she suddenly blushed crimson, and Mrs. -Delafield then felt that she was very old and Parton very young, and -that in that fact alone was a bond, even if there had been no other. She -had many bonds with Parton, and now, seeing her so soft, uncertain, and -dismayed, she would have liked to pat her on the shoulder and say, -"There, my dear, it doesn't make any difference. I assure you I'm not -disturbed." And since she could not say it, she looked it, replying with -the utmost equability, "Mr. Darley? By all means. Show him in at once, -Parton." - -There was, after Parton had gone, a short interval, while Mr. Darley -doubtless was taking off his coat, and during which she felt herself -mainly engaged in maintaining her equability. But, after her encounter -with Rhoda, wasn't she equable enough for any situation? Besides, Mr. -Darley could in no fashion menace Jane Amoret, and under all her -conjectures and amazements there lay a certain satisfaction. She knew, -from her encounter with Parton, that she was interested in all young -creatures when they were nice, and she was not sorry to have another -look at Mr. Darley. - -When he entered and she saw him,--not in khaki as that first time, but -in a gray tweed suit,--when Parton had softly and securely closed the -door and left them together, she found herself borne along on a curious -deepening of the current of sympathy for mere youth. She had not -remembered how young he was; she had not had that as her dominant -impression at Rhoda's tea, as she had it now. He must be several years -younger than Rhoda; hardly more than twenty-two or three, she thought; -and it must have been as a mere child that the war had swept him out -into maturing initiations. Something of an experience, shattering yet -solidifying, was in his face, fragile, wasted, yet more final and -finished than one would have expected at his time of life; and also, in -curious contrast to his boyish, beardless look, a deep line was engraved -across his forehead; whether by suffering or by the trick she soon -discovered in him of raising his eyebrows in an effort of intense -concentration, she could not tell. - -She gave him her hand simply, and said, "Do sit down." - -But Mr. Darley, though he looked at the chair she indicated, did not -take it. He remained standing on the hearthrug, facing the windows, his -hands clasped behind him, and she then became aware that he was enduring -a veritable agony of shyness. It did not take the form of -blushes,--though his was a girlish skin that would display them -instantly,--or of awkward gestures or faltering speech. It was a shyness -wild, still, and bereft of all appeal, like that of a bird,--the simile -came sharply to her,--a bird that had followed some swift impulse and -that now, caught in a sudden hand, relapsed into utter immobility. His -large eyes were on hers--fixed. His expression was like a throbbing -heart. She knew that all she wanted, for the moment, was to show him -that the hand was gentle. - -"I'm afraid you came hoping to find Rhoda," she said, looking away from -him and giving her chair, as a pretext, sundry little adjustments before -drawing it to the fire. "But she left this morning, after seeing me, and -you must have crossed her on the road. At least--have you motored?" - -The large eyes, she found, were still fixed on her as, with the -question, she glanced up at him; but he answered immediately--rather as -if with a croaking cry from the blackbird when one pressed it,-- - -"No; I came by train. I left a little after Rhoda did." - -"By train?" she marvelled kindly. "But we are four miles from the -station here. Aren't you, at your end, as far? And such roads!" She saw -now that his boots and upturned trousers were, indeed, deeply mired. - -"Oh--I didn't mind the walk," said Mr. Darley. "It wasn't far." - -She was sure he hadn't found it far. His whole demeanour expressed the -overmastering impulse that had, till then, sustained him. - -"Have you had any lunch?" she went on. "I can't think where you can have -lunched. There's nothing at the station. Do let me send for something. -I've only just finished." - -It seemed strangely indicated that she should, to-day, feed Rhoda and -her lover. - -But the caught blackbird was in no state for feeding. More wildly, yet -more faintly than before he gave forth the croaking cry with, "Oh, no. -Thanks so much. Yes. At our station. I found something at our station. -Sandwiches; no, a bun. I had a cup of Bovril." - -And now, curiously, poignantly to her, he began to blush as though -suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of himself and of how idiotically he -must be behaving. Poor child! How young he was! And how ill he had been -in the trenches; and how beautiful it was to remember--as she did -suddenly, and not irrelevantly, she knew, though she could not trace the -relevance--that, in the little volume, written since his return, there -had not been a shadow of the ugly rancour, revengeful and provocative, -one met in some other soldier-poets whom one might have fancied to be of -his kind. For how he must have hated it! And, at the same time,--memory -brought back a line, a stanza here and there, from her snatched -reading--how holy he had found it; seeing so much more than error, -death, and suffering. - -Her eyes dwelt on him with something beyond the kindly wish to spare him -as she said, "Please sit down. You must be very tired and you are not -strong, Rhoda told me. Don't be afraid of me. I am an old lady who can -listen to anything and, I think, understand a great deal. I've already -heard a great deal from Rhoda. I'm anything but unfriendly to you, I -assure you." - -It was--she was aware of it when it had crossed her lips--a curious -thing to say to her niece's lover, to the man who had destroyed Tim's -happiness and wrecked Niel's home; but it was too true not to be said. -And she was perfectly sure now that it was not Mr. Darley who had -wrecked and destroyed. It was Rhoda who had taken him, of course; not he -Rhoda. He would never take anybody. He would stand and gaze at them as -he now gazed at her, and only when they threw out appealing arms would -he move towards them. Rhoda had thrown out appealing arms--after she -discovered that alluring arms had no effect. Mrs. Delafield's -impressions and intuitions tumbled forth in positive clusters as she -took in her companion. Allurements, Russian-ballet back-grounds, snowy -throats and velvet eyes, would have no effect upon him at all; he cared -as little about them at one end of the scale of sensations as about rats -and corpses at the other. He would not even see them. It was something -else he had seen in Rhoda; something she had found herself driven to -display. And if she were getting tired of him already, it was simply -because, having trapped him with the artifice, she now found herself -shut up with him in a cage, which, while it was of her own making, was -extremely uncongenial to her. - -Mr. Darley was far too absorbed in what she had just said to him to -think of taking the chair. It had helped him incalculably--that was -quite apparent; for though the blush stayed, and though he was still -wild and shy, they had already, indubitably, begun to understand each -other. - -"Do you mean," he asked, "not unfriendly to me or not unfriendly to -Rhoda?" - -This was an unexpected question, and for a moment, not knowing what it -portended, she hardly knew how to meet it. But the understanding that -seemed to deepen with every moment made truth the most essential thing, -and she replied after only a hesitation, "To you." - -Mr. Darley looked all his astonishment. "But why? Do you feel that you -like me, too? Because, of course, I've never forgotten you. That's why I -felt it possible to come to-day." - -And since truth was essential, it was she, now, who looked, with her -surprise, something that she felt to be a recognition, as she replied, -"I suppose it must be that. I suppose we liked each other at first -sight. I certainly didn't know the feeling was reciprocal." - -"Nor did I!" Mr. Darley exclaimed. He took the chair at the other end of -the hearthrug, facing her, his knees crossed, his arms clutched tightly -across his chest; and now he was able to reach his journey's goal. As -all, on Rhoda's side, had been made clear to her that morning, so on -his, all was clear, as he said, with a solemnity so young, so genuine -that it almost brought tears to her eyes, "Then since you do like me, -please don't let her leave me!" - -The situation was before her, definite and overpowering; but how it -could have come about remained veiled like the misty approaches to a -mountain. - -"Does Rhoda want to leave you?" she questioned. - -"Why--didn't you know?" Mr. Darley's face flashed with a sort of stupor. -"Didn't she come for that?" - -"You answer my questions first," Mrs. Delafield said after a moment. - -He was obedient and full of trust. "It's because of the child, you know, -that lovely little creature in London. From the first--you can't think -how long ago it already seems, though we have hardly been a week -together--I've seen it growing, that feeling in her that she couldn't -bear it. Other things, too; but that more than all. At least," he was -truthful to the last point of scruple, "I think so. And though she did -not tell me that she was saying good-bye this morning, I knew--I -knew--that she was coming to you because she wanted her child, and would -accept anything, endure anything, to be with it again." - -"What do you think Rhoda had to endure?" Mrs. Delafield inquired. - -"Oh--you can't ask me that! I saw you in it and you saw me!" Mr. Darley -exclaimed. "You _will_ be straight with me? You saw that soulless life -of hers, with that selfish figurehead of a husband for all guide. She -was suffocating in it. She didn't need to tell me. I saw it in her face -before she told me. How can a woman live with a man she doesn't love? -When you said not unfriendly to me, did you mean to make a difference? -Did you mean that you don't care for Rhoda? Yet she's always loved and -trusted you, she told me, more than any one. You were the one reality -she clung to. That's why _she_ could come to you to-day." - -"What I mean is that I'm on your side, not on Rhoda's," said Mrs. -Delafield, and at the moment her charming old white face expressed, -perhaps as never before in her life, the quality of decisiveness. "I am -on your side. But I have to see what that is." - -He was feeling her face even more than her words. He was gazing at her -with a rapt scrutiny which, she reflected, exonerating Rhoda to that -extent, would make it difficult for a woman receiving such a tribute not -to wish to retain it permanently. It enriched and sustained one -and--although it was strange that she should feel this--troubled and -moved one, too. A sense of pain stirred in her, and of wonder about -herself and her fitness to receive such gazes. One really couldn't, at -sixty-three, have growing pains; yet Mr. Darley's gaze filled her with -that troubled consciousness of expanding life. He wanted Rhoda. She -wanted Jane Amoret. So, wasn't it all right? Wasn't she all right? His -side was her side. They wanted the same thing. But the troubled sap of -the new consciousness was rising in her. - -"My side is really Rhoda's side," said Mr. Darley, as if answering her -thought. He held his knee in gripped hands and spoke with rapid -security. He was still shy, but he now knew exactly what he wished to -say, and how to say it. "It's Rhoda's side, if only she'd see it. That's -why I was not disloyal in asking my question when you said you weren't -unfriendly. Really--really--you _will_ believe me--it's for her, too. I -wouldn't have let her come with me if it hadn't been. I'm not so selfish -as I seem. I know it's dreadful about the child. But--this is my secret; -Rhoda does not guess it and I could never tell her--she doesn't love the -child as she thinks she does. Not really. In spite of her longing. She -longs to love it, of course; but she isn't a mother; not to that child. -That's another reason. It was all false. The whole thing. The whole of -her life. The real truth is," said Christopher Darley, gazing large-eyed -at her, "that Rhoda is frightened and wants to go back. She's not as -brave as she thought she was. Not quite as brave as I thought. But if -she yields to her fear and leaves me,--she hasn't yet, I know, I see -that in your face--but if she goes back to her old life, it will mean -dust, humiliation, imprisonment forever." - -"That's what I told her," Mrs. Delafield said, her eyes on his. - -"I knew! I knew!" cried the young man. "I knew you'd done something -beautiful for me--for us. Because you see the truth. And you were able -to succeed where I failed! You were able to convince her! You've saved -us both! Oh, how I thank you!" - -"It wasn't quite like that," said Mrs. Delafield. "It wasn't to save -either of you. I don't think it right for a woman to leave her husband -with another man because she has ceased to love her husband. But I made -her go back. I wouldn't even let her tell me that she wanted to leave -you. I didn't convince her. I merely made it impossible for her. She -left me reluctant and bewildered. You haven't found out yet,"--Mrs. -Delafield leaned forward and picked up the little poker; the fire needed -no poking and the movement expressed only her inner restlessness,--"you -haven't found out that Rhoda, at all events, _is_ very selfish?" - -Christopher Darley at that stopped short. "Oh, yes, I have," he answered -then; but the frightened croak was in his voice as he said it. - -"And have you found out, too," said Mrs. Delafield, eyeing her poker, -sparing him, giving him time, "that she's unscrupulous and cold-hearted? -Do you see the sort of life she'll make for you, if she is faithful to -you and stays with you, not because she's faithful, not because she -wants to stay, but gagged and baulked by me? Haven't you -already--yourself, been a little frightened sometimes?" she finished. - -She kept her eyes on her poker and gave Mr. Darley his time, and indeed -he needed it. - -"If you've been so wonderful," he said at last, with the slow care of -one who threads his way among swords; "if, though you think we're -lawbreakers, you think, too, that we've made ourselves another law and -are bound to stand by it; if you've sent her back to me--why do you ask -me that? But no," he went on, "I'm not frightened. You see--I love her." - -"She doesn't love you," said Mrs. Delafield. - -"She will! She will!"--It made Mrs. Delafield think of the shaking -heart-throbs of the blackbird.--"All that you see,--yes, yes, I won't -pretend to you, because I trust you as I've never before trusted any -human being, because you are truer than any one I've ever met,--it's all -true. She is all that. But don't you see further? Don't you see it's the -life? She's never known anything else. She's never had a chance." - -"She's known me. She's had me." - -Mrs. Delafield's eyes did not leave the poker. But under the quiet -statement the struggle in her reached its bitter close. She had lost -Jane Amoret. She must give her up. Not for her sake; nor for -Rhoda's,--oh, in no sense for Rhoda's,--but for his. She could not let -him pay the price. She must save him from Rhoda. - -"What do you mean?" he asked; and it was as if crumbling before her -secure strength, almost with tears. - -"I mean that you'll never make anything different of her. I never have, -and I've known her since she was born. You won't make her, and she'll -unmake you. She is disintegrating. She has always been like that. -Nothing has spoiled her. From the first she's been selfish and untender. -I don't mean to say that she hasn't good points. She has a sense of -humour; and she's honest with herself: she knows what she wants and why -she wants it--although she may take care that you don't. She isn't petty -or spiteful or revengeful. No,"--Mrs. Delafield moved her poker slowly -up and down as she carved it out for him, and it seemed to be into her -own heart she was cutting,--"there is a largeness and a dignity about -Rhoda. But she feels no beauty and no tragedy in life, only irony and -opportunity. You'll no more change her than you'll change a flower, a -fish, or a stone." - -Holding his knee in the strained grasp, Christopher Darley kept his eyes -on her, breathing quickly. - -"Why did she come with me, then?" he asked, after the silence between -them had grown long. (Strange, she thought, so near they were, that he -could not know her heart was breaking, too. All the time it was Jane -Amoret's sleeping eyelashes she saw.) "Why did she love me? I am not -irony or opportunity." - -"Do you think she ever loved you?" said Mrs. Delafield. "Was it not only -that she wanted you to love her? Wasn't it because you were different, -and difficult, and new? I think so. I think you found her at a bored, -antagonistic moment; money-quarrels with her husband,--he is a good -young fellow, Niel, and he used to worship her,--the war over and life -to take up again on terms already stale. She is calculating; but she is -adventurous and reckless, too. So she went. And of course she was in -love with you then. That goes without saying, and you'll know what I -mean by it. But Rhoda gets through things quickly. She has no soil in -her in which roots can grow; perhaps that's what I mean by saying she -can't change. One can't, if one can't grow roots. But now you are no -longer new or difficult. You are easy and old--already old; and she's -tired of you. You bore her. You constrain and baffle her--if she's to -keep up appearances with you at all; and she'd like to do that, because -she admires you exceedingly. So she wants to go back to Niel. I know," -said Mrs. Delafield, slightly shaking her poker, "that if I'd given her -a loophole this morning, she'd be on her way to London now." - -"And why didn't you?" asked Christopher Darley. - -Ah, why? Again she brooded over the softly breathing little profile, -again met the upward gaze of Jane Amoret's grey eyes. Well might he ask -why. But there was the one truth she could not give him. There was -another that she could, and she had it ready. "I hadn't seen you," she -said. - -"You thought it right for her to come back to me, until you saw me?" - -"I thought it beneath her dignity--as I said to her--to be unfaithful to -two men within a fortnight." - -"But why should you care for her dignity?" Mr. Darley strangely pressed. -"Why shouldn't you care more for your brother's dignity, and her -husband's, and her child's--all the things she said you'd care for?" - -He had brought her eyes to his now, and, for the first time since they -met, it was he who had the advantage. Frowning, yet clear, he bent his -great young eyes upon her and she knew, dismayingly, that her thoughts -were scattered. - -"I have always cared for Rhoda." She seized the first one. - -"Is it a future for Rhoda to disintegrate the life of the man who loves -her and to get no good of him? Isn't it better for a woman like Rhoda to -go back to the apparent dignity, since she has no feeling for the real? -Isn't that what you would have felt, if you'd been feeling for Rhoda? It -wasn't because you felt for her," said Christopher Darley. "You had some -other reason. You are keeping another reason from me. You know," he -urged upon her with a strange, still austerity, "you know you can't do -that. You know we must say the truth to each other. You know that we -simply belong to each other, you and I." - -"My dear Mr. Darley--my dear young man!" - -She was, indeed, bereft of all resource. She laid down her poker and, as -she did so, felt herself disarming before him. His eyes, following her -retreat, challenged her, almost with fierceness. - -"I know--I know that you are giving up something because of me," he -said. "You want her to go back to her husband now, so that I may be -free. It wasn't of me you thought this morning; nor of your brother, nor -of Rhoda. Everything changed for you after you saw me. What is it? What -is it that made you send Rhoda back to me and that makes you now want to -free me? You are beautiful--but you are terrible. You do beautiful and -terrible things. And you must let me share. You must let me decide, too, -if you do them for me!" - -He had started up, but not to come nearer in his appeal and his demand. -Cut to the heart as he was,--for she knew how she had pierced,--it was -rather the probing of some more intolerable pain that moved him. And -looking down at her with eyes intolerant of her mercy, he embodied to -her her sense of a new life and a new conscience. Absurd though his -words might seem, they were true. Though never, perhaps, again to meet, -she and Christopher Darley recognized in each other some final affinity -and owed each other final truth. - -She no longer felt old and wise, but young and helpless before the -compulsion of the kindred soul. She owed him the truth, and in giving it -she must risk his freedom and his happiness. Looking up at him, that -sense of compulsion upon her, she said, "It was because of Jane Amoret. -It was because I loved her and wanted to keep her." - -Christopher Darley grew paler than before. "She is here?" - -"Yes. She came this morning. She is upstairs, sleeping." - -"Rhoda saw her?" - -"Yes." - -"And left her? To you?" - -"Yes. Left her to me." - -He raised his head with a backward jerk and stared out of the window -before him. She kept her eyes on his face, measuring its strength -against hers. He was not measuring. He seemed to be seeing the beautiful -and terrible things of which, he had told her, she was capable. She -felt, when his eyes came back to her, that he had judged her. - -"You see you can't," he said gently. - -"Can't what? Can't keep her, you mean, of course." - -"Anything but that. You can't abandon her--even for my sake." - -So that had been the judgment. He saw only beauty. - -"I shan't abandon her. I shall always be able to see as much of her as I -did of Rhoda, and more. And she is different from Rhoda. I shan't have -the special joy of her, but I shall have the good." - -"Moreover," he went on, with perfect gentleness, putting her words -aside, "I can't abandon Rhoda. All that you have said is true. But it -doesn't go far enough. You yourself, you know, see life too much in -terms of irony, of fact rather than faith. You've owned that Rhoda is -adventurous and honest; you've owned that she doesn't lie to herself. -Then she has growth in her. No human being can be like a flower or a -fish or a stone. It was mere literature, your saying that. Every human -being has futures and futures within it. You know it really. Why you -yourself, though you are so old and fixed, are different now from what -you were an hour ago. I am different, of course. And Rhoda will be -different, too. She won't disintegrate me. She'll make me very -miserable, doubtless; she has already. And I shall make her angry. But I -shall hold her, and she'll change. You shall see. I promise you. And you -will keep Jane Amoret, and she will be eternally different because of -you." - -Mrs. Delafield, while he spoke, had risen. She stood before him, -grasping her gold chain on either side, her eyes very nearly level with -his, and she summoned all her will, her strength, her wisdom to meet -him. Yes, they had come to that, she and this boy. - -"I accept all your faith," she said. "Only you must help me to make my -world, and not yours, with it. Don't be afraid for Jane Amoret. I shall -be firmly in her life. Rhoda shan't keep me out. She won't want to keep -me out. Rhoda has far more chance of changing, of learning something -from this experience, as a disconcerted and forgiven wife than as a -sullen adventuress; and you--you will not be miserable; not with Rhoda, -at all events; and you will be free. I am going to send a wire to Rhoda, -at once, and tell her that I have reconsidered my advice to her. That, -in itself, will show her how I managed her this morning. I shall tell -her that she must go to London to-night, to her father. And to-morrow -I'll take Jane Amoret up and bring Rhoda and Niel together." - -He took it all in, wide-eyed, he too now measuring the threat. - -"You can't," he said; "I won't let you!" - -"You'll have to let me. I have the fact on my side as well as the faith. -She wants to leave you. She wants only the excuse of being asked. You -can't stop my giving her the excuse." Yes, after all, her fact against -his faith, she must have her way. What could his love for Rhoda and his -feeling for herself do against the ironic fact that Rhoda, simply, was -tired of him? "You must see that you can't force her to stay," she said. -"You couldn't even prevent her coming to me this morning." - -She looked at him with all the force of her advantage and saw that -before the cruel fact, and her determination, he knew his helplessness. -It was, again, the bird arrested in its impulse; and a veil seemed to -fall across his face, a shyness, almost a wildness to shut them out from -each other. He dropped his eyes before her. - -"Dear Mr. Darley, my dear young friend, see that it's best. See that -it's best all round. See it with me," she begged. "I was wrong this -morning; wrong from the very first. Let it come to that only. Count -yourself out. It was of myself, of my own delight in the child that I -was thinking. No, not even thinking; I tried to think it was for her; -but it was my own feeling that decided. If you had never come, it would -still have been right to give her up--though I should never have seen it -unless you'd come. It was almost a crime that I committed. They had -asked me to implore her to go back; they trusted me. And I prevented the -message coming to her. I did not believe the things I said to her--not -as she thought I believed them. I did not care a rap about her dignity; -you saw the falsity at once. I cared only about keeping Jane Amoret." - -He stood there before her, remote, unmoved, with downcast, unanswering -eyes. - -"Are you angry? Don't you see it, too?" she pleaded. - -"No." He shook his head. "You had a right to keep the child." - -"Against all those other reasons? Against my own conscience?" - -"Yes. Because you were strong enough. You were right, because you were -strong enough. I believe in law, too, you see--unless one is strong -enough to break it for something better. You were. It was a beautiful -thing to do." - -"But then, if you think me so strong, why not trust me now? This, now, -is the thing I want to do." - -"Because of me. It isn't against the law you are acting now; it's -against your own life. I am not angry. But it crushes me." - -They stood there then, she deeply meditating, he fixed in his unyielding -grief, for how long she could not have said. Parton's step outside broke -in upon their mute opposition. - - -VI - -She and Mr. Darley, Mrs. Delafield was aware, presented precisely the -abstracted, alienated air that Parton would expect. The young man moved -away to the window while she took from the salver the note Parton -presented. Then, her hand arrested in the very act by a recognition, - -"Is there an answer?" she asked. - -"No answer, ma'am." - -"Who brought it?" - -"A man from the station, ma'am." - -"Very well, Parton." - -Parton was gone. Mr. Darley kept his back turned. She held the note in -her hand and stared at it. The writing was Rhoda's; the envelope one of -the station-master's. She had been at the station, then, when she wrote, -four miles away. The London train, for which she had been waiting, had -gone long since; it had gone before the arrival of Mr. Darley's. - -An almost overpowering presage rose in her mind; she could hardly, for a -moment, summon the decision with which to open the envelope. Then, -reading as she stood, she felt the blood flow up to her face. - -For it was almost too much, although it was, through Rhoda's act, she -who had won finally. Even she, then, had not yet correctly measured -Rhoda's irony or Rhoda's sardonic assurance. Rhoda, after all, did not -care to keep up appearances with her, and, after all, why should she? -Here was fact, and it had been fact all through. She wanted most to go -back. She wanted it more than to be dignified in her aunt's eyes, or, -really, in anybody else's. Once back Rhoda would take care of her -dignity. In a flash Mrs. Delafield saw how little, when all was said and -done, Rhoda would pay. - - DEAR AUNT ISABEL [she wrote, in her ample, tranquil hand]: I've - been thinking over all you said and have come to the conclusion - that you are considering me too much. I feel that I must consider - my child. I have made a grave mistake and am not too proud to own - it. Christopher and I are not at all fitted to make each other - happy. So I have wired to father that I arrive this afternoon, and - to Niel that I will see him to-morrow. I have written too, of - course, to my poor Christopher. But he will understand me. Thank - you so much, dear Aunt Isabel, for your kindness and helpfulness. - -Your affectionate RHODA - - P.S. Will you send nurse up with Jane Amoret within the week? Not - at once, please; that would look rather foolish. - -With the accumulated weight of absurdity, relief, dismay, she had sunk -down into her chair, still gazing at the letter, and it was dismay that -grew. As if with a violent jolt back to earth, Rhoda seemed to show her -that life was not docile to nobilities. She hated to think that he must -feel with her that shattering fall. There was nothing for them to do now -for each other; no contest and no sacrifice. Rhoda had settled -everything. - -She spoke to him at last, and, as he came to her, not looking around at -him, she held out the note. He stood behind her to read it; and after -that he did not speak. - -She heard him move presently, vaguely, and then, vaguely, he drifted to -and fro. He walked here and there; he paused, no doubt to feel his bones -and to count how many had been broken, and then, with a start, he went -on again. - -"Please come where I can see you," she said at last. - -He came at once, obediently, standing as he had stood a little while ago -before the fire, his hands locked behind him, but now with face bent -down, fixed in its effort to see clearly what had happened to them. - -"You see, it was over. You see, you couldn't have made anything of it." -It was almost with tears that she besought him not to suffer too much. -"You have nothing to regret, except having believed in her. Tell me that -you are not too unhappy." - -"I don't know what I am," Christopher said. "But I know I've more to -regret than having believed in her. I've all the folly and mischief I've -made." He had thought it out and she could not deny what he had seen, -not even when he went on, "If it could have been in our way,--yours and -mine, or, at least, what was yours this morning, when you thought you -had kept her with me,--everything might have been atoned for. It might -have meant a certain kind of beauty, and a certain kind of happiness, -even, perhaps. But in this way, the way she's chosen, it only means just -that--folly, mischief,"--he turned to the fire and looked down into -it,--"sin," he finished. - -She could not deny it, even to give him comfort; but she could find -something else. "It was Rhoda who chose. You, whatever your mistakes, -chose very differently. I'm not trying to shift responsibility; to make -mistakes is to be foolish and mischievous. But can't even sin be atoned -for? Doesn't it all now depend on you? That you should make yourself -worth it. You are the only one of us who can do that." - -He turned to her and his eyes studied her with an unaccepting -gentleness. - -"You mean because I'm a poet? It isn't like you, really, to say that. -You don't believe in poets and their mission in that sense. It's too -facile." - -"Not only because you are a poet. I wasn't thinking so much of that, -although your gift helps. But simply because you are young and good." - -"I'm not good enough," said Christopher. "And I'm too young. You've -shown me that. I am afraid of myself. I see what one can do while -meaning the best." - -She watched him with grave tenderness, feeling again, in his -dispassionate capacity for accepted experience, his strange maturity. -And knowing all that might be difficult, yet knowing that it would be, -after all, to a decision like her own, the merest gossamers of -convention that she must brave, she said,--and as she looked up at him -his face seemed to blend with the face of her little, sleeping, lost -Jane Amoret,--"Don't you think I, perhaps, could be of help, while you -are so young?" - -He did not understand her at all. He, too, was absorbed in his inner -image of loss, yet he, too, was almost as aware of her as she of him, -and his eyes, with their austere gentleness, dwelt on her, as if -treasuring, of this last encounter, his completed vision of her. - -"Yes, you will be. I shall never forget you and what you've been to me. -I'll do my best," he promised her. "But I seem to have lost everything. -I could be strong for her; I don't know that I can be strong enough for -myself." - -"That's what I mean," said Mrs. Delafield. "It takes years to be strong -enough for one's self, and even when one's old one hasn't sometimes -learned how to be. I'm not sure, after this morning, that I've learned -yet. But I know that I could be strong for you. Will you let me try? -Will you let me take care of you a little and guard you from the Rhodas -until the right person comes?" - -"What do you mean?" he asked; and, answering the look in her face, tears -sprang to his eyes. - -"We belong to each other. Didn't you say it?" she smiled. "We are -friends. We ought not to lose each other now." - -"Oh! But--" He gazed at her. "How could you! After what I've done!" - -"You've done nothing that makes me like you less." - -"Oh--I can't! I can't!" said Christopher Darley. "How could I accept it -from you? Already you've been unbelievably beautiful to me. It's not as -if you were a Bohemian sort of creature, like me. Appearances must count -for you. And the appearance of being friends with your niece's discarded -lover--no--I can't see it for you. I can imagine you being above the -law, but I can't imagine you being above appearances. I don't think that -I should want you to be. I care about appearances, too, when they are -yours." - -It crossed her mind, with almost a mirthful sense of the sort of -appearances she would have to deal with, that Parton's face would be -worth watching. Poor Tim's hovered more grievously in the background. -But, after all, it would be a Tim with wounds well salved. - -"It's just because mine are so secure and recognized, don't you see, -that I can do what I like with them," she said. "It's not for me a -question of appearances, but of realities. After all, my dear young man, -what am I going to get out of it all? My roots have been torn up too, -you know." - -"Because of me! Because of me!" Christopher groaned. "Do you think you -need remind me of that? Shall I ever forgive myself for it? Get out of -it? You'll get nothing. You've been tormented between us all, and you -lose Jane Amoret." - -"Then don't let me lose you too," said Mrs. Delafield. - -Again, with the tears, his blush sprang to his face, and he stood there -incredulous, looking down at her, almost as helpless in the shyness the -unexpected gift brought upon him as he had been when he first came in to -her. - -"Really you mean it?" he murmured. "Really I can do something for you, -too? Because, unless I can, I couldn't accept it." - -"You can make me much less lonely, when she's gone," said Mrs. -Delafield. - -She knew that this was to give the gift in such a way as to ensure its -acceptance; but he murmured, stung again intolerably by the thought of -Jane Amoret, "Oh--I can't bear it for you!" - -"You can help me to bear it." - -Still he pressed upon her what he saw as her sacrifice. - -"You mean that I may see you when I like? I may always write and you'll -always answer? I can sometimes, even, come and stay, like any other -friend? Please realize that if you let me come down on you like that, I -may come hard. I'm frightfully lonely, too." - -"As hard as you like. I want you to come hard. Like any friend. Yes." - -She was smiling up at the young man, and, as she had promised herself -years for Jane Amoret, she promised herself now years--though not so -many would be needed--for Christopher Darley. It was in the thought of -what she could do for Christopher Darley that she saw Rhoda's -punishment. Not for having left him, but for having taken him; for not -having known what to do with him without taking him. And Rhoda would see -it with her, if no one else did. - -"Come, you must quite believe in me," she said. "Give me your hand, dear -Christopher, and tell me that you take this meddling, commanding old -woman to be your friend." - -He had no words as he took the hand she gave him, but from his look it -might have been as if he at last received into his keeping the great -gift, the precious casket of the future; and his eyes, like those of a -devout young knight, dedicated themselves to her service. - -It was again gift and miracle; and though in her mind was the thought of -all her mournings, and of the lost Jane Amoret, she felt, rooting itself -in the darkness and sorrow, yet another flower. - -"And now," she said, for they must not both begin to cry, "please ring -the bell for me. The time has not quite come for your first visit; but, -before you go, we will have our first tea together." - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -HEPATICAS - - -I - -OTHER people's sons were coming home for the three or four days' leave. -The first gigantic struggle--furious onslaught and grim resistance--was -over. Paris, pale, and slightly shuddering still, stood safe. Calais was -not taken, and, dug into their trenches, it was evident that the -opposing armies would lie face to face with no decisive encounter -possible until the spring. - -There was, with all their beauty and terror, an element of the facetious -in these unexpected holidays, of the matter-of-factness, the freedom -from strain or sentiment that was the English oddity and the English -strength. Men who had known the horrors of the retreat from Mons or the -carnage of Ypres, who had not taken off their clothes for ten days at a -stretch or slept for four nights, came home from trenches knee-deep in -mud, from battlefields heaped with unburied dead, and appeared -immaculate and cheerful at breakfast; a little sober and preoccupied, -perhaps; touched, perhaps, with strangeness; but ready for the valorous -family jest, and alluding to the war as if, while something too solemn -for adequate comment, it were yet something that lent itself to -laughter. One did such funny things, and saw them; of the other things -one did not speak; and there was the huge standing joke of an enemy who -actually hated one. These grave and cheerful young men hated nobody; but -they were very eager to go back again; and they were all ready, not only -to die but to die good-humouredly. From the demeanour of mothers and -wives and sisters it was evident that nothing would be said or done to -make this readiness difficult; but Mrs. Bradley, who showed serenity to -the world and did not even when alone allow herself to cry, suspected -that the others, beneath their smiles, carried hearts as heavy with -dread as her own. - -It had been heavy, with hope now as well as with dread, for the past -week. It was a week since she had last heard from Jack. Mrs. Crawley -over the hill, had had a wire, and her husband was now with her; and -Lady Wrexham expected her boy to-morrow. There was no certainty at all -as regarded herself; yet at any moment she might have her wire; and -feeling to-day the stress of waiting too great to be borne in passivity, -she left her books and letters and put on her gardening shoes and gloves -and went out to her borders. - -For weeks now the incessant rain had made the relief and solace of -gardening almost an impossibility; but to-day was mild and clear. There -was no radiance in the air; curtains of pearly mist shut out the sky; -yet here and there a soft opening in the white showed a pale, far blue, -gentle and remote as the gaze of a wandering goddess, and the hills -seemed to smile quietly up at the unseen sun. Mrs. Bradley, as she went -along the river-path, could look across at the hills; the river-path and -the hills were the great feature of Dorrington,--the placid, comely red -brick house to which she and Jack had come fifteen years ago, after the -death of her husband in India. Enclosed by woods, and almost catching -sight of the road,--from its upper windows and over its old brick -wall,--the house would have seemed to her too commonplace and almost -suburban, in spite of the indubitably old oak-panelling of the -drawing-room, had it not been for the river and the hills. Stepping out -on to the lawn from the windows of the drawing-room, she and Jack, on -that April day, had found themselves confronting both--the limpid, rapid -little stream, spanned near the house by its mossy bridge, and the -hills, beyond the meadows, streaked with purple woodlands and rising, -above the woods, to slopes russet, fawn, and azure. Jack, holding her by -the hand, had pointed at once with an eager "Isn't it pretty, -mummy!"--even at eight he had cared almost as much as she, and -extraordinarily in the same way, for the sights of the country; and if -the hills hadn't settled the question, it was settled, quite finally, -ten minutes later, by the white hepaticas. - -They had come upon them suddenly, after their tour of the walled kitchen -garden and their survey of the lawn with its ugly shrubberies,--now long -forgotten,--penetrating a thicket of hazels and finding themselves in an -opening under trees where neighbouring woods looked at them over an old -stone wall, and where, from an old stone bench, one could see the river. -The ground was soft with the fallen leaves of many an autumn; a narrow -path ran, half obliterated, down to the river; and among the faded -brown, everywhere, rose the thick clusters, the dark leaves, and the -snowy flowers,--poignant, amazing in their beauty. - -She and Jack had stopped short to gaze. She had never before seen such -white hepaticas, or so many, or so placed. And Jack, presently, lifting -his dear nut-brown head and nut-brown eyes, had said, gazing up at her -as he had gazed at the flowers, "They are just like you, mummy." - -She had felt at once that they were like her; more like than the little -boy's instinct could grasp. He had thought of the darkness and -whiteness; her widow's weeds and pale face had suggested that; but he -could not know the sorrow, the longing, the earthly sense of irreparable -loss, the heavenly sense of a possession unalterably hers, that the -dark, melancholy leaves and celestial whiteness of the flowers expressed -to her. Tears had risen to her eyes and she had stooped and kissed her -child,--how like her husband's that little face!--and had said, after a -moment, "We must never leave them, Jack." - -They had never left them. Dorrington had been their home for fifteen -years, and the hepaticas the heart of it. It had always seemed to them -both the loveliest ritual of the year, that early spring one when, in -the hazel copse, they would find the white hepaticas again in flower. -And of all the garden labours none were sweeter than those that -cherished and divided and protected the beloved flowers. - -Mrs. Bradley, to-day, worked in her long border, weeding, forking, -placing belated labels. She was dressed in black, her straw hat bound -beneath her chin by a ribbon and her soft gardening gloves rolling back -from her firm, white wrists. Her gestures expressed a calm energy, an -accurate grace. She was tall, and when she raised herself to look over -the meadows at the hills, she showed small, decisive features, all -marked, in the pallor of her face, as if with the delicate, neutral -emphasis of an etching: the grey, scrutinizing eyes, the charming yet -ugly nose, the tranquil mouth that had, at the corners, a little fall, -half sweet, half bitter, as if with tears repressed or a summoned smile. -Squared at brow and chin, it would, but for the mildness of the gaze, -have been an imperious face; and her head, its whitened hair drawn back -and looped in wide braids behind, had an air at once majestic and -unworldly. - -She had worked for over an hour and the last label was set beside a -precious clump of iris. The hazel copse lay near by; and gathering up -her tools, drawing off her wet gloves, she followed the path under the -leafless branches and among the hepatica leaves to the stone bench, -where, sinking down, she knew that she was very tired. She could see, -below the bank, the dark, quick stream; a pale, diffused light in the -sky showed where the sun was dropping toward the hills. - -Where was Jack at this moment, this quiet moment of a monotonous English -winter day?--so like the days of all the other years that it was -impossible to think of what was happening a few hours' journey away -across the Channel. Impossible to think of it; yet the thick throb of -her heart spoke to the full of its significance. She had told herself -from the beginning--passionate, rebellious creature as, at bottom, she -knew herself to be, always in need of discipline and only in these later -years schooled to a control and submission that, in her youth, she would -have believed impossible to her--she had told herself, when he had gone -from her, that, as a soldier's widow, she must see her soldier son go -to death. She must give him to that; be ready for it; and if he came -back to her it would be as if he were born again, a gift, a grace, -unexpected and unclaimed. She must feel, for herself as well as for her -country, that these days of dread were also days of a splendour and -beauty unmatched by any in England's history, and that a soldier's widow -must ask for no more glorious fate for her son than death in such a -cause. She had told herself all this many times; yet, as she sat there, -her hands folded on her lap, her eyes on the stream below, she felt that -she was now merely motherhood, tense, huddled, throbbing and longing, -longing for its child. - -Then, suddenly, she heard Jack's footsteps. They came, quick and light, -along the garden path; they entered the wood; they were near, but -softened by the fallen leaves. And, half rising, afraid of her own joy, -she hardly knew that she saw him before she was in his arms; and it was -better to meet thus, in the blindness and darkness of their embrace, her -cheek pressed against his hair, his head buried close between her neck -and shoulder. - -"Jack!--Jack!" she heard herself say. - -He said nothing, holding her tightly to him, with quick breaths; and -even after she had opened her eyes and could look down at him,--her own, -her dear, beautiful Jack,--could see the nut-brown head, the smooth -brown cheek, the firm brown hand which grasped her, he did not for a -long time raise his head and look at her. When, at last, he did look up, -she could not tell, through her tears, whether, like herself, he was -trying to smile. - -They sat down together on the bench. She did not ask him why he had not -wired. That question pressed too sharply on her heart; to ask might -seem to reproach. - -"Darling--you are so thin,--so much older,--but you look--strong and -well." - -"We're all of us extraordinarily fit, mummy. It's wholesome, living in -mud." - -"And wholesome living among bursting shells? I had your last letter -telling of that miraculous escape." - -"There have been a lot more since then. Every day seems a miracle--that -one's alive at the end of it." - -"But you get used to it?" - -"All except the noise. That always seems to daze me still. Some of our -fellows are deaf from it.--You heard of Toppie, mother?" Jack asked. - -Toppie was Alan Graham, Jack's nearest friend. He had been killed ten -days before. - -"I heard it, Jack. Were you with him?" - -"Yes. It was in a bayonet charge. He didn't suffer. A bullet went right -through him. He just gave a little cry and fell." Jack's voice had the -mildness of a sorrow that has passed beyond the capacity for emotion. -"We found him afterwards. He is buried out there." - -"You must tell Frances about it, Jack. I went to her at once." Frances -was Toppie's sister. "She is bearing it so bravely." - -"I must write to her. She would be sure to be plucky." - -He answered all her questions, sitting closely against her, his arm -around her; looking down, while he spoke, and twisting, as had always -been his boyish way, a button on her coat. He was at that enchanting -moment of young manhood when the child is still apparent in the man. -His glance was shy yet candid; his small, firm lips had a child's -gravity. With his splendid shoulders, long legs, and noble little head, -he was yet as endearing as he was impressive. His mother's heart ached -with love and pride and fear as she gazed at him. - -And a question came, near the sharp one, yet hoping to evade it:-- - -"Jack, dearest, how long will you be with me? How long is the leave?" - -He raised his eyes then and looked at her; a curious look. Something in -it blurred her mind with a sense of some other sort of fear. - -"Only till to-night," he said. - -It seemed confusion rather than pain that she felt. "Only till to-night, -Jack? But Richard Crawley has been back for three days already. I -thought they gave you longer?" - -"I know, mummy." His eyes were dropped again and his hand at the -button--did it tremble?--twisted and untwisted. "I've been back for -three days already.--I've been in London." - -"In London?" Her breath failed her. The sense of alien fear became a -fog, horrible, suffocating. "But--Jack--why?" - -"I didn't wire, mummy, because I knew I'd have to be there for most of -my time. I felt I couldn't wire and tell you. I felt I had to see you -when I told you. Mother--I'm married.--I came back to get married.--I -was married this morning.--Oh, mother, can you ever forgive me?" - -His shaking hands held her and his eyes could not meet hers. - -She felt the blood rush, as if her heart had been divided with a sword, -to her throat, to her eyes, choking her, burning her; and as if from -far away she heard her own voice saying, after a little time had passed, -"There's nothing I couldn't forgive you, Jack. Tell me. Don't be afraid -of hurting me." - -He held her tightly, still looking down as he said, "She is a dancer, -mother, a little dancer. It was in London, last summer. A lot of us came -up from Aldershot together. She was in the chorus of one of those -musical comedies. Mother, you can never understand. But it wasn't just -low and vulgar. She was so lovely,--so very young,--with the most -wonderful golden hair and the sweetest eyes.--I don't know.--I simply -went off my head when I saw her. We all had supper together afterwards. -Toppie knew one of the other girls, and Dollie was there. That's her -name--Dollie Vaughan--her stage name. Her real name was Watson. Her -people, I think, were little tradespeople, and she'd lost her father and -mother, and an aunt had been very unkind. She told me all about it that -night. Mother, please believe just this: it wasn't only the obvious -thing.--I know I can't explain. But you remember, when we read _War and -Peace_"--his broken voice groped for the analogy--"You remember Natacha, -when she falls in love with Anatole, and nothing that was real before -seems real, and she is ready for anything.--It was like that. It was all -fairyland, like that. No one thought it wrong. It didn't seem wrong. -Everything went together." - -She had gathered his hand closely in hers and she sat there, quiet, -looking at her hopes lying slain before her. Her Jack. The wife who was, -perhaps, to have been his. The children that she, perhaps, should have -seen. All dead. The future blotted out. Only this wraith-like present; -only this moment of decision; Jack and his desperate need the only real -things left. - -And after a moment, for his labouring breath had failed, she said, "Yes, -dear?" and smiled at him. - -He covered his face with his hands. "Mother, I've ruined your life." - -He had, of course, in ruining his own; yet even at that moment of -wreckage she was able to remember, if not to feel, that life could mend -from terrible wounds, could marvellously grow from compromises and -defeats. "No, dearest, no," she said. "While I have you, nothing is -ruined. We shall see what can be done. Go on. Tell me the rest." - -He put out his hand to hers again and sat now a little turned away from -her, speaking on in his deadened, bitter voice. - -"There wasn't any glamour after that first time. I only saw her once or -twice again. I was awfully sorry and ashamed over the whole thing. Her -company left London, on tour, and then the war came, and I simply forgot -all about her. And the other day, over there, I had a letter from her. -She was in terrible trouble. She was ill and had no money, and no work. -And she was going to have a child--my child; and she begged me to send -her a little money to help her through, or she didn't know what would -become of her." - -The fog, the horrible confusion, even the despair, had passed now. The -sense of ruin, of wreckage almost irreparable, was there; yet with it, -too, was the strangest sense of gladness. He was her own Jack, -completely hers, for she saw now why he had done it; she could be glad -that he had done it. "Go on, dear," she said. "I understand; I -understand perfectly." - -"O mother, bless you!" He put her hand to his lips, bowing his head upon -it for a moment. "I was afraid you couldn't. I was afraid you couldn't -forgive me. But I had to do it. I thought it all over--out there. -Everything had become so different after what one had been through. One -saw everything differently. Some things didn't matter at all, and other -things mattered tremendously. This was one of them. I knew I couldn't -just send her money. I knew I couldn't bear to have the poor child born -without a name and with only that foolish little mother to take care of -it. And when I found I could get this leave, I knew I must marry her. -That was why I didn't wire. I thought I might not have time to come to -you at all." - -"Where is she, Jack?" Her voice, her eyes, her smile at him, showed him -that, indeed, she understood perfectly. - -"In lodgings that I found for her; nice and quiet, with a kind landlady. -She was in such an awful place in Ealing. She is so changed, poor little -thing. I should hardly have known her. Mother, darling, I wonder, could -you just go and see her once or twice? She's frightfully lonely; and so -very young.--If you could.--If you would just help things along a little -till the baby comes, I should be so grateful. And, then, if I don't come -back, will you, for my sake, see that they are safe?" - -"But, Jack," she said, smiling at him, "she is coming here, of course. I -shall go and get her to-morrow." - -He stared at her and his colour rose. "Get her? Bring her here, to -stay?" - -"Of course, darling. And if you don't come back, I will take care of -them, always." - -"But, mother," said Jack, and there were tears in his eyes, "you don't -know, you don't realize. I mean--she's; a dear little thing--but you -couldn't be happy with her. She'd get most frightfully on your nerves. -She's just--just a silly little dancer who has got into trouble." - -Jack was clear-sighted. Every vestige of fairyland had vanished. And she -was deeply thankful that they should see alike, while she answered, -"It's not exactly a time for considering one's nerves, is it, Jack? I -hope I shan't get on hers. I must just try and make her as happy as I -can." - -She made it all seem natural and almost sweet. The tears were in his -eyes, yet he had to smile back at her when she said, "You know that I am -good at managing people. I'll manage her. And perhaps when you come -back, my darling, she won't be a silly little dancer." - -They sat now for a little while in silence. While they had talked, a -golden sunset, slowly, had illuminated the western sky. The river below -them was golden, and the wintry woodlands bathed in light. Jack held her -hands and gazed at her. Love could say no more than his eyes, in their -trust and sorrow, said to her; she could never more completely possess -her son. Sitting there with him, hand in hand, while the light slowly -ebbed and twilight fell about them, she felt it to be, in its accepted -sorrow, the culminating and transfiguring moment of her maternity. - -When they at last rose to go it was the hour for Jack's departure, and -it had become almost dark. Far away, through the trees, they could see -the lighted windows of the house that waited for them, but to which she -must return alone. With his arms around her shoulders, Jack paused a -moment, looking about him. "Do you remember that day--when we first came -here, mummy?" he asked. - -She felt in him suddenly a sadness deeper than any he had yet shown her. -The burden of the past she had lifted from him; but he must bear now the -burden of what he had done to her, to their life, to all the future. -And, protesting against his pain, her mother's heart strove still to -shelter him while she answered, as if she did not feel his sadness, -"Yes, dear, and do you remember the hepaticas on that day?" - -"Like you," said Jack in a gentle voice. "I can hardly see the plants. -Are they all right?" - -"They are doing beautifully." - -"I wish the flowers were out," said Jack. "I wish it were the time for -the flowers to be out, so that I could have seen you and them together, -like that first day." And then, putting his head down on her shoulder, -he murmured, "It will never be the same again. I've spoiled everything -for you." - -But he was not to go from her uncomforted. She found the firmest voice -in which to answer him, stroking his hair and pressing him to her with -the full reassurance of her resolution. "Nothing is spoiled, Jack, -nothing. You have never been so near me--so how can anything be spoiled? -And when you come back, darling, you'll find your son, perhaps; and the -hepaticas may be in flower, waiting for you." - - -II - -Mrs. Bradley and her daughter-in-law sat together in the drawing-room. -They sat opposite each other on the two chintz chesterfields placed at -right angles to the pleasantly blazing fire, the chintz curtains drawn -against a rainy evening. It was a long, low room, with panelled walls; -and, like Mrs. Bradley's head, it had an air at once majestic, -decorated, and old-fashioned. It was a rather crowded room, with many -deep chairs and large couches, many tables with lamps and books and -photographs upon them, many porcelains, prints, and pots of growing -flowers. Mrs. Bradley, her tea-table before her, was in her evening -black silk; lace ruffles rose about her throat; she wore her accustomed -necklace of old enamel, blue, black, and white, set with small diamonds, -and the enamel locket that had within it Jack's face on one side and his -father's on the other; her white hands, moving gently among the teacups, -showed an ancient cluster of diamonds above the slender wedding-ring. -From time to time she lifted her eyes and smiled quietly over at her -daughter-in-law. It was the first time that she had really seen Dollie, -that is, in any sense that meant contemplative observation. Dollie had -spent her first week at Dorrington in bed, sodden with fatigue rather -than ill. "What you need," Mrs. Bradley had said, "is to go to sleep for -a fortnight"; and Dollie had almost literally carried out the -prescription. - -Stealing carefully into the darkened room, with its flowers and open -windows and steadily glowing fire, Mrs. Bradley had stood and looked for -long moments at all that she could see of her daughter-in-law,--a -flushed, almost babyish face lying on the pillow between thick golden -braids, sleeping so deeply, so unconsciously,--her sleep making her -mother-in-law think of a little boat gliding slowly yet steadily on and -on, between new shores; so that, when she was to awake and look about -her, it would be as if, with no bewilderment or readjustment, she found -herself transformed, a denizen of an altered world. That was what Mrs. -Bradley wanted, that Dollie should become an inmate of Dorrington with -as little effort or consciousness for any of them as possible, and the -drowsy days and nights of infantine slumbers seemed indeed to have -brought her very near. - -She and Pickering, the admirable woman who filled so skilfully the -combined positions of lady's maid and parlourmaid in her little -establishment, had braided Dollie's thick tresses, one on either -side,--Mrs. Bradley laughing a little and both older women touched, -almost happy in their sense of something so young and helpless to take -care of. Pickering understood, nearly as well as Jack's mother, that -Master Jack, as he had remained to her, had married very much beneath -him; but at this time of tragic issues and primitive values, she, nearly -as much as Jack's mother, felt only the claim, the pathos of youth and -helplessness. It was as if they had a singularly appealing case of a -refugee to take care of; social and even moral appraisals were -inapplicable to such a case, and Mrs. Bradley felt that she had never so -admired Pickering as when seeing that for her, too, they were in -abeyance. It was a comfort to feel so fond of Pickering at a time when -one was in need of any comfort one could get; and to feel that, -creature of codes and discriminations as she was, to a degree that had -made her mistress sometimes think of her as a sort of Samurai of -service, a function rather than a person, she was even more -fundamentally a kind and Christian woman. Between them, cook -intelligently sustaining them from below and the housemaids helpful in -their degree, they fed and tended and nursed Dollie, and by that eighth -day she was more than ready to get up and go down and investigate her -new surroundings. - -She sat there now, in the pretty tea-gown her mother-in-law had bought -for her, leaning back against her cushions, one arm lying along the back -of the couch and one foot in its patent-leather shoe, with its sparkling -buckle and alarming heel, thrusting forward a carefully arched instep. -The attitude made one realize, however completely tenderer -preoccupations held the foreground of one's consciousness, how often and -successfully she must have sat to theatrical photographers. Her way of -smiling, too, very softly, yet with the effect of a calculated and -dazzling display of pearly teeth, was impersonal, and directed, as it -were, to the public _via_ the camera rather than to any individual -interlocutor. Mrs. Bradley even imagined, unversed as she was in the -methods of Dollie's world, that of allurement in its conscious and -determined sense she was almost innocent. She placed herself, she -adjusted her arm and her foot, and she smiled gently; intention hardly -went further than that wish to look her best. - -Pink and white and gold as she was, and draped there on the chesterfield -in a profusion of youth and a frivolity that was yet all passivity, she -made her mother-in-law think, and with a certain sinking of the heart, -of a Dorothy Perkins rose, a flower she had never cared for; and Dollie -carried on the analogy in the sense she gave that there were such -myriads more just like her. On almost every page of every illustrated -weekly paper, one saw the ingenuous, limpid eyes, the display of -eyelash, the lips, their outline emphasized by just that touch of rouge, -those copious waves of hair. Like the Dorothy Perkins roses on their -pergolas, so these pretty faces seemed--looped, draped, festooned--to -climb over all the available spaces of the modern press. - -But this, Mrs. Bradley told herself, was to see Dollie with a dry, hard -eye, was to see her superficially, from the social rather than from the -human point of view. Under the photographic creature must lie the young, -young girl,--so young, so harmless that it would be very possible to -mould her, with all discretion, all tenderness, into some suitability as -Jack's wife. Dollie, from the moment that she had found her, a sodden, -battered rose indeed, in the London lodging-house, had shown herself -grateful, even humble, and endlessly acquiescent. She had not shown -herself at all abashed or apologetic, and that had been a relief; had -counted for her, indeed, in her mother-in-law's eyes, as a sort of -innocence, a sort of dignity. But if Dollie were contented with her new -mother-in-law, and very grateful to her, she was also contented with -herself; Mrs. Bradley had been aware of this at once; and she knew now -that if she were being carefully and commendingly watched while she -poured out the tea, this concentration did not imply unqualified -approval. Dollie was the type of young woman to whom she herself stood -as the type of the "perfect lady"; but with the appreciation went the -proviso of the sharp little London mind,--versed in the whole ritual of -smartness as it displayed itself at theatre or restaurant,--that she was -a rather dowdy one. She was a lady, perfect but not smart, while, at the -same time, the quality of her defect was, she imagined, a little -bewildering and therefore a little impressive. Actually to awe Dollie -and to make her shy, it would be necessary to be smart; but it was far -more pleasant and perhaps as efficacious merely to impress her, and it -was as well that Dollie should be impressed; for anything in the nature -of an advantage that she could recognize would make it easier to direct, -protect, and mould her. - -She asked her a good many leisurely and unstressed questions on this -first evening, and drew Dollie to ask her others in return; and she saw -herself stooping thoughtfully over a flourishing young plant that yet -needed transplanting, softly moving the soil about its roots, softly -finding out if there were any very deep tap-root that would have to be -dealt with. But Dollie, so far as tastes and ideas went, hardly seemed -to have any roots at all; so few that it was a question if any change of -soil could affect a creature so shallow. She smiled, she was at ease; -she showed her complete assurance that a young lady so lavishly endowed -with all the most significant gifts, need not occupy herself with mental -adornments. - -"You're a great one for books, I see," she commented, looking about the -room; "I suppose you do a great deal of reading down here to keep from -feeling too dull"; and she added that she herself, if there was -"nothing doing," liked a good novel, especially if she had a box of -sweets to eat while she read it. - -"You shall have a box of sweets to-morrow," Mrs. Bradley told her, "with -or without the novel, as you like." - -And Dollie thanked her, watching her cut the cake, and, as the rain -lashed against the windows, remarking on the bad weather and cheerfully -hoping that "poor old Jack" wasn't in those horrid trenches. "I think -war's a wicked thing, don't you, Mrs. Bradley?" she added. - -When Dollie talked in this conventionally solicitous tone of Jack, her -mother-in-law could but wish her upstairs again, merely young, merely -the tired and battered refugee. She had not much tenderness for Jack, -that was evident, nor much imaginativeness in regard to the feelings of -Jack's mother. But she soon passed from the theme of Jack and his -danger. Her tea was finished and she got up and went to the piano, -remarking that there was one thing she _could_ do. "Poor mother used to -always say I was made of music. From the time I was a mere tot I could -pick out anything on the piano." And placing herself, pressing down the -patent-leather shoe on the loud pedal, she surged into a waltz as -foolish and as conventionally alluring as her own eyes. Her inaccuracy -was equalled only by her facility. Smiling, swaying over the keys with -alternate speed and languor, she addressed her audience with altogether -the easy mastery of a music-hall _artiste_: "It's a lovely thing--one of -my favourites. I'll often play, Mrs. Bradley, and cheer us up. There is -nothing like music for that, is there? it speaks so to the heart." And, -whole-heartedly, indeed, she accompanied the melody by a passionate -humming. - -The piano was Jack's and it was poor Jack who was made of music. How was -he to bear it, his mother asked herself, as she sat listening. Dollie, -after that initiation, spent many hours at the piano every day,--so many -and such noisy hours, that her mother-in-law, unnoticed, could shut -herself in the little morning-room that overlooked the brick wall at the -front of the house and had the morning sun. - -It was difficult to devise other occupations for Dollie. She earnestly -disclaimed any wish to have proper music lessons, and when her -mother-in-law, patiently persistent, arranged for a skilful mistress to -come down twice a week from London, Dollie showed such apathy and -dulness that any hope of developing such musical ability as she -possessed had to be abandoned. She did not like walking, and the sober -pageant of the winter days was a blank book to her. Sewing, she said, -had always given her frightful fidgets; and it was with the strangest -sense of a privilege, a joy, unhoped-for and now thrust upon her, that -Mrs. Bradley sat alone working at the little garments that meant all her -future and all Jack's. The baby seemed already more hers than Dollie's. - -Sometimes, on a warm afternoon, Dollie, wrapped in her fur cloak, would -emerge for a little while and watch her mother-in-law at work in her -borders. The sight amused and surprised but hardly interested her, and -she soon went tottering back to the house on the preposterous heels that -Mrs. Bradley had, as yet, found no means of tactfully banishing. And -sometimes, when the piano again resounded, Mrs. Bradley would leave her -borders and retreat to the hazel-copse, where, as she sat on the stone -bench, she could hear, through the soft sound of the running water, -hardly more than the distant beat and hum of Dollie's waltzes; and -where, with more and more the sense of escape and safety, she could find -a refuge from the sight and sound and scent of Dollie,--the thick, -sweet, penetrating scent that was always to be indelibly associated in -her mind with this winter of foreboding, of hope, and of growing -hopelessness. - -In her letters to Jack, she found herself, involuntarily at first, and -then deliberately, altering, suppressing, even falsifying. While Dollie -had been in bed, when so much hope had been possible of a creature so -unrevealed, she had written very tenderly, and she continued, now, to -write tenderly, and it was not false to do that; she could feel no -hardness or antagonism against poor Dollie. But she continued to write -hopefully, as every day hope grew less. - -Jack, himself, did not say much of Dollie, though there was always the -affectionate message and the affectionate inquiry. But what was -difficult to deal with were the hints of his anxiety and fear that stole -among the terse, cheerful descriptions of his precarious days. What was -she doing with herself? How were she and Dollie getting on? Did Dollie -care about any of the things she cared about? - -She told him that they got on excellently well, that Dollie spent a good -deal of time at the piano, and that when they went out to tea people -were perfectly nice and understanding. She knew, indeed, that she could -depend on her friends to be that. They accepted Dollie on the terms she -asked for her. From friends so near as Mrs. Crawley and Lady Wrexham -she had not concealed the fact that Dollie was a misfortune; but if -others thought so they were not to show it. She still hoped, by degrees, -to make Dollie a figure easier to deal with at such neighbourly -gatherings. She had abandoned any hope that Dollie would grow; anything -so feeble and so foolish could not grow; there was no other girl under -the little dancer; she was simply no more and no less than she showed -herself to be; but, at this later stage of their relationship, Mrs. -Bradley essayed, now and then, a deliberate if kindly severity,--as to -heels, as to scents, as to touches of rouge. - -"Oh, but I'm as careful, just as careful, Mrs. Bradley!" Dollie -protested. "I can't walk in lower heels. They hurt my instep. I've a -very high instep and it needs support." She was genuinely amazed that -any one could dislike her scent and that any one could think the rouge -unbecoming. She seemed to acquiesce, but the acquiescence was followed -by moods of mournfulness and even by tears. There was no capacity in her -for temper or rebellion, and she was all unconscious of giving a warning -as she sobbed, "It's nothing--really nothing, Mrs. Bradley. I'm sure you -mean to be kind. Only--it's rather quiet and lonely here. I've always -been used to so many people,--to having everything so bright and jolly." - -She was not rapacious; she was not dissolute; she could be kept -respectable and even contented if she were not made too aware of the -contrast between her past existence and her present lot. With an air -only of pensive pride she would sometimes point out to Mrs. Bradley, in -the pages of those same illustrated weeklies with which her -mother-in-law associated her, the face of some former companion. One of -these young ladies had recently married the son of a peer. "She _is_ in -luck, Floss," said Dollie. "We always thought it would come to that. -He's been gone on her for ages, but his people were horrid." - -Mrs. Bradley felt that, at all events, Dollie had no ground for thinking -her "horrid"; yet she imagined that there lay drowsing at the back of -her mind a plaintive little sense of being caught and imprisoned. Floss -had stepped, triumphant, from the footlights to the registrar's office, -and apparently had succeeded in uniting the radiance of her past and -present status. No, Dollie could be kept respectable and contented only -if the pressure were of the lightest. She could not change, she could -only shift; and although Mrs. Bradley felt that for herself, her life -behind her, her story told, she could manage to put up with a merely -shifted Dollie, she could not see how Jack was to manage it. What was -Jack to do with her? was the thought that pressed with a growing weight -on her heart. She could never be of Jack's life; yet here she was, in -it, planted there by his own generous yet inevitable act, and by -hers,--in its very centre, and not to be evaded or forgotten. - -And the contrast between what Jack's life might have been and what it -now must be was made more poignantly apparent to her when Frances Graham -came down to stay from a Saturday to Monday; Frances in her black, tired -and thin from Red-Cross work in London; bereaved in more, her old friend -knew, than dear Toppie's death; yet with her leisurely, unstressed -cheerfulness almost unaltered, the lightness that went with so much -tenderness, the drollery that went with so much depth. Dearest, most -charming of girls--but for Jack's wretched stumble into "fairyland" last -summer, destined obviously to be his wife,--could any presence have -shown more disastrously, in its contrast with poor Dollie, how Jack had -done for himself? She watched the two together that evening, Frances -with her thick crinkled hair and clearly curved brow and her merry, -steady eyes, leaning, elbow on knee, to talk and listen to Dollie; and -Dollie, poor Dollie, flushed, touched with an unbecoming sulkiness, -aware, swiftly and unerringly, of a rival type. Frances was of the type -that young men married when they did not "do for themselves." There was -now no gulf of age or habit to veil from Dollie her disadvantage. She -answered shortly, with now and then a dry, ironic little laugh; and, -getting up at last, she went to the piano and loudly played. - -"He couldn't have done differently. It was the only thing he could do," -Frances said that night before her bedroom fire. She did not hide her -recognition of Jack's plight, but she was staunch. - -"I wouldn't have had him do differently. But it will ruin his life," -said the mother. "If he comes back it will ruin his life." - -"No, no," said Frances, looking at the flames. "Why should it? A man -doesn't depend on his marriage like that. He has his career." - -"Yes. He has his career. A career isn't a life." - -"Isn't it?" The girl gazed down. "But it's what so many people have to -put up with. And so many haven't even a career." Something came into her -voice and she turned from it quickly. "He's crippled, in a sense, of -course. But you are here. He will have you to come back to always." - -"I shall soon be old, dear, and she will always be here. That's -inevitable. Some day I shall have to leave her to Jack to bear with -alone." - -"She may become more of a companion." - -"No; no, she won't." The bitterness of the mother's heart expressed -itself in the dry, light utterance. It was a comfort to express -bitterness, for once, to somebody. - -"She is a harmless little thing," Frances offered after a moment. - -"Harmless?" Mrs. Bradley turned it over drily and lightly. "I can't feel -her that. I feel her blameless if you like. And it will be easy to keep -her contented. That is really the best that one can say of poor Dollie. -And then there will be the child. I am pinning all my hopes to the -child, Frances." - -Frances understood that. - -Dollie, as the winter wore on, kept remarkably well. She had felt it the -proper thing to allude to Jack and his danger; and so, now, she more and -more frequently felt it the proper thing to allude, humorously if with a -touch of melancholy, to "baby." Her main interest in baby, Mrs. Bradley -felt, was an alarmed one. She was a good deal frightened, poor little -soul, and in need of constant reassurances; and it was when one need -only pet and pity Dollie that she was easier to deal with. Mrs. Bradley -tried to interest her in plans for the baby; what it should be named, -and how its hair should be done if it were a little girl,--for only on -this assumption could Dollie's interest be at all vividly roused; and -Mrs. Bradley more than ever hoped for a boy when she found Dollie's -idle yet stubborn thoughts fixed on the name of Gloria. - -She was able to evade discussion of this point, and when the baby came, -fortunately and robustly, into the world on a fine March morning, she -could feel it as a minor but very real cause for thanksgiving that -Dollie need now never know what she thought of Gloria as a name. The -baby was a boy, and now that he was here Dollie seemed as well pleased -that he should be a commonplace Jack, and that there should be no -question of tying his hair with cockades of ribbon over each ear. -Smiling and rosy and languid, she lay in her charming room, not at all -more maternal--though she showed a bland satisfaction in her child and -noted that his eyes were just like Jack's--yet subtly more wifely. Baby, -she no doubt felt, with the dim instinct that did duty for thought with -her, placed and rooted her and gave her final rights. She referred now -to Jack with the pensive but open affection of their shared complacency, -and made her mother-in-law think, as she lay there, of a soft and sleepy -and tenacious creeper, fixing tentacle after tentacle in the walls of -Jack's house of life. - -If only one could feel that she had furnished it with a treasure! -Gravely, with a sad fondness, the grandmother studied the little face, -so unfamiliar, for signs of Jack. She was a helplessly clear-sighted -woman, and remembrance was poignantly vivid in her of Jack's face at a -week old. Already she loved the baby since its eyes, indubitably, were -his; but she could find no other trace of him. It was not a Bradley -baby; and in the dreamy, foreboding flickers of individuality that pass -uncannily across an infant's features, her melancholy and steady -discernment could see only the Watson ancestry. - -She was to do all she could for the baby; to save him, so far as might -be, from his Watson ancestry and to keep him, so far as might be, Jack's -and hers. That was to be her task. But with all the moulding that could, -mercifully, be applied from the very beginning, she could not bring -herself to believe that this was ever to be a very significant human -being. - -She sent Jack his wire: "A son. Dollie doing splendidly." And she had -his answer: "Best thanks. Love to Dollie." It was curious, indeed, this -strange new fact they had now, always, to deal with; this light little -"Dollie" that must be passed between them. The baby might have made Jack -happy, but it had not solved the problem of his future. - - -III - -A week later the telegram was brought to her telling her that he had -been killed in action. - -It was a beautiful spring day, just such a day as that on which she and -Jack had first seen Dorrington, and she had been working in the garden. -When she had read, she turned and walked down the path that led to the -hazel-copse. She hardly knew what had happened to her; there was only an -instinct for flight, concealment, secrecy; but, as she walked, there -rose in her, without sound, as if in a nightmare, the terrible cry of -her loneliness. The dark wet earth that covered him seemed heaped upon -her heart. - -The hazel-copse was tasselled thickly with golden-green, and as she -entered it she saw that the hepaticas were in flower. They seemed to -shine with their own celestial whiteness, set in their melancholy green -among the fallen leaves. She had never seen them look so beautiful. - -She followed the path, looking down at them, and she seemed to feel -Jack's little hand in hers and to see, at her side, his nut-brown head. -It had been on just such a morning. She came to the stone bench; but the -impulse that had led her here was altered. She did not sink down and -cover her face, but stood looking around her at the flowers, the -telegram still open in her hand; and slowly, with stealing calm, the -sense of sanctuary fell about her. - -She had lost him, and with him went all her life. He was dead, his youth -and strength and beauty. Yet what was this strange up-welling of relief, -deep, deep relief, for Jack; this gladness, poignant and celestial, like -that of the hepaticas? He was dead and the dark earth covered him; yet -he was here, with her, safe in his youth and strength and beauty, -forever. He had died the glorious death, and no future, tangled, -perplexed, fretful with its foolish burden, lay before him. There was no -loss for Jack; no fading, no waste. The burden was for her and he was -free. - -Later when pain should have dissolved thought her agony would come to -her unalleviated; but this hour was hers and his. She heard the river -and the soft whisperings of spring. A bird dropped lightly unafraid from -branch to branch of a tree near by. From the woods came the rapid -insistent tapping of a woodpecker; and as in so many springs she seemed -to hear Jack say, "Hark, mummy," and his little hand was always held in -hers. And everywhere telling of irreparable loss, of a possession -unalterable, the tragic, the celestial hepaticas. - -She sat down on the stone bench now and closed her eyes for a little -while so holding them more closely--Jack and the hepaticas--together. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -DAFFODILS - - -I - -THOUGH he knew that he was going to die, Marmaduke Follett as he lay in -the hospital on the French coast had never in his life been so happy. -Until these last days he had not been able to feel it in its -completeness. Of the great engagement where he had fallen he remembered -only the overwhelming uproar, the blood and mud; and after that, -torments, apathies, dim awakenings to the smell of ether and relapses to -acquiescent sleep. Now the last operation had failed--or rather, he had -failed to recover from it--and there was no more hope for him; but he -hardly suffered and his thoughts were emerging into a world of -cleanliness, kindness, and repose. - -The hospital before the war had been a big hotel, and his was one of the -bedrooms on the second floor, its windows crossed by two broad blue -bands of sea and sky. As an officer he had a room to himself. The men -were in the wards downstairs. - -One of his nurses--both were pleasant girls but this was the one who -with a wing of black hair curving under her cap reminded him of his -cousin Victoria--had put a glass of daffodils beside his bed, not -garden daffodils, but the wild ones that grow in woods; and if she made -him think of Victoria how much more they made him think of the woods in -spring at Channerley! - -He was dying after a gallant deed. It was a fitting death for a Follett -and so little in his life had been at all fitted to that initial -privilege: it was only in the manner of his death that his life matched -at all those thoughts of Victoria and Channerley. - -He did not remember much of the manner; it still remained cloaked in the -overwhelming uproar; but as he lay there he seemed to read in the -columns of the London papers what all the Folletts were so soon to -read--because of him:-- - -"His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to award the Victoria -Cross to the under-mentioned officers, non-commissioned officers and -men:-- - -"Sec. Lt. Marmaduke Everard Follett. For most conspicuous bravery. - -"He was directed with 50 men to drive the enemy from their trench and -under intense shell-and machine-gun fire he personally led three -separate parties of bombers against a captured 325 yards of trench; -attacking the machine gun, shooting the firer with his revolver, and -destroying gun and _personnel_ with bombs. This very brave act saved -many lives and ensured the success of the attack. In carrying one of his -men back to safety Sec. Lt. Follett was mortally wounded." - -He felt himself smile, as he soberly spaced it out, to remember that the -youths at the office used to call him Marmalade. It was curious that he -most felt his present and his present transfigured self, when he thought -of Cauldwell's office, where so many years of his past had been spent. -When he thought of that, of the jocund youths, of the weary hours and -wasted years, it was to feel himself transfigured; when he thought of -the Folletts and of Channerley, to feel that he matched them; to feel at -last as if he had come home. What to the grimy, everyday world counted -as transfiguration, counted as the normal, the expected, to the world of -Channerley. - -He wondered, lying there and looking out past the daffodils, where -Victoria was; he had heard that she was nursing, too, somewhere in -France; and again, as he had smiled over the contrast of "Sec. Lt. -Marmaduke Everard Follett" and the "Marmalade" of Cauldwell's office, he -smiled in thinking of the difference between Victoria and the nice young -nurse who, for all her resembling curve of hair, was also second-rate. -It would have been very wonderful to have been nursed by Victoria, and -yet his thought turned from that. There had never been any sweetness, -never even any kindness for him, in Victoria's clear young gaze; when it -came to nursing, he could imagine her being kind to a Tommy, but not to -him, the dull, submerged cousin; and the nice though second-rate nurse -was very kind. He would rather die under her eyes than under Victoria's. - -And he would rather think of Victoria as he had last seen her at the big -London dance to which, most unexpectedly, he had found himself asked -last spring--the spring before the war. He had decided, as with nervous -fingers he tied his white cravat,--how rarely disturbed had been that -neat sheaf lying in his upper drawer!--that he must have been confused -with some other Follett, for he was so seldom asked anywhere, where he -would be likely to meet Victoria. However, it was a delight to see her -in her snowy dress, her beautiful hair bound with silver, and to feel, -as he watched her dancing, that she belonged, in a sense, to him; for -he, too, was a Follett. - -How much more did she belong to him now! And not only Victoria, but all -of them, these Folletts of his and the Folletts of past generations; and -Channerley, centre of all his aching, wistful memories. It had been for -him, always, part of the very structure of his nature, that beautiful -old house where he had spent his boyhood. Perhaps it was because he had -been turned out of the nest so early that he never ceased to miss it. -His thought, like a maimed fledgling, had fluttered round and round it, -longing, exiled, helpless. - -If, now, he could have survived, his eldest brother, he felt sure, must -have asked him oftener to stay at Channerley. It still gave him a pang, -or, rather, the memory of many pangs, to recall that Robert had not -asked him for two years, and had seemed to forget all about him after -that. They had all seemed to forget about him,--that was the trouble of -it,--and almost from the very beginning: Robert, who had Channerley; -Austin, who had gone into the army and was now in Mesopotamia; Griselda, -married so splendidly up in her northern estate; and Amy, the artistic -bachelor-girl of the family, whom he associated with irony and -cigarette-smoke and prolonged absences in Paris. Even cheerful Sylvia, -of South Kensington, with her many babies and K.C. husband, whom he -always thought of, for all her well-being, as very nearly as submerged -as himself,--even Sylvia saw little of him and asked him only to family -dinners,--Mr. Shillington's family, not hers,--at depressingly punctual -intervals. - -But Sylvia, the one nearest him in years, was the one who had forgotten -least, and she had, after her fashion, done her best for him. Confused -at study, clumsy at games, shy and tongue-tied, he had not in any way -distinguished himself at a rather second-rate public school; and to -distinguish himself had been the only hope for him. The Folletts had -never had any money to spare, and Eton and Oxford for Robert and -Sandhurst for Austin fulfilled a tradition that became detached and -terse where younger sons who could not distinguish themselves were -concerned. Still, he had always felt that, had his father lived, -something better would have been found for him than to be bundled, -through the instrumentality of Mr. Shillington, into a solicitor's -office. There he had been bundled, and there he had stuck for all these -years, as clumsy, as confused as ever; a pallid, insignificant little -fellow (oh, he had no illusions about himself!) with the yellow hair and -small yellow moustache which, together with his name, had earned for him -his sobriquet. - -They had not disliked him, those direfully facetious companions of his. -_Noblesse oblige_ was an integral part of his conception of himself, -however little they might be aware of his unvarying courtesy towards -them as its exercise. He suspected that they thought of him as merely -inoffensive and rather piteous; but shyness might give that impression; -they could not guess at the quiet aversion that it covered. He was aware -sometimes, suddenly, that in the aloofness and contemplative disdain of -his pale sidelong glance at them, he most felt himself a Follett. If -his mind, for most practical purposes, was slow and clumsy, it was sharp -and swift in its perceptions. He judged the young men in Cauldwell's -office as a Follett must judge them. In the accurate applying of that -standard he was as instinctively gifted as any of his race; and if he -knew, from his first look at her, that the nice young nurse was -second-rate, how coldly and calmly, all these years, he had known that -the young men who called him Marmalade were third-rate. And yet they -none of them disliked him, and he wondered whether it was because, when -he most felt disdain, he most looked merely timid, or because they -recognized in him, all dimly as it might be, the first-rateness that was -his inherently and inalienably. - -Just as the third-rate young men might recognize the first-rate but -dimly, he was aware that to the world the Folletts, too, were not -important. It was not one of the names, in spite of centuries of local -lustre, to conjure with; and he liked it all the better because of that. -They had never, it was true, distinguished themselves; but they were -people of distinction, and that was, to his quiet, reflective, -savouring, an even higher state. He sometimes wondered if, in any of -them, the centring of family consciousness was as intense as in himself. -If they were aloof about third-rate people, it was not because they were -really very conscious about themselves. They took themselves for -granted, as they took Channerley and the family history; and only Amy -was aware that some of the family portraits were good. - -The history--it was not of course accurate to call it that, yet it -seemed more spacious and significant than mere annals--pored over -during long evenings, in faded parchments, deeds, and letters, was known -in every least detail to him. How the Folletts had begun, very soberly -but very decorously, in the fifteenth century, and how they had gone on: -rooting more deeply into their pleasant woodlands and meadows; -flowering, down the centuries, now in a type of grace--that charming -Antonia who had married so well at James the First's court; and of -gallantry--a Follett had fallen at Naseby, and a Follett had fought at -Waterloo; or of good-humoured efficiency, as in the eighteenth-century -judge and the nineteenth-century bishop. And he, who was neither -graceful nor gallant nor good-humoured (sour and sad he felt himself), -never could resist the warming, revivifying influence of these -recognitions, stretching himself, sighing, smiling happily before his -Bloomsbury fire on a winter's evening, as he laid down the thick pile of -yellowed manuscripts to think it all over and feel himself, in spite of -everything, a link with it all. - -Robert had always been very decent about letting him have and keep the -documents for as long as he liked. - -It was strange to think that he was never to see his Bloomsbury lodgings -again, and stranger, really, that a certain tinge of regret was in the -thought; for how, for years, he had hated them, place of exile, of -relegation, as he had always felt them! Yet he had come to be fond of -his little sitting-room, just because, to his eye, with its mingled -comfort and austerity, it was so significant of exile. If a Follett -couldn't have what he wanted, that was all he would have--his rack of -pipes, his shelves of books, his little collection of mostly marginless -mezzotints ranged along the dark, green walls. The room was a refuge and -did not pretend to be an achievement, and in that very fact might, to an -eye as sharp as his for such significance, suggest the tastes that it -relinquished. He had indeed all the tastes and none of the satisfactions -of Channerley. - -There it was; he had come back to it again, as, indeed, he had, in -spirit, never left it--never for a moment. He felt himself, lying there -in the hospital on the French coast, with the soft spring sea lapping -upon the beach under his window--he felt himself drop, drop, softly, -sweetly, deeply, back to his childhood. From his high nursery-window he -saw the dewy tree-tops,--the old hawthorn that grew so near the house, -and the old mulberry,--and the rooks wheeling on a spring sky so many -years ago. The dogs, at that early hour, just released, might be racing -over the lawns: idle, jovial Peter, the spaniel, and Jack, the plucky, -hot-tempered little Dandy-Dinmont. - -Below the lawns were the high grey garden walls, and above, rising a -little from the flagged rose-garden, were the woods where the daffodils -grew, daffodils like those beside him now, tall and small, their pale, -bright pennons set among warrior spears of green. Little bands of them -ran out upon the lawn from under the great trees, and one saw their gold -glimmering far, far along the woodlands. Oh, the beauty of it, and the -stillness; the age and youth; the smile and the security! How he had -always loved it, shambling about the woods and gardens; creeping -rather--he always saw himself as creeping somehow--about the dear, gay, -faded house! Always such an awkward, insignificant little boy; even his -dear old Nanna had felt dissatisfied with his appearance, and he had -always known it, when she sent him down with the others to the -drawing-room; and his mother, she had made it very apparent, had found -him only that. - -He shrank from the thought of his mother; perhaps it was because of her, -of her vexed and averted eyes, her silken rustle of indifference as she -passed him by, that he saw himself as creeping anywhere where she might -come. He only remembered her in glimpses: languidly and ironically -smiling at her tea-table (Amy had her smile), the artificial tone of her -voice had even then struck his boyish ear; reading on a summer -afternoon, with bored brows and dissatisfied lips, as she lay on a -garden chair in the shade of the mulberry tree; querulously arguing with -his father, who, good-humoured and very indifferent, strolled about the -hall in his pink coat on a winter morning, waiting for the horses to be -brought round; his mother's yellow braids shining under her neatly -tilted riding-hat, her booted foot held to the blaze of the great -log-fire. A hard, selfish, sentimental woman; and--wasn't it really the -only word for what he felt in her?--just a little shoddy. He -distinguished it from the second-rate nicely: it was a more personal -matter; for his mother, though certainly not a Follett, was of good -stock; he knew, of course, all about her stock. It always grieved him to -think that it was from her he had his yellow hair and the pale grey of -his eyes; his stature, too, for she had been a small woman; all the -other Folletts were tall; but she had given him nothing more: not a -trace of her beauty was his, and he was glad of it. - -It was curious, since he had really had so little to do with him, as -little, almost, as with his mother, how blissfully his sense of his -father's presence pervaded his childish memories. He was so kind. The -kindest thing he remembered at Channerley, except his dear old Nanna and -Peter the spaniel. It used to give him a thrill of purest joy when, -meeting him, his father, his hands clasped behind his back after his -strolling wont, would stop and bend amused and affectionate eyes upon -him; rather the eyes, to be sure, that he bent upon his dogs; but -Marmaduke always felt of him that he looked upon his children, and upon -himself, too, as parts of the pack; and it was delightful to be one of -the pack, with him. - -"Well, old fellow, and how goes the world with you to-day?" his father -would say. - -And after that question the world would go in sunshine. - -He had always believed that, had his father lived, he would never have -been so forgotten; just as he had always believed that his father would -never have allowed one of his pack to be bundled into the solicitor's -office. For that he had to thank, he felt sure, not only Sylvia's -negative solicitude, but his mother's active indifference. Between them -both they had done it to him. - -And he never felt so to the full his dispossession as in thinking of -Robert. He had always intensely feared and admired Robert. He did not -know what he feared, for Robert was never unkind. But Robert was -everything that he was not: tall and gay and competent, and possessing -everything needful, from the very beginning, for the perfect fulfilment -of his type. The difference between them had been far more than the ten -years that had made of Robert a man when he was still only a little boy. -There had been, after all, a time when they had been a very big and a -very little boy together, with Austin in between; yet the link had -seemed always to break down after Austin. Robert, in this retrospect, -had always the air of strolling away from him--for Robert, too, was a -stroller. Not that he himself had had the air of pursuit; he had never, -he felt sure, from the earliest age, lacked tact; tact and reticence and -self-effacement had been bred into him. But his relationship with Robert -had seemed always to consist in standing there, hiding ruefulness, and -gazing at Robert's strolling back. - -The difference from Austin had perhaps been as great, but it had never -hurt so much, for Austin, though with his share of the Follett charm, -had never had the charm of Robert. A clear-voiced and clear-eyed, -masterful boy, Austin's main contact with others was in doing things -with them, and that sort of contact did not mean congeniality. Austin -had made use of him; had let him hold his ferrets and field for him at -cricket; and a person whom you found useful did not, for the time being, -bore you. - -But he had bored Robert always--that was apparent; and beautiful -Griselda, who was older than either of them, and Amy, who was younger. -Griselda had gazed rather sadly over his head; and Amy had smiled and -teased him so that he had seldom ventured on a remark in her presence. -Even fat little Sylvia, the baby, had always preferred any of the others -to him as she grew up; had only not been bored because, while she was -good-humoured, she was also rather dull. And at the bottom of his -heart, rueful always, sore, and still patiently surprised, he knew that, -while he found them all a little brutal, he could not admire them the -less because of it. It was part of the Follett inheritance to be able to -be brutal, unconsciously, and therefore with no loss of bloom. - -And now, at last, he was not to bore them any longer; at last, he was -not to be forgotten. How could he not be happy,--it brought back every -blissful thrill of boyhood, his father's smile, the daffodil woods in -spring, heightened to ecstasy,--when he had at last made of himself one -of the Folletts who were remembered? He would have his place in the -history beside the Follett who fell at Naseby. No family but is glad of -a V.C. in its annals. They could no longer stroll away. They would be -proud of him; he had done something for all the Folletts forever. - - -II - -The nice young nurse came in. She closed the door gently, and, with her -smile, calm before accustomed death, and always, as it were, a little -proud of him,--that was because they were both English,--she took his -wrist and felt his pulse, holding her watch in the other hand, and asked -him, presently, how he felt. Only after that did she say, contemplating -him for a moment,--Marmaduke wondered how many hours--or was it perhaps -days?--she was giving him to live,-- - -"A gentleman has come to see you. You may see him if you like. But I've -told him that he is only to stay for half an hour." - -The blood flowed up to Marmaduke's forehead. He felt it beating hard in -his neck and behind his ears, and his heart thumped down there under the -neatly drawn bed-clothes. - -"A gentleman? What's his name?" - -Was it Robert? - -"Here is his card," said the nurse. - -She drew it from her pocket and gave it to him. It couldn't have been -Robert, of course. Robert would only have had to come up. Yet he was -dizzy with the disappointment. It was as if he saw Robert strolling away -for the last time. He would never see Robert again. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe was the name. The address was a London club that -Marmaduke placed at once as second-rate, and "The Beeches, Arlington -Road," in a London suburb. On the card was written in a neat scholarly -hand: "May I see you? We are friends." - -It was difficult for a moment to feel anything but the receding tide of -his hope. The next thing that came was a sense of dislike for Mr. Guy -Thorpe and for the words that he had written. Friends? By what right -since he did not know his name? - -"Is he a soldier?" he asked. "How did he come? I don't know him." - -"You needn't see him unless you want to," said the nurse. "No; he's not -a soldier. An elderly man. He's driving a motor for the French Wounded -Emergency Fund, and came on from the Alliance because he heard that you -were here. Perhaps he's some old family friend. He spoke as if he were." - -Marmaduke smiled a little. "That's hardly likely. But I'll see him, yes; -since he came for that." - -When she had gone, he lay looking again at the blue bands across the -window. A flock of sea-gulls flew past--proud, swift, and leisurely, -glittering in the sun. They seemed to embody the splendour and -exultation of his thoughts, and, when they had disappeared, he was -sorry, almost desolate. - -Mr. Guy Thorpe. He took up the card again in his feeble hand and looked -at it. And now, dimly, it seemed to remind him of something. - -Steps approached along the passage, the nurse's light footfall and the -heavier, careful tread of a man. An oddly polite, almost a deprecating -tread. He had gone about a great many hospitals and was cautious not to -disturb wounded men. Yet Marmaduke felt again that he did not like Mr. -Guy Thorpe, and, as they came in, he was conscious of feeling a little -frightened. - -There was nothing to frighten one in Mr. Thorpe's appearance. He was a -tall, thin, ageing man, travel-worn, in civilian clothes, with a dingy -Red-Cross badge on the sleeve of his waterproof overcoat. Baldish and -apparently near-sighted, he seemed to blink towards the bed, and, as if -with motoring in the wind, his eyelids were moist and reddened. He sat -down, murmuring some words of thanks to the nurse. - -A very insignificant man, for all his height and his big forehead. -Altogether of The Beeches, Arlington Road. Had he turned grey, he might -have looked less shabby, but dark thin locks still clustered above his -high crown and behind his long-lobed ears. His eyes were dark, his -moustache drooped, and he had a small, straight nose. Marmaduke saw that -he was the sort of man who, in youth, might have been considered very -handsome. He looked like a seedy poet and some sort of minor civil -servant mingled, the civil servant having got the better of the poet. -Marmaduke also imagined that he would have a large family and a harassed -but ambitious wife, with a genteel accent--a wife a little below -himself. His tie was of a dull red silk. Marmaduke did not like him. - -Mr. Thorpe glanced round, as if cautiously, to see if the nurse had -closed the door, and then, it was really as if more cautiously still, -looked at Marmaduke, slightly moving back his chair. - -"I'm very grateful to you, very grateful indeed," he said in a low -voice, "for seeing me." - -"You've come a long way," said Marmaduke. - -"Yes. A long way. I had heard of your being here. I hoped to get here. I -felt that I must see you. We are all proud of you; more proud than I can -say." - -He looked down now at the motoring-cap he held, and Marmaduke became -aware that the reddened eyes were still more suffused and that the mouth -under the drooping moustache twitched and trembled. He could think of -nothing to say, except to murmur something about being very glad--though -he didn't want to say that; and he supposed, to account for Mr. Thorpe's -emotion, that he must be a moving sight, lying there, wasted, bandaged, -and dying. - -"You don't remember my name, I suppose," said Mr. Thorpe after a moment, -in which he frankly got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. - -"No, I'm afraid I don't," said Marmaduke very politely. He was glad to -say this. It was the sort of thing he did want to say. - -"Yet I know yours very, very well," said Mr. Thorpe, with a curious -watery smile. "I lived at Channerley once. I was tutor there for some -time--to Robert, your brother, and Griselda. Yes," Mr. Thorpe nodded, "I -know the Folletts well; and Channerley, the dear old place." - -Now the dim something in memory pressed forward, almost with a physical -advance, and revealed itself as sundry words scratched on the schoolroom -window-panes and sundry succinct drawings in battered old Greek and -Latin grammars. Robert had always been very clever at drawing, catching -with equal facility and accuracy the swiftness of a galloping horse and -the absurdities of a human profile. What returned to Marmaduke now, and -as clearly as if he had the fly-leaf before him, was a tiny thumb-nail -sketch of such a galloping horse unseating a lank, crouching figure, of -whom the main indications were the angles of acute uncertainty taken by -the knees and elbows; and a more elaborate portrait, dashed and dotted -as if with a ruthless boyish grin--such an erect and melancholy head it -was, so dark the tossed-back locks, so classical the nose and -unclassical the moustache, and a brooding eye indicated in a triangular -sweep of shadow. Beneath was written in Robert's clear, boyish hand, -"Mr. Guy Thorpe, Poet, Philosopher, and Friend. Vale." Even the date -flashed before him, 1880; and with it--strange, inappropriate -association--the daffodils running out upon the lawn, as no doubt he had -seen them as he leaned from the schoolroom window, with the Greek -grammar under his elbow on the sill. - -So that was it. Mr. Guy Thorpe, placed, explained, disposed of--poor -dear! He felt suddenly quite kindly towards him, quite touched by his -act of loyalty to the old allegiance in coming; and flattered, -too,--yes, even by Mr. Thorpe,--that he should be recognized as a -Follett who had done something for the name; and smiling very -benevolently upon him, he said:-- - -"Oh, of course; I remember perfectly now--your name, and drawings of you -in old schoolbooks, you know. All tutors and governesses get those -tributes from their pupils, don't they? But I myself couldn't remember, -could I? for it was before I was born that you were at Channerley." - -There was a moment of silence after this, and in it Marmaduke felt that -Mr. Thorpe did not like being so placed. He had no doubt imagined that -there would be less ambiguous tributes, and that his old pupils would -have talked of him to the younger generation. - -And something of this chagrin certainly came out in his next words as, -nodding and looking round at the daffodils, he said:-- - -"Yes, yes. Quite true. No, of course you couldn't yourself remember. I -was more though, I think I may fairly say, than the usual tutor or -governess. I came, rather, at Sir Robert's instance."--Sir Robert was -Marmaduke's father.--"We had met, made friends, at Oxford; his former -tutor there was an uncle of mine, and Sir Robert, in my undergraduate -days, used to visit him sometimes. He was very keen on getting me to -come. Young Robert wanted something of a firm hand. I was the friend -rather than the mere man of books in the family." - -"Poet, Philosopher and Friend"--Marmaduke had it almost on his lips, and -almost with a laugh, his benevolence deepened for poor Mr. Thorpe, so -self-revealed, so entirely Robert's portrait of him. Amusing to think -that even the quite immature first-rate can so relegate the third. But -perhaps it was a little unfair to call poor Mr. Thorpe third. The -Folletts would not be likely to choose a third-rate man for a tutor; -second was kinder, and truer. He had, obviously, come down in the world. - -"I see. It's natural I never heard, though: there's such a chasm between -the elders and the youngers in a big family, isn't there?" he said. -"Griselda is twelve years older than I am, and Robert ten, you remember. -She was married by the time I began my Greek. You never came back to -Channerley, did you? I hope things have gone well with you since those -days?" - -He questioned, wanting to be very kind; wanting to give something of the -genial impression of his father smiling, with his "And how goes the -world with you to-day?" But he saw that, while Mr. Thorpe's evident -emotion deepened, it was with a sense of present grief as well as of -retrospective pathos. - -"No; I never came,--that is--. No; I passed by: I never came to stay. I -went abroad; I travelled, with a pupil, for some years before my -marriage." Grief and confusion were oddly mingled in his drooping face. -"And after that--life had changed too much. My dear old friend Sir -Robert had died. I could not have faced it all. No, no; when some -chapters are read, it is better to close the book; better to close the -book. But I have never forgotten Channerley, nor the Folletts of -Channerley; that will always remain for me the golden page; the page," -said Mr. Thorpe, glancing round again at the daffodils, "of friendship, -of youth, of daffodils in springtime. I saw you there," he added -suddenly, "once, when you were a very little lad. I saw you. I was -passing by; bicycling; no time to stop. You remember the high road -skirts the woods to the north. I came and looked over the wall; and -there you were--in your holland pinafore and white socks--digging up the -daffodils and putting them into your little red-and-yellow cart. A -beautiful spring morning. The woods full of sunshine. You wouldn't -remember." - -But he did remember--perfectly. Not having been seen; but the day; the -woods; the daffodils. He had dug them up to plant in his own little -garden, down below. He had always been stupid with his garden; had -always failed where the other succeeded. And he had wanted to be sure of -daffodils. And they had all laughed at him for wanting the wild -daffodils like that for himself, and for going to get them in the wood. -And why had Mr. Thorpe looked over the wall and not come in? He hated to -think that he had been watched on that spring morning--hated it. And, -curiously, that sense of fear with which he had heard the approaching -footsteps returned to him. It frightened him that Mr. Thorpe had watched -him over the wall. - -His distaste and shrinking were perhaps apparent in his face, for it was -with a change of tone and hastiness of utterance, as though hurrying -away from something, that Mr. Thorpe went on:-- - -"You see,--it's been my romance, always, Channerley--and all of you. -I've always followed your lives--always--from a distance--known what you -were up to. I've made excuses to myself--in the days when I used to go a -good deal about the country--to pass by Channerley and just have a -glimpse of you. And when I heard that you had done this noble -deed,--when I heard what you had done for England, for Channerley, for -us all,--I felt I had to come and see you. You must forgive me if I seem -a mere intruder. I can't seem that to myself. I've cared too much. And -what I came for, really, was to thank you,--to thank you, my dear -boy,--and to tell you that because of you, life must be nobler, always, -for all of us." - -His words had effaced the silly, groping fear. It was indeed, since his -colonel's visit, the first congratulation he had had from the outer -world. The nurses, of course, had congratulated him, and the surgeons; -but no one who knew him outside; the kindly telegrams from Robert and -Sylvia did not count as congratulations. And in a way poor Mr. Thorpe -did know him, and though it was only from him, it had its sweetness. He -felt himself flush as he answered, "That's very kind of you." - -"Oh, no!" said Mr. Thorpe, shaking his head and swinging his -foot--Marmaduke knew that from the queer movement of his body as he sat -with very tightly folded arms. "Not kind! That's not the word--from us -to you! Not the word at all!" - -"I'm very happy, as you may imagine," said Marmaduke. And he was happy -again, and glad to share his happiness with poor Mr. Thorpe. "It makes -everything worth while, doesn't it, to have brought it off at all?" - -"Everything, everything--it would; it would, to you. So heroes feel," -said Mr. Thorpe. "To give your life for England. I know it all--in every -detail. Yes, you are happy in dying that England may live. Brave boy! -Splendid boy!" - -Now he was weeping. He had out his handkerchief and his shoulders -shook. It made Marmaduke want to cry, too, and he wondered confusedly if -the nurse would soon come back. Had not the half hour passed? - -"Really--it's too good of you. You mustn't, you know; you mustn't," he -murmured, while the word, "boy--boy," repeated, made tangled images in -his mind, and he saw himself in the white socks and with the little -red-and-yellow cart, and then as he had been the other day, leading his -men, his revolver in his hand and the bullets flying about him. "And I'm -not a boy," he said; "I'm thirty-four; absurdly old to be only a second -lieutenant. And there are so many of us. Why,"--the thought came -fantastically, but he seized it, because Mr. Thorpe was crying so and he -must seize something,--"we're as common as daffodils!" - -"Ah! not for me! not for me!" Mr. Thorpe gulped quickly. Something had -given way in him--as if the word "daffodils" had pressed a spring. He -was sobbing aloud, and he had fallen on his knees by the bed and put up -his hand for Marmaduke's. "I cannot keep it from you! Not at this last -hour! Not when you are leaving me forever!--My son! My brave son! I am -your father, Marmaduke! I am your father, my dear, dear boy!" - - -III - -It was the stillest room. The two calm bands of blue crossed the window. -In the sunlight the gulls came flying back. Marmaduke looked out at -them. Were they the same sea-gulls or another flock? Then quietly he -closed his eyes. Stillness--calm. But something else was rising to him -from them. Darkness; darkness; a darkness worse than death. Oh! death -was sweet compared to this. Compared to this all his life had been -sweet; and something far dearer than life was being taken from him. He -only knew the terrible confusion of his whole nature. - -He opened his eyes again with an instinct of escape. There were the -bands of blue, and, still passing in their multitudes, leaving him -forever, the proud, exultant sea-gulls. The man still knelt beside him. -He heard his own voice come:-- - -"What do you mean?" - -"I never meant to tell you! I never meant to tell you!" a moan answered -him. "But--seeing you lying there!--dying!--my son!--who has given his -life for England!--And how I have longed for you all these years!--My -romance, Marmaduke--How could I be silent? Forgive me! Forgive me, my -boy. Yes, mine. My known children are dear to me, but how far dearer the -unknown son, seen only by stealth, in snatched glimpses! It is true, -Marmaduke, true. We were lovers. She loved me. Do not ask. Do not -question. We were young. She was very beautiful. It was springtime; -daffodils were in the woods. She said that she had never known any one -like me. She said that her life was hollow, meaningless. I opened doors -to her, I read to her. Browning--I read Browning," he muttered on, "in -the woods; among the daffodils. It was a new life to her--and to me. And -we were swept away. Don't blame us, Marmaduke. If there was wrong, there -was great beauty--then. Only then; for after, she was cruel--very cruel. -She turned from me; she crushed and tore my heart. Oh!--I have -suffered! But no one knew. No one ever dreamed of it. Only she and I. -My God!--I see her in your hair and eyes!" - -It was true. It was absolutely true. Through his whole being he felt its -inevitability. Everything was clear, with a strange, black, infernal -clearness. His life lay open before him, open from beginning to end: -that beginning of tawdry sentiment and shame--with daffodils; and this -end, with daffodils again, and again with tawdry sentiment and shame. - -He was not a Follett. He had no part in the Folletts. He had no part in -Channerley. He was an interloper, a thief. He was the son of this -wretched man, in whose very grief he could detect the satisfaction--oh, -who more fitted to detect such satisfaction!--of his claim upon a status -above his own. He was all that he had always most despised, a -second-rate, a third-rate little creature; the anxious, civil, shrinking -Marmalade of Cauldwell's office. Why (as the hideous moments led him on, -point by point, his old lucidity, sharpened to a needle fineness, seemed -to etch the truth in lines of fire upon the blackness), hadn't he always -been a pitiful little snob? Wasn't it of the essence of a snob to -over-value the things one hadn't and to fear the things one was? It -hadn't been other people, it had been himself, what he really was, of -whom he had always been afraid. He saw himself reduced to the heretofore -unrecognized, yet always operative, element in his own nature--a timid, -watchful humility. - -Oh, Channerley! Channerley! The wail rose in his heart and it filled the -world. Oh, his woods, his daffodils, his father's smile--gone--lost -forever! Worse than that--smirched, withered, desecrated! - -A hideous gibbering of laughter seemed to rise around him, and pointing -fingers. Amy's eyes passed with another malice in their mockery; and -Robert would never turn to him now, and Griselda would never look at -him. He saw it all, as they would never see it. He was not one of them, -and they had always felt it; and oh,--above all,--he had always felt it. -And now, quite close it seemed, softly rustling, falsely smiling, moved -his loathsome mother: not only as he remembered her in youth, but in her -elegant middle years, as he had last seen her, with hard eyes and alien -lips and air of brittle, untouched exquisiteness. - -Suddenly fury so mounted in him that he saw himself rising in bed, -rending his dressings, to seize the kneeling man by the throat and -throttle him. He could see his fingers sinking in on either side among -the clustered hair, and hear himself say, "How dare you! How dare you! -You hound! You snivelling, sneaking hound! You look for pity from me, do -you!--and tenderness! Well, take this, this! Everything, everything I am -and have that's worth being and having, I owe to them. I've hated you -and all you mean, always--yes, your fear and your caution and your -admiration and your great high forehead. Oh, I see it! I see it!--it's -my own! And though I am only that in myself, then take it from me that I -hate myself along with you and curse myself with you!" - -It came to him that he was slowly panting, and that after the fever-fury -an icy chill crept over him. And a slow, cold smile came with it, and he -saw Jephson, the wit of the office, wagging his head and saying, "Little -Marmalade take a man by the throat! Ask me another!" - -No; little Marmalade might win the V.C.; but only when he thought he was -a Follett. Was that what it all came to, really? Something broke and -stopped in his mind. - -He heard his father's voice. How long ago it had all happened. He had -known for years, hadn't he, that this was his father? - -"Marmaduke! Mr. Follett! What have I done? Shall I call somebody? Oh, -forgive me!" - -His father was standing now beside him and bending over him. He looked -up at him and shook his head. He did not want any one to come. - -"Oh, what have I done?" the man repeated. - -"I was dying anyway, you know," he heard himself say. - -What a pitiful face it was, this weary, loosened, futureless old face -above him! What a frightened face! What long years of slow disgarnishing -lay behind it: youth, romance, high hopes, all dropped away. He had come -to-day with their last vestiges, still the sentimental, romancing fool, -self-centred and craving; but nothing of that was left. He was beaten, -at last, down into the very ground. It was a haggard, humiliated, -frightened face, and miserable. As he himself had been. But not even -death lay before this face. For how many years must it go on sinking -down until the earth covered it? Marmaduke seemed to understand all -about him, as well as if he had been himself. - -"Sit down," he said. He heard that his voice was gentle, though he was -not aware of feeling anything, only of understanding. "I was rather -upset. No; I don't want any one. Of course I forgive you. Don't bother -about it, I beg." - -His father sat down, keeping his swollen eyes on the motoring-cap -which, unseeingly, he turned and turned in his hands. - -"Tell me about yourself a little," said Marmaduke, with slow, spaced -breaths. "Where do you live? How? Are you fairly happy?" - -He knew that he was not happy; but he might, like most people with whom -life had not succeeded, often imagine himself so, and Marmaduke wanted -to help him, if possible, to imagine it. - -"I live near London. I used to do a good deal of University Extension -lecturing. I've a clerkship in the Education Office now." Mr. Thorpe -spoke in a dead obedient voice. "A small salary, not much hope of -advance; and I've a large family. It's rather up-hill, of course. But -I've good children; clever children. My eldest boy's at Oxford; he took -a scholarship at Westminster; and my eldest girl's at Girton. The second -girl, Winnie, has a very marked gift for painting; she is our artist; -we're going to send her to the Slade next year when she leaves the High -School. Good children. I've nothing to complain of." - -"So you're fairly happy?" Marmaduke repeated. Oddly, he felt himself -comforted in hearing about the good and happy children, in hearing about -Winnie, her father's favourite. - -"Happy? Well, just now, with this terrible war, one can't be that, can -one? It is a great adventure for me, however, this work of mine, -motoring about France. I don't think I've ever done anything I cared so -much about since--for years," said Mr. Thorpe. "It's a beautiful -country, isn't it? and the soldiers are such splendid fellows! One gets -a lot out of it. But happy? No, I don't suppose I am. I'm pretty much of -a failure, and I started life with great imaginings about myself. One -doesn't get over that sort of disappointment; one never really gets over -it in a way." Mr. Thorpe was looking at him now, and it was as if there -were a kindliness between them. "Things have been rather grey and -disagreeable on the whole," he said. - -"They can be very grey and disagreeable, can't they?" said Marmaduke, -closing his eyes. - -He was very tired, and as he lay there quietly, having nothing further -to know or to suffer, having reached the very limits of conscious -dissolution, something else began to come to him. It seemed born of the -abolition of self and of the acceptance of the fact that he was dead to -all that had given life worth or beauty. It would have been very good to -be a Follett; though, he saw it now, he had over-prized that special -sort of goodness--with so much else from which he had been, as really, -shut out; but he was not a Follett; nor was he merely this poor, -insignificant father. He did not quite make out in what the difference -lay and he did not rejoice in it, for there was no rejoicing left in -him. But, even if the difference were only an acquired instinct (dimly, -the terms of his complacent readings in biology and sociology returned -to him), even if it were only that, not anything inherent and -transmissible, it was, all the same, his own possession; something that -he and the Folletts had made together; so that it was as true to say -that he had won the V.C. as to say that they had. The lessened self that -was left to him had still its worth. To see the truth, even if it undid -you, was worthy; to see so unwaveringly that it was good to be a Follett -even when you weren't one, had the elements of magnanimity; and to -accept the fact of being second-rate proved, did it not?--if you still -cared to prove it; he felt himself smile as gently at the relinquished -self as he had smiled at his father,--that you were not merely -second-rate. - -There was now a sound of stumbling movement; doors opening and shutting; -nurses, surgeons in the room; and his father's face, far away, against -the blue bands, looking at him, still so frightened and so miserable -that he tried again to smile at him and to say, "It's all right. Quite -all right." - -At all events he had been decent to the poor old fellow. His thoughts -came brokenly, but he was still seeing something, finding something; it -was like a soft light growing. At all events, he had behaved as a -Follett would wish to behave even when brought to such a pass. No--but -it wasn't quite that, either; it was something new. He had behaved as -any one decent should wish to behave. And the daffodils glimmering to -his vision seemed to light him further still. "We are as common as -daffodils," came back to him. Daffodils were for everybody. Foolish -little boy who, on the distant spring morning in the woods of -Channerley, dug them up to take them to his own garden! - -He was there among them with his little red-and-yellow cart, and the -thrush was singing high above him, in the rosy topmost branches of an -elm. - -Beautiful woods. Beautiful flowers of light and chivalry. How the -sunshine streamed among them! - -"Dear Channerley," he thought. For again he seemed to belong there. - -Gentle hands were tending him and, as he turned his cheek on the -pillow, it was with the comfort--almost that of the little boy at -Channerley being tucked up in the warm nursery to go to sleep--of -knowing that he was dying, and that, in spite of everything, he had -given something to the name. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PANSIES - - -I - -"OF course it is a horrid little garden, but one gets so fond of one's -own things, even when they are horrid," said Miss Edith Glover, with her -gentle deprecatory laugh. - -She stood with her friend at the door of the conservatory that led from -the sitting-room to the oblong plot of garden--a small, middle-aged -woman, with soft brown eyes, and hair the colour of a faded leaf; her -wasted throat and transparent temples and faint yet feverish flush -marking her already with menacing symptoms. - -The conservatory was of the sort that crops out irrelevantly at the back -of the many suburban houses, like glaucous fungi; but in Miss Glover's -little establishment, its shelves filled with neatly ranged boxes of -seedlings, with bundles of raffia, tidy baskets, and carefully garnered -labels, it was completely utilitarian, with never a fern or begonia to -recall its usual state. Miss Glover's house was suburban, or nearly so, -for though it stood in secure detachment from other villas on the -southern slopes of a small Surrey town, the town, on its northern side, -spread into ugly patches of red brick that devoured the woods and fields -and ran long tentacles almost up to London. Acacia Road was removed -from this peril of vitality, and its upper windows looked over pleasant -stretches of untouched hill and meadow. - -The Nook had been left to Miss Glover by an aunt five years ago, and to -her it was, from its porch before to its garden behind, a paradise pure -and simple, though she described her garden now, in showing it to -Florrie Lennard, so disparagingly. If she called it horrid, however, it -was only because, with her strong sense of other people's claims and -opinions, she recognized that to Florrie, accustomed to grand week-ends -at big country-places, it must, _qua_ garden, look very dim and meagre. -That it must also look, in its humility, very lovely, she took for -granted. - -Mrs. Lennard, however, standing with her on the conservatory step, her -robust silken arm protectingly and benevolently laid within hers, did -not contradict her, though her cheerful eyes roamed kindly over the -borders of pansies, the beds of mignonette, and the clumps of sweet peas -in the corners; but her kindness was for her friend rather than for the -garden, and she said, "You haven't had strength, I expect, for doing -more with it." - -"I've never had much strength," said Miss Glover. "It doesn't want much -hard work, luckily. The pansies go on from year to year and only need -dividing in the autumn, and then there are the bulbs, of course, in -spring; I have crocuses and daffodils and narcissi and some beautiful -tulips. The rest I do with penny packets. All those sweet peas and all -that mignonette came from two penny packets." - -"You can't expect much for a penny, can you?" said Mrs. Lennard with -her rather jovial air; and now she stepped down onto the narrow strip of -lawn that had a bird-bath sunken in the middle and a rose-bush at each -corner, of the kind now seldom seen, known as Prince Charlie or Maiden's -Blush--dark and small of foliage, with flat flowers that would be snowy -were they not tinged with a cold pink. They always made Miss Glover -think of an old Scotch ballad. Their flowering season was over, now, -however. The old Pyrus japonica that grew against the wall was also, -long since, over, though its fresh, vigorous green embossed the dull -bricks; but on the wall opposite, a Madame Alfred Carriere was throwing -out a second blooming, dreamy, melancholy and romantic as only she could -be. Madame Alfred Carriere made Miss Glover think of a Chopin waltz, and -she hoped that Florrie might at all events remark favourably on her -abundance. But Florrie hardly glanced at her. Pausing, as they paced the -lawn, to look with tolerant interest at the bird-bath, she observed, - -"I've just been staying with the Isaacsons in Hertfordshire. Such a -lovely place. They've a broad sanded walk leading from the house to the -rose-garden, as long as--well, to the end of this road, and it's arched -with roses all the way, a regular roof of roses, the latest climbers; I -never saw such a sight. And their herbaceous border, even now, is a -blaze of colour. I wish you could see it. It would do you good. It did -_me_ good, I know. I told Mrs. Isaacson I always feel a better woman -after a week-end in her garden. Flowers mean so much to me. I can't get -on without them. I run down to the Isaacsons whenever, as I say to her, -I need an aesthetic cocktail. Of course they've half a dozen gardeners -working from dawn till dewy eve. You can do pretty much what you want in -the way of gardens when you're as rich as the Isaacsons. What it must -have cost them to make that sunken rose-garden!--all flagged between the -beds, with a sun-dial, and a fountain in the middle and bowers of roses -all about. They terraced the lawns, too, with flights of stone steps -leading down one from the other, and great white stone vases on the -pilasters simply foaming over, my dear, with pink geraniums. Against the -blue sky it's dazzling. - -"Such nice people they are, too, the Isaacsons. Di, the eldest girl, is -marrying Lord Haymouth next week, you know. People says it's a _mariage -de convenance_, of course, for she's to have L50,000 and he's without -the proverbial penny. But I happen to know it's a love match: love at -first sight; a regular _coup de foudre_. I was with the Isaacsons at -Ascot this spring when they met, and I saw in a moment that Di's fate -was sealed. Do you remember the big photo of Di in court dress on the -piano in the flat? No? Well, I should have thought it couldn't have -escaped notice. Such a splendid young creature; dark, proud, glowing -beauty. I think, when they're young, there's nothing to beat a beautiful -Jewess. She has a gorgeous voice, too, Di; could have made her fortune -in grand opera. I've given her a gold cigarette-case with her monogram -in diamonds and rubies. It nearly broke me; but they've always been -simply sweet to me. She's very fond of smoking. Smokes too much, her -mother and I tell her, though I'm afraid _I'm_ not a very good example -to set before the young!" - -Mrs. Lennard's face, while she thus spoke, expressed her contentment -with the Isaacsons, with herself, the cigarette-case, and life in -general. It was large and ruddy and masterful, with aquiline nose and -small, jocund mouth creasing to the chin in a deep line that spoke of -good nature and ingenuous sensuality; the full throat supported by a -high lace collar, well boned up behind the ears; the prominent blue eyes -at once bland and beaming. She was tall, of a fine presence, her -handsome bosom thickly decorated with turquoise ornaments, her shoes of -glittering patent leather; and from her wrist dangled a purse of fringed -and woven gold--an offering to her from the proprietor of the lady's -paper that, for many years, she had edited with so much _flair_ and -ability. - -She had made a very good thing of her life, had Mrs. Lennard; and, -nearing the fifties as she was, she had amassed a small but secure -income and a large number of affluent friends; friends always engaged in -vigorous and costly pursuits that involved many rich toilettes, meals to -the sound of orchestras in sumptuous restaurants and constant motoring -from place to place. Among such friends poor Edie Glover had not -counted. She and Mrs. Lennard had been schoolmates in early days when -their fortunes, one as the daughter of a poor parson and one of a poor -doctor, were equally unpromising. But Florrie had married an ambitious -young journalist, typified always, in Miss Glover's memory, from her one -rather dazed and shrinking impression of him, by extraordinarily smart -mustard-coloured spats and the weighty and imposing seal ring on his -finger; and, though early widowed, Florrie had followed along the paths -where he had set her feet with an energy and shrewdness that he could -not have bettered. - -Meanwhile, poor Edie--for so Mrs. Lennard always thought of -her--struggled through many years of waning youth to make her living, -and support her mother, as a music-teacher in London. Mrs. Lennard, even -when the tides of her own fortune ran low, never lost sight of her. She -had always been the kindest of friends, sowing the Glovers' dun-coloured -days with "complimentary" theatre or concert tickets and asking them -frequently to tea with her at her club. Even after Edie, now alone in -the world, had retired to Acacia Road and left youth and London behind -her, Mrs. Lennard, who had the air of fully possessing both, kept -constantly in touch. She had never before managed, it was true, but for -one half hour as she motored by on a winter's day, to visit Acacia Road; -but it was to her flat in Victoria Street that Miss Glover always came -when called to London by mild necessities or pleasures. Florrie insisted -on it; and though, in some ways, Miss Glover would have preferred the -house of her cousin in Bayswater,--overflowing with children as it was, -and offering only the tiniest of back bedrooms on the top floor,--or the -villa of a school-mistress friend at Golder's Green, it had always been -impossible to resist Florrie's determined benevolence. - -"Nonsense, my dear Edie," she would say. "Your cousin can't want you. -You'll only be in the way, with those dozens of children. And as for -Golder's Green, what can you see of London from Golder's Green?" -(Florrie overlooked the fact that for forty-odd years Miss Glover had -done nothing but "see" London.) "You'll be worn out with tubes and -motor-buses if you go to Golder's Green. Whereas with me you are ten -minutes from everywhere, be it dentist or dressmaker or concert, and -your bedroom's waiting for you--Muriel Lestrange left me only last -Monday; and you can't make me believe you'd not rather have your bath in -my lovely porcelain tub, with steaming hot water day and night, than in -one of those awful, antediluvian, blistered monsters, that fold you up -like a jack-knife--and the tin of tepid water hauled up four flights by -a slavey. I know my London, my dear, through _and_ through, and any -pleasure here depends upon how you start your day; upon your bath and -your breakfast. I can't offer much, but I can offer both of those, A -number one." - -So she could. Miss Glover could not deny it, though loyally and -unheededly murmuring that the villa at Golder's Green had also its -bathroom. It couldn't, however, compare with Florrie's, all snowy tiles -and glittering taps and ranged jars and bottles of salts and scents. -Florrie's bathroom seemed to her always to be the very centre and symbol -of Florrie's life--modern, invigorating, rejuvenating, at once -utilitarian and decorative. It was a sort of brilliant magician's cave -from which all the rest radiated: the compact yet so sumptuous little -drawing-room with its baby-grand and its palm, its silver-framed -photographs, frilled cretonnes, and rose-coloured carpet; the -dining-room, even more compact, yet, in its sobriety, as -sumptuous--where the breakfasts always, in spite of familiarity, broke -upon Miss Glover as revelations of what coffee and rolls and kidneys and -bacon could be in the way of strength and heat and crispness; even the -pink silk quilt beneath which she crept at night, and the little maid -who brought her early tea, looking, in her fluted caps and aprons, as -though she belonged to a theatrical troupe--all seemed emanations of -that magic centre where Florrie lay of a morning in hot, scented water -and read the paper and smoked a cigarette before emerging armed and -panoplied for the avocations and gaieties of the day. - -Yet it was not so much Florrie's bathroom and breakfasts, or even -Florrie's kindness, that overbore her protests as Florrie's -determination, her way of knowing so much better than you yourself could -know what was not only good, but happy for you. There was never an -answer to be found to her; and though Florrie's flat, with all its -sumptuousness, dazed and even tired Miss Glover a little, just as dear -Florrie herself sometimes dazed and tired her, she found herself -installed there always, feeling her own pursuits, her little -tea-parties, her concerts, her timid, bewildered shopping, to be very -humdrum and inappropriate as issuing from such a base of operations. The -only return she was able to make was to emboss Florrie's sheets and -towels and table-linen with beautifully embroidered monograms, and she -had always a slight and pleasant sense of being, at all events, a -country mouse who had contributed its little offering of grain or honey -when she recognized these trophies of her craft on her bed and on the -table and in the bathroom. - -But the last time she had gone up that summer, only, now, three weeks -ago, she had found herself suddenly of a significance almost as great as -that of any of Florrie's brilliant friends. To become significant to -Florrie one had either to be brilliant or piteous, and she was piteous. -Florrie had gone with her to the doctor's, and it was Florrie, kind -Florrie, an arm about her shoulders and a breast spread to her tired -head, who had broken to her the verdict. - -She was menaced, gravely menaced.--Yes; it did not surprise her--she had -thought it might be that. She had seen her father and two sisters die of -it--And unless she could go away and spend a year in a Swiss open-air -cure, the doctor didn't think she'd live through the winter. - -Seated on Florrie's frilled sofa, while Florrie, all encompassing tact -and urgency, passed on the verdict, it was not of it that she first -thought. Her mind, perhaps in an instinctive recoil, fixed itself upon -the oddly insistent impression of pinkness that she was aware, suddenly, -of receiving. Florrie's blouse, under her cheek, was a bright blur of -pink; and when she turned her eyes away from that they met, everywhere, -garlands of roses looped with knots of blue ribbon on a background of -white and pink stripes. Too much pink: this was the absurdly irrelevant -criticism that, dimly, but as if culminatingly, emerged. She must have -felt it as too pink for many years, but only now was she aware of it. -And then, with a sense of refuge, came the vision of her pansies: those -borders of white and purple pansies under the dull brick wall that she -had looked at so fondly that morning before starting for her journey. -But she would have to leave her pansies, then; not only for a season; -perhaps forever. - -It was in this form and in this roundabout way that the thought of death -became real to her; with pathos rather than poignancy and with yearning -regret rather than fear. She did not feel afraid of dying. Her quiet -little faith that, though so still, was deep enough for all her needs, -had sunken wells of wordless security in her. She was not afraid; but -the thought of leaving her flowers, her garden, the skyey view from her -bedroom window, symbolized for her all the sadness of death. There was, -indeed, nothing else to regret much. Every one she had loved most dearly -was gone; and when all was said and done, and in spite of the peace of -the last five years, she was a battered, tired little creature, with few -of the springs of desire left in her. Her life, as she looked back on -it, seemed to have been spent, for the most part, in crowded buses on -wet evenings, with not enough lunch behind and not enough dinner before -her; in those, and in going up and down steps of strangers' houses. -There had been, of course, more than that; she had never, except when -her dearest young sister died, been very unhappy, and there had been -interests and alleviations always--beautiful evening walks across the -Park and relaxations over tea with a book before the fire in her -lodging-house sitting-room; but the past, when she called it up in an -image, seemed always to crumple into that jolting, rattling, wet, and -crowded omnibus. So there was not much strength now left in her for -resistance or regret; but she would do her best to live, and that really -meant that she would do her best not yet to leave her garden. - -When she was older, too old to dig a little, divide the pansies in -autumn and sow the penny packets in spring, too old to care for the -Madame Alfred Carriere or the Pyrus japonica, would be time enough to -go. But in coming back to it that evening, she knew how deeply, how -tenaciously she loved her garden. It was the only thing she had ever -owned in her life, the only thing she had ever made: her work and -creation; its roots seemed to go down into her heart; and she could not -feel that in heaven there would be old white roses and white and purple -pansies and mignonette and sweet peas that one had sown one's self from -penny packets. - - -II - -At first, when Florrie told her, the verdict had seemed unescapable. She -had said, after the little silence in which she received it,--the -silence in which much had happened to her,--she had said, in a very -quiet voice that had surprised herself, "I'm afraid it's no good, then, -Florrie dear. I can't afford to go away." - -Aunt Kate had left her only the house and its contents. She had saved -only the tiniest sum herself--just enough to yield an income that paid -for her food and light and coal. To pay for Jane, her good old servant, -to pay for her clothes and washing, to pay for the trips to London and -the crumpets and cakes that she gave her friends at tea in Acacia Road, -she had still to depend upon the pupils that, fortunately, she had found -in the small Surrey town. On three afternoons a week she sallied forth, -peacefully indeed, with no sense of anxiety or pressure, and made her -way to the houses of the doctor, the rector, the big London -manufacturer, and instructed their young daughters in the excellent -Munich method that she had imbibed in youth. With these delightfully -convenient strings to her bow she could manage perfectly. But to give -them up and to pay for an open-air cure in Switzerland was outside the -bounds of her possibilities. - -So she explained, in the quiet voice, to Florrie; and it was then that -Florrie, revealing herself as a more wonderfully kind friend than even -in Miss Glover's grateful eyes she had always been, said, the tears -suddenly hopping down her cheeks and making dark spots on the pink silk -blouse,-- - -"Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Edie! What do a few pounds more or less -matter at a time like this? You _shall_ go! It's a question of life or -death. Now, not a word, my dear, and listen to me. _I'll_ send you. -It'll be the proudest day of my life that sees you off. What's all my -good luck worth to me if I can't give a friend a helping hand when she -needs it? I can sell out some investments. I've more than enough, and -I'll soon fill my stocking again. And you shall go as soon as we can get -you ready; and first class, my dear, all the way, boat _and_ train. -Don't I know the difference it makes--and getting off to sleep on the -way? Jane shall go with you to take care of you--oh, yes, she shall!--I -won't hear of your going alone; and you'll come back next spring a sound -woman. - -"I know all about those Swiss open-air cures," Florrie rushed on. -"They're magical. Poor Lady Forestalls was at death's door three years -ago--there she is--over there on the piano--that tall, regal-looking -woman with the Pekinese: worse than you she was, by far. And she went to -Switzerland and came back in six months' time, cured; absolutely cured. -Never a touch of it since. She does everything and goes everywhere. And -such scenery, my dear, such flowers! You'll revel in it. And Julia -Forestalls told me that the people were so interesting. She made a -number of friends--Italian, German, Russian. You shall take my -tea-basket, my dear. Jane can carry it easily. It's a gem; everything -complete and so convenient. It makes simply all the difference on a -journey if you can get a steaming hot cup of tea at any time you like, -day _or_ night. I saved Cora Clement's life with my tea-basket in -Venice; she says so herself. She got chilled to the bone on the lagoons. -Over there on the writing-bureau she is; American. Not a beauty, but -_jolie laide_, and dresses exquisitely--as you can see. She's always -taken for a French-woman." - -Miss Glover, even more than usual, felt to-day that dear Florrie dazed -and bewildered her a little; but the mere fact that Florrie's tears had -dried so soon, that she could, so soon, be telling her about Lady -Forestalls and Cora Clement, was encouraging. Miss Glover felt that her -case was evidently but one among many to which Florrie had seen the -happiest endings--a comparatively unalarming affair; entirely -unalarming, though exceedingly engrossing, Florrie's tone and demeanour -indicated, when taken in hand by such as she. - -And how she took it in hand! There was no use protesting against -anything. As always, Florrie made her feel that she knew better than she -herself could what was good for her. It was all arranged before they -parted that day, and Florrie had further smoothed her path by declaring -that nothing would suit her better, if Edie really felt fussed about the -money, than to take The Nook during her absence. "The very thing I -need," said Florrie. "I've been thinking for some time that I must have -a little place near London to run down to for week-ends. And you've that -duck of a spare-room, too, I remember, where I can put up a friend; and -it's so near town that people can motor down and have tea with me of an -afternoon. My dear, nothing could be more providential." - -During the three weeks that followed, Florrie, in London, shopped for -her, decided on the clothes she would need and the conveniences that she -must take; and interesting parcels arrived at The Nook every morning. It -was strange and exciting to be made much of, strange and exciting to be -on a journey; she had not been out of England since that stay, in -girlhood, in Munich; and in spite of the shadow hanging over her, the -sense of haste lest she be overtaken, she felt the days of preparation -as almost happy ones. Jane, it was true, was rather gloomy about -everything, but even beneath her sombre demeanour Miss Glover felt sure -that she, too, was touched by the sense of adventure, for Jane had never -been out of England at all. - -And now the boxes were all packed and Miss Glover's dressing-case stood -open, half filled, in her bedroom, waiting only for her sponge bag and -pin-tray and brush and comb to be added next morning, when she and Jane -and Florrie were to go up together to Victoria, and Florrie was to see -them off; and while Jane prepared her most festive tea, Miss Glover had -been showing Florrie all over her new domain on that August afternoon -when she had spoken of her garden as horrid. Florrie, in answer to her -shy request that she might, perhaps, if it wasn't too much bother, sow -some mignonette and sweet peas for her next spring, had answered with -reassuring decision, "To be sure I will, my dear. I'll take care of -everything and have it all waiting for you spick and span when you get -back." And then Jane's gong had summoned them in, and it had been -reassuring, too, to see how benignant were the glances that Florrie cast -about the little sitting-room while she stirred her tea and commended -Jane's cakes. "Beeswax and turpentine for all the furniture once a week. -_I_ know. And dusted every morning without fail." - -Yes, it was safe in Florrie's competent hands, dear little room. In her -heart of hearts, though she had no faintest flicker of criticism or -comparison except for that one strangely painful memory of the rush of -pinkness,--Miss Glover very much preferred her own room, shabby and -simple as it was, to Florrie's; just as, though so well aware of the -relative insignificance of her garden, she knew that she would prefer it -to the Isaacsons', with its arches of roses and its geraniums in white -stone vases. She liked quiet, soft, gentle things; the ever-so-faded -ancient chintzes on her aunt's chairs and sofa, showing here and there a -ghostly bird of paradise or a knot of nearly obliterated flowers, her -aunt's absurd, faded, old-fashioned carpet,--fortunately faded!--and her -grandmother's Lowestoft cups ranged above the mantelpiece. Everything -was in its place; her knitting-basket between her chair and the -fireplace; her beaded footstool before the best armchair, where Florrie -sat; the little table, with a bowl of white and purple pansies on it, -where lay the daily paper and the two books from the circulating -library. All were dear to her; all spoke of continuity with the past, of -long association, of quiet, small, peaceful activities; and as she -looked about she knew that her heart would have sunk a little at the -thought of leaving them, had it not been for Florrie's sustaining -presence. - -Florrie, while her second cup of tea was being made, drew forth and laid -beside the tea-tray, with an air of infinite sagacity, the coupons for -the reserved seats in the first-class carriage. "_I'll_ keep my eyes on -those," said Florrie. It was almost as if they had been tickets for some -brilliant entertainment--as if, Miss Glover felt, she and Jane were -going to be taken to the opera rather than to Switzerland. It was owing -to Florrie that she had almost come to feel that Switzerland _was_ the -opera. - -But that night, when they had gone upstairs and the house was still, the -sense of adventure deserted her. Sitting in her dressing-gown before her -mirror while, with hands that tired so easily, she brushed and braided -her hair, she felt, suddenly, very middle-aged, very lonely, ill, and -almost frightened. The look of her gaping dressing-case, as she glanced -round at it, was frightening, as was the emptiness of the mantelpiece, -from which the family photographs had all been taken to be packed, -together with the Bible and prayer-book from the table near her bed. It -was a room already deserted. It looked as it might look if she had died. -What, indeed, in spite of Florrie's good cheer, if she were to die out -there, alone, away from everything and every one she knew? And, with a -curious impulse, rising to go and close the gaping dressing-case, she -realized that she had not said good-bye to anything. The morning had all -been spent in packing--in that and in preparations for Florrie's -arrival; and all the afternoon Florrie had been with her, and she was to -be with her till her departure to-morrow. She would not again be alone -in her little house; she would not again be alone in her garden. The -thought of her pansies came with a pang of reproach; it was as if she -had forgotten them, like children sent to bed without a good-night kiss. - -She drew her curtain and looked out. Yes; there they were. The moon was -shining brightly and the white pansies lay below like pools of milk upon -the ground. She looked at them for some moments, while the soft -fragrance of the night mounted to her and seemed with gently -supplicating hands to draw her forth; and then, cautiously--for Florrie -slept across the way--but with decision, she put on her heavy cloak over -her dressing-gown, wrapped a shawl about her head and shoulders, and -stole downstairs. - -The drawing-room was very dark; she felt her way swiftly through it past -the familiar objects, and the conservatory door opened on a flood of -silvery light. She saw the high, shining disk of the moon, and the great -black poplar tree that grew in the neighbouring garden seemed vast -against the sky. As she stepped out, she made herself think of Diamond -in "At the Back of the North Wind." It was like stepping into a -fairy-tale; only something more sweet and solemn than a fairy-tale, as -that book was; something, for all its beauty, a little awful. But when -she looked down from the moon, the sky, the poplar, there was only -sweetness. The fragrance that had solicited her seemed now to welcome -her, to clasp and caress her. The pansies were all looking up at her. On -the wall Madame Alfred Carriere was more beautiful than she had ever -before seen her, her pale flowers and buds making a constellation -against the darkness. - -She walked round the path, looking at it all, so glad that she had -come, smiling--a child in fairyland, or a spirit arrived in Paradise and -finding it strange yet familiar--as Paradise should be. Perhaps, she -thought, dying would be like that: a stepping out from the darkness into -something vast and solemn that would slowly gather about one into -well-known and transfigured shapes, into white pansies growing thickly -at one's feet. She stooped in the moonlight and passed her hands over -their upturned faces. They were flowers entranced, neither sleeping nor -awake; and she felt, as her fingers touched their soft, dewy petals, as -if their dreams with their whiteness flowed into her. To leave them was -like leaving her very self, yet the parting now was all peace and -innocent acquiescence, like them, and she was still smiling as she -whispered to them, "Good-bye, darlings." - - -III - -SWITZERLAND was like the opera, and for her first months there Miss -Glover felt as if she watched it from a box--very much at the back and -looking past many heads at the vast display. Everything that Florrie had -said was true: the scenery was more magnificent than she could have -imagined, oppressively more, and the people, again oppressively, more -interesting. They were, these people, engaged all of them in trying to -keep alive, and, when they failed in that, in dying, dying under one's -eyes from day to day; and in the publicity of such occupations there was -something as abnormal as was the size of the mountains. Some of these -people she came to know a little--those, usually, who had given up: the -dear little Russian girl who, alas, died in December; the sulky, -affectionate French boy; and the large yet wasted German singer who made -Miss Glover think of a splendid fruit keeping still its shell of form -and colour while eaten away inside by wasps. Frauelein Schmidt liked to -have her play Schubert and Schumann songs to her, and still tried to -sing attainable passages here and there in a queer, booming, hollow -voice that made Miss Glover, again, think of the wasps imprisoned and -buzzing. But most of the people remained parts of the spectacle to her. -They engaged, when they were well enough, in winter sports; they talked -together of books she had never heard of, and of things she had never -thought of; and often, moreover, she could not understand what they -said, as her languages did not extend beyond rather simple French and -German, and Dante with a dictionary. - -The only other English person there was a young man who made her think -of the Prince Charlie roses; he was sombre and delicate and beautiful -and did not talk to anybody, sitting apart and reading all day long. -Miss Glover wondered a good deal about him, and watched him sometimes -from her place on the snow-sifted balcony when they lay there encased in -fur bags and buttressed with hot-water bottles. His name was Lord Ninian -Carstairs; and that was like the roses, too. - -Once, when they were alone on the balcony, their recumbent chairs near -one another, he lifted his eyes suddenly and found hers fixed upon him, -and perhaps their wistful and ingenuous absorption touched him, for, -flushing faintly,--he was a shy young man,--he asked if she were feeling -better. - -She said she couldn't quite tell. It was difficult to tell what one -felt, didn't he find? Everything was so different; so exciting in a way; -and when one was excited one felt, perhaps, better than one was. - -Lord Ninian laughed shortly at that, and said that he didn't feel -excited; he wished he could. - -"I'm depressed, too, sometimes," said Miss Glover; and then he sighed. - -"One gets so abominably homesick in this hole," he said. - -She had never thought of such splendour as being, possibly, to anybody, -a hole; but she knew what it was to feel homesick. They smiled at each -other when they met after that, she and Lord Ninian, and he lent her -magazines and books. When she heard that he had died,--she had not seen -him for a week and had feared for him,--she felt very, very sad and her -thoughts turned in great longing to Acacia Road and to her garden. - -She wanted very much to live to see her garden again; but she could not -help being frightened lest she should not; for, as the winter wore on, -it became evident to her, and all the more because every one else was so -carefully unaware of it, that one of the things that Florrie had -predicted was not to come true. She was not to return cured. She was not -going to get better. At first the slow burning of fever had seemed only -part of the excitement, but she could not go on thinking it that when it -began to leave her breathless, trembling, faint. By the time that the -miracle of the Alpine flower-meadows was revealed to her and she had -watched the snow recede and the jonquils and anemones advance, she knew -that if she wished to die at home she must soon go. They would not -consent to that at once. They said that the spring months were full of -magic, and she was persuaded to stay on. They were magically beautiful -and she was glad to see them, but she longed more and more to see her -little garden. She dreamed sometimes of her pansies at night, and it -seemed to her once that as she stooped in the moonlight and touched them -she was cured; the fever fell from her; a cool white peace flowed into -her veins; and when she looked up from them, the night was gone and the -sun was rising over her Surrey hills. - -At the beginning of June they consented that she should go. They did not -tell her the truth, of course. They said that she might pass the summer -in England, since she wished so much to return there, and that she must -come back for next winter; but she knew that if her state had not been -recognized as hopeless they would not have let her go. It was hopeless, -and she summoned all her strength and resolution, that she might live -until she reached Acacia Road. - - -IV - -FLORRIE met her at Victoria. Florrie did not know that it was hopeless, -though she knew that it was not as yet, a cure; but from the way that -she controlled her features to a determined joviality Miss Glover could -infer her shock, her grief, her consternation. The glance, too, that -Jane and Florrie exchanged was revealing, had she been in need of -revelations. - -After a night in Florrie's flat, however, she knew that she looked so -much better that poor Florrie, when she came to see her in the morning, -was quite erroneously cheered. "_You're_ all right," Florrie declared. -"The journey's knocked you about a bit; but once we get you down to -Surrey, Jane and I, you'll pick up in no time. After all, there's no -place like home, is there?" - -Miss Glover, from her pillows, smiled. She felt very fond of kind -Florrie and sorry for her that she must, so soon, suffer sadness on her -account. - -It was difficult, in the train, to listen to Florrie's talk. After her -fright of the day before, Florrie had cheered up so tremendously that -she talked even more than usual, of her friends, her enterprises, of how -she was going yachting that autumn with the Forestalls, and of how Di -Haymouth had just had a baby. - -"A splendid boy, and Mr. and Mrs. Isaacson are fairly off their heads -with pride and pleasure. Such a layette, my dear, you never saw! Real -lace through and through--and the cradle of a regular little prince! I -gave him a silver porringer for his christening; a lovely thing, all -heavy _repousse_ work with his initials on a shield at one side. Di say -it's the prettiest porringer she ever saw." - -It was difficult to listen to Florrie and to nod and smile at the right -moment when she was thinking of her garden and wondering if Florrie had -really remembered to sow the sweet peas and mignonette. Even if she -hadn't, the Madame Alfred Carriere and the Prince Charlie roses would be -out, and the last tulips, and the pansies, of course. And it was such a -beautiful day, just such a day as that she had risen to look at when, in -her dream, the pansies had cured her. - -The drive from the station up to Acacia Road was a short one. The dear, -foolish little porch was there, the bow-window, the laurel-bushes. Her -own home. As she saw it she felt such a lift of the heart that it seemed -to her, too, that she might be going to get better after all. Florrie -and Jane helped her out and she and Florrie went into the sitting-room. -She looked round it, smiling, while she felt her happy, fluttering -breaths like those of some wandering bird put back into its own dear -cage again, safe, secure, bewildered a little in its contentment. She -was like such a trivial little cage-bird; she was meant for Acacia Road, -and not for Swiss mountains. - -Everything was the same: even her knitting-basket stood waiting for her, -and all that caught her eye with their unfamiliarity were the flowers, -the profusion of flowers, standing in bowls and vases everywhere; -perhaps almost too many flowers,--that was like dear, exuberant -Florrie,--and all pink. - -"Oh--how lovely they are!" she said, finding the fluttering breath fail -her a little. "How dear of you, Florrie, to have it all arranged like -this!" - -"They look welcoming, don't they?" said Florrie, who laughed with some -excitement. "Will you rest, dear, or come into the garden?" - -"Oh, the garden, please. I'm not at all tired. I can rest later." - -Florrie still led her by the arm. They went into the conservatory and -there came to her then the strangest, dizziest sense of pink--everywhere -pink!--shining in at her through the sea-green glass, bursting in at her -through the open door. - -For a moment she thought that her mind was disordered, and looked up -with large, startled eyes at Florrie; but, beaming as she had never yet -seen her beam, all complacency and triumphant benevolence, Florrie -nodded, saying, "Now for your surprise, my dear. Now for your garden. -Just see what I've made of it to welcome you!" - -They stepped out. Pink. Pink everywhere, above, below, around one. The -paths were arched with swinging iron chains on which, already, the long -festoons advanced. The border, heaping itself up splendidly against the -wall, was splashed with white, yellow, blue and purple, a blaze of -colour indeed, but pink dominated, like the sound of trumpets in an -orchestra. It also made Miss Glover think, strangely, sickly, of the -sound of a gramophone. There was no lawn. The centre of the garden was -flagged, with a highly ornamental sun-dial in the middle and a white -garden seat and a wonderful white stone basin for the birds. There were -no Prince Charlie roses, no mignonette and sweet peas, there were no -pansies. Her garden had disappeared. - -"There!" said Florrie. - -She led her to the garden seat. From here Miss Glover, as she sank down -upon it, could see that the back of the house was also dappled with the -incessant colour. - -"Isn't it a marvel!" said Florrie. "I hardly dared hope they'd grow as -they have, but Dorothy Perkins is a winner, and these latest climbers -run her close. I spared nothing, my dear, nothing--manure, bone-meal, -labour. The men were working here for a week last autumn. All the old -soil was carted away and a rich loam put in three feet deep. I put them -in big. I knew I could get them to take if I took enough pains over it. -Those chains will be covered in another month. I knew it would do you -more good than any open-air cure to find such a garden waiting for you. -I'd defy anybody to have the blues in this garden! In its little way -it's just an epitome of joy, isn't it? It's done _me_ good, to begin -with! I've been having tea out here every day in my week-ends and every -one who's seen it and heard about my plan says I'm a regular old fairy -with a wand. Mrs. Isaacson motored down only last Saturday and thought -it was a perfect poem. And so it is, though I say it as shouldn't." - -Florrie had paused on the deepest breath of purest satisfaction, and the -time had come when Miss Glover must speak. She must find words to -express gratitude and astonishment. She must not burst into tears. She -felt that if she began to cry she would at once be very ill. She did not -want to be taken ill before dear, good, kind Florrie. And it was, of -course, a beautiful garden; far more beautiful than hers had ever been, -no doubt; yet it hurt her so--to find her garden gone--that she heard -her voice come in gasps as she said, "Dear Florrie--you are a wonderful -friend--you are indeed.--I can never thank you enough. It's a miracle." - -Florrie patted her shoulder--she had her arm around her shoulders. "My -best thanks will be to see you happy in it, Edie dear, and getting well -and strong again in it. It's a regular surprise-packet, this garden, let -me tell you, my dear. It'll go on, that border, right up till November, -one thing after another: I thought it all out, pencil and paper and -catalogue in hand. I went over the whole colour-scheme with Mrs. -Isaacson--there's no one who knows more about it. And since most of the -herbaceous things came from her garden, it didn't cost as much as you'd -think. They've always heaps of plants left over when they divide in -autumn, and everything was at my disposal; and all the latest varieties, -as I needn't say. Wait till you see the lilies--yes, my dear, I've found -room for everything; where there's a will there's a way is my motto, you -know--and the phloxes and the chrysanthemums." - -She would never see them, though she was sure that they would all be -very beautiful; she would never see these latest varieties from Mrs. -Isaacson's garden. And she would never see her own little garden again. -How wonderfully fortunate it was--the thought went through her mind -confusedly as she sat there, feeling herself droop against Florrie's -shoulder--that she was not to live with Florrie's and to go on missing -her own garden. How fortunate--but her thoughts swam more and more and -tears dazed her eyes--that she had not to say good-bye twice to her -pansies. She had died, then, really,--that was it,--on the moonlight -night when she had last seen them. And she had left the house to -Florrie, dear kind Florrie, and Florrie would go on having tea happily -under the festoons of roses. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PINK FOXGLOVES - - -THEY were only beginning to revert. Last summer they had stood, spires -of fretted snow tapering at the points to jade-coloured buds, at the -edge of the little copse where the garden path lost itself among young -larches, birches, hazels, and poplars, black and white. The sun set -behind the copse, spreading in the summer evenings a pale gold -background, and often when he went to look at his foxgloves and to -listen to the lonely song of the willow-wren, rippling, like a tiny rill -of water, from the heart of the wood, Aubrey Westmacott had felt that -there was something almost dangerous in such bliss as this. To breathe -this limpid air, to hear the willow-wren, to look at white foxgloves, -and to know himself free forever from the long oppression of London--if -he could have sung his wistful gratitude, his melancholy joy, the song -might have been like the bird's. - -This year the change in the foxgloves had come as a complete surprise; -he was still a novice at gardening. He had left his beloved garden for a -week; regretfully, for he could not bear to lose a day of it--he was -like a lover with a bride, long pined for, who each day grows dearer and -lovelier; but he had gone, because it seemed churlish to refuse the old -don friend at Cambridge--and when he returned, at evening, and had -walked down to the copse and had seen them standing there, so delicately -yet so decisively altered, the shock of the surprise had seemed all -delight. He had intended white foxgloves to rise, always, against the -copse; but then he had not known how lovely pink foxgloves could be. He -had never seen them of such a shade, each bell of palest rose brimmed -with shadows of mauve, and finely freaked within. Regiments of the white -flowers had remained steadfast, so that there could be no sense of loss, -and he had picked an armful of the pink ones and carried them back to -the house, feeling, as he looked at them against his shoulder, that he -would have liked to kiss them. He spent the remaining hours of dusk in -arranging them. He never allowed the parlourmaid to arrange the flowers. -That she saw him, tolerantly, if with a flavour of irony, as a very -eccentric gentleman, he was aware, just as he was aware, quite -cheerfully, that many of his kind neighbours found him a rather absurd -one. But one of the deepest joys this new life afforded him, after the -paternal bliss of seeing the darlings grow, was in disposing them about -the rooms, with a loving discrimination that Ridley's skilled but cold -and conventional hands could never have accomplished. - -This evening he put the foxgloves in the drawing-room, a tall jar on the -bureau, a taller jar on the piano, and a group in the vast white Chinese -bowl, wedged cunningly into place with stones among the stems. Here he -could look at them next morning as he worked at his history. He always -worked in the drawing-room, for there he had the morning sun, and, if -he could not see his massed and tiered herbaceous border, could look out -at the cherry tree and at the tiny squares of terraced lawns, dropping -from level to level, with their stone steps and low stone walls and -narrow jewelled bordering of flowers. - -There was a very nice little study behind the dining-room--it was from -the dining-room that one saw the herbaceous border, and he could -meditate future rearrangements and harmonies while he ate his -breakfast--but the study looked out on the stable shrubberies. He liked, -too, to feel himself encompassed by his treasures, old and new, while he -wrote of mediaeval customs; his mother's incompetent but loveable -water-colours, sketches of her old home, the grey, ancient, gabled house -among just such Cotswold slopes and uplands as his western windows -looked out upon, though his mother's old home, passed long since to -alien hands, lay on the other side of the county; and his father's -seafaring trophies, from China and Japan and far Pacific islands, and -all the lately acquired delightful solidities of Jacobean oak, and his -maturest choice in printed linen. Here, on their background of mullioned -window or dark wainscoting--such a gem of a little Jacobean house it -was--the pink foxgloves greeted him next morning, set among feathery -heads and sharp green spears of meadow grass, glimmering and poised on -tiptoe, like groups of softly blushing nymphs, and he stood for a long -time looking at them, his hands clasped behind his back. - -He was forty-six, a fragile little man, blanched and stooping from the -long years of imprisonment in the Government office, from which the -undreamed-of inheritance had released him only three years ago, with -faded gold hair hanging across his forehead and a gentle face of stifled -dreams, the mouth slightly puckering as if in intentness on some task. -The eyes, of a dim yet dense pastel blue that told darkly in his faded -face, were intent, too, but not acute; they dwelt; they did not -penetrate. He wore a small, short moustache, and a pair of gold -_pince-nez_ dangled at his coat button. - -Delicate as he had always been, and ineffectual, as he had always so -dejectedly been aware of being, he, too, with all his relatives, had -thought it very fortunate when, on leaving the university, he had -secured the tiny post in the Civil Service. There, he knew, he would -stay; he was not of the type that rises, and he had never during the -long years that followed rebelled consciously against his fate. He was, -he often told himself reproachfully, so very fortunate compared with men -far abler and more deserving than himself. He found that he could not -write, as he had hoped to do, after the conscientious hours at the -office. He read a great deal, and crept away to the country for every -week-end, sitting by meadow or river, like a dusty mouse let loose from -its trap and softly panting in the sunlight. He was often ill, and the -doctors always recommended a country life, but it was not on hygienic -grounds that he pined for limpid spaces and starry solitudes. There was -a soft passion in his blood, inherited from the mother whom he so much -resembled, for the sights and sounds and occupations of rurality. He -adored flowers. He often dreamed of them at night, and in waking hours -the thought of a garden of his own haunted him. Sometimes he went to -stay with friends in their gardens; but this was an ambiguous joy; it -was like seeing the pink and white babies playing about their nurses and -perambulators in the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens, and having no -claim to kiss any of them. He loved children, too. - -And now he found himself transplanted to this wonderful fairy tale by -Uncle Percy's legacy. He still, often, could hardly realize it. There -was a haze of dizzy delight over all the memory of the last three years; -the search for a house, the securing of Meadows, the furnishing and -ordering of his household--he who had lived in rooms in Kensington for -twenty-four years, ruled over by a flawlessly honest but relentless -landlady! To think that he could have other fish for breakfast than -finnan haddock, and other vegetables in winter than cabbage! This was a -minor but an emphatic pleasure. - -But above all, around all, the garden! He had planned and planted it -all, studying books, brooding over catalogues, making lists, writing -labels ever so neatly. The vegetables were given over to the gardener; -but his flowers, except for deep trenching--and oh, how deep, how rich, -he saw to it that it was! he tended single-handed. His seed-boxes, his -cold-frames, his tools and baskets, how he adored them all, and how -happy he was in any small personal economies, so that extravagance in -manure and bone-meal and leaf-mould should be well justified. The -history of mediaeval customs was also a long-cherished ideal, but it -remained of secondary interest; his heart, always, was in the garden, -meditating mulchings, waterings, or hoeings. Every dream had come true, -had more than realized itself. Was it any wonder that he should feel -himself going softly in his amazed gratitude, should sometimes, as when -he listened to the willow-wren at evening, feel that such happiness was -dangerous. - -It had not seemed to flaw the happiness, it had seemed but to add a -sweeter undertone to it, melancholy yet blissful, that into the new -Paradise there should have stolen a new longing, and that, as of old, he -should find himself haunted by an unattainable loveliness. He thought of -this as he looked at the pink foxgloves, for they made him think of the -face of Leila Pickering. "Yes, yes, yes," he said to himself, as he -turned to the mediaeval history, for he had the habit, caught from his -long loneliness, of speaking much to himself and with a quaint -repetition of words that stole into his social speech, "it is she they -are like; she they are like. Lovely, lovely, like her." - -Later in the morning, privileged as she was to interrupt even the -history, it was Mrs. Pomfrey who informed him that the strange, delicate -beauty was transitory, an unfixed type, and that, next year, or in a -very few years, the palely rosy nymphs would be purple. - -"They'll revert. You can get pink ones, you know, from the seedsmen; -rosy carmine they call it; but not at all this colour. I've never seen a -colour quite like this. Your soil must do it. I've always thought the -soil of Meadows had magic in it." - -Mrs. Pomfrey was the late rector's widow, and lived in a thicket of -roses half a mile away in the village. She was tall, black-robed, -majestic, and melancholy, with a deep voice and black eyes and a high, -hooked nose and large false teeth that shifted slightly and slightly -clashed together when she spoke. She had survived all emotions except -the grief of having to grow her roses on a clayless soil, and to this -grief she often returned. A girlhood friend of Aubrey Westmacott's -mother, she had been his link with Windbury. His week-ends with her -there had been the very comets of his dark London sky, and for years he -had seen Meadows inadequately tenanted, with an eye of brooding love. - -"Oh! they'll revert to purple, then," he said, somewhat distressed; and -he repeated "purple, purple," several times, as if to familiarize -himself with the sound and very sight of it, while Mrs. Pomfrey answered -him, "Give 'em time and they'll all revert. You must dig 'em up and sow -again from year to year if you want to keep 'em pure." - -"Not that I don't care very much for the purple ones," said Aubrey; -"they are most beautiful flowers, most beautiful; but it's wild in -woods, that I like best to see them. It will be a business to replant; -dear me! It took me a day of hard work to establish my white ones in -that haphazard-looking little colony down there." - -"Gardening is all hard work," said Mrs. Pomfrey, "and all -disappointment, for the most part, too. It's only the things you didn't -expect to succeed that ever do, and any effect you particularly count on -is pretty sure to fail you." She tempered her grimness by a slight, -bleak smile, however, for she and Aubrey Westmacott understood each -other and had the gardener's soul, for which no work is too hard and no -disappointments too many. - -"It will be very wonderful to have the intervals of pink to look forward -to, though," Aubrey found the atonement. "They are singularly lovely, -aren't they? Will you think me very silly, now, I wonder, or sillier -than you always think me?" - -"I don't think you silly, my dear Aubrey," Mrs. Pomfrey interposed, -"only guileless; you are very guileless; I've thought that ever since -you were taken in by that dreadful cook of yours, who had red hair, and -got drunk and rubbed the whitebait through a sieve." - -"Well," Aubrey continued, smiling his gentle, tentative smile, "my -foxgloves, at all events, can't take me in, and since they are so very -unusual and so lovely I thought I'd ask a few people in to-day to see -them. The Carews, you know, and Barton, and Mrs. and Miss Pickering. And -you--if you can come. I'll put it off till to-morrow, if that will -secure you, only the foxgloves may not be quite so lovely by then." - -"I will come with pleasure, my dear Aubrey," said Mrs. Pomfrey, "and -though nobody will appreciate your foxgloves as you do, we shall all -enjoy your tea." - -"Miss Pickering cares very much for flowers, you know, very much. We've -talked a great deal about flowers," said Aubrey, swinging his eyeglass -and nodding as he looked at his old friend. - -"Does she? She doesn't know much about 'em though." - -"No; all those years in India, and in towns. She has lived so much in -towns. Such an inappropriate life it seems for such an exquisite -creature." - -"Does it?" said Mrs. Pomfrey. She added after a moment, as if with -concession, "She is a very pretty girl." - -Aubrey Westmacott was not acute. "Isn't she?" he said eagerly. "A -beautiful and noble and lovely head, isn't it? like a flower; she is -altogether like a flower, with her slenderness and height. Do you know," -he went on, swinging his glasses more quickly, while he kept his -ingenuous eyes on his friend, "can you guess the flower she makes me -think of? In that pale pink dress, that pink dress she wore the other -day at the rectory garden party, and with that white hat lined with -pink. Can you guess?" His eyes overflowed with their suggestion. - -Mrs. Pomfrey moved hers from his face to the foxgloves. "Like those, I -suppose you mean." - -"_Isn't_ she?" he repeated. "Now, isn't it quite remarkable? You see it, -too." - -"Yes; I see it," said Mrs. Pomfrey. She studied the flowers and again, -after a deliberating pause, went on, "Do you think Mrs. Pickering is -like purple foxgloves?" - -Aubrey's eyeglass tumbled from his hand. He was astonished, almost -indignant. "Mrs. Pickering?" - -"She looks like her daughter," said Mrs. Pomfrey; "as much like her, -that is, as a purple foxglove looks like a pink one." - -"I can imagine nothing more unlike a flower than Mrs. Pickering," said -Aubrey, with gathered repudiation. - -"No; certainly; she's not at all like a flower. She's more like a -sparrow--something sharp and commonplace and civic. I only intended an -analogy, for she must have been a very pretty girl." - -"Nothing could be less sharp or commonplace or civic than Miss -Pickering." Aubrey was now deeply flushed. - -"Oh, of course not, my dear Aubrey; she is very unusual looking," Mrs. -Pomfrey again conceded. "And she is tall and her mother is short. Old -Colonel Pickering, too, was tall, I remember. I saw him once or twice -when they were living at Cheltenham the year before he died! a bleached, -dull, oppressed old man, a much better type than the wife; she ruled -him, I heard, with a rod of iron. One may be sure that she doesn't rule -Miss Leila. She is a young lady with a will of her own, unless I am much -mistaken in her." - -"A will of her own; yes, yes"--Aubrey eagerly, pathetically to Mrs. -Pomfrey's ear, gathered up the ambiguous fragments--"and great firmness -of will; great decision of character; and the serenity, you know, the -sweet dignity that go with it, that so often go with it. You have -noticed her serenity, her dignity. And she is very silent--a great -contrast to her mother. I often wonder what brought them here. It's very -fortunate for all of us; but Mrs. Pickering is, as you say, so civic, -yes, so commonplace, that I don't understand what she can find in this -quiet place to please her. She certainly doesn't care about her garden. -Those beds about The Cottage are very distressing; they distress Miss -Pickering." - -"It's quite clear to me why they came," said Mrs. Pomfrey. "They can't -afford London, and, I suppose, know nobody there if they could; and -there is more chance of a pretty girl like Miss Leila marrying well here -than there is in Cheltenham. She doesn't hunt, it's true; but the -hunting makes a difference, and there is a good deal going on in one -way and another. Mrs. Pickering hoped to capture Arthur Barton; she made -that very evident. But he has never looked at another woman since his -wife died, and never will, I imagine; at all events, he didn't look at -Miss Leila." - -Aubrey's eyes, dwelling on her, expressed reprobation and almost horror. -"She tried to marry her daughter to Barton! That lovely child and -Barton! What a terrible woman!" - -"Miss Pickering must be a good twenty-five, my dear Aubrey, and I was -married at eighteen. No; I don't like Mrs. Pickering, but I can see -nothing reprehensible in her determination to settle her daughter well -in life." - -"But Barton! He is fifty! He must be fifty! He must be older than I am; -yes, very considerably older than I am." - -"Well?" said Mrs. Pomfrey, and there was a mingled reluctance and -grimness in her smile, "and do you think of yourself as unmarriageable?" - -He ran his hand several times over his head and through his hair. He was -still flushed, but suddenly he became pale, swallowing quickly several -times. - -"Do you know--you have said something--you have made me think -something--put something before me. Yes; I must tell you, I must tell -you," he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and fixing his eyes -on the wall above Mrs. Pomfrey's head. "I love her; I love Miss -Pickering. You may think it absurd. I know I'm a dull old bachelor; -everything of that sort; but there it is. Ever since I saw her, a year -ago, when they first came. I never dreamed of anything else. A dull old -bachelor, nothing to offer, and twice her age. But I can't help -wondering--it's only a wonder--whether there might just be a chance for -me--if you don't think my age, and all that, makes it impossible. What I -mean," Aubrey finished, with a sort of quiet desperation, "is--could she -love me? It would have to be love with a girl like Miss Pickering. Am I -a man that a girl like that could love?" - -Tears now were in his eyes as he brought them back to Mrs. Pomfrey's, -and seated upon the sofa, the pink foxgloves in the Chinese bowl beside -her, she looked back at him very gravely. She was so grave that for some -moments she was silent. Then, before speaking, she took out her -spectacles and polished them and put them on. She saw him quite well -without them. It was as if in emphasis of the gravity of the moment. -And, in the first place, she did not answer his question. - -"How much have you seen, my dear Aubrey, of this young lady?" she -enquired. - -He said, faltering, that he had seen a good deal of Miss Pickering -during this spring and summer. Mrs. Pickering had been very kind, had -asked him there quite often for tennis; and Miss Pickering had been far -more kind, for she had played with him and he was a wretched player, -though he was so fond of the game. "And we've had one or two little -walks. She came with me to the woods this spring and helped me to dig -anemone roots. Oh! I don't pretend it's anything at all; it's only, I -know, her kindness; I never thought it anything else. But--if you really -don't think me absurd for dreaming of it--?" He faltered to a long -gazing question. - -Mrs. Pomfrey now rose. She stood looking away from him, then moved -towards the door. "My dear Aubrey," she said, "I think of you what -anybody who knows you must think--that the woman who wins your love is -one of the most fortunate of women. Whether you are the kind of man that -a girl like Miss Pickering could love, I cannot say. I've really seen -very little of her. All that I know of her is that she is very pretty -and has nice quiet manners. If she marries you, she is, as I say, the -most fortunate of women." - -Mrs. Pomfrey stepped out into the little square, flagged hall. He -accompanied her to the garden gate, following her speechless, while, -lifting up her skirts, displaying large, flat-heeled shoes, she stepped -down from terrace to terrace. She paused at the last. - -"Your Alpine phlox is doing very nicely. You'll find that by next year -it will have spread to a foot across," she said. He had put in the -Alpine phlox the autumn before under her supervision. She added at the -gate, "By that time there may be a Mrs. Westmacott at Meadows." - -Pale, almost tearful, he pressed her hand over the gate. "I can't say -how I thank you," he murmured. - -After a little while he was able to compose his thoughts and write his -notes. Thompson took them round, and before lunch he had his answers. -They could all come, except Mr. Barton, the dapper, fussy, kindly, -pepper-and-salt little squire, who lived in the beautiful big house just -over the nearest hill; he had gone up to London for the day. - -Aubrey very much enjoyed giving little tea-parties at Meadows. In London -he had not enjoyed them at all. He had given them when duty required -it, and he had sometimes been very extravagant and had taken a couple of -young girl cousins, up for the season, to a restaurant and a play. But -he had never enjoyed these occasions. He was shy and a poor talker, and -in London the demands upon one's personality were too heavy to make his -entertaining a success. The demands upon one's personality in the -country were so small and so easily satisfied; a garden talked for one -and entertained for one. All his neighbours, except Mrs. Pickering, -whose formal beds did not count, had gardens and were profoundly -interested in them. The mild, middle-aged Carews were authorities, and -to-day he remembered, with all the pressure of his new preoccupations, -that he must question them about that matter of mulching. - -At four-thirty he saw two parasols approaching along his box hedges--one -was black and one was rose-colour; his heart stood still when he saw it. -She would be wearing, then, the dress that made her look more than ever -like a pink foxglove. He went down the terraces to greet mother and -daughter at the gate. - -Mrs. Pickering was short and stout and blonde, her slightly rapacious -features--small aquiline nose, small smiling mouth, and small projecting -chin--embedded and muffled, as it were, in powdery expanses of cheek and -throat. She had an unsmiling, steel-blue eye, appraising, determined, -deliberate, under its level bar of dark eyebrow. She did not please -Aubrey. Her voice in especial, metallic yet glossy, as if with a careful -veneer, disturbed him. A gossiping lady of the neighbourhood had -informed him that Mrs. Pickering's origins were quite lacking in -distinction and that in her handsome girlhood she had stalked the -stupid Colonel--of a quite good family--and had brought him down, -resistless, at the first shot. These stories, for which he had not liked -his informant the more, seemed to hover in Mrs. Pickering's glance and -smile, and her voice to preserve the flavour of many strategies and -triumphs. But Aubrey did not look for long at Mrs. Pickering. She -rustled in, dressed in her fashionable black and white, a long chain of -steel and brilliants crossing her buttressed bosom, a crest of plumes, -black and white, waving upon her head. - -Miss Pickering followed her mother. Tall, very tall, and poised with a -lovely grace, she was, but for the arresting darkness of brows and -lashes, fair; with the infantile fairness, the wild-rose tints, that to -the ingenuous male will always seem to vouch for a spiritual -exquisiteness to match. And she, too, had small, aquiline features, and -her hair was as golden as the heart of a wild rose. She did not smile, -like her mother; she was a serene young lady, and silent, as loveliness -should be. - -"This sweet place!" said Mrs. Pickering. "How charmingly you are -improving it, Mr. Westmacott; it looks prettier every time I see it." - -"It will take years before it looks as I mean it to look," said Aubrey, -leading them up the terraces. "That's the joy of gardening, isn't it? It -gives one something to plan for one's whole future." He smiled with a -slight appealingness at Miss Pickering. "I am afraid I make myself -rather foolish sometimes; I talk so much about my garden." - -"I don't wonder that you do," said Mrs. Pickering; "it's quite a little -Paradise." - -In the drawing-room it was Mrs. Pickering who continued to talk. She -renewed her laments over the water-colours. "To think that these -beautiful old places should get into the hands of common middle-class -people!"--Aubrey had again to assure her that the people who had bought -his mother's old home were very nice indeed.--And Mrs. Pickering said -that she doted upon his room, "So old-world, so peaceful!" and -expatiated on the view of the terraced lawns and further meadows from -the window. She made no comment on his foxgloves, and it seemed like a -presage of happiness when Miss Pickering, from her chair, remarked, -looking up at them, "How lovely your pink foxgloves are!" - -"You think so? You like them? Yes, yes, are they not lovely?" He was -delighted with her commendation. - -"It's such a pretty idea, putting them with the grasses," said Miss -Pickering. "I do like lots of flowers in a room." - -He did not have an opportunity of speaking with her alone till after -tea. Then, when they had all gone into the garden--how it happened he -did not know, for he would not have dared arrange it--he found himself -walking down the path towards the copse with Miss Pickering, while -behind them, quite far already behind them, Mrs. Pickering paused and -exclaimed over the herbaceous border, Mr. Carew beside her. Mrs. Carew -and Mrs. Pomfrey had sat down under the trees near the house. - -"Would you like to see the pink foxgloves growing?" he asked her. "They -are very beautiful growing--more beautiful, I think you'll feel, than in -the house." - -"I'd love to see them," said Miss Pickering. - -They crossed the slip of meadow among the tall grasses and, "There," -said Aubrey, pointing, with a faint smile, "there they are!" - -"_How_ sweet!" said Miss Pickering, with her serene emphasis. They stood -to look. - -"Do you know," said Aubrey, wondering at himself, but he felt upborne, -"that I find they look like you--the pink ones." - -"Really?" She smiled now, turning her calm, blue eyes upon him. "That's -very flattering." - -"No, no; not flattering; not at all flattering," said Aubrey. "Not at -all, not at all," he repeated under his breath. He could say no more -just then. They walked on, his heart in a flutter. - -"Have you ever heard a willow-wren, Miss Pickering?" he asked suddenly. - -"A willow-wren? I don't think so. I don't know much about birds." - -"It is usually singing in the wood at this hour. Would you care to come -and see if we can hear it?" - -"I'd love to. I wish you'd teach me all about birds," said Miss -Pickering. - -His heart was thumping now. They entered the copse. It seemed to him, as -they passed them, that the foxgloves were tall angels set about Paradise -and welcoming him there. It was very still among the trees. Miss -Pickering walked lightly beside him. She, too, looked like an angel. -They reached a clearing, where an old fallen log lay, and here they sat -down. "We shall hear it, I think," said Aubrey, "if we sit here -quietly." - -Presently, in the stillness, the little bird began to sing its song, the -descending chromatic chain of liquid notes, melancholy and happy; the -song of his very soul, Aubrey felt, and that the bird said for him all -that he could not say as, with head bent, he sat listening, the beloved -presence beside him. She was part of the song; and in it, as they -listened together, their very hearts were mingling. They knew each -other, he felt sure, very well. - -"How sweet!" she murmured, and he nodded, not able to look at her. - -There was a silence, and then the bird sang again. He raises his eyes to -hers now, and they turned to him and smiled. Her hand lay on the rough -bark of the log, and his was near it. Was it her hand that responded to -the unconscious appeal of his, or had he dared? He held it. That was the -bewildering, the transcending fact. - -"Oh, Miss Pickering! Miss Leila--Leila," he stammered. "May I tell you? -May I ask you? Can you care for me?" - -Her eyes still smiled, if very gravely. "Do you really love me?" she -murmured. - -"Oh, Leila!" he repeated. The willow-wren still sang, but all the little -chains of sound seemed to be woven into a mist about him, trembling, -shining. He held her hand to his lips. He wished to kneel before her. -This was Paradise. - -"It's so very sudden," said Leila Pickering. "I never dreamed you cared -till just now." - -"Ever since I saw you first--ever since I saw your eyes. It has been -like the fragrance of my flowers at evening, like the moon rising on my -flowers. I did not dare to hope--you so young, so lovely;--life before -you." - -"I think we can be very happy together," said Leila Pickering. "I knew -you were a dear from the first moment I saw you, too." - -The willow-wren stopped singing now and flew away. In the distance, -then, he heard the liquid, dropping notes, and they sounded very sad. -His arm was around Leila Pickering, and she leaned her head on his -shoulder, so that in an ecstasy of wonder he felt the warm brightness of -her hair against his cheek. He had never heard her talk so much. She -told him that she had had such a dull, horrid life, so poor, knowing -such tiresome, second-rate people. And she did not get on at all well -with her mother. - -"Nobody has ever really understood me--till you came," she said, sitting -upright now beside him, the lovely colour in her cheeks delicately -heightened, her eyes shining while she talked. She confided in him. She -loved him. They were betrothed--this was the blissful, culminating -thought that seemed to go in waves of music through him as he gazed at -her. He had ceased to hear the willow-wren's melancholy little song. And -then he heard her say: - -"I don't want to live in the country, you know. You won't mind? Of -course I love it; but we can pay week-end visits, always;--you must know -such heaps of nice people; friends. And we'll travel too--I long to see -the world. India doesn't count. Only think, I've never been to Paris -except once--on a horrid, cheap trip, for a week. We never could afford -to do anything really amusing or buy any really nice things. My life has -been so frightfully dull, and I do want to stretch my wings and see lots -of people and entertain and go to plays, you know. I adore London. I'm -sure I shall be a good hostess." - -It was as if a sword had transfixed him. He seemed to hear a great bell -booming--a great London bell--Big Ben; he had always heard Big Ben from -his office in Whitehall, and there had been a jangle of bells in -Kensington, too, and a roar, a ceaseless roar. And he seemed to hear the -words "Dangerous, dangerous." He had been too happy. - -He kept his mild, kind eyes of a pastel blue upon her, and he told -himself, while he wrestled, transfixed, that she must not guess; but, as -if pressed from his anguish, he heard himself murmuring helplessly, -though the gentle, fixed smile held his lips, "You don't care for my -little place, then? You wouldn't care to go on living at Meadows? It's a -nice little place, Meadows--a nice little place; we could make it very -pretty, and we could have people here, as many as you wanted." - -Had a note of pleading, almost desperate, crept in unawares? He saw her -calm eyes harden slightly, fixed on him. And he saw, then, tears rise in -them. - -"Oh! it's so dull, so dull, down here!" she breathed. "It's a darling -little place, Meadows--of course, of course I love it. I wish we could -afford to keep it, just to run down to for a quiet week-end now and -then; but you couldn't, could you? And it's far too small for -entertaining, isn't it? And no one really smart cares to come and stay -with one if one has no shooting, nothing to offer. One can really _live_ -in London--I've always felt that. You do care more for me than you do -for Meadows?" she finished with a smile, half appealing and half -challenging. - -And looking into the blue eyes, blurred and enlarged, like a child's, -with their tears, he saw himself as mean and petty and selfish. He loved -her, and was it only as another flower to place among his flowers, -another treasure to place among his treasures, a possession of his own, -without end or purpose for itself? He loved her, and, unimaginably, she -loved him and would marry him. Love must know pain and sacrifice--"pain -and sacrifice"--he seemed to hear himself repeating. This was a young -life, with its rights to life, and it must stretch its wings. - -He smiled at her and raised her hand again to his lips, saying, "Of -course I care more for you than for Meadows, dear Leila. Of course we -will live where you choose." - -And very radiant now, rising and smiling down upon him, Leila Pickering -said, "You _are_ a dear. I'm sure it's best for us both; we'd get so -pokey here. I know we couldn't afford Mayfair--I wouldn't dream of that; -but I think a house in one of those little new streets near Cadogan -Square would be just right for us; don't you?" - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CARNATIONS - - -I - -RUPERT WILSON came into the studio where his wife, who had been out -sketching all the morning, was washing her paint-brushes, carefully -turning and rubbing them in a pot of turpentine. She wore her painting -apron, for Marian in the midst of her artistic avocations was always -neat and spotless; and, half turned from him as she was, she did not -look round as he entered. Rupert carried his stick, a rustic, ashen -stick of which he was very fond, and his Panama hat; he was going out -and Marian probably knew that he was going out, and where; this made it -more difficult to say in a sufficiently disengaged voice, "I'm just -going down to see Mrs. Dallas for a little while." - -"Oh! are you?" said Marian. She continued to stir her brushes, and -though her wish, also, very evidently was to appear disengaged and -indifferent, she was not able to carry it out, for she added, as if -irrepressibly, "You need hardly have taken the trouble to come and tell -me that." - -Rupert looked at her, and since she did not look at him, it was very -intently, as if to measure to the full the difference between this -Marian and the Marian he had known and believed in. It was hard to -realize that his wife should show a trivial and unworthy jealousy and -should strike him such a blow; for that it was a blow he knew from the -heat in his cheek and the quickening of his pulse; but, as he looked at -her, standing there turned from him, her blue apron girt about her, her -black hair bound so gracefully around her head, the realization -uppermost in his mind was that Marian, since the second baby had come, -had grown very stout and matronly. He seemed to see it to-day for the -first time, as if his awareness of it came to emphasize his sudden -consciousness of her spiritual deficiency. - -When he had met and fallen so very deeply in love with Marian, she had -been, if not slender, yet of a supple and shapely form, with just -roundness and softness enough to contrast delightfully with her rather -boyish head, her air, clear, fresh, frank, of efficiency and swiftness. -He had, of course, found her a great deal more than clear and fresh and -frank; but, entangled as he had been in that wretched love-affair with -Aimee Pollard,--the pretty, untalented young actress who had so -shamefully misused him,--torn to pieces and sunken in quagmires as he -had been, these qualities in Marian had reached him first like a draught -of cold spring water, like dawn over valley hills. These were the -metaphors he had very soon used to her when she had applied her firm, -kind hands to the disentangling of his knots and her merry, steady mind -to tracing out for him the path of honourable retreat. He had found her -so wonderful and lovely and had fallen so much in love with her that his -ardour, aided by her quiet fidelity, had overborne all the opposition -of her people. Foolish, conventional people they were,--their opposition -based, it appeared, almost unimaginably to his generous young mind, on -the fact that Marian happened to have money and that he had none, except -what he might make by his books; and also, though it was nearly as -unimaginable, on the fact that a good many of these people were in the -peerage. Marian, a year before he had met her, had broken away from the -stereotyped routine of their country life and had come to London to -study painting; and it was that Marian of the past who had seemed to -share to the full all his idealisms. They had married within three -months of their meeting. - -From such a dawn, white, fresh, blissful, to this dull daylight! from -such a Marian to this narrow-minded matron! Marian still had beauty. Her -clear eyes were as blue, her wide, pale lips as sweet; but she was a -matron. Her neck had grown shorter, her chin heavier; the girlish grace -of glance and smile seemed muted, muffled by their setting; there was no -longer any poetry in her physique. And as Rupert stood looking at her -and seeing all this, his sense of grievance, though he was unaware of -this factor in it, grew deeper. - -A little while passed before he said,--and it was, he felt, with -dignity,--"I really don't know what you mean by that, Marian." - -She had now finished her brushes and had taken up her palette. She began -to scrape the edges as she answered,--and her voice was not schooled, it -was heavy with its irony and gloom,--"Don't you? I'm sorry." - -"I trust indeed that it doesn't mean that you are jealous of my -friendship for Mrs. Dallas?" - -"Friendship? Oh, no; I'm not jealous of any friendship." - -"Of my affection, then; of my love, if you like," said Rupert. "You know -perfectly well what I feel about all that--and I thought you felt it, -too. It's the very centre of my life, of my art; my books turn on it. -It's the thing I have most of all to say to the world. Love isn't a -measured, limited thing; its nature is to grow and give. My love for -Mrs. Dallas doesn't touch your and my relation; it enriches it rather." - -Marian scraped her palette and said nothing. He could see her cheek, the -cheek that ran too massively into her neck. Marian's skin was white and -fine; a faint colour now rose to it; a faint colour was, in Marian, a -deep blush. - -To see her blush like that gave him an odd sensation. It was as if the -blush were echoed in his heart; he felt it grow and melt softly, and -there drifted through his mind a thought of Mrs. Dallas and of her -magic. - -Through the studio window, draped with its summer creepers, he could see -the two perambulators moored in the shade of the lime tree on the lawn. -The babies were having their afternoon sleep. He was very fond of his -children; and to feel, now, mingling with the strange, yearning glow, -this pause of contemplative fondness, was to feel himself justified anew -and anew aggrieved. The glow of tenderness seemed to envelope the babies -as well as Mrs. Dallas. And it shut out Marian. - -What had she to complain of? Was he not a tender husband and a loving -father? Could she suspect his love for Mrs. Dallas--it was she herself -who had forced him to use that word--of grossness or vulgarity? It was -as high and as pure as his love for her. - -His love for Marian had evolved into the perambulators, and this -recognition, flitting unseasonably, vexed him with a sense of slight -confusion that made him feel more injured than before. It was true that, -theoretically, he held views so advanced as to justify, in true, -self-dedicating passion, all manifestations. Practice and theory in his -young life had been far apart; but the thought of passion, in connection -with Mrs. Dallas, had, as it were, been made visible by Marian's blush; -and, slightly swinging his hat, slightly knotting his brows as he looked -at the matronly Marian, he groped for some new formulation of his creed, -since it was evident that however much he might love Marian it was no -longer passion he felt for her. One must perhaps allow that passions -could not be contemporaneous; but he had always combated this shackling -view. - -He stood there, gazing, trying to think it out,--a tall young man, well -made yet slightly uncouth, with ruffled, heavy locks and large intent -eyes. Something of the look of a not quite purely bred Saint Bernard -puppy he had; confiding, young and foolish, with his knotted brow and -nose a little overlong. And as he found himself unable to think it out -and as Marian still stood silent, scraping, scraping away at the palette -in an exasperating fashion, he said,--and now in an openly aggrieved -voice,--"I thought you liked her yourself; I thought you quite loved -her. You seemed to." - -Now that he was losing his temper, Marian was regaining hers. Her voice -had all the advantage of quiet intentions as she answered, "I did like -her; I thought her very charming. I don't dislike her now. But I'm -sorry to see a woman of her age behaving with so little dignity." - -"A woman of her age! Dignity!" - -"She is at least forty-five." - -"I don't follow your meaning. Is a woman of forty-five cut off from -human relationships?" - -"From some, certainly; if she has any regard, as I say, for her dignity. -And a woman in Mrs. Dallas's position ought to be particularly careful." - -"Mrs. Dallas's position!" She really reduced him to disgusted -exclamations. - -"You know, Rupert, that there are all sorts of stories about her. You -know that Mrs. Trotter told us that her first husband divorced her on -account of Colonel Dallas.--Other stories, too." - -"Upon my word! You astonish me, Marian! You heard all these vile tales -when we first came here,--from people, too, who you'll observe, run to -Mrs. Dallas's dinner-parties whenever they have the chance,--and you -didn't seem to mind them much when you were going there almost every -day--and taking every one you knew to see her. What about your Aunt -Sophy--if you believed these stories?--An old dragon of conventionality -like your Aunt Sophy! You took her again and again, and arranged that -luncheon in London with her when you and Mrs. Dallas went up--so that -they should have another chance really to make friends. I remember you -used the expression, 'really make friends.' It's odd to hear you talking -of stories at this late hour." - -"I only talk of them because Mrs. Dallas has made me remember them. I am -quite as open-minded as you are about such things. I was just as ready -to think well of her--even if they were true. Why do you call them vile? -You wouldn't think it wrong for a woman to leave her husband if she -didn't love him, and to go with a man she did love. If Mrs. Dallas did -that, why is it vile to say so?--Aunt Sophy, as a matter of fact, said -it was a different story. And she was charmed with Mrs. Dallas, just as -I'd determined she should be, stories or no stories. I did all I could -for her, because I counted myself her friend and thought it a shame that -any one so charming should be handicapped in any way. But I didn't -imagine that a friend would try to take my husband from me." Marian -spoke with severe and deliberate calm. - -"I like that! I really do like that!" said Rupert, laughing bitterly. -"It's really funny to hear you talk as if Mrs. Dallas could owe you -anything! I wish she could hear you! I wish we could have her -dispassionate opinion of that hideous old bore of an Aunt Sophy. It was -obvious enough that she put up with her simply and solely through -friendship for you. Do all you could for her! A woman who has hordes of -friends--charming, finished, cosmopolitan people of the world! Why, my -dear girl, it's she, let me tell you, who has given you more chances -than you ever had in your life for meeting really interesting people! -They're not the sort you'd be likely to meet at your Aunt Sophy's, -certainly. They'd perish in her _milieu_!" - -"Mrs. Dallas doesn't perish in it," Marian coldly commented. "On the -contrary, I never saw her more alert. She didn't seem to find Aunt Sophy -in the least a bore. She was very much pleased indeed to lunch there and -she has looked her up every time she's gone to London since; moreover, -she's going to stay with her at Crofts this autumn. It doesn't look -like boredom." - -"I wish her joy of Crofts! She's a complete woman of the world, of -course, and she knows how to put up with all sorts and conditions of -bores. She's taken on Lady Sophy because she's your friend. It's -pitiful--it's unbelievable to see her so misjudged!--Take me from you! -I've never gone there but she's asked me why you didn't come. She still -sends you flowers pretty well every day. Those are hers, I see. I'm glad -that you've deigned to put them in water." - -The tall sheaf of carnations, white and rose and yellow, that stood in a -jug on a shelf in the studio must, evidently, have come from Mrs. -Dallas's garden. No other person grew such carnations. The garden at -Ashleigh Lodge, this pleasant country house that they had taken for the -six summer months, was not its strong point, and Mrs. Dallas had kept -them reinforced from her abundance. Rupert associated the carnations, -their soft and glowing colours, their formal grace and spicy sweetness, -with the whole growth of his devotion to Mrs. Dallas. He fixed his -indignant eyes on them now. - -"Of course I put them into water. I am going to arrange them and take -them into the drawing-room presently," said Marian with her hateful -calm. "But they give me no more pleasure. Nor does she. She is like -them. They are heartless flowers and she is a heartless woman. I see -quite plainly now what I didn't see before. She's that type,--the -smiling, calculating siren. She lives for admiration; she's herself only -when she has someone at her feet, and she's seen to it that you should -be,--though I'm bound to say that you haven't made it difficult for her. -It fits in with all the stories." - -Rupert, at this, turned away and went out. He thrust his hat firmly down -on his fair locks and swung his stick as he strode by the little -footpath through the woods. Bitter disappointment with Marian surged in -him, and hot anger, but above all an atoning tenderness that seemed -almost to break his heart in its longing to protect and justify the -woman so traduced by her. His head throbbed and drummed as he went. To -have it come to this! To have such hands laid on it--their love! their -silent, hidden love! That Mrs. Dallas returned his love he seemed to -see, with many other things, clearly, rapturously, if with trembling, -for the first time to-day. He saw it with Marian's unworthiness; -Marian's unworthiness had shown it to him; and now, exulting, he claimed -it. She loved him, veiling the depth in her vagueness, her aloofness, -her indulgent irony. His mind retraced, with yearning gratitude, the -steps of their relationship. No one had ever been to him what she was. -How she helped and lifted him! How juvenile and undiscriminating in -their happy acceptances were Marian's appreciations of his work beside -Mrs. Dallas's half-idle comments. He had read through to her, in -manuscript, all his last novel; and Marian had not seen it yet. He had -not wanted to read it to Marian; and she, besides, had been very busy -with her painting. - -Mrs. Dallas had listened to the novel almost every day, sitting in the -shade of her veranda, in her white dress, with the hands that, unless -she were gardening, seemed always exquisitely idle, yet that in their -idleness seemed to dream and smile;--he could see the white skin, the -delicate finger-tips, the pearls and rubies slipping down, and his heart -contracted with a pang and ecstasy as he saw himself holding her hand, -kissing it. He must kiss it, to-day, and he must tell her. For she -needed him; he was sure of it. She needed him terribly. If she lifted -him, yet how much, too, he could lift her, out of the lethargic shallows -and sullen quagmires of her life. - -She could not be happy with her husband. He felt himself shut his eyes -before the retrospect of what the disenchantments and disasters must be -that lay behind her. If she had taken great risks, with that heart of -highest courage he divined in her, if she had faced great sacrifices for -her present husband, what wonder that her loveliness was now clouded by -that irony and languor? She was not kind to Colonel Dallas; he could not -hide from himself that she was not kind to him; but, as he owned it, he -yearned over her with a deeper comprehension of tenderness, feeling his -rights the greater. How could she be kind to the selfish, complaining, -elegant old man?--for, to Rupert, Colonel Dallas's fifty-five years -seemed old. She never said anything actually sharp or disagreeable to -him--even when he was at his most fretful and tiresome; but when he was -least so she was not any the kinder, and by her glances, by the -inflections of her cool and indolent voice in answering him, she -displayed to the full, to others and to himself, did he take the pains -to see it, how dull and how tiresome she found him. No; she was like a -weary, naughty child in this; and seeing her as a child, with a child's -faults--and did it not prove how unblinded his love must be that he -should see it?--he felt himself fold her to his heart in a tenderness -more than a lover's; a paternal passion was in it; he had known that it -must be in true love; he had said so in one of his books. How his books -would grow from his knowledge of her! - - -II - -He had now passed through the woods and crossed the road and entered the -footpath that ran down to Woodlands, the small house encircled by birch -and fir woods where, for now some four or five years, the Dallases had -pitched their errant tent. One could reach it, also, by the road; but -Rupert always took this short cut that brought him out at a little gate -opening on the upper lawn. There was an upper and a lower lawn at -Woodlands; on the upper Colonel Dallas had a putting-green; the lower -was a tiny square surrounded by Mrs. Dallas's beds of carnations. -Rupert, when he emerged upon the putting-green, could look down past the -red-tiled roofs and the white rough-cast walls of the house at the -carnations, massed in their appointed colours--from deep to palest rose, -from fawn and citron to snowy white--among flagged paths. - -Mrs. Dallas had told him, in one of her infrequent moments of -communicativeness, that during years of wandering as a soldier's -wife--her first husband, also, had been a soldier--she had come to be -known as the woman who could make things grow anywhere. She had grown -flowers in sands and marshes. She had snatched it might be but the one -season of fulfilment from the most temporary of sojournings--in China, -in India, in Africa. Sometimes only bulbs would grow; sometimes only -roses; but what she tried for, always, and had never attained in more -perfection than at Woodlands, was carnations. They were her favourite -flower and they atoned to her here, she said, for living in a house that -made her always think of an ornamental bottle of some popular -dentifrice, so red and white, so fresh and spick and span, and with such -a well-advertised air, was Woodlands. Her carnations were the only -things of which he had ever heard her speak with feeling. Rupert, as he -looked down at them from the upper lawn and descended the stone steps, -felt his heart beating violently. - -A veranda ran along the front of Woodlands, and Mrs. Dallas was sitting -on it, just outside her drawing-room windows. The shaded depths of the -room behind her glimmered here and there with the half-drowned -brightness of crystal, porcelain, lacquer,--the things, none very good -but all rather charming, that she had picked up for a song in the course -of her wanderings; and she sat there, rather like a siren indeed, at the -mouth of her cavern, its treasures seeming to shine in the translucent -darkness behind her as if through water. Rupert, remembering and -accepting the simile, saw her as a siren, a creature of poetry and -romance, though he recognized that her poetry, like her romance, was -hidden from the ordinary observer. Even to his eyes she always appeared -first and foremost as a woman of extreme fashion, and his other -perceptions of her were tinged with the half-tormenting, half-delicious -pungency of this one, for Rupert had known till now no women of -fashion. He had passed his youth, until going to Oxford, in a -provincial town, where his father, an admirable and sagacious man, was a -hard-worked doctor; and his only glimpses of society had been in his -encounters, always displeasing to him, with Marian's tiresome and -conventional kinsfolk and the few haphazard contacts in London that came -in the way of a young writer. Mrs. Dallas might embody poetry and -romance, but she also embodied luxury and the exercised and competent -economy that made it possible. She might have to live in small, gimcrack -Woodlands and do without a motor; but she had her maid. The slices of -bacon at breakfast were carefully computed; but the coffee was of the -best and blackest. - -To-day, as always when he had seen her, she seemed ready for any -possible social emergency. She could have stepped from her veranda, with -those wonderfully cut little white shoes, into the smartest of -garden-parties, or have received in her shimmering cavern the unexpected -visit of a royal personage; and her soft white linen with its heavy -Italian embroideries clotted, like thick cream, about the hem and wrists -and breast, would have been as exquisitely appropriate as it was to this -empty afternoon of reverie. - -She was a small, very shapely woman, soft and curved and compact. Her -coiffure would have looked old-fashioned in its artifice and elegance, -and with its "royal fringe," were it not for its air of a rightness as -unquestionable as that of some foreign princess's, who kept and did not -follow fashions. Mrs. Dallas's face, too, was small and colourless and -slightly faded; her hair was of a lighter brown than her arched eyebrows -and her melancholy and dissatisfied eyes; her eyelids, tinged with a -dusky mauve, drooped heavily and made her always look a little sleepy; -the smiling line of her full-lipped yet minute mouth was ironic rather -than mirthful. To have called it a bewitching or an alluring face would -have been to imply a mobility it did not possess; but it was potent -through its very passivity; it was provocative through its profound and -slumbrous indifference. - -There was certainly no hint of allurement in the glance she turned on -Rupert Wilson as he came round the corner of the veranda; it was, -indeed, even to his rapt preoccupation, a little harder in its quiet -attentiveness than usual; yet she smiled at him, and her smile was -always sweet, holding out a languid hand in silence and leaving it to -him to say, "You expected me." - -It was hardly a question, and Mrs. Dallas gave it no answer. He had, -indeed, come to see her every day for many weeks now. But yesterday had -finished the novel, and to-day was almost the first they had had without -some definite programme of reading. - -Rupert sat down on the steps of the veranda at her feet and took off his -hat and looked out across the carnations; and since she said nothing, -he, too, was silent, and to his trembling young heart the silence was -full of new avowals. - -Colonel Dallas's smoking-room also opened on the veranda, and as they -sat there he came out. He was a tall, heavy man, with large pale cheeks -drooping on either side of a white moustache, and a gloomy eye that -could become fretful. He cast now a glance that was only gloomy at his -wife and her companion. - -"Beastly hot day," he said, to her rather than to Rupert. "It's worse in -the house than out, I think." - -"Are you going over to the Trotters' for tea and croquet?" his wife -inquired. - -"To the Trotters'? Why should I go to the Trotters'?" - -"They asked you, and you accepted." - -"Well, I certainly don't feel inclined to endure that broiling walk for -the sake of _les beaux yeux_ of Madame Trotter _et filles_. It's a dull -neighbourhood, this, but the Trotters are, perhaps, when all's done and -told, the dullest people in it." - -"You've always seemed to get on particularly well with them, I've -thought," said Mrs. Dallas, in the voice that when it seemed considerate -could contrive to be most disparaging. "It's a pity not to go. You need -a walk. You can't afford Carlsbad this year, you know." - -"I need hardly be reminded of that," said Colonel Dallas, and now it was -fretfully. "To run the risk of apoplexy on the road and to drink the -Trotters' foul Indian tea is hardly an equivalent. No; I shall practise -some putting shots, and perhaps, if it gets cooler towards evening, I'll -go over to the links. The Trotters can manage without me.--What time do -the Varleys arrive?" - -"At seven-thirty. There's no other train they could arrive by, as far as -I'm aware." - -The colonel looked at his watch, drew his hat down over his eyes, and -went slowly away round the corner of the house. - -His wife's eyes did not follow him, nor, it was evident, her thoughts. - -"It has been rather oppressive, hasn't it?" said Rupert, glancing up at -her. "You haven't been feeling it too much, I hope." - -"Not at all. I like it. I think it's only people who don't know how to -be quiet who mind the heat," said Mrs. Dallas. "This is the one time of -the year that one can sit out of doors in a thin dress, and I am very -grateful for it." Even about small things Mrs. Dallas always seemed to -have her mind quite made up. Her likes and dislikes, for all the -inertness of her demeanour, were clear and unshifting. She sometimes -made Rupert feel himself amorphous, vague, uncertain; and this feeling, -though blissful, had yet its sting of sadness and anxiety. - -"Well, some people aren't able to be quiet, are they?" he observed. "On -a day like this I always think of people in factories,--great, roaring, -clanking places with the sun gnawing at their iron roofs,--and the pale, -moist faces, the monotonously rapid hands." - -"Do you?" said Mrs. Dallas. She often said that, in that tone, when he -gave expression to some enthusiasm or sympathy. She did not make him -feel snubbed, but always, when she said, "Do you?" she made him feel -young again, a little bewildered and a little sad. He imagined, to -explain it in her, that people's thoughts did not interest her, her -woman's intuition probing below their thoughts to their personalities. -It was he, himself, with his heart full of devotion, that interested -Mrs. Dallas. Yet it was not of him that she next spoke. "How is Marian?" -she asked. "Is she painting to-day?" - -He was aware that his face altered and that his colour rose. He had to -steady something, in his glance and in his voice, the pressure of his -new consciousness was so great, as he answered, "Yes, she's been -painting all the morning." - -"I haven't seen her for some days now," Mrs. Dallas remarked. - -"No." The longing in him to confide in her, to pour out his grief and -his devotion, was so strong that for the moment he could find only the -simple negative. - -"I quite miss Marian," Mrs. Dallas added. - -He looked down at the little foot placed on a cushion beside him, and he -said, "You've always been so kind, so charming to Marian." He remembered -Marian's words with a deepened wrath and tenderness. - -"Have I? I'm glad you think so. It's been very easy," said Mrs. Dallas. - -A silence fell. - -"May I talk to you?" Rupert jerked out suddenly. "May I tell you things -I've been feeling? I have been feeling so much--about you--about -myself.--I long to tell you." - -"By all means tell me," said Mrs. Dallas with great placidity; and one -could see that she had often made the same sort of reply to the same -sort of appeal. - -"You know what you have been to me," said Rupert, turning on the step so -that he could look up at her. "You know how it's all grown--beautifully, -inevitably. No one has ever been to me what you are." - -Mrs. Dallas's sleepy eyes rested on him, and her delicate nostrils, -slightly dilating, might have been, though without excitement, inhaling -a familiar incense. - -"I do love you so much," said Rupert in a trembling voice, gazing at -her; "I do love you. You understand what I mean. You know me now and you -couldn't misunderstand. I want to serve you. I want to help you. I want -you to lean on me and trust me--to let me be everything to you that I -can." And as he spoke he stretched out his hand and laid it on her hands -folded in her lap. - -Mrs. Dallas let it lie there, and she looked back at him, not moved, -apparently, but a little grave. "No, I don't think I misunderstand your -feeling," she said after a moment. "Of course I've seen it plainly." - -"Yes, yes, I knew you did.--And that you accepted -it,--dearest--loveliest--best." He had drawn her hand to him now and he -pressed his lips upon it. And as he kissed Mrs. Dallas's hand, as that -imagined happiness was consummated, he felt his mind cloud suddenly, as -if in a cloud of fragrance, and, thought sinking away from him, he knew -only an aching sweetness, the white, warm hand against his lips, the -darkness of the glimmering room near by, and the scent of the -carnations, exhaling their spices in the hot sunshine. Closing his eyes, -he breathed quickly. And above him, a little paler, Mrs. Dallas, for a -moment, as if with the conscious acceptance of a familiar ritual, also -closed her eyes and breathed in, with the scent of her carnations, the -immortal fragrance of the youth and passion that, to her, could soon no -longer come. "Dear boy!" she murmured. - -They heard the step of Colonel Dallas descending from the upper lawn. -Rupert drew back sharply; Mrs. Dallas softly replaced her hand upon the -other in her lap. Her husband appeared, and he looked very fretful. - -"The sun is quite tropical. It's impossible to play in it. We don't get -a breath of air down in this hole." He took out his watch--Colonel -Dallas was always taking out his watch. "What time is tea?" he asked. - -"At five o'clock, as usual, I suppose," said his wife. - -"It's only just past four," said the colonel, with the bitterly resigned -air of one who loses a wager he had hardly hoped to win. "I shall go to -the Trotters'. It's better than being baked in this oven. Their lawn is -shaded at all events." He spoke as if there had been some attempt to -dissuade him from the alleviations of the Trotters' lawn. - -"I don't know why you didn't go half an hour ago," said his wife. -"You've so often discovered that the sun is tropical on the upper lawn -at this hour." And as the colonel moved off she added, "Just tell them -that I'll have lemon-squash instead of tea, will you?" - -It was a rather absurd little interlude; yet it had its point, its -appropriateness; it fitted in with those thoughts of succour, and Rupert -tried, now, to recover them, saying, after the gate had closed upon the -colonel and keeping still at his little distance, "Are you very -unhappy?" - -How he was to help Mrs. Dallas except by loving her and coming to see -her every day and being allowed to kiss her and hold her hand he did not -clearly know, but it seemed the moment for returning to those offers of -service. He did not attempt to regain her hand. Mingling with the -rapture, when the kiss and the scent of the carnations had blurred his -mind, there was also a sense of fear. He was different; and there was -more in his love than he had known. - -"Very unhappy? Not more than most people, I suppose. Why?" Mrs. Dallas -asked. Her tone was changed. Her moment of diffusion, of languor and -acceptance, was gone by. - -"Why?" Rupert felt the change and the question hurt him. "When that's -your life?--This?" - -"By that, do you mean my husband?" Mrs. Dallas inquired kindly. "He's -not my life. As for this--if you mean my situation and occupation--having -love made to me by a pleasant young man while I smell carnations, I can -assure you that there's nothing I enjoy much more." - -She did more than hurt him now; she astonished him. "Don't!" he -breathed. It was as if something beautiful were being taken from him. -Instinctively he stretched out his hand for hers and again she gave it; -but now she looked clearly at him, a touch of malice in her smile, -though her smile was always sweet. - -"Don't what?" - -"Don't pretend to be hard--flippant. Don't hide from me. Give yourself -to the real beauty that we have found." - -"I have just said that I enjoy it." - -"Enjoy is not the word," said Rupert, in a low voice, looking down at -the hand in his. "It's an initiation. A dedication." - -"A dedication? To what?" Mrs. Dallas asked, and even more kindly; yet -her kindness made her more removed. - -Her words seemed to strike with soft yet bruising blows upon his heart. -"To life. To love," he answered. - -"And what about Marian?" Mrs. Dallas inquired. And now, still gently, -she withdrew her hand and leaned her cheek on it as, her elbow on the -cushions of her chair, she bent her indolent but attentive gaze upon -him. "I should have thought that dedication lay in that direction." - -His forehead was hot and his eyes, hurt, bewildered, indignant, -challenged hers yet supplicated, too. "Please don't let me think that -I'm to hear mean conventionalities from you--as I have from Marian. You -know," he said, and his voice slightly shook, "that dedication isn't a -limiting, limited thing. You've read my books and cared for them, and -understood them,--better, you made me feel, that I did myself,--so that -you mustn't pretend to forget. Love doesn't shut out. It widens." - -"Does it?" said Mrs. Dallas. "And what," she added, "were the mean -conventionalities you heard from Marian? I've been wondering about -Marian." - -"She is jealous," said Rupert shortly, looking away. "I could hardly -believe it, but she made it too plain. It seemed to take the -foundation-stones of our life away to hear her. It made all our past, -all the things I believed we shared, seem illusory. It made me feel that -the Marian I'd loved and trusted was a stranger." - -Mrs. Dallas contemplated his averted face, and as she heard him her -glance altered. It withdrew itself; it veiled itself; it became at once -less kind and more indolent. "And you really don't think Marian has -anything to complain of?" she inquired presently. - -"No, I do not," said Rupert. "Nothing is taken from her." - -"Isn't it? And if I became your mistress, would you still think she had -nothing to complain of?" Mrs. Dallas asked the question in a tone of -detached and impartial inquiry. - -How far apart in the young man's experience were theory and practice was -manifested by the hot blush that sprang to his brow, the quick stare in -which an acute eye might have read an ingenuous and provincial dismay. -"My mistress?" he stammered. "You know that such a thought never entered -my head." - -"Hasn't it? Why not?" - -"You know I only asked to serve--to help--to care for you." - -"You would think it wrong, then, to be unfaithful, technically, to your -wife?" - -"Wrong?" His brow showed the Saint-Bernard-puppy knot of perplexity. -"It's not a question of wrong. Wrongness lies only in the sort of love. -Real love is sacred in all its expressions of itself; my ideal of love, -just because it includes that one, can do without it." - -"But, on your theory, why should it do without it?" Mrs. Dallas, all -mildness, inquired. - -His mind was driven back to those questionings in the studio, when he -had thought of the incongruous yet allied themes of passion and -perambulators, and groped again, angrily, in the same obscurity. -"It's--it's--a matter of convenience," he found, frowning; "it--it -wouldn't work in with other beautiful things. It wouldn't be -convenient." - -"I'm glad to hear you find such a reasonable objection," said Mrs. -Dallas. "There could hardly be a better one. It wouldn't be at all -convenient. Though, I gather, if it could be made convenient, you still -think that Marian would have nothing to complain of." - -"I don't know why you are trying to pin me down like this." Rupert, -stooping, gathered some flakes of stone from the path and scattered them -with a sharp gesture that expressed his exasperation. "You know what I -believe. Love is free, free as air and sunshine. How can one stop one's -self from loving? Why should one? And if our love, yours and mine, could -mean that complete relation, then, yes, the ideal thing, the really -ideal thing, would be for Marian to feel it right and beautiful and to -be glad that there should be two perfected and complete relations -instead of one. As it is, that inclusive vision isn't asked of her." - -"She's not, in fact, to be asked to be a Mormon," Mrs. Dallas remarked. -"All that she has to put up with is that her husband should be in love, -platonically, with another woman, and should have ceased to be in love -with her. It's hard, you know, when some one has been in love with you, -to give it up." - -"But I have not ceased to love Marian!" Rupert cried. "Why should you -suppose it? My love for you doesn't shut out my love for her. It's a -vulgar old remnant of sexual savagery to think it does. A mother doesn't -love one child the less for loving another. Why can't people purify and -widen their minds by looking at the truth?--That jeer about Mormons is -unworthy of you. Marriage is a prison unless husband and wife are both -free to go on giving and growing. What does love mean but growth?" - -Mrs. Dallas's eyes had drifted away to her beds of carnations and they -now rested on them for a little while. Rupert took up his hat and fanned -himself. He was hot, and very miserable. - -"It always strikes me, when I hear talk like yours," said Mrs. Dallas -presently, "that it is so much less generous and noble than it imagines -itself to be. It's the man, only, who frames the new code and the man, -only, who is to enlarge himself and run two or three loves abreast." - -"Not at all. Marian is precisely as free as I am to love somebody else -as well as me." - -"As free? Oh no," said Mrs. Dallas, laughing softly. "Theoretically, -perhaps, but not actually. Nature has seen to that. When women have -babies and lose their figures it's most unlikely that they'll ever be -given an opportunity to exercise their freedom. That fact in itself -should make you reconsider your ideas about love. Own frankly that they -apply only to men and don't pretend to generosity. The only free women -are the _femmes galantes_; and you'll observe that they are seldom -burdened with a nursery, and that they never grow fat." - -She touched, with an accuracy malignant in its clairvoyance, his -subconscious awareness of Marian's physical alteration. Something in him -shrank away from her in fear and indignation. She was trying to make him -see things from a false and petty standpoint, the standpoint of a woman -of the world, a mere woman of the world--that world of shameful -tolerances and cruel stupidities. "I don't know anything about _femmes -galantes_," he said, "nor do I wish to. You misunderstand me if you -think that by love I mean sensuality." - -With slightly lifted brows she looked out at the carnations; and had she -been angry with him he could have felt less angry with her. He was, -indeed, very angry with her when she remarked, tranquilly, "I don't -think you know what you mean by love." - -"I mean by love what Shelley meant by it," Rupert declared. - - "True love in this differs from gold and clay, - That to divide is not to take away. - Love is like understanding that grows bright - Gazing on many truths. - -"I mean what all the true, great hearts of the world have meant by -it,--poetry, rapture, religion; and they can only be sustained, renewed, -created, by emotion, by passion, by sexual passion--if you like to call -it by a name you imagine to be derogatory." He felt himself warmed and -sustained against the menace that emanated from her by the sound of his -own familiar eloquence. - -But Mrs. Dallas still tranquilly contemplated the carnations. - -"That's the man's point of view. The view of the artist, the creator. -Perhaps there's truth in it. Perhaps he can't write his poems and paint -his pictures without taking intoxicants. But it will never be the view -of the woman. Mary Shelley will never really like it when Shelley makes -love to Jane Clairmont; Marian will never like it when you make love to -me. They'll try to believe it's the ideal, to please him, when they are -the ones he is in love with; but when he is in love with other women -they won't go on believing." - -"That is their fault, their littleness, then. The wide, glorious outlook -is theirs, too, if they choose to open their eyes. I don't accept your -antithesis for women,--humdrum respectability, roast mutton, milk -pudding, or dissipation. I don't believe that when a woman marries and -becomes a mother she must turn her back on love." - -Mrs. Dallas at this began to laugh, unkindly. "Turn her back on love? No -indeed. Why should she? Hasn't she her husband and children, to say -nothing of her friends, her father and mother, her sisters and brothers? -You idealists seem always to forget these means of expansion. By love -you mean simply and solely the intoxicant. Call it poetry and religion, -if you like, but don't expect other people, who merely see that you are -intoxicated, to call it that." - -He sat, trying to think. Idly, half absently, with languid fingers, she -seemed to be breaking his idols as though they had been silly little -earthenware figures, not good enough--here was the stab, the -bewilderment--for her drawing-room. And who was she to do it, this -remote, mysterious creature, steeped in the perfume of her passionate -past? He felt as he gazed at her that it was not only himself he must -defend against her. - -"It's curious to me to hear you talk in this way." He armed himself, as -he spoke, with all that he could muster of wisdom and of weight. "You -are the last woman I'd have expected to hear it from. You've made me -your friend, so that I'd have a right to be frank, even if you hadn't -let me love you. What right have you to turn your back on all the -beauty and romance of life--to smile at them and mock them? You haven't -allowed yourself to be bandaged and crippled by convention, I'm sure of -it. You have followed your heart--bravely, truly--out into life. You -have loved--and loved--and loved--I know it. It breathes from you. It's -all you've lived for." - -"And you think the result so satisfactory?" said Mrs. Dallas. She looked -at him now, and if it was with irony it was with sadness. She turned -from her question. "Well, if you like, I am one of the _femmes -galantes_; they are of many types, you know; I wasn't thinking, when I -shocked you so, of the obvious, gross type. I was thinking of the woman -who corresponds to you--the idealist, the spiritual _femme galante_. -And, I'm convinced of it, for a woman, it doesn't work. A man, if he is -a big man, or has a big life,--it isn't always the same thing by the -way,--may have his succession of passions, or, as you'd claim,--and I -don't believe it,--his contemporaneities; he has a context to frame them -in; they may fall into place. But a woman's life can't be calculated in -those terms of dimension. It is big enough for the emotion that leads to -marriage and to the loves that grow from that, the loves you think so -little of. It is an emotion that can't be repeated over and over again, -simply because, in a normal life, it has grown into something else, -something even better, I should say: a form of poetry and rapture and -religion quite compatible with roast mutton and respectability. But the -women who miss the normal life and who try to live on the emotions, -they--well, I can only say that to my mind they always come to look -silly. Silly is the only word for them." - -He stared at her. "You don't look silly." - -"Why should I?" Mrs. Dallas asked. "I'm not of the idealist type. I -don't confuse intoxication with religion and think I have the one when -I've only the other. I may have missed the real thing, but I've not -repeated the emotion that ought to lead to it. You are quite mistaken in -imagining that I've loved and loved and loved. I haven't. I have allowed -other people to love me. That, as you'll own, is a very different -matter. I am hard and cold and disillusioned. I am not soft and yearning -and frustrated. Why should I look silly?" - -He stared at her, and his heart was flooded with pain. What was she, -then? What was her feeling for him? What had she meant? As she spoke and -as he looked at her, the veil of romance dissolved from about her and he -saw her for the first time with her own eyes,--devoid of poetry, a hard, -cold, faded, worldly woman. Yet she was still a Sphinx, strange and -alluring, and still he struggled against her, for her, saying hotly, -though his heart was chilled, "If it's true, you've hurt -yourself--you've hurt yourself horribly, through fear of looking silly." - -"No, I've not hurt myself," said Mrs. Dallas. "I've been hurt, perhaps; -but I've not allowed my hurts to repeat themselves too often. Some -things in life should be unique and final. The people who don't keep -them so become shoddy. Marian, for instance, is neither hard nor cold, -nor shoddy either. You have made one of the mistakes that idealists are -always making in imagining that she was humdrum respectability and that -I was poetry and rapture and religion.--Oh, it's no good protesting. If -I had a double chin and thin hair you'd never have wanted to help my -soul, however unhappy I was. And if Marian had sat about in carefully -chosen clothes and looked mysterious and not let you feel sure that she -cared about you, you would probably have remained in love with her. So -please own that you have been mistaken and that on the one side is love, -the love that Marian feels for you, although she knows you; because she -knows you; and on the other is illusion, intoxication, sensuality; yes, -my dear Rupert, such as you felt when I let you kiss my hand a little -while ago." - -He sat, sullen, even sulky, half turned from her, and again he stooped -and gathered up the flakes of stone and tossed them away down the path. - -The clink and chink of ice and glass was heard approaching through the -drawing-room, and the maid stepped out bearing the tray, which she set -down on a wicker table before her mistress. The tall crystal jug, veiled -in frosty rime, showed tones of jade and chalcedony, and fillets of -lemon peel threaded it like pale, bright enamel. This gem-like beaker, -the plate of golden cakes, with the scent of the carnations, with Mrs. -Dallas's little foot on its cushion, with her rings of pearl and ruby, -had all been part of the magic she had meant to him. The very sound of -the ice, dully yet resonantly chinking, brought a suffocating sense of -nostalgia. It was over, all over. He was disenchanted. She was cruel to -him, to him who had loved her. She had cut into him and killed bright, -ingenuous, trustful things. And, in a placid voice, she asked him if he -would have some cake, and filled his glass. - -He took it from her and drank it off in silence. The icy, aromatic -liquid seemed an antidote to that other intoxicant she had mocked. Irony -flowed through his veins; a bitter-sweet sense of vengeful maturity. -When he set down the glass, he looked up at her, and he felt himself -measuring his sword against the stiletto of an adversary. - -"Well, I've had my lesson," he said. "I've been a generous but deluded -idealist, it seems, in imagining that men and women are equals in their -claims on life. Since I'm an artist, I have a right to my raptures, I -take it. And poor Marian must be jealous with reason. Well, well; it's -an odd morality to hear preached." - -Mrs. Dallas still sipped her lemonade and she quietly considered him. -She said nothing, and even after she had finished and set down her glass -she sat for still a little while in silence. - -"I'm sorry I've seemed to preach," she then remarked, "and I certainly -think that Marian has every reason to be jealous. What more did I say? -That a man isn't as ridiculous and undignified as a woman when he falls -in and out of love-affairs on the condition that he has a big life? That -was it, wasn't it?" - -"That was it, and I'm glad to have your assurance that I am in no danger -of being ridiculous or undignified." - -"Do you mean," said Mrs. Dallas, looking at him, "that you think yours -such a big life?" - -It had been, before, his heart, its tenderness, its devotion and -dedication, that she had cut into; it was into something deeper now, -something more substantially and vitally at the centre of his life, -something of which his heart and all its ardours were but tributaries. -He was to learn that self-love could bleed with a fiercer, darker gush. -The blood, as if foretelling his ordeal, sprang to his forehead as he -looked back at her. - -"I have my art," he said, and he disdained any pretended humility; he -spoke with pride and even with solemnity. "I live for my art. I don't -think that I am an insignificant man." - -"Don't you?" said Mrs. Dallas. It was with an unaffected curiosity that -her eyes rested on him, and it sank into him, drop by drop, like poison. -"Not insignificant, perhaps," she took up after a moment. "That's not -quite the word, perhaps. You are very intelligent and appreciative and -good-hearted. I don't suppose one can be quite insignificant if one is -that. But--do you call it art, your writing? I wonder. Oh, you are quite -right to live for it, of course, just as other men do for stock-broking -or fox-hunting or print-collecting, or anything else that employs their -energies or satisfies their tastes or brings in money; but, to count as -art, a man's activities must mean more than just his own satisfaction in -them, mustn't they? You write careful, intelligent, sentimental little -books; but I can't feel that the world would be any the poorer if you -were to take to stock-broking or fox-hunting instead. No, it doesn't -seem to me, my dear Rupert, that your life is nearly large enough for a -succession of love-affairs. It's all right when one is young and looking -for a mate; experiments are in order then; but you've found your mate, -and you'll soon be not so very young, and if on the strength of your art -you imagine yourself entitled to unseasonable intoxications, you'll -become, in time, an emotional dram-drinker, one of those foolish old -inebriates we are all familiar with, and you'll spoil yourself for what -you were meant to be and can be,--a devoted husband and an excellent -_pere de famille_." - -Stretched on his rack, broken, bleeding, Rupert stared at her. Who was -this woman, this cruel, ambiguous woman who watched his agony with -deliberating, drowsy eyes? There came into his mind the memory of a -picture seen in childhood, some sentimental print that had strongly -impressed his boyish sensibilities. A corner of a Roman amphitheatre, a -rising tier of seats; sham architecture, sham Romans, no doubt, and a -poor piece of claptrap, looked back on from his maturity; but the face -of the Roman woman, leaning so quietly forward under its gold tiara, to -watch, unmoved, the tormented combatants below, was it not like this -face? Yes, she was of that stony-hearted breed, unaltered by the -centuries. - -The torment of his humiliation snatched at anger for a veil. He said, -smiling, "You have been very successful till now in concealing your real -opinion of me." - -"Have I concealed it?" - -"My work certainly seemed to be of absorbing interest to you." - -"I listened to it; yes." - -"I didn't imagine you'd stoop to feign interest. I didn't imagine you'd -take such pains to allure and flatter a commonplace young _pere de -famille_." - -"Did I take pains to allure and flatter him?" - -"From the first!--From the very first!--That day we met!--My God!" Even -now he could not help feeling himself, seeing himself, as one of his own -heroes; and, for a moment, he bent his head upon his hands--as they -would have done had a calamity as unimaginable as this befallen them. -"That first day!--The apple-blossoms framing you! You stood under your -white parasol in our orchard--and you smiled at me!" - -"I generally do at agreeable-looking young men when I see that they -admire me," Mrs. Dallas commented. - -"Oh, don't pretend!--Don't hide and shift!" He lifted fierce eyes; "It -wasn't only that. You seemed to care. You seemed to need me. You made it -easy--inevitable. You came--and came; and you asked me here again and -again." - -"Not 'me,'--'us,'" Mrs. Dallas amended suavely. She was looking at him, -all this time, with that thoughtful, poisonous curiosity; and as he now -sat, finding for the moment no words, his fury baffled by her quiet -checkmating, she went on, "And afterwards I let you come alone because I -saw that you admired me, and that is always pleasant to me. When, at -first, as you say, I showed myself so affable, it was because I liked -Marian. I do still like her; more than I ever liked you, my dear Rupert; -if you are good-hearted and intelligent, she is more so, and she has -more sense of humour than you have, and doesn't take herself so -seriously. And, to be quite frank, since we are talking it all out like -this, I not only liked Marian, but saw that she could be of use to me. -I've had, in some ways, a tiresome, tangled life, and things haven't -always gone as I wanted them to go, so that I don't let opportunities -for strengthening and straightening here and there pass me by. Through -Marian I met several people I wanted to meet and make sure of. People -useful to me. I think Marian quite understood and quite wanted to help. -She would. She is of my world in a sense you aren't, you know, my dear -Rupert. And, in my idle way, I did take a good deal of trouble to be -agreeable to her. It all turned out exceedingly well and I was very -grateful to Marian. That's one reason, you see, why I felt to-day that -our little flirtation was going too far and must be put a stop to. I -don't want Marian to be jealous of me; it would be distinctly -inconvenient. But there is more in it than that. I wouldn't have put -myself to this bother and talked things out like this if it hadn't been -because of my liking for Marian. It makes me angry to see that you don't -know how lucky you are to have such a wife. I want you to see how very -lucky you are. I want you to see yourself as others see you,--a very -unimportant young man, without position and without money, married to a -quite unusually delightful girl who has both. This isn't the young man's -fault, of course; one wouldn't like him the less for it; but one does -expect him to be aware of his own felicity. One does expect him to feel -that, at present, his wife is too good for him. I don't mean in the -conventional sense; one wouldn't ask him to recognize that; but in the -sense of worth and charm and distinction, for those are the things he -supposes himself to care for." - -She had, while she spoke of the "young man" thus impartially, turned her -eyes from him, and they rested again on the beds of carnations. The sun -had sunk behind the hill, and though the bright soft colours were -unshadowed, they all lay in a different light and seemed to glow coolly -in their own radiance, like jewels. - -Rupert rose. His anger had passed from him. He no longer felt Mrs. -Dallas to be an antagonist; but he felt her to be a stranger; and he -felt himself to be a stranger. A sense of fear and loneliness and -disembodiment had fallen upon him while he listened to her. He held out -his hand to her. "Good-bye," he said. "I think I must be going." - -She took his hand and looked up at him with the gaze so remote, so -irrevocable. "Good-bye," she said; "I hope to see you and Marian some -day soon, perhaps." - -The words, with their quiet relapse on convention, made him feel himself -in a new world. He had been thinking of final, fatal things, things dark -and trenchant; she showed him compromise, continuity, commonplace good -sense; and, dispossessed, bereft as he was, something in him struggled -to place itself beside her in this alien atmosphere, to make itself a -denizen of the new since he had forever lost the old world. - -"Oh yes, I'll tell her," he said. And as he released her hand he found, -"Thank you. I'm sure you meant it all most kindly." - -"It's very nice of you to say so," said Mrs. Dallas, smiling. - -It was the world of convention; yet with all his bewildered groping for -clues and footholds, he felt, dimly, as a glimmer before his eyes or a -frail thread in his hands, that the smile was perhaps the most sincerely -sweet that he had ever had from Mrs. Dallas. It was as if she saw his -struggle and commended it. - - -III - -He walked away, up the steps, across the putting-green and out into the -woods. He went slowly as he began the gradual ascent. He felt very -tired, as though he had been beaten with rods, and there was in him a -curious mingling of confusion and lucidity, of pain and contemplation. -The present and the future were curtained with shame, uncertainty, and -dismay; but the past was vivid, and, like a singular, outgrown husk, he -seemed to look back at that Rupert on the veranda, so blind, so bland, -so fatuous, and to see him as Mrs. Dallas had seen him. - -Beyond the curtain was Marian. He knew that he went towards Marian as if -towards safety and succour; yet all was opaque before his eyes, for who -was it that Marian was to succour but that fatuous Rupert? and was it -for such as he that he could seek support? How could he go to Marian and -say, "I have been given eyes to see you as you are; help me, now, to be -blind again to what I am." No; he could not, if he were to follow his -glimmer and hold his thread, seek succour from Marian. - -When he reached the house he went into the drawing-room and found her -sitting there in a cool dress, a book upon her knee. She did not see him -as he entered quietly and he stood for some moments in the doorway -looking at her. - -She had been crying; her cheeks were white and her eyelids heavy; but -though this perception came to him with a blow of feeling, it did not, -for the moment, move him from his contemplation of her, with all that it -brought of new and strange to the familiar. - -She was strange, though she was not a stranger, as he had become to -himself. He noted the black curves of her hair, the ample line of her -bosom, the gentle, white maternal hand laid along the book. On a -cabinet, above her head, he saw that she had very beautifully arranged -the white, rose and yellow carnations. It was like her to do this -justice to her rival's gift; like her to place them there not only -faithfully but beautifully. And as she sat, unaware of him, in the -luminous evening air, he felt her to be full of enchantment and this -enchantment to centre in the hand laid along the book. His eyes fixed -themselves on the hand. It seemed a symbol of the Marian of grace and -girlhood whom he had loved with such ardent presage of eternal faith, -and of this Marian sitting quietly in her saddened and accepted life, -not changed except in so far as she was yet more worthy of fidelity. He -saw that she had passed through her ordeal and transcended it; he saw -that she would never again show him jealousy; and he saw that as the old -Marian he had, perhaps, forever lost her. A lover must always show -jealousy. This was a wife, maternal and aloof. - -He came into the room and she looked round at him. Her eyes, altered by -weeping, were mild and alien. They were without hostility, without -accusation; deliberating, gentle; the eyes of a wife. "Did you have a -nice afternoon?" she asked laying down her book. "It's been delicious, -hasn't it?" - -Quite as irrevocably as Mrs. Dallas she made the world that he must -enter. She, too, in her different way, a way founded on acceptance -rather than rejection, showed him compromise and continuity. And nothing -that Mrs. Dallas had said to him cut into him so horribly as to see -Marian show him this new world. - -An impulse came to fall on his knees beside her, bury his head in her -lap, and pour out all his griefs. But already, and for Marian's sake, -now, he had learned a better wisdom. To fall and weep and confess would -be, again, to act like one of his own heroes; and Marian, in her heart, -knew all that there was to know of that old Rupert. He must make her now -know, and make himself know, a new Rupert. - -He sat down opposite her and, smiling a little, he said, "Mrs. Dallas -has done with me." - -"Done with you!" Marian repeated. Her faint colour rose. - -"Quite," said Rupert, nodding; "in any way I'd thought she had me." - -"Do you mean," said Marian, after a moment, "that she's been horrid to -you?" - -"Not in the least, though it felt horrid. She merely let me see that I'd -been mistaken." - -"Mistaken? In what way?" - -"In almost every way. In my ideas about myself, and about life, and -about her.--It wasn't, for one thing, me she liked in particular, at -all. It was you." - -Marian's flush had deepened. "She seemed to like you very much indeed." - -"Only frivolously; not seriously. She showed me to-day how silly I'd -been to think it anything but frivolous. She made me see that I'd been a -serious ass." - -Marian sat looking at him. She was startled, and on his -behalf--wonderful maternal instinct!--she was angry; yet--he saw it all -in the sweet, subtle alteration of her face--she was happy, half -incredulously yet marvelously happy. And as he saw her happiness, tears -came to Rupert's eyes and he felt himself, deeply and inarticulately, -blessing Mrs. Dallas. She had been right. This was something "even -better." - -"She's an exceedingly clever woman," he said, smiling at Marian, though -she must see the tears. "And an exceedingly first-rate woman, too. And -I'll always be grateful to her. The question is,"--he got up and came -and stood over his wife,--"I've been such an ass, darling. Can you -forgive me?" - -He had found her hand as he questioned her and he held it now up to his -cheek closing his eyes, how differently! - - -IV - -Mrs. Dallas, after her young friend had left her, sat on for quite a -long while on the veranda. The concentration of her recent enterprise -effaced itself from her eyes and lips. Her glance, steeping itself again -in indolent and melancholy retrospects, fell into a reverie. Once or -twice, putting up a languid hand, she yawned. - -When the whole garden lay in coolness, she went in and got her gardening -apron and gloves and basket of implements. It was an ideal moment for -layering her carnations. Tripping out again on her little high-heeled -shoes, she placed her kneeling-mat before a splendid plant and set to -work. She scorned complicated aids. A box of long hairpins were her -chief allies, and a sharp knife. Deftly she selected a blue-gray shoot -and stripped the narrow leaves, sharply cut a transverse slit into the -tender stalk, firmly bent and pinned the half-severed spray into the -heaped earth where it was to make new roots and establish itself in a -new life. And, as she did so, her mind reverting to thoughts of Rupert -and of her rough usage of him, a simile came to her that made her smile, -her hard and not unkindly smile. She did not regret it, though -unquestionably she had had her own moment of reluctance and of loss. It -had hurt him terribly, no doubt, as, if they had feeling, it must now -hurt her carnations to be cut and bent and pinned. But "It might be the -making of him," Mrs. Dallas thought. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -STAKING A LARKSPUR - - -AS a matter of fact (one has often to take one's stand on fact when -thinking about Vera), it's I who am the gardener; it's I, that is to -say, who draw the plans and compute the cost and give the orders and see -that the men carry them out. I often lend a hand at carrying them out, -too, for I love planting seedlings and staking plants and tweaking out -weeds here and there when I've the chance. That wonderful blue border -Vera had on the south terrace last summer,--it was just going over when -the war broke out,--I put in all the new blue larkspurs myself, three -hundred of them,--the larkspurs that Mrs. Thornton was to remind me -of,--and I designed and planted and with my own hands helped to lay out -the dream-garden, Vera's special garden. It was she, certainly, who had -had the idea, standing on the site of the little, old, abandoned sunken -garden in its circle of stone wall and cypresses, and saying, "I see a -dream-garden here, Judith; a place where one can come and sit alone and -dream dreams." She often has charming ideas, Vera, but she knows nothing -about gardening. I sound already as if I were crabbing her, I know; and -perhaps I am. Certainly I never think of her relation to her garden -without a touch of irony, and this story, which begins in the -dream-garden, isn't to her advantage. It was there that I felt my first -definite irascibility in regard to Vera and little Mrs. Thornton, and -felt the impulse, as far as I was able, to take Mrs. Thornton under my -wing. - -It's a rather clipped and confined wing, and yet I can do pretty much as -I choose at Compton Dally; I don't quite know why, for Vera doesn't -exactly like me. Still, she doesn't dislike me, and I think she's a -little bit afraid of me; for I am as definite and determined as a pair -of garden shears, and my silence is often only the good manners of the -dependant, and Vera knows it. - -I am her cousin, an impecunious cousin, my mother a sister of her -father's, old Lord Charleyford, who died last year. Vera herself was -very impecunious until she married Percival Dixon; impecunious, but -always very lovely and very clever, and she was on the crest of every -wave, always, and never missed anything, except ready money and a really -good offer, even before Percival Dixon came along--he came _via_ South -Africa--and gave her all the money that even she could spend, and bought -back Compton Dally for her. Compton Dally had been in the family for -hundreds of years, and it was our grandfather, Vera's and mine, who had -ruined us all and finally sold it. It was everything for Vera to get it -back, even if she had to take Percival Dixon with it; and I confess that -for Compton Dally I could almost have taken Percival Dixon myself; but -not quite, even for Compton Dally. - -Well, she has always been fairly decent to me; not as decent as she -might have been, certainly, but more decent than I, at all events, -expected, whatever may have been poor mother's hopes and indignations. I -always thought mother unfair; there was no reason why Vera should go out -of her way to give me a good time, and it showed some real consideration -in her to have suggested, when mother died and while Jack was reading -for the bar, that, until he and I could set up housekeeping in London -together, I should come and be her companion and secretary and general -odd-job woman; and for people like Vera to show any consideration is -creditable to them. I am five years older than Jack, and our plan has -always been to live together. I intend, of course,--though Jack at -present doesn't, dear lamb!--that he shall marry; but until then I'm to -live with him and take care of him and help him with his work. All this -if he ever comes back again. He is fighting at the front as I write, so -that it remains to be seen whether I'm to go on always with Vera. If -Jack doesn't come back I shan't find it more difficult than anything -else. We have always been all in all to each other, he and I; but that -is quite another story and one that will never be written. This one is -neither about Jack nor me, but about Vera and her garden and little Mrs. -Thornton and her husband and her clothes. - -Vera had thrown open Compton Dally to wounded Tommies and wounded -officers, and the Thorntons came in that way. He'd only been back from -the Boulogne hospital for a week, was badly crippled, and had a very -gallant record. Most of Vera's officers before this had been colonials -who had no homes to go to. The Thorntons weren't colonials, but they had -no home and were very poor, so that the arrangement for them to spend -six weeks or two months at Compton Dally while Captain Thornton got back -his strength--as far as he was able to get it back, poor man!--seemed an -admirable one. - -They came on a hot June afternoon both very tired, while we were all -having tea on the west terrace. The Tommies--there were over a dozen of -them, with two Red Cross nurses to take care of them--had their tea in -the billiard-room, which is made over to them for their games and meals -and almost constant gramophone, and the accurate laughter of Harry -Lauder is wafted out to us on various music-hall strains at most hours -of the day. He was laughing loudly and richly as the Thorntons arrived. -After tea Vera led them about the garden. Vera's garden is merely a part -of her toilette, and plays almost as important a part as her clothes in -her general introduction of herself; and that she intended to introduce -herself gracefully to Captain Thornton was evident; and that I was to -pilot Mrs. Thornton, I had known after Vera's glance at her imitation -Panama hat, her blue linen skirt, of an obsolete cut and a bad one at -that, and her white blouse, shrunken in washing. Vera placed her swiftly -as dull and dowdy, and it was my part, always, to pilot the dowdy and -the dull. - -I don't mind that, however; even now, after three years of it, I always -enjoy going over Compton Dally and the gardens with newcomers. It's such -a beautiful old place, so grave and so serene, its splendid Tudor front -lifted high on stone terraces, and its courts and corners behind -breaking out into all sorts of unexpected and enchanting antiquities. It -symbolizes, if you begin with the Saxon arches in the cellars, the -whole history of England, and means so much more than any person who has -ever lived there, or who ever will live there, can ever mean. It's worth -the sacrifice of generations of younger sons and myriads of marriageable -daughters. What could they all do better than to keep it going? I always -recalled this when I wondered how Vera could have married Percival -Dixon, and felt almost as much satisfaction as she could feel in the -fact that two robust little boys, still at their preparatory school, -stood reassuringly behind her and Percival; the elder, too, a thorough -Compton, with hardly a trail of Dixon apparent on his ingenuous young -countenance. I have the whole history of Compton Dally at the tips of my -fingers, and if people give me an opening and show that they care about -it, I can talk to them for hours as I take them round, feeling, for my -little part and share in it, that, even if Vera weren't as decent as she -is, I should put up with a great deal to stay in it and take care of it. - -We didn't go about the house to-day. The Thorntons saw the big -herbaceous border and the rose-garden, the rock-garden, tinkling with -its little rivulet, the moat, and the lime-tree alley; and then Vera, -trailing her gossamer draperies along the flagged path between the -cypresses,--for Vera, even at this epoch of shortened petticoats, -manages always to trail,--murmured, as I've heard her murmur, when she's -at Compton Dally, at least once a week, "And this is my dream-garden, -where I come and sit alone and dream dreams." - -She led Captain Thornton down among the cypress boughs. He had a -splinted leg and an unaccustomed crutch, and found the steps a -difficulty; but Vera put a hand under his elbow and let him lean -heavily on her shoulder, and he reached the dream-garden without, I -hope, too many twinges. - -It is really very lovely. I don't like hearing it called a dream-garden, -naturally; but I do feel always, when I come into it, that it is like -sinking into the stillness and magic of a happy dream. The gypsophila -wasn't out yet, but it made a mist, like drowsiness; white peonies, grey -santolina, white roses and silver sea-thistle, the dreamy spires of -white foxgloves, low, purple pansies, and tall irises, white and grey -and purple--these, in their twilight colours, were massed against the -grey stone walls, and there were four bay-trees in stone urns at the -corners. The beautiful old stone seat (I found it in Brompton Road, but -it might have been made for Compton Dally three hundred years ago in -Italy) was heaped with grey and purple cushions. In the centre rose the -fluent shaft of the fountain, falling, with a musical rustle and murmur -into the stone basin where pale goldfish move among the water-lilies. - -We sat down, and Vera went on to say, as always: - -"The other gardens are for friends. I plan them for them. I see them -there. This is for loneliness, for my very self; and to me it is the -heart of the whole, as solitude should be the heart of life." - -Vera, as a matter of fact (you see, the phrase recurs constantly), is -never alone. If she is wan and strange and wistful, it isn't from -dreaming dreams, but from not having enough sleep and doing five times -too many things and seeing five times too many people in the day. Vera, -too, I may say it here, isn't in the least an ass, though she may, on -occasions she finds suitable, talk like one. Occasions are often -suitable, so that, as I once told her, she's in danger of making a habit -of it. She looked at me, when I told her this, with the pausing, -penetrating, ironic gaze she is so capable of, and finally, with a -slight grimace, said, "I'll be careful, Judith." - -I have moments of feeling fond of her and this was one of them. She is -careful; I've very rarely heard her talk like an ass when the occasion -was unsuitable; but so many people are stupid that these are rare, and I -foresee that, as she gets on and sinks by degrees into the automatism -that overtakes so many artificial people, it may become a habit, just as -the touch of rouge on her pale lips is already becoming more emphasized. - -Captain Thornton, I saw at once, as she did,--for she saw most -things,--was not stupid; but he was very simple. There was a certain -bewilderment on his handsome, sturdy face, wistfulness rather than -delight, such as a soul newly arrived in Paradise might feel, unable to -forget the passes of death and the companions left behind in suffering. -He wasn't forgetting; I felt that as I looked at him. So many of them -forget. Vera, I am sure, hardly ever remembers what it all really -means--all these wounded heroes. Perhaps it is natural that she -shouldn't; she has no one near in it. - -Captain Thornton gazed about him quietly, and from the garden looked -back at the angel who had led him there. Of course Vera must have looked -like an angel to him. I haven't described Vera, and she is difficult to -describe. To say that she is pale and dark, with attenuated features and -dwelling, melancholy eyes, is only the beginning of it. Of course she -is getting on now,--she is nearing forty-five,--but she's still lovely; -her smile makes me think of a pearl dropped in wine, and behind the -melancholy of her eyes is that well of waiting irony. She looks as soft, -as tenderly encompassing, as a summer night; but she is really sharp, -sharp, sharp. Thwart or vex her, and out leaps the stiletto; or, rather, -it would be more exact to say, out come the claws. But women of the Vera -type will always, to young men like Captain Thornton, be angels pure and -simple. I don't suppose, for one thing, that he'd ever talked intimately -with any one quite like her. He came, I was to learn, from a remote -country rectory where the great ladies of the neighbourhood had been -unfashionable, matter of fact, and clothed for the most part in tweed -and leather, and none of them would have been likely to make much, -before the war, of a young soldier. Vera was making much of him, and a -fashionable angel is an angel doubly equipped. He would not know what it -was that made her so strange in her sweetness; but fashion of that -achieved and recondite kind is like a soft incense wafted around a -woman. She is first, everywhere, always, without an effort; and people -who are first, if they also look like angels, win hearts as easily as -they run and twist their fingers among their ropes of pearls, as Vera -was doing now. She always wore her pearls; they fell together in a milky -heap in her lap, and long earrings glimmered in the shadows of her hair. - -Vera's way of talking, too, is like a spell. Her voice is rather like -the fountain, so low, so inarticulate, yet so expressive. She murmurs -rather than speaks, with now and then a pause that is almost a soft -gurgle. Sometimes it exasperates me to hear her, but sometimes even -cross-grained I am charmed. - -The voice purled and rippled and gurgled over Captain Thornton now. He -sat on Vera's farther hand, and Mrs. Thornton sat between Vera and me. -Already, at tea-time, Mrs. Thornton had interested me. She had remained -silent without seeming shy. Superficially, no doubt, she was dowdy, and -superficially she looked dull, or, as I saw it, dulled; and dull and -dowdy is what at tea they all put her down for. It's curious, how in a -group of highly civilized people, a newcomer, without a word or glance -exchanged between them, is in a moment assessed and placed and -relegated. Everybody was going to be very kind to Mrs. Thornton, that I -saw, and everybody was going to relegate her; only the highly civilized -can manage the combination. - -Mrs. Thornton, from one point of view, had a pallid, podgy little face, -with wide lips and short nose and a broad, infantile brow above eyes -singularly far apart. All the same, and the more I looked at her the -more I saw it, it was a delicious face; squared here, stubborn there, -sweet by turns and glances. And she was of the loveliest colour, with a -skin silver-white, and thick, shining, pale-gold hair, and eyes of a -deep, dense, meditative blue. All her attributes, however, were -invisible to Vera, and I was fully prepared for the glance with which, -over Mrs. Thornton's imitation Panama, she presently said to me: - -"Darling, do take Mrs. Thornton round the water-garden. It's so lovely -at this hour. Captain Thornton must wait for it till to-morrow. He's too -tired to go farther now." - -Mrs. Thornton got up at once, with her air of vague acquiescence in -anything proposed, and I led her up and out and down the lime-tree alley -and through the copse, where Vera, in spring, has her wild garden, to -the banks of the river, the clear, wandering little stream, bridged and -islanded, golden in the afternoon light under its willows and reflecting -irises and meadow-sweet. - -"Now we can sit down," I said, and on a bench under a willow we did sit, -Mrs. Thornton with an involuntary sigh of weariness. "I expect your -husband will soon get all right here," I said presently. "It's such good -air. Is his leg badly damaged?" - -"Well, you see, he can already get about quite well with it," said Mrs. -Thornton; "but I'm afraid he'll never be able to do any of the things he -most cares for again--riding and cricket, and his soldiering, of course. -He will have to give up the army. I am afraid it's afterwards one will -begin to feel all the things that one must give up. Just now all that I -can think about is that he has come back alive. Have you any one out -there?" she asked. - -I told her about Jack and how he had got a commission at the beginning -of the war and gone out in January. - -"It must be even more of a wrench to have them go when they aren't -already in the army," said Mrs. Thornton. "A soldier's wife ought not to -feel it so much of a wrench. I'm afraid I did, though." - -I saw already that Mrs. Thornton had taken to me. It was natural that -she should. I had taken to her quite tremendously, and she must have -felt it; and, besides, a great many women do feel confidence in me at -once. I, to be sure, look like anything but an angel, though I, like -Vera, have small, pale features and dark hair. But mine's not a -melancholy or mysterious face. My eyebrows dip together over my nose, -and my mouth is at once placid and irascible. I look, in my straight, -austere clothes,--the silver buckles on my shoes and the fob of old -trinkets at my waist for all adornment,--like a cross between a young -priest in his soutane and a Blue-Coat boy; and I think it is the boyish -woman, curt and kind and impersonal, who gains the confidence of others -of her sex. - -"I don't know that it was more of a wrench," I said. "I expect that you -and I felt pretty much the same sort of thing on that Victoria platform -when we said good-bye to them. What do you and your husband intend -doing, now that he has to give up his profession?" - -"Well, we had thought of having a chicken-farm somewhere. We are both so -fond of the country, and I've a cousin who has a chicken-farm, and I've -helped her with it, and she has made it pay. Even if Clive's leg stays -so bad, I am very strong. But we've had, really, no time yet to talk -things over." - -"You don't look very strong," I observed, "but that may be because you -are over-tired. You look very tired. I should say that you got up at six -this morning, and raced around London shopping in the heat, and packed, -and had no lunch, and a journey on top of it all. So no wonder you are -tired." - -"How clever of you!" Mrs. Thornton cried, laughing. "That is exactly -what I have been doing. And I've been in a Belgian refugee hostel ever -since Clive went, and that is tiring, though it keeps one going, too. -Don't you find it difficult just to go on from day to day?" She was -leaning forward on her knee now to look up into my face while I knitted. -"I mean, when one wakes in the morning, for instance, to think that one -has to get up and brush one's teeth and do one's hair and all the rest -of it. It seems impossible when what one is feeling is that one wants to -be chloroformed till it is all over. It was then that the hostel was so -sustaining; one had to get up whether one felt like it or not." - -"I know; yes," I said, nodding. "I've work, too, though it's not so -sustaining as a hostel. I'm my cousin's secretary, and we have all these -Tommies now; they take up a good deal of time. It must be curious, -having it all over, all that weight of anxiety." - -"It is, it is," said little Mrs. Thornton, eagerly, with her look of -gratitude for finding some one with whom to talk about it. "It's almost -like losing a limb. I feel crippled, as well as Clive. Isn't it absurd? -But it's almost like loss. And one is dazed with the relief of it." - -"How long have you been married?" I asked. - -"Only a year and a half," she told me, and that Clive's mother and hers -had been great friends, and that she had often gone to stay with his -people in the country, so that she had always known him. Her mother had -died when she was a child and her father only two years ago. She had -lived in London with her father, who had been an artist. She was just -twenty. And after she had told me about herself, she asked me about -Jack, and I found myself telling her all about him and about those plans -of ours for living together in London if he ever comes back. - -The party at Compton Dally was small, and they were all there (except -Sir Francis who was an old family friend and who was paying a long -visit), to help Vera with her Tommies. The only other officer besides -Captain Thornton was poor Colonel Appleby, a pale, frightened, -middle-aged man invalided home with nervous shock. At dinner that night -Lady Dighton, who is the embodiment of lassitude and acquiescence, had -him, and Mrs. Travers-Cray had Sir Francis, and Vera had Captain -Thornton, so that Percival fell to the share of Mollie Thornton, and I -wondered how she liked him. If she was already feeling herself out of -it, to have Percival at dinner wouldn't make her feel herself in; quite -the reverse. Percival's appearance is always summed up to me by the back -of his head: the wedge of fat, red neck above his high collar, the -sleek, glittering black hair, and the rims of his red ears curving -forward on each side. The back of his head seems really as -characteristic as the front, though that is jovial and not unkindly. -Percival looks sly over his food, and looks over his wine like the sort -of man who is going to tell a story that no one else will find at all -amusing. He told Mollie several such stories that night, I inferred, -though she was evidently neither shy nor shocked; it was in the quality -of her smile that I read her kindly endurance. - -Milly, Vera's girl, just seventeen and just promoted to late dinner, sat -on Mollie's other hand and did not, as far as I observed, address her -once during the meal. But, then, Milly never makes efforts unless they -are plainly useful. All Vera's beauty had been spoiled in her by the -Dixon admixture, and yet she is a most engaging-looking little minx, -with broad, bold, black, idle eyes and a blunted nose, auburn hair and a -skin of roses and carnations. Vera had seen to that. Poor Vera is quite -fond of the child, a half-vexed, half-ironic constantly rebuffed -tenderness. But Milly says to me, "Mother is such a bore, you know," and -likes me far better, who make no claim upon her and who, she must feel, -like her very little. She will soon take flight, however, when a -sufficiently advantageous occasion presents itself. The war has been a -sad blow to her projects, and what I like in Milly is the fact that she -has never uttered a word of complaint as to the shattering of her -girlish gaieties. However, to get back to Mollie Thornton, I don't think -she could have enjoyed her companions at dinner. - -After dinner I go and amuse the Tommies and talk to the nurses until -bedtime, but, before I went, I observed that Vera, after her wont with -the detrimental belongings of a guest, had placed Mollie in a corner -with a book and the urgent, smiling murmur: "By a friend of mine. Quite, -quite beautiful. I know you'll love it." It is a book called "Spiritual -Control," with a portrait of its author, who is a stock-broker, a sleek, -stalwart, satisfied person whom Vera characterizes, why I can't think, -except that she had him once to stay after hearing his lecture, as her -"friend." A great many people find the book inspiring; Vera, as a matter -of fact, doesn't, and she found Mr. Cuthbert Dawson a terrible bore. It -was plain from her giving poor Mrs. Thornton "Spiritual Control" to -read, where she placed her. - -When I came back an hour later she was still in her corner with -"Spiritual Control," but she wasn't reading it. She had drawn the -curtain at the window where she sat, and was looking out at the -splendid, dramatic moonlight. Sir Francis and Colonel Appleby were -reading the evening papers, Lady Dighton and Leila Travers-Cray talked -together while they knitted, Milly had disappeared, and at the farthest -end of the great room, on its farthest sofa, Vera, pale and pearly, was -talking to Captain Thornton. - -"Well," I said, "how is your spirit? Is it more controlled?" - -Mrs. Thornton looked up at me, and after a moment her smile of -understanding merged into one of friendly enjoyment. - -"How do you manage," she said, "to be so austere in the daytime and so -splendid at night? You make me think of a Venetian princess in that -brocade." - -"It is nice, isn't it?" I said. "And made by the littlest of -dressmakers. I'm clever at clothes. But tell me how you like Mr. -Cuthbert Dawson." - -"Well, he is very cheerful and sincere," said Mrs. Thornton, kindly; -"but I don't seem to get much out of it. I'm really too tired and stupid -to read to-night." - -"And it's time your husband was in bed," I said. "One of the nurses is -coming for him." - -Mrs. Thornton looked down the long room at her husband. - -"If only I'd had the Red Cross training," she said, "I could have taken -care of his leg then. I suppose I mustn't ask to be allowed to. Isn't it -quite early?" she added. "He's enjoying the talk with Lady Vera." - -"It's half-past ten, and we are strict with our invalids. Here is nurse -now. I'll come up with you and see that you are comfortable." - -No one could have said that there was any creature comfort lacking in -Mrs. Thornton's reception at Compton Dally. Captain Thornton, as the -invalid, had a larger room, but Mrs. Thornton's room, next it, was quite -as charming a one, pink and grey, with old French prints and hangings of -_toile de Jouy_. She went up to the prints for a moment of silent -appreciation before turning to me with a sigh, half pleasure and half -wistfulness. - -"How lovely everything is here! Papa would have been in rapture over -those Cochins. I shall enjoy my sleep to-night." And then,--it was her -only sign of awareness,--"I suppose I'm to be allowed to go and say -good-night to Clive when nurse has done with him." - - * * * * * - -My study at Compton Dally, where I type and write and do accounts, opens -on the west terrace, and from my bureau I seemed, at most hours of the -days that followed, to have a view of Mollie Thornton's little figure -wandering, as it were, on the outskirts, not plaintive,--there was never -a touch of plaintiveness,--but passive. With her sewing or knitting or a -book she sat a good deal under the shade of the cedar that stands at the -corner of the terrace, and she spent a good deal of time drifting up and -down the vistas of the lawns and park watching birds, a binocular in her -hand. She was certainly a most comfortable person to relegate, since she -never looked melancholy and usually contrived to seem occupied, and -Vera, when she passed behind her on the terrace on her way to the -dream-garden, Captain Thornton beside her, would pause and put her hand -on her shoulder and say, "Happy, dear?" in the most dulcet tone. And -when Mrs. Thornton, lifting those meditative eyes, answered, "Yes, thank -you," Vera, all bland benevolence, would say, "That's right," and pass -on. Leila Travers-Cray and Lady Dighton sometimes exchanged a few -friendly remarks with her, and she read the morning papers to Colonel -Appleby when his eyes hurt him; but she was relegated far, far away, as -completely as any human being could be who could in any way count as a -guest. - -I was very busy and had not much time to be with her, though all the -time I had was hers; but I knew accurately what she was feeling. I -related it always with that dreadful Victoria platform, with those -moments of pain and yet of rapture which we had both known, when we had -felt ourselves, in our suffering, stand for England, lifted up in -accepting sacrifice to the august and beautiful spirit that claimed our -dearest. One would expect, after that transcendent suffering, to find as -transcending a joy; but how was joy possible to a young wife caught into -what might be to her husband a fairyland or a paradise, but to her was a -cruel and complicated machine where her only part was to turn round with -the other wheels and pretend to like it? I knew that it must not be -taken too seriously. It was only to last for six weeks, and then she -would have her Clive back again; yet while it lasted it must make the -months of suffering passed through seem happy by comparison. There had -then been nothing between them but distance and the fear of death; and -now everything was between them--everything Vera stood for; her house, -her friends, her smile, her pearls, her dream-garden. - -On morning after morning I saw Vera leading him away to it, with her -armful of books, and Chang, her Pekinese, trotting at her heels. I -perfectly understood Vera's state of mind in regard to Captain Thornton. -There was no occasion for commonplace jealousy. He merely made her feel -cheerful and rejuvenated. Everything she had to show and tell him was -new to him. She became new to herself, poor old Vera! and gained from -the quiet regard of his sane and simple eyes--handsome eyes under -straight, dark brows--a sense of freshness and worth in everything. She -liked him better than any of the wounded heroes she had yet had. Some of -them had been merely stupid, and one or two had been gloomy, sardonic -men--men of her own world, to whom nothing she had to say would seem -new. Clive Thornton was neither stupid nor sardonic, and he was simple -enough to accept Vera's fancy tricks--her talk of dreaming dreams and -solitude--as part of an angel's manner, and he was just clever enough to -be able to appreciate anything she had to say. I could quite see how -endearing Vera must find his steady gaze and his considering silences. -Even with my vigorous espousal of his wife's side I never felt angry -with him. His not seeing that she was unhappy was part of the same -innocence that made him not see that Vera was a cat. Mollie, besides, -took quite as much care to conceal her unhappiness as Vera to behave -like an angel. It never crossed his mind that his wife was relegated; it -never crossed his mind that they were separated. He did not feel -separated; they were both, as far as he knew, in fairyland together. And -yet I knew it might not all be so trivial and transient as it seemed. A -new standard was being formed for him; a new idea of what it was to be -an angel. It was possible that all unconsciously he would no longer -think of Mollie as one when he left Compton Dally; and when I took this -in I began to gather up my weapons. - -I found Mollie one afternoon sitting on the bench under the willow-tree -where we had had our first talk. She had her knitting, but her hands -were still, and she was gazing before her at the water. If she were not -a tragic figure, it was only because there are some things sadder than -tragedy. She had faced everything, been through everything, she had gone -down into the Hades where so many of us were still living, and now she -found herself baulked and menaced by commonplace daylight. Tragedy is, -in some ways, an easy thing to bear. - -"Well, what are you doing here by yourself?" I asked her, advancing. -There was a look on her face, startled and steadied, that showed me what -she had been thinking about in the fancied security of her solitude. But -she managed at once the vague smile that concealed so much, and said -that she had been, as usual, resting. "I seem to find out every day more -and more how tired I was," she added. - -"You didn't care to go with the others, motoring?" I took my place -beside her. "You'd have liked Marjorams. It's a lovely old place. Some -people think it beats Compton Dally, though, naturally, I'm not one of -them." - -"I'm sure you're not," said Mollie, laughing a little. "That was one of -the things that first struck me about you--how you loved it. I felt that -you were a fiercely loyal person." - -"I think I am--narrow loyalties, but fierce ones," I said. "But you -haven't answered my question." - -"About motoring? I don't care much about it, you know. And there really -wasn't room enough for me." - -I knew there hadn't been; but I was deliberately eschewing tact. - -"Has Captain Thornton gone?" I inquired, knowing, also, that he hadn't. - -"No; Lady Vera is reading to him in the flagged garden," said Mollie in -the voice that showed me how little she had to learn about spiritual -control. "Lady Vera is going to take him out for a run in her two-seater -before dinner. He enjoys that a great deal more than the big car." - -"It's far pleasanter, certainly," I agreed. And I went on: "They are -reading, you mean, in the dream-garden. You mustn't forget that it's a -dream-garden--where one goes to be alone." - -She looked round at me quickly, and after a moment I saw that she -faintly coloured. She said nothing, leaving it to me to follow up my -graceless gibe. I was quite ready to follow it up. - -"As a matter of fact," I said, knitting the loops along the side of my -heel, "Vera hardly ever is alone there. It's always, with Vera, a -_solitude a deux_. She's not at all the sort of woman for real solitude. -She is the sort of woman who likes to feel, or, rather, to look lonely -and not to be alone." - -To this, after a pause, Mollie said: - -"She is very charming; Clive finds her very charming." And, forced to -it, apparently, by my crudity, she added, "Aren't you fond of her, -then?" - -"No, I'm not; not particularly," I said. "Especially not just now. Vera -is not at her best, to my mind, when she is being angelic to young -married men." - -Mollie Thornton now blushed deeply. - -"I am perfectly contented that she should be angelic to Clive," she -said. - -"You are very loyal," I returned. "But you'll own that he is getting -more out of it than you are. It's a place, Compton Dally, for wounded -heroes rather than for a wounded hero's wife." - -"Do you mean," she asked after a moment, "that I oughtn't to have come?" -She had indeed owned to everything in the bewilderment of the question. -I laughed at it. - -"Oughtn't to have been with your husband at a time like this! Even Vera -could hardly ask that, could she? And that's my quarrel with her; that -it's the time of all times that you should be together and that she -never lets you see him, practically." - -She looked away, and after a moment I saw that her eyes had filled with -tears. - -"He hasn't an idea of it," she said at last. - -"That fact doesn't make you happier, does it?" - -"He thinks I'm as happy as he is. He thinks that we are together in it -all, and that she is an angel to me, too," said Mollie. "She always is -an angel to me when she sees me." - -"All men are rather stupid when it comes to knowing whether their wives -are happy," I remarked. "I think your Clive is a great dear; but I like -you best because you see things he doesn't. You, for instance, see that -Vera isn't an angel, though she may look like one." - -"He has no reason to think anything else, has he?" said Mollie, and I -saw that I had brought her to the point to which I had intended to bring -her. "I don't let him guess that I'm not happy; it would be horrid of me -if I did, for it would only mean that he'd feel at once that we must go -away, and all this loveliness would be over for him. A stuffy little -flat in Bayswater isn't a very alluring alternative; and that's where -we'd have to go--to my aunt's--till Clive was better." - -"How you'd love the stuffy flat! How glad you'd be to be there with him! -And, to do him justice, how happy he'd be there with you! He will be in -a month's time. The only question is, the month. No, Vera isn't an -angel. If she were an angel, she'd have seen to it that you were happy -here, too. But when it comes to being nice to other women,--really nice, -I mean,--she can be a cat. And what I'd like very much to see now is -what she'd make of it if you could show her that you could look like an -angel, too. It's so much a matter of looks." - -"Make of it? But I couldn't look like an angel." - -"You could look like a rival; that's another way of doing it. You could -look like another woman of her own sort. You could make her see you. She -simply doesn't see you now. I suspect that if Vera saw you and saw that -you were charming, she'd show her claws. I'd like Captain Thornton to -see her showing her claws." - -In silent astonishment, her blue eyes fixed upon me, Mollie gazed. - -"No, I don't hate Vera, if that's what you're wondering," I said. "I -like you, that's all, and I don't intend that she shall go on making you -unhappy." - -"But I don't want Clive made unhappy," Mollie said. "I can't imagine -what you mean; but, whatever it is, I don't want it. I couldn't bear all -this to be spoiled for him. I couldn't bear it not to be always, for -him, a paradise." - -It was my turn to gaze at her, and I gazed penetratingly. - -"And what if it all came to mean that you yourself, because of it, were -never to be more to him than a second-rate paradise? What if she were to -spoil you for him?" - -I brought out the cruel questions deliberately, and for a moment Mollie -faced them and me. - -"Why do you say that? How cruel to say that!" she murmured, and then -suddenly she bowed her head upon her hands. "It's been my terror. I'm -ashamed of myself for thinking it. And now--you see it!" - -I put my arm around her shoulders. - -"I'm not cruel. I only want us to see things together. I don't really -think they'd ever come to that; and, at all events, he would never know -that they had." - -"But I should," Mollie said. - -"Yes, you would. And it's horribly true that real things can be spoiled -and blighted by false things. I've often seen it happen. You do see the -danger, and you must take up the burden, my dear, of being cleverer than -your husband, and save him along with yourself. If Vera were what she -looks and seems to him, he might be right in feeling that he found in -her something he couldn't find in you. You must show him that she isn't -what she looks and seems and you must show him that you can be a -first-rate paradise, too." - -"In a little flat in Bayswater! On a chicken-farm! No, it can't be done. -Paradises of this sort don't grow in such places," poor Mollie moaned. - -"You can keep up the real paradise in them--the one he has already--when -you get there. The point is that you must show him now that you can look -like this one here. And the way to look it is to dress it. I'm sure -you've realized the absolutely supreme importance of dress for women of -the paradise type--the women you see here, all these sweet ministering -angels to the Tommies and the young husbands. I don't mean to say that, -with the exception of Vera, they're not as nice as you are in spite of -being well dressed; but I do mean that if they dressed as you do they'd -not be women of the paradise." - -Mollie's hands had fallen, and she was gazing again with eyes childlike, -astonished, and trusting. - -"But, Judith, what do you mean?" she asked. "Dress? Of course you all -dress beautifully. Haven't I loved simply looking at you all, as if -you'd been the most exquisite birds? But how could I do it? I haven't -the money; I never have had. If one has no money, one must be either -aesthetic or dowdy, and I've always prefered to be dowdy." - -"Yes, I saw that; I liked you for that. There's hope for the dowdy, but -none for the aesthetic; the one is humble, and the other is complacent. -Your clothes express renunciation simply--and the summer sales. But -though it is a question of money, some women who have masses of money -never learn how to dress. They remain mere dressmakers' formulas; and -others, with very little, can't be passed by. They count anywhere. -You've noticed my clothes. I've hardly any money, yet I'm perfect. All -my clothes mean just what I intend them to; just as Vera's mean what she -intends, and Mrs. Travers-Cray's and Lady Dighton's, and Milly's, for -Milly already is as clever as possible at knowing her thing. But you've -abandoned the attempt to intend. You've sunk down, and you let the winds -rake over you. You've always made me think of a larkspur, that blue and -silver kind, all pensive grace and delicacy; but you're a larkspur that -hasn't been staked. Your sprays don't count; they tumble anyhow, and no -one sees your shape or colour. Last night, for instance--that -turquoise-blue chiffon: not turquoise, and not that sort of chiffon." - -"I know it. I hated it," she said. - -"Of course you did, and so does any one who looks at you in it." - -"But I couldn't afford the better qualities," she appealed. "And in the -cheaper ones I couldn't get the blue I wanted, the soft Japanese blue." - -"No, you couldn't. And you thought it wouldn't show if you had it made -up on sateen. It always does show. No, it needs thought and time and -computing, too much time, too much thought, to say nothing of too much -money for many women, of course; for them it wouldn't be worth it. There -are other things to do than to live in paradise. But for you it is worth -it; to show him that you can look like an angel, and to show him that -Vera can look like a cat. No, _I'll_ show him; mine is the -responsibility. It's worth it, at all events, to me. I'll put in the -stakes, and tie you and loop you and display you. You'll see. I told you -I'd a clever little dressmaker. That's an essential. And we'll scrape up -the money. You shall be dressed for once as you intend." - -She was bewildered, aghast, tempted, and, on the top of everything, -intensely amused. Her face was lighted as I'd never seen it before with -pure mirth, and it looked like still, silver water that becomes suddenly -glimmering, quivering, eddying, and sunlit. She was charming thus -lighted. It was a sort of illumination of which Vera's face is -incapable; her gaiety is always clouded with irony. - -"It is all too kind, too astonishing, too funny for words," Mollie said. -"Of course I should love to be well dressed for once, and I can't see -why I shouldn't avail myself of your little dressmaker now,--especially -now, since, as you tell me, I offend through my dowdiness. And I do -really need some new clothes. I'm wearing out my trousseau ones, you -know. Yes; wasn't it a horrid little trousseau? But, don't you see," and -the sunlight faded, "I can't be a real, not a real angel, not a real -paradise. It's much deeper. It's a question of roots. It's the way they -smile, the way they walk, the way they know what they want to say and -what they don't want to say." - -I nodded. "You know, too, and you'd say it, if people saw you and cared -to hear what you said." - -"That would help, of course. I've never felt so stupid in my life as -here. But, oh, it's deeper!" said Mollie. "I don't belong to it. How -they all make me feel it! I'm an outsider; and why should I pretend not -to be?" - -"It wouldn't be pretending anything to dress as you'd like to dress. No -one who _sees_ is an outsider now a days, if they can contrive to make -themselves seen. That's the whole point. And there's nothing you don't -see. You see far more than Vera does. Don't bother about the roots. Take -care of the flowers, and the roots will take care of themselves; that's -another modern maxim for you. Your flowers are there, and all that we -need think of now is how to show them. Wait. You'll see. We'll go to -London to-morrow," I said; "and this very evening we'll have a talk -about your hair." - - * * * * * - -You may be sure that I was on the spot to see a week or so later my -larkspur's debut as an angel. We were all assembled in the drawing-room -before dinner, and she was a little late, as I, not she, had intended -that she should be. It was precisely the moment for a mild sensation. -The day had been hot and long. Everybody, apart from being anxious,--for -everybody was anxious, Sir Francis and Mrs. Travers-Cray with sons at -the front and Lady Dighton's husband in the Dardanelles--apart from that -ever-present strain, everybody to-day was a little jaded, blank, and -tired of one another. There reigned, as a symptom, that silence that in -the moments before dinner falls sometimes upon people who know each -other too well for surmise or ceremony. They stood about looking at the -evening newspapers; they picked up a book; they sat side by side, -knitting without speaking. Vera, sunken in a deep chair near my sofa, -yawned wearily. No one, in fact, had anything to look to before bedtime -except the stimulant of the consomme or a possible surprise in the way -of sweets. - -I had known that I could count upon Mollie not to be self-conscious when -she appeared in her new array, but I hadn't counted upon such complete -and pensive simplicity. Her eyes were on me as she entered, her husband -limping behind her, and they seemed to ask me, with a half-wistful -amusement, if she came up to my expectations. She far surpassed them. I -never saw a woman to whom it made more difference. "It," on this -occasion, was blue--the blue of a night sky and the blue of a sky at -dawn, the blue, too, of my larkspurs, lapping at the edges here and -there, as delicately as filaments of cloud crossing the sky, into white. -It made one think, soft, suave triumph that it was, of breezes over the -sea at daybreak and of a crescent moon low on a horizon and of white -shores and blue Grecian hills; at least it made me think of these -things, it and Mollie together; and with it went the alteration of her -hair--bands of folded gold swathed round and round her little head. No -one but myself had ever seen before that Mollie had the poise and -lightness of a Tanagra figure nor that the shape of her face was curious -and her eyes strange and her skin like silver; but I knew, as she -advanced down the long room, that Vera, sunken in her chair, saw it all -at last, drank in every drop of it, with an astonishment that, though it -expressed itself in no gesture, I was able to gauge from her very -stillness, her concentration of stillness, as she watched the relegated -becoming visible at last. It's not pleasant for anybody to have to own -that they've been blind and made a mistake, and Vera was specially fond -of discovering oddity and charm and of claiming and displaying and -discussing a discovery. And here was oddity and charm which she had not -only failed to discover, but had helped to obscure. Mollie was indeed -visible, and every eye was on her as she drifted quietly forward in the -evening light and sat down beside me. She was mine, and no one else's; -that was quite evident, too. - -That Captain Thornton had received something of a revelation was also -evident, though it had not probably amounted to more than seeing, and -saying, that Mollie was looking awfully well; but it expressed itself in -the fact that, instead of joining Vera, as was his wont, he came and sat -down next to Mollie on my sofa. We began to talk, and, though the -watching pause was prolonged for yet another moment, the others then -began to talk, too. It was as if, not quite knowing what had happened to -them, they were all a little cheered and exhilarated; as if they'd had -their consomme and as if the sweet had been altogether a surprise. A -spectacle of any sort has this effect upon a group of jaded people. Only -Vera kept her ominous silence. - -Dinner was announced, and we all got up. Percival, with a new alacrity, -approached Mollie,--he almost always had Mollie,--the others paired off -as usual, and Vera rose to Captain Thornton's arm. It was then that she -said, smiling thoughtfully upon Mollie: - -"Aren't you doing your hair in a new way, dear?" - -I saw from Mollie's answering smile that she was still ingenuous enough -to hope that she might win Vera's approval with that of the others, the -hope, too, that while Clive might think of herself as a first-rate -angel, he should never see Vera as a cat. - -"It is new," she said. "I've just learned how to; Judith showed me. Do -you like it?" - -Leaning on Captain Thornton's arm, Vera, with gently lifted brows, -rather sadly shook her head. - -"I suppose I don't care about fashions. It's very fashionable, isn't it? -But I loved so that great, girlish knot. People's way of doing their -hair is part of their personality to me. Judith cares so much about -fashion, I know. Do you care about fashion, Captain Thornton? Do you -like this fashionable way? You know, I can't help always thinking that -it makes women's heads look like cheeses; in napkins, you -know--Stiltons." - -It was the first scratch. Mollie, though with a little startled glance, -took it with all mildness, making no comment as Percival led her away, -Percival remarking that it was, he thought, a ripping way of doing her -hair; and I, as I went out manless, heard Captain Thornton, behind me, -saying, in answer to Vera's murmurs: - -"Yes; I see; I see what you mean. But, do you know, all the same I think -it's most awfully becoming to Mollie. It brings out the shape of her -face so." - -"What a _dear_ little face it is!" said Vera, rapidly leaving the -cheese. - -It all worked like a stealing spell. There was nothing marked or sudden -in it. No one, I think, except Vera, was aware that his or her attitude -to little Mrs. Thornton had changed. She had become visible, that was -all, and they became aware that she was not only worth looking at, but -worth talking to. At dinner that night old Sir Francis fixed his -eye-glass to observe her more than once and after dinner he joined her -in the drawing-room and talked with her till bedtime. It turned out -then that he had known her father and actually possessed one of his -pictures; had been a great admirer. Next morning he was walking with her -on the terrace before breakfast. Mollie in a blue lawn, as sprightly as -it was demure, her casque of golden hair shining in the sunlight. Lady -Dighton asked her that afternoon to come motoring with her and the -Tommies, and in the evening I heard Mrs. Travers-Cray, while she and -Mollie wound wool together, telling her about her two boys at the front. -The only person who didn't see more of Mollie was Captain Thornton; but -that, I felt sure, was because Vera was determined that he shouldn't. - -It was not for a day or two that I was able to compare notes with -Mollie. - -"Well," I said, joining her on the terrace before dinner, "_ca y est_." - -"It's extraordinary," said Mollie. "Everything is different. I myself am -different. I feel, for one thing, as if I'd become clever to match my -clothes. It would be almost humiliating to have the mere clothes make so -much difference and every one change so to me unless I could really feel -that I'd changed, too." - -"You're staked. I told you how it would be." - -"And I owe it all to you. It's a wonderfully sustaining feeling to be -staked; secure, peaceful. Such a funny change, Judith, is little Milly! -Have you noticed? She came up to me when I was walking this afternoon -and linked her arm in mine, and in ten minutes was confiding in me all -about her perplexed love-affairs, as if we'd been old friends." - -"Yes, she would. She loves to tell people about her love-affairs." - -"But I couldn't have imagined that she was really so ingenuous; for, in -a sense, she is ingenuous." - -"Exceedingly ingenuous when she isn't exceedingly sophisticated; I think -one often sees the mixture. The only thing you must be prepared for with -the Milly type is that in a week's time she may forget that she ever -confided in you and, almost, that she ever knew you. Her ingenuousness -is a form of presumptuousness." - -"Yes, I think I saw that. I'm beginning to see so many things--far more -things than I'll ever have use for on a chicken-farm, Judith." And -Mollie laughed a little. - -"And what does your husband say?" I asked. - -"Well, I've not seen much of him, you know. But I'm sure he likes it -awfully, the way I look." - -"Only Vera won't let him get at you to tell you so." - -"Oh, he sees enough of me to tell me so," said Mollie, smiling: "only it -takes him time to come to the point of saying things, and it's true that -we haven't much time." - -"And she hasn't given you any more scratches before him?" - -"Not before him." Mollie flushed a little. "It _was_ a scratch, wasn't -it? I don't think he saw that it was." - -"He will see in time. And it's worth it, isn't it, since it's to make -him see?" - -"Yes, I can bear it. She's rather rude to me now when he isn't there, -you know; but it's really less blighting to have some one see you enough -to be rude to you than to see you so little that they are affectionate. -Yet I hope she won't be too rude." - -"She can hardly bear it," I said. - -It was the next morning that Vera showed me how little she was able to -bear it. She had kept me singularly busy, as if afraid that I might wave -a magic wand even more transformingly, and she came into the study where -I was writing invitations for a garden-fete in aid of the Red Cross -fund, and after giving me very dulcetly a long list of instructions, she -went to the window and looked out for some silent moments at Mollie -sauntering up and down with Sir Francis under the blue bubble of her -parasol. - -"I suppose you dressed her when you took her up to town that day," she -then remarked. - -I had wondered how long Vera could keep under cover and I was pleased to -see her emerge. - -"Well, hardly that," I said, marking off with my pen the names of the -people on my list who were away and not to be counted on for help with -the bazaar. "She badly needed some clothes and couldn't afford expensive -places; so I took her to my little woman. She was able to carry out -Mollie's ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, hasn't she? She knows -so exactly what suits her." - -"Carry out her ideas? She hasn't an idea in her head. Carry out yours, -you mean, you funny creature. I can't conceive why you took the pains to -dress up the deadly little dowd." Vera drummed with her fingers on the -window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and -they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray, -sweet, impassive, honey-coloured woman, was one of the few people for -whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard. - -"Oh, you're mistaken there, Vera, just as you've been mistaken about her -looks," I said, all dispassionate limpidity. "She has heaps of ideas, I -can assure you, and I saw it from the beginning; just as I saw that she -was enchanting looking." - -"Enchanting! Help! Help! That little skim-milk face, with those great -calf's eyes! Who is the poor dear martyr thing who carries her eyes on a -plate? St. Lucia, isn't it? She makes me think of that--as much -expression. You may have succeeded in making her less of a dowd, but -you'll never succeed in making her less of a bore." - -"Well, Mrs. Travers-Cray doesn't find her a bore," I remarked, casting a -glance of quiet, satisfied possessorship at the group outside. - -"Oh, Leila always was an angel," said Vera, "and your little protegee -has made a very determined set at her." - -"Sir Francis is an angel, too, then. He delights in her; that's -evident." It was perhaps rather indiscreet of me to goad Vera like this, -but I could not resist taking it out of her and rubbing it into her, and -I knew that Sir Francis would vex her almost as much as Mrs. -Travers-Cray. "And look at Milly," I added. "You can't say that Milly is -an angel. The fact is that Mrs. Thornton is a very charming young woman, -and that if you don't see it you are the only person who doesn't." - -"Another person who doesn't see it is her husband," said Vera. She was -determined not to show that she was angry, but I could see how angry she -was. "Sir Francis, of course, old goose, thinks any one charming if they -are young and dress well and look at him with appealing eyes. It is her -husband I'm really sorry for. It's evident that he never spoke to a -civilized woman in his life till he came here. He doesn't show much -signs of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It's -pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first -curate's daughter they find round the corner. And now that she's pushing -herself forward like this, he is done for." Vera, I saw, was very angry -to be goaded so far. - -"Surely she is the more interesting of the two," I blandly urged. -"Neither of them has a spark of ambition if it comes to pushing; they'll -be quite happy on their chicken-farm. But if it were a question of -getting on and getting in with the right people, it would, I imagine, be -she rather than he who would count. This last day or two has made that -evident to my mind. In her soft, strange way little Mollie is unique, -whereas he is only an honest young soldier, and there are thousands more -just like him, thank goodness!" - -Vera at this turned her head and looked at me for a moment. After all, -even if I wasn't angry, I, too, had given myself away. And it evidently -pleased her to recognize this--to recognize that she wasn't being -worsted merely by Mollie's newly revealed charm, but by my diplomacy as -well. And it is rather a good mark to Vera, I think, that I don't -believe it ever crossed her mind for a moment that she had the simplest -method of speedy vengeance in her hands--had simply to send me packing. -Of course we should both have known that to use such a method would have -been to reveal one's self as crude and vulgar; yet a cattish woman who -is very angry may easily become both. Vera didn't. There are things I -always like about her. - -She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling -with cousinly good-humour: - -"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that, -Judith darling--how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he doesn't. -You are so essentially a woman's woman, aren't you? I suppose it's just -because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don't feel -drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you, -of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their -hair and the colour of their ties. You're a first-rate woman's woman, I -grant you, and you're very clever and you've succeeded in foisting your -little friend on silly Sir Francis and on Leila Travers-Cray, and it's -all rather dear and funny of you, and I've quite loved watching it all -and seeing you at work; but you won't succeed in foisting Mrs. Thornton -on her husband, and he'll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out -whether he's anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found -him,"--and Vera now spoke with a simple candour,--"quite, quite a dear; -with a great deal in him--sensitiveness, tact, flavour. So much could -have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and -started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who doesn't -know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? No; -I'm afraid Mrs. Mollie, after she's left your hands, Judith dear, will -tumble quite, quite flat again. _Would_ you mind, darling, getting all -the invitations off to-day? We mustn't be slipshod about it. And don't -forget to write to the merry-go-round man, and to Mark Hammond to see if -he'll sing." So, having delivered what she hoped might be a somewhat -stinging shaft at my complacency, Vera trailed away. - -If I hadn't so goaded her I don't believe, really, that she'd have taken -the trouble that she did take to prove herself right and me wrong. There -had been, before this, little conscious malice or intended unkindness. -But now the claws were out. During the next day or two it at once -justified and infuriated me to watch the manifold little slights and -snubs of which poor Mollie was the victim, the dexterity with which, -while seeming all sweetness, Vera essayed to belittle and discompose -her, to display her as ignorant or awkward or second-rate. Only a woman -can be aware of what another woman is accomplishing on these lines, and -though Captain Thornton once or twice showed a puzzled brow, her skill -equalled her malice, and he never really saw. I was prepared for it when -Mollie came to my study one morning and shut the door and said: - -"I'm afraid I can't stand it any longer, Judith." - -"It has been pretty bad," I said. "She's been so infernally clever, -too." - -"Our time is really nearly up," said Mollie, "and I'm trying to think of -some excuse for getting Clive to feel we'd better go before it comes. -Only now she's telling him that I am jealous of her." - -Pen in hand, I leaned back and looked up at my poor little accomplice. -This, I recognized, was indeed Vera's trump-card, but I certainly hadn't -foreseen that she would use it. - -"Has he told you so?" I asked. - -"Oh, no, he wouldn't. He couldn't, could he? But I know it. Men are very -transparent, aren't they, Judith? He is always urging me to see more of -her, and telling me that she is so kind, so clever, such a dear, and -that I'd really think so, too, if I'd try to see more of her. And when -I say that I'm sure she is, and that I hope I shall see more of her, he -thinks--I can see it--that I'm only playing up, and between us, her and -me, he is rather wretched and uncomfortable. What shall I do, Judith? -You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures, -she was really sneering at father's, and when I tried to -answer,--because I felt I had to answer about that,--making me seem so -rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he didn't -understand. And it's all the time like that. I have to pretend not to -see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns -everything against me." - -"Be patient. Give her a little more time," I said. "She'll run to earth -if you give her a little more time." - -"But it is so horrid, between Clive and me, Judith: if I say what I -think to him, he will only see it as jealousy, so even with him I have -to pretend, and it makes me feel as if I were growing to be like her, -and I can't bear it." - -I meditated while poor Mollie dried her eyes, to which the irrepressible -tears had risen. "Ask him if he can't arrange for you to see more of -her," I said presently. - -She looked at me with a general trust, yet a particular scepticism. - -"But she will make that seem as if I were trying to force myself on -them; because she's always with him, isn't she?" - -"Only now because she keeps him, not because he wants to stay. I'm quite -sure that he wants to be more with you. I think you can manage it, -Mollie. Just say, when he next urges: 'Oh, but I'd love to, Clive. Only -you must tell me when. Perhaps sometime you'd take me to the -dream-garden when you think she'll be there and that she'd care to have -me, and then, when you get us started, you could leave us. You could go -and take Judith for a stroll.' Something of that sort." - -She eyed me sadly and doubtfully. - -"I'll try whatever you tell me to try, but I feel afraid of her. I feel -as if she cared, really cared, to do me harm." - -"She's been proved wrong," I said, "and I've rather rubbed it in; but at -the worst, Mollie, she can never harm you now as there was danger of her -doing. It's better, far better, you'll own, for your husband to think -you're jealous and a naughty angel than for him to think you're a -second-rate one." With this aphorism, for the time being, she had to be -contented. I myself felt sure that the hour of reckoning was to come. - -It was next afternoon, after lunch, Vera being engaged in the -drawing-room with visitors, that I met Captain Thornton on the lawn with -his wife. Mollie was very large-eyed and rather pale, and I inferred -from her demeanour that she had taken a step or made a move of some -kind. - -"Do come with us, Miss Elliot," said Captain Thornton. "I'm just taking -Mollie along to the dream-garden. She wants to have a little talk, all -to herself, with Lady Vera, and Lady Vera told me to wait for her there -till these people were gone; so it's just the thing. And you and I can -leave them together, do you see? People never get really to know each -other unless they are alone together, do they?" - -"No, they don't," I replied. "Though sometimes they never get to know -each other when they are alone together," I couldn't resist adding; but -as I saw a slight bewilderment on his honest face I indulged in no -further subtleties, and made haste to add, "Does Vera know that you were -going to arrange a meeting?" - -"Oh, not a bit of it. That's just the point," said the guileless young -man. "I want her to think that it's all Mollie's doing, you know; -because she's got it into her head that Mollie doesn't really care about -her. Funny idea, isn't it? As if Mollie could be like that to any one -who's been as kind to us as Lady Vera has! But I'm sure that if they -have a few quiet talks it will all come right. Mollie is so -undemonstrative; I told her that. It needs time for her to get used to -anybody." - -Mollie, her arm within her husband's, cast across his unconscious breast -a grave, deep glance upon me as he thus quoted his defence of her. What -was she to do with Vera, the glance perhaps asked me, too, now that she -was to have her? What account of the interview would Vera serve up to -Clive? Was not her last state to be worse than her first? I tried, in my -answering glance, to reassure and sustain, yet I myself felt uncertainty -about this fulfilment of my counsel. - -We reached the dream-garden. Vera and Captain Thornton had been there -for most of the morning, and books and papers were piled on the seat -where the grey and purple cushions denoted attitudes of confident -tete-a-tete. - -Captain Thornton and I talked about the war, and I saw, with a mild, -reminiscent irony, remembering Vera's sting, that he was perfectly -prepared to give me every opportunity for judging him. I felt, indeed, -though Vera had so absorbed him, that he had never cared to talk about -the war with her. She and the other angels were there to help one to -forget, but with me he was glad to remember. It was I who heard Vera's -swift footfall approaching. Captain Thornton, stooping to mark out with -books and pencils the plan of a battle, had, I think, almost forgotten -the coming interview, and until Vera appeared among the cypresses, -flushed above her pearls, he remained unaware. She stood there at the -top of the steps for a moment, looking down at us, at Captain Thornton -and me, our heads so close together, and at Mollie in her blue and with -her unrevealing little face, and I saw from her expression, as she took -us all in, that she had not been succeeding so well with Captain -Thornton as Mollie and even I had feared. It was a smouldering -irritation against him that flared up with her anger against Mollie and -me. - -"Oh!" she said, a dreadfully significant monosyllable on Vera's -competent lips. It expressed surprise and weariness and the slight -embarrassment of the civilized confronted with the barbarian. "Oh!" she -repeated, and she descended the steps, Chang trotting after her with his -countenance of quizzical superciliousness. "I'm so very, very sorry." -She did not look at any of us now; her voice was exceedingly -inarticulate and exceedingly sweet. "I'm afraid there's been a mistake. -It's the other gardens that are for my friends. I'm charmed always to -see them there. And there are so many other gardens, aren't there? But -this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to -be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired." - -We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those -weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook -them into place. - -"It's my fault," Clive stammered. "I mean--I didn't understand. I -thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know -you better, and I suggested this." - -Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang -sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. "I'm very, very -sorry," she gurgled, with oh, such vagueness! "It's my one corner. My -one place to be alone. I don't see people here unless I've asked them to -come." She took up a review and opened it, and her eyes scanned its -pages. - -We were dismissed,--"thrown out," as the Americans say,--and we -retreated up the steps, Mollie helping Clive, and down the flagged path -and out into the lime-tree alley. - -It was a display so complete that it left me, indeed, a little abashed -by the success of my manoeuvres, while at the same time I felt that I -mustn't let Captain Thornton discern the irrepressible smile that -quivered at the corners of my mouth. When we were out on the lawn he -turned his startled eyes on me. - -"Really, you know, I'd no idea, Miss Elliot--what?" He appealed to me. - -"That Vera could lose her temper?" I asked. - -Clive continued to stare. - -"It comes to that, doesn't it? What else can it mean?" He looked now at -his wife. "To speak like that to you, Mollie! And when she's been saying -she wanted so awfully to make real friends with you." - -Mollie, I saw, was dismayed. The triumph had been too complete. She -could not keep up with it. - -"I am sure that Lady Vera is very badly overwrought about something," -she said. "She wanted particularly to be alone and she found us there, -and it put her on edge." Actually she was trying to patch up his fallen -angel for him. - -"But she told me to wait there for her.--Sent me off to wait for her -when those people came," said Clive. "It seems to me that it was you she -minded finding. And yet she's been going on about your never coming to -talk to her. She's been going on about it like anything." He caught -himself up, blushing, and I saw that Vera was all revealed to him. I -hardly needed to pluck another pinion from her, though I didn't resist -the temptation to do so, saying: - -"You see, Vera is rather jealous. She can't bear sharing things--her -friends of her dream-garden. She liked to have you there, but she didn't -like to have Mollie there. Did she tell you she wanted to make friends -with Mollie? She's never taken any pains to show it, has she?" - -"Oh, please, Judith!" Mollie implored. - -"But he sees it all now, Mollie, so why shouldn't I say it?" I inquired. -"Her point has been, Captain Thornton, to keep you in and to keep Mollie -out, and she very nearly succeeded in doing it." - -"Please, Judith! It's not only that. She's been such a real friend to -you, Clive! I'm sure she is overwrought about something, and it will be -all right when you next meet her." But Mollie pleaded in vain. - -"I'm hanged if it will be all right!" said Captain Thornton. - -Vera made no attempt to reinstate herself. It was part of her strength -never to try to recover what was lost. She kept up appearances, it is -true, but that was for her own sake rather than in any hope, or even -wish, to regain his good opinion. When we all met at tea, she came -trailing in, with Chang under her arm, and as she sank into her place, -diffusing the suavest unconsciousness, she said to Mrs. Travers-Cray: - -"Charlie Carlton's been killed, have you heard? This war is something -more than I can bear." - -Charlie Carlton, as I knew, was a cousin of the recent callers and a -most remote friend of Vera's; but it was the best that she could do for -the occasion, and all that she was inclined to do, though a melancholy -smile, as impersonal as it was impartial, was turned more than once on -Captain Thornton and Mollie as she inquired whether they liked sugar in -their tea or had enough cream. She had made their tea for six weeks now, -and after the first week she had never forgotten that they both liked -sugar and both disliked cream. But she thus washed her hands of intimacy -while keeping up the graces of hostess-ship. They might have arrived -that afternoon. - -Mollie and her husband rose beautifully to the situation, for their last -two days at Compton Dally; that is, Mollie rose, for the husband at such -times has only to follow and be silent. I don't think that she could -have shown a grace and a distance as achieved as Vera's had it not been -for those charming clothes of hers. You must have something to rise from -if you are to float serenely above people's heads; otherwise you merely -stand on tiptoe, very uncomfortably. Mollie and Vera might have been -two silken balloons, passing and repassing suavely in the dulcet summer -air. And on the last day Vera's sense of dramatic fitness prompted her, -evidently, to the most imperturbable _volte-face_: she showed to Mollie -a marked tenderness. To Captain Thornton she was kind, perfectly kind, -but that she found him rather dull was evident. It might have been -Mollie with whom she had spent all those hours in the dream-garden. - -"Must you really go, dear?" she asked. - -Mollie said that she was afraid they must. She had heard from her aunt, -who was waiting to take them in, and, owing to all Vera's kindness, -Clive was now quite strong again. Vera did not insist. - -"I've _so_ loved getting to know you!" she said, holding Mollie's hand -at the door of the motor on the morning of their departure. "It's been -_such_ a pleasure. You must often, often come to Compton Dally again. -_Good_-bye, dear!" - -But Mollie knew, and Vera knew that she knew, that never again would -they be asked to Compton Dally. Meanwhile, if the war isn't over and -Jack hasn't come back, I'm to go and stay with them next spring on the -chicken-farm. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -EVENING PRIMROSES - - -IT had been a hot day and there seemed to be thunder in the air, but she -was afraid there would be no rain that night. The abandoned garden -needed it sadly; though, as she reflected, rain would encourage weeds -rather than the few remaining flowers. Poppies had sown themselves -everywhere, degenerates of the Shirleys which, three years ago, had -spread their silken cups in the large bed at the foot of the lawn. Their -withered stalks cracked beneath her steps in the paths and glimmered -under the unpruned branches of the cordon apple trees. There were -thistles, too, sorrel, and tall nettles, a matted carpet of bindweed and -groundsel in the little kitchen-garden, once so neat, and, of course, as -poor Charlie had predicted, the Michaelmas daisies had eaten up nearly -everything in the herbaceous border. That was one of the last questions -he had written to her: "How are my pink phloxes? Have the Michaelmas -daisies smothered them?" They had. It was the season at which the -phloxes should be in fullest flower, but not one was to be seen; the -dense, fine foliage of the daisies had advanced in a wall of green -nearly to the border's edge. - -It was still oppressively warm. A toad hopped indolently away and -paused at the box edging, lying up against it, his front feet extended, -as if so wearied by the heat that he took his chances of discovery. She -stopped to look at the clumsy creature, in which so little of nature's -accurate grace was expressed; and as she stood there, a sudden rustle in -the box betrayed another inhabitant--this time a baby hedgehog which, -too young for fear, moved busily about among the flat dandelion plants -that rosetted the path, and even, encountering the tips of her shoes, -stopped to examine them carefully before moving on again. The baby -hedgehog would have amused Charlie. He had always been delightful about -animals; he and the boys had always had that great interest in common. - -Yes, the bird-boxes were still there. She could see one in the big apple -tree and one fixed to the porch of the house, under the rose. How well -she remembered the frantic delight that hailed the hatching of the first -brood of tits. And the day when Charlie had deemed it prudent to -withdraw the door for a peep at the beautifully fitted mosaic of bright -little heads and bodies within, lifting up Giles in his holland pinafore -for a long, blissful gaze. Six years ago that must have been. - -The light was altering now, and when she turned at the end of the path, -a great moon had risen across the lane and seemed to hang in the -branches of the walnut tree that grew in the field beyond. A great, -shining, heavy moon, and mournful, it seemed to her; her desolate -thoughts, she was aware, lending their colour to everything. Heavy, -mournful, desolate; that was the rhythm of her own steps passing along -in the twilight, pursued by the unformulated consciousness that lay -behind all these pictures of the past; pausing at last, as if to let the -dogging sorrow overtake her, as she came to where, near the -summer-house, against the wall, the evening primroses grew. - -It was years since Charlie had first planted them there, and she had -said to herself at the time that they would never be rid of them, -tenacious, recurrent things, sowing themselves patiently, and coming up -loyally even when there was no one to wish them well. She felt touched -by their presence; for though she had always found them untidy and -uninteresting, she saw, really now for the first time, that they could -be beautiful. Homely, loyal flowers; yet--was it the invading sense of -sorrow colouring them, too?--a little uncanny, showing at this neutral -hour of mingled dusk and moonlight their pale, evident gold; becoming -conscious, as it were, becoming personal at the time when other flowers -became invisible. Not that it was a sinister uncanniness; not that of -ghosts; of fairies, rather; the very strangeness, sadness, sweetness of -the moon, to which, from them, she lifted her eyes. And they reminded -her of something, but what, she could not say. Not of Charlie. There had -never been anything strange or sad about Charlie, except the fact, -pursuing her now in his deserted garden, that he was dead and would -never see it again. - -It was a year to-day since he had been killed, and she had come down to -the country with the sense of commemoration. She wanted, alone in the -little place so full of thoughts of him, to find him, to recall him; and -she had been doing that at every turn. Yet the evening primroses shining -there brought a pang deeper than any vision of him. They, though so -homely, seemed to personify loneliness; they seemed to be missing -something; and although she was desolate because Charlie was dead, -because he would never again delight in his garden, it was, in a sense, -for him rather than for herself that she sorrowed, and, in a sense, she -did not miss him at all. - -She stood still in the path, her hands clasped behind her, her head -bent, a personification of widowhood in her thin black draperies, her -intent, memorial poise. And she could have said of herself with truth -that, during all this year, she had known only a widow's sad -preoccupations. There had been the settling of business matters; lawyers -and bankers to interview; planning for the boys, with school-masters to -visit; and the tending of bereaved relations--Charlie's dear old parents -clung to her. But now, on the day of his death, it was as if for the -first time she had had leisure, at last, to realize that, with it all, -she had never had the widow's heart. She had grieved over him; she had -longed to do all for him that could be done--there was nothing new in -that; but it was far worse than not being heartbroken: it was the sorry -fact that she did not even miss him. He had left, as it were, no -emptiness behind him. - -She had lifted her head and looked round the garden, trying, in the -physical fact of absence, to summon the spiritual void. How he had -planned, dug, planted it; pruned his fruit trees; placed his anemones in -leaf-mould, his bulbs on sand. She saw his kindly, handsome figure -everywhere; his brown cheek, good grey eye, and close-cropped, tawny -hair. A manly, simple creature; the salt of the earth, as honest as the -day--oh, she saw it all; she had said it to herself a hundred times; and -there had, indeed, been nothing one could say against Charlie. But then, -as a wife, there had been nothing to say against her, either; he had -been perfectly happy with her--the happiest creature, even in the manner -of his death. He had been killed instantaneously, while walking, on a -sunny day, beside his men along a road in France. Every letter she had -had from his brother officers over there spoke of his gaiety and good -spirits. The war itself had, on the whole, meant happiness to him, for -all his gravity over certain of its tragedies. But he had been almost as -grave over mischances with his Boy Scouts, and it had all remained for -him an immense, magnificent form of boy-scouting. - -Dear, good Charlie! Yet--was it possible that something of the old -long-conquered exasperation could still, at this hour, thrust itself -into her memories? He had not been quite boyish enough to justify his -lightness and make it loveable. That had been the final fundamental -trouble in their mistaken marriage; she had not been able to mother him. -He had not been appealing, beguiling, endearing, like a child. Not like -a child; not boyish, fatherly, rather; even, playfully didactic, and -assuming always that theirs was a completely reciprocal marital -intimacy. It had not been his fault, of course. She had been too clever -ever to let him guess how stupid she found him. She felt the possessive -arm laid about her shoulders for an evening stroll; saw the wag of his -premonitory finger as he raised himself from a border to call out a -jocose reprimand; heard the chaff with which, before friends, he counted -her mistaken opinions. - -And it had been when they were alone, especially at dinner,--Charlie -across the table from her in his faultless black and white,--that the -pressure of their distance had been most difficult to protect him from. -He talked then, and she had to answer adequately. He was fond of talk, -and, while the most uncritical of Conservatives, was full of solutions -for old ills. He took Trade-Unionists, Home-Rulers, and Dissenters -playfully and held them up to kindly ridicule. "You can laugh most -people out of their nonsense," was one of Charlie's maxims; and if they -didn't respond to the treatment,--he had tried it unsuccessfully on the -village cobbler who preached in the tin chapel on Sunday,--he suspected -them of being rather wicked. - -In the first year of their marriage she had paid him the compliment of -disagreement, or, at least, discrimination. She had, until her marriage, -thought of herself as a Conservative; to be counted one by Charlie -disturbed her sense of rectitude. But Charlie opposed, became puzzled, -and finally aggrieved. He bothered and bothered and argued and argued, -with the air of trying to bring an erring child to reason. "Now look at -it in this light," he would say. Or, "Try to see the thing squarely, -Rosamund"; and would turn upon her irrelevant batteries from the -_Spectator_. She had at last the sensation of flying, battered and -breathless, from his platitudes, and found, soon, her only refuge in -duplicity. After that, through all the years of their married life, -Charlie, she knew, thought of their evening hours alone together as -exceedingly pleasant and successful. He wasn't one of your fellows who -doze over the _Field_ with a cigar after dinner. He had a clever wife -and he appreciated her and was proud--in spite of feminine aberrations -affectionately recognized and checked--of what he called her -"intellects." He called his father and mother his "respected -progenitors" and his stomach was never other than "Little Mary." And -while he talked and expounded and made his unexacting jests, Rosamund -knew that her silences had no provocation, her smile no irony. - -So it had gone on--so it might have gone on for the normal span of life. -The only insecurity that had threatened her careful edifice was the -question of the boys. The boys were like herself, or, rather, like her -adored and brilliant father--proud, sensitive, ardent little creatures, -tender-hearted and frightfully intelligent. Physically, too, they were -of a different race from Charlie, with thick brown locks, passionate yet -gentle eyes, and full, small, closely closing mouths. As boys, Charlie -had fairly well understood them,--he got on well with the average -boy,--as persons, never; and though as boys, at least as little boys, -they got on beautifully with him, they had, as persons, almost at once -understood him, even when they were too young to evade or hide from him. -If they had not been so young, they would, already, then, have hurt him -often. - -And for her the boys at once complicated everything. It had been easy, -in one way, to yield in non-essentials, though she was woman enough to -cry her eyes out when Charlie had taken Philip and Giles, at the -earliest age, to have their dear Jeanne-d'Arc heads close-cropped in -pursuit of the ideal of manliness; easy, comparatively, to steel her -heart when timid little Philip, blanched with terror, was made to ride -at six. Charlie had been right about that,--how glad she had been to -own it!--for Philip had, in a week's time, forgotten his fears. But she -and Charlie had come near quarrelling over Giles's rag-doll Bessie. -Giles was only three and adored Bessie, and Charlie had tossed her in -the air, mocked her, and held her up by the toe while Giles sobbed -convulsively. - -"Do you really want our boys to be milksops, Rosamund?" he had asked, -as, refusing to argue, she took the doll from him, placed her in Giles's -arms, and kept them both on her lap, pressed within her arms, her head -bent down over them so that she need not look at her husband. He had -gone away vanquished, and Giles had kept his Bessie, until, in the -course of nature, she had dropped away from him. - -Worse than this came one day when Charlie had found Philip in a corner -writing poetry. He had not been altogether pleased by the children's -literary tastes. To grind dutifully at Latin and Greek was one thing, -and he was fond of a tag from Tennyson. But he had never cared to read -Keats and Shelley when he was a kid. He took the copy-book out of -Philip's reluctant hands and, turning from page to page, read out, in -mock-dramatic tones, the derivative, boyish efforts, which yet, to her -ear, had every now and then their innocent, bird-like note of reality. - -"And now this--'To a Skylark,'" said Charlie, laying a restraining, -affectionate hand on Philip's shoulder, wishing him to rise superior to -vanity and join in the fun, once it was pointed out to him. - - "'Glad creature from the dew upspringing - And through the sky your path upwinging!' - -Up, up, pretty creature!" - -Philip, twisting round under his father's arm, burst into tears of rage, -tore the book from his hand and struck him. - -It had been a terrible moment, and Rosamund, reduced as she almost was -to Philip's condition, had never more admired her husband, who, turning -only rather pale, had walked away, saying, "I think you'll be sorry for -that when you think it over, old fellow." That he had been astonished, -cut to the quick, she had seen, feeling it all for him at the moment of -her deepest feeling for Philip. - -"I'm not sorry! I'm not sorry!" Philip had sobbed, rushing to her arms -and burying his head on her breast. "I'm not sorry! He's stupid! stupid! -stupid!" - -"Hush, hush," she had said--what a horrid moment it had been! "That is -wrong and conceited of you, Philip. You must learn to take a little -chaffing. You know how your father loves you." - -"It's not conceited! It's not conceited to care about what one tries to -do. You know it's not. _You're_ not stupid!" the boy had sobbed. - -Alas, it had been only four years ago; only a year before the war! Even -then, at nine, Philip had been old enough, when he recovered from his -weeping, to know that he had hurt her most, had made things difficult -for her; and he had been sorry about his father, too, going to him -bravely with a tremulous, "Please forgive me, father." "That's all -right, old boy," Charlie had said. It _was_ all right, too, in a sense. -It left not a trace in the sweetness of Charlie's nature. It was Philip -who had been shaken, frightened to the very core, by what his own -outburst had revealed to himself and to her. The boy would always have -felt affection for his father; but he, too, would soon have protected -him; he, too, would hardly miss him. - -The moon had now risen far up out of the walnut branches, and flooded -the garden with sorrowful brightness. Poor, poor Charlie! was that all -it came to, then, for him? this deserted garden and a wife and children -who hardly missed him? Why, was it not the very heart of his tragedy for -her to see that they would be happier without him? "And he _was_ a -dear," she said to herself, remembering with an almost passionate -determination kind, trustful looks and the happy love of fifteen years -ago. - -She had been standing still all this while, near the evening primroses; -but now, with the great sigh that lifted her breast, she moved forward -again, and a bird, disturbed in its rest, flew out from the thick tangle -of honeysuckle at the entrance to the summer-house, startling her. As -she stopped, her eyes drawn to the spot, she saw, suddenly, that a pale -figure was sitting in the summer-house, closely shrunken to one side; -hoping in its stillness,--that was apparent,--to remain undiscovered. -Ever since she had entered the garden it must have been sitting there; -and ever since she had entered the garden it must have been watching -her. But why? How strange! - -Dispelling a momentary qualm, she stooped her head under the honeysuckle -and entered; and then, clearly visible, with her pale hair and face,--as -pale, as evident as an evening's primrose,--the girl sitting there, -wide-eyed, revealed, with her identity, that haunting analogy of a -little while ago. Of course, it came in a flash now, that was what they -reminded her of. Long ago she had thought--conceding them their most -lovable association--that Pamela Braithwaite looked like an evening -primrose. - -"My dear Pamela," she said, almost as gently as she would have said it -to a somnambulist; for, like the flowers, again, she was sad, even -uncanny; although Pamela's uncanniness too,--sweet, homely -creature,--could never be sinister. She put a hand upon her arm, for the -girl had started to her feet. - -"Oh--do forgive me, Mrs. Hayward!" Pamela gasped. Sad? It was more than -that. She was broken, spent with weeping. "I didn't know you were -coming. I sit here sometimes in the evenings. I thought you wouldn't -mind." - -"My dear child, why should I mind? I'm thankful to you for coming to the -sad little place. It's much less lonely to think about, for you have -always been so much of our life here." - -This, she knew, was an exaggeration; but she must be more than kind to -such grief as this: she must find some comfort, if that were possible. - -And to feel herself accepted, welcomed, did give comfort; for, sinking -again on the seat, bending her face on her hands, Pamela sobbed, "Oh, -how kind you are!" - -"Poor child, poor, poor child!" said Rosamund. She was only five years -older, but she felt as a mother might feel towards the stricken girl. -She put an arm around her, murmuring, "Can you tell me what it is? Don't -cry so, dear Pamela." - -Pamela Braithwaite had been a girl of eighteen when they had come, in -the first year of their marriage, to Crossfields. The Braithwaites lived -a mile away, near the river, a large, affectionate, desultory family, -in a large, dilapidated house. Already Pamela mothered the younger -brood, and mothered the widowed father as well--a retired tea-planter, -who had brought from Ceylon some undefined but convenient complaint that -enabled him to pass the rest of his days wrapped in a number of coats, -eating very heartily, and, as he expressed it, "sitting about." A -peaceful, idle man, legs outstretched in sun or firelight, hat-brim -turned down over his eyes (he had a curious way, even in the house, of -almost always wearing his hat), pipe between his teeth; good-looking, -too, tall and fair, like his daughters, and with a touch in his -appearance, though not in his character, of amicable distinction. - -Pamela, except for a brother already married and in Ceylon, was the -eldest, with a long gap between her and the group of younger brothers, -of whom Rosamund thought mainly as a reservoir of Boy Scouts until they -had had to be thought of as a reservoir of volunteers. There were three -or four younger sisters, too, some of whom had married and some of whom -had gone forth into the world--always with an extreme light-heartedness -and confidence--as companions or secretaries. These again were hardly -individualized in Rosamund's recollection, except for the fact that, -since Pamela was always making blouses or trimming hats for them, she -had become aware that it was Phyllis who wore pink and Marjory blue. - -But whoever went, Pamela always stayed; and even when the war broke upon -the world, with Frank, the Braithwaite baby, just old enough to enlist, -and Phyllis and Marjory at once enrolling themselves as V.A.D.'s, Pamela -remained rooted. Who, indeed, had she gone, would have taken care of -Mr. Braithwaite, and of the brothers and sisters home on leave, and of -the garden earnestly dedicated to potatoes, or the small family of -Ceylon nephews and nieces deposited continually in her charge by their -parents? - -Poor little Pamela! She had had a burdened life; the assiduities of -maternity and none of its initial romance. With her large, clear eyes, -very far apart, she had always a wistful look; but it was that of a -child watching a game and waiting for its turn to come in, and no -creature could have given less the impression of weariness or routine. -For she had remained, even at thirty-three, the merely bigger sister; an -atmosphere of schoolroom tea and the nurture of rabbits and guinea-pigs -still hanging about her; her resource and cheerfulness seeming concerned -always with the organizing of games, the care of pets, and the soothing -of unimportant distresses. Tall, in her scant tweed skirts, her -much-repaired white blouse, her slender feet laced into heavy boots, -gardening gloves on her hands, so Rosamund had last seen her, a year -ago, just before Charlie had been killed, when she had straightened -herself from moulding potatoes in the lawn borders and had come forward -with her pretty smile to greet her visitor and take her in to tea. Frank -had been killed since then, as well as Charlie, but at that time, for -both households, the war was splendid adventure rather than sorrow. - -Mr. Braithwaite, in the sunny, shabby drawing-room, had stumbled up -among his wrappings, to point out to her his accurate flags, advancing -or retreating on the many maps that were pinned upon the walls. Frank's -last letter had been read to her, and Dick's and Eustace's; and Pamela -had come in and out, helping the maid with the tea (the Braithwaite -maids were always as cheerful and desultory as the family, and Rosamund -never remembered seeing one of them who had not her cap askew or her -cuffs untied), standing to butter the bread herself, the side of the -loaf before cutting the slice, after her old schoolroom fashion; her -discreet yet generous use of the butter--the crust covered to a nicety -and no lumps on the crumb--seeming to express her, as did the pouring -out of the excellent tea, drawn to a point and never over, and the -pleasant, capacious cups with their gilt rims and the immersed rose -which, as one drank, discovered itself at the bottom. - -A sweet, old-fashioned, homely creature; like the evening primroses; -like them, obliterated, unnoticed in daylight; and like them now, -becoming visible, becoming personal, even becoming tragic at this -nocturnal hour; for was this really Pamela, sweet, prosaic Pamela, -sobbing so broken-heartedly beside her? How meagre, intellectual, and -unsubstantial her own grief seemed to Rosamund as she listened, almost -aghast, her arm about Pamela's shoulders; and her instinct told her: "It -is a man. It is some one she loves--not Frank, but some one she loves -far more--who is dead. It is something final and fatal that has broken -her down like this." And aloud she repeated: "Can you tell me, Pamela -dear? Please try to tell me. It may help you to tell." Her own heart was -shaken and tears were in her own eyes. - -Between her sobs Pamela answered, "I love him--I love him so much. He is -dead. And sometimes I can't bear it." - -Rosamund had never heard of a love-affair. But these years of war had -done many things, had found out even the hidden Pamelas. - -"I didn't know.--My poor child!--I never heard. Were you engaged?" - -She had Pamela's ringless hand in hers. - -"No! No! It wasn't that. No--I've never had any one like that. No one -ever knew. He never knew." Pamela lifted her head. Her face seemed now -only a message emerging from the darkness; shadowed light upon the -shadow, it was expression rather than form. "May I tell you?" she said. -"Can you forgive my telling you--here and now,--and to-night, when -you've come to be with him? It was Mr. Hayward I loved. I've always -loved him. He has been all my life. Ever since you first came here to -live." - -Rosamund gazed at her, and through all her astonishment there ran an -undertone of accomplished presage. Yes, that was it, of course. Had she -not been feeling it, seeking it all the evening?--or had it not been -seeking her? Here it was, then, the lacking emptiness. Desolate voids -seemed to open upon her in Pamela's shadowy eyes. She tightly held the -ringless hand and felt, presently, that she pressed it against her heart -where something pierced her. Was it pity for Pamela? or for Charlie? -This was his; had always been his. And Pamela, who had had nothing, had -lost everything. "My dear!" she murmured. - -"Oh, how kind you are!" said Pamela. She sat quiet, looking down at -their two hands held against Rosamund's heart. And with all the -austerity of her grief she had never been more childlike in Rosamund's -eyes. Like a child, once the barriers of shyness were down and trust -established, she would confide everything. - -Rosamund knew how it must help her to confide. "Tell me if you will," -she said. "I am glad you loved him, if it has not hurt you too much. You -understand, don't you, that I must be glad--for him?" - -"Yes, oh, yes; I understand. How beautiful of you to see it all!--Even -though it's so little, it is his; something he did; and so you must -care. But I don't think there's much to tell; nothing about him that you -don't know." - -"About you, then. About what he was to you." - -"That would simply be my whole life," said Pamela. "It's so wonderful of -you to understand and not to blame me. So many people would have thought -it wrong; but it came before I knew what it was going to be, and I never -can feel that it was wrong. He never knew. And even if he had, it -couldn't have made any difference. It must be because of that that I can -tell you. If you hadn't been so happy, if it hadn't been so perfect--for -you and him--I don't think that I could have told. I should just have -rushed away when you came in and hidden from you." - -"Why?" asked Rosamund after a moment. She heard something in her own -voice that Pamela would not hear. - -"I don't quite know why," said Pamela; "but don't you feel it too? -Perhaps if it hadn't been so perfect, even my little outside love might -have hurt you--or troubled you--to hear about. But I see now that you -are the only person in the world who could care to hear. It is a comfort -to tell you. I am so glad you came." Pamela turned her eyes upon her -and it was almost with her smile. "When I see you like this I can -believe that he is here, listening with you, and sorry for me, too." - -How like an evening primrose she was! Rosamund could see her clearly -now: the candid oval of the face, the eyes, the innocent, child forehead -with thick, fair hair falling across it. - -"Yes. Go on," she said, smiling back. - -She was not worthy of Pamela, and poor Charlie was not worthy of her; -but no human being is worthy of a flower. And though so innocent, she -was not stupid; subtlety like a fragrance was about her as she said, -"You can comfort me because you have so much to comfort with." - -"So much grief, or so much remembered happiness?" - -"They go together, don't they?" said Pamela. "Every sort of fulness. But -I needn't try to get it clear. You understand. I always thought that -perhaps people who had fulness couldn't; now I see that I was mistaken." - -"Have you been very unhappy, dear child?" - -"Until now? While he was here? Oh, no, I have been lonely. Even before -he came, even though my life was so crowded, it was rather lonely. I -never had any one of my own, for myself. But afterwards, even if I felt -lonely, I was happy. At least, after just at first. Because, just at -first, it was miserable, for I couldn't help longing to see him more and -to have him like me more, and that made me understand that I was in love -with him, and I was frightened. I can't explain clearly about it, even -to myself. But I was very, very unhappy. Perhaps you remember the time -when I was twenty, and got so run down, and they sent me to Germany to -my old governess--the only time I ever went away from home, out of -England. It was a miserable time. I tried not to think of him and not to -care. But I had to come back, and he was there, and I knew I couldn't -stop caring, and that all I could do about it was to try to be better -because of him,--you know,--and make people happier, and not think of -myself, but of him and them. And everything changed after that. I was -never frightened any more, and though perhaps it wasn't exactly -happiness, it was, sometimes, I believe, almost better. I can't explain -it, but what I mean is in some poetry. I never cared much about poetry -till he came. Then I seemed to understand things I'd never understood -before, and to feel everything that was beautiful. - -"You remember how dear he was to us all--to the boys and me. I always -shared in everything they did. Every bit of this country is full of him; -I could never bear to go away and leave it. I want always to stay here -till I die.--Flowers and birds--wasn't he wonderful about them? And our -walks in the woods! He saw everything, and made us see it. I never woke -in the morning without thinking, Will he come to-day? What will he say -and do? I was never tired of watching him and listening to him. All his -little ways--you know. When I pleased him,--sometimes I saw the bird we -were watching for first, or caught my trout well,--it was a red-letter -day. And in big things--to feel I should have pleased him if he'd known. -It was he who helped me in every way, without knowing it. And I took -more and more joy in you. At first I had felt dreadfully shy with -you--and afraid of you. You were so clever, with all your books and -music and friends, and you didn't seem to need anything. But afterwards -you were so kind, that, though I was always shy, I was not frightened -any longer. I used to think about you so much, and imagine what he felt -about you--and you about him.--You won't mind my saying it, I know. -Perhaps you remember the way I used so often, in the evenings, to walk -past with the children, and say good-night over the wall. That was to -see you and him walking together. You were so beautiful! You are far and -far away the most beautiful person I've ever known. I always noticed -everything you wore, and how your hair was done. I was glad when you -took it down from the knot and had it all at the back, as you do now. -And the lovely pale blue dress, with the little flounces--do you -remember?--a summer dress of lawn. I did love that. And the white linen -coats and skirts, and the big white hat with the lemon-coloured bow. -Your very shoes--those grey ones you always had, with the low heels and -little silver buckles. No one had such lovely clothes. And the way you -poured out tea and looked across the table at one. Always like a -beautiful muse--you don't mind my saying it?--a little above everything, -and apart, and quietly looking on.--How I understood what he felt for -you! I felt it, too, I think, with him." - -Yes, dear flower and child, she had: offering to Charlie that last -tribute of a woman's worship, the imaginative love of the woman he -loves; cherishing the cruelly sweet closeness of that piercing -community. How she had idealized them both. How she had idealized -Charlie's love. Charlie had never seen her like this. Charlie had never -dreamed of her as a muse, above, apart, and quietly watching. Why, with -Pamela's Charlie she herself could almost have been in love! - -"What did you talk about, you and he," she asked, "when you were -together?" Their sylvan life, Pamela's and Charlie's, was almost as -unknown to her as that of the birds they watched. She had almost a soft -small hope that perhaps Pamela could show her something she had missed. -"Did you ever talk about poetry, for instance?" - -"No; never about things like that," Pamela answered. "He talked more to -the boys than to me; he talked to us all together--about what we were -doing. But I used to love listening to him when he came and talked to -father. Politics, you know; and the way things ought to be done. He was -a great deal discouraged, you remember, by the way they _were_ being -done. All those unjust taxes, you know. He wanted, he used always to -say, to _give_ to the poor himself; he _loved_ taking care of them. But -he hated that his money should be taken from him like that, against his -will. And he always, always foresaw the war; always knew that Germany -was plotting, and how England swarmed with spies. He thought we ought to -have declared war upon her long ago and struck first.--I'm rather glad -we didn't, aren't you? because then, in a way, we should have been in -the wrong rather than they; but of course he felt it as a statesman, not -like an ignorant woman.--You think Germany plotted, too?" - -"Yes, oh, yes." How glad Rosamund was to be able to think it, to be -able, here, with a clear conscience, to remember that, on the theme of -Germany's craft and crime, she and Charlie had thought quite -sufficiently alike. "But I am with you about not striking first." - -"Are you really?" There was surprise in Pamela's voice. She did not -dwell on the slight perplexity. "Of course, he always worsted father if -he disagreed. It was rather wicked of me, but I couldn't help enjoying -seeing father worsted. He'd never thought things out, as Mr. Hayward -had. But that's what he talked about--things like that--and you." - -"Me?" Rosamund's voice was gentle, meditative--her old voice of the -encounters with Charlie. How she could hear him through all Pamela's -candid recitative! - -"He was always thinking about you. 'My wife says so and so. My wife -agrees with me about it. I brought my wife last night to see it as I -do.' Oh, you were with him in everything! It was so beautiful to see and -hear! I used to imagine that the Brownings were like that--after I read -their lives. He was a sort of poet, wasn't he? Any one so loving and so -happy is a sort of poet--even if they don't write poetry. Down in the -meadows one day, when we were watching lapwings, he and I and the -boys,--he wanted to show us a nest; you know how difficult they are to -find,--you passed up on the hillside, with Philip and Giles. We could -see you against the larchwood, they in their holland smocks and you in -white, with the white-and-yellow hat. I shall never forget the way he -stood up and smiled, his eyes following you. 'There's Rosamund and the -progeny,' he said.--You know the dear, funny way he had of saying -things." - -Yes--she knew it. Yet tears had risen to Rosamund's eyes. Dear old -Charlie; dear, old, tiresome Charlie! The tears had come as she saw him -standing to look after her and his boys; but there was nothing more, -nothing that she could give to Pamela, not one crumb of enrichment from -what Pamela believed to be her great store. Pamela had seen all--and -more than all--that there was to see. - -In her own silence now she was aware of a growing oppression. She was -too silent, even for one mute from the depth and sacredness of memory. -Might not such silence seem to reprove Pamela's flooding confidence? She -struggled with her thoughts. "The lapwings?" she heard herself -murmuring. "I remember his showing me a nest. How he loved birds and how -much he knew about them! Weren't you with us on the day we put up all -the nesting-boxes here? Do you remember how he planned for the placing -of each one, each bird to have its own appropriate domain? It was a -lovely day, in very early spring." - -"Oh--_do_ you remember that?" How Pamela craved the crumb was shown by -her lightened face; it was almost happy, as it turned to Rosamund, with -its sense of recovered treasures. "Very early spring--March. Snowdrops -were up over there,--and there,--and there were daffodils at the foot of -the wall. You were in blue: a frieze coat and skirt of Japanese blue, -with a grey silk scarf and a little soft grey hat with a blue wing in -it; and you said,--you were standing just over there, near the -pond,--'We can always count on tits.'--But you did get robins, too, and -thrushes in the big boxes; and then the splendid year when the -nut-hatches came to the box down in the orchard. And you were tying up -one box, but it was too high and he came and did it for you. I can see -you both so plainly, your hands stretching up against the sky. Tall as -you are he was taller; his head seemed to tower up into the branches. -Such a blue sky it was! And afterwards we had tea in the drawing-room, -and the tea wasn't strong enough for him, and you liked China and he -Indian tea. And you teased him and said that you had always to make him -the little brown pot all for himself. He said, 'Tea never tastes so -right as out of a brown pot.' There were white tulips growing in a bowl -on the tea-table. And then you played to us. And you sang--'I need no -star in heaven to guide me.'--He was so fond of that. Oh, do you remember -it all, too?" - -All--all. Rosamund, though her tears fell, felt her cheek flushing in -the darkness. How often he had asked for "I need no star in heaven to -guide me"! How often she had sung it to him, rejoicing so soon, while -she threw the proper tumultuous fervour that Charlie loved into the -foolish air, in the atoning thought that already Philip's favourite was -"Der Nussbaum" and that even little Giles asked for "the sheep song," -the bleak, beautiful old Scottish strain: "Ca' the yowes to the knowes," -with its sweetest drop to "my bonnie dearie." "Oh--give us something -cheerful!" Charlie would exclaim after it. - -"I remember it all, dear," she answered; and there was silence for a -while. - -"How do you bear it?" Pamela whispered suddenly. - -The hour, the stillness, the hands that held her, drew her past the last -barrier. Her broken heart yearned for the comfort that the greater loss -alone could give. What was the strength that enabled his wife to sit -there so quietly, so gently, so full of peace and pity? - -Rosamund felt herself faltering, stumbling, as she heard the inevitable -question, and knew, as it came, that even Pamela's heavenly blindness -might not protect her, unless she could be very careful, from horrid -loss or suspicion. To touch with a breath of her daylight reality that -silver world of recollection would be to desecrate. Could she hold her -breath and tread softly while she answered? Yes, surely. Surely she, who -had hidden through all the years from Charlie, could hide from Pamela, -although Pamela already was nearer than Charlie and knew her better than -he had ever done. All the old strength and resource welled up in her, -protecting this lovely thing, as, after the long moment, not looking at -Pamela, but into Charlie's garden, she found the right answer. - -"You see, dear, it is so different with me. You have only your memories. -I have the boys--his boys--to live for." - -It was right. It was the only answer. She heard Pamela's long, soft -breaths, full of a gentle awe, and felt her hand more tightly clasped. -Once the right step was taken, it was easier to go on: - -"I want to tell you why I am so glad to have found you here, Pamela -dear. You'll understand, I think, when I say that motherhood lives in -the present and future, and is almost cruel, cruel to everything not -itself, for it forgets the past in the present. Do you see,"--she found -the beautiful untruth,--"he is so much in them for me, that I might -almost forget him in them--forget to mourn him, as one would if they -were not there. So do you see why it comforts me to know that, while I -must go on into the future with them, you will be keeping him here and -remembering?" - -She could look at Pamela now, in safety, and she turned to her, finding -rapt eyes upon her. - -"Come here often, won't you, when I'm away as well as when I'm here. We -must make it all look again as it did when he was with us--flowers and -trees and bird-boxes. You will help me in it all and you will think of -him here and love him. I know what happiness you meant to him--more than -he was aware of. You were a beautiful part of his life. You say you were -always, for him, only together, with the boys. That is only partly true. -He used often to speak of you to me, the little passing things people -say of any one they are very fond of and take for granted. He -appreciated you and counted upon you. I came here so sad, Pamela, so -burdened. I've never been sadder in my life than I was to-night as I -walked here. And you have lifted it all. It makes all the difference to -know that you are here, in his garden, remembering him. More difference -than I can say." - -It was an unutterable gratitude that, with her tears, with love and pity -and reverence, welled up in her, seeing what Pamela had done. The garden -was no longer empty, and Charlie not forgotten. In the night of his -death and disappearance this flower had become visible. Always, when she -thought of him, she would think of evening primroses and of Pamela, so -that it would be with tenderness, with the understanding, homely, -unexacting, consecrating, that Pamela gave; Pamela herself becoming a -gift from Charlie; emerging from the darkness, evident and -beautiful,--almost another child whose future she must carry in her -heart; though the only gift she could give her now, in return for all -that she had given, was the full and free possession of the past, -where, outside the garden wall, she had been a wistful onlooker. She -felt that she opened the gate, drew Pamela in, and put into her keeping -all the keys that had weighed so heavily in her unfitted hands. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -AUTUMN CROCUSES - - -I - -"WHAT you need is a complete change, and quiet," said his cousin -Dorothy. - -Guy, indeed, in spite of his efforts to keep up appearances, was a -dismal figure. He had been passing the teacups and the bread and butter, -enduring all the jests about sugar-rations and margarine, and enduring, -which was so much worse, the complacencies over the approaching end of -the war. His haggard face, narrow-jawed and high-foreheaded, expressed -this endurance rather than any social amenity, and he was aware that -Aunt Emily could hardly feel that the presence of her poet and soldier -nephew added much to her tea-party. Indeed, the chattering, cheerful -women affected his nerves almost as painfully as did the sound of the -motor-buses when--every day it happened--he stopped on the curb, after -leaving his office in Whitehall, and wondered how long it would take him -to summon courage to cross the street. He felt, then, like breaking down -and crying; and he felt like it now when they said, "Isn't it all _too_ -splendid!" - -Cousin Dorothy was as chattering and as cheerful as the rest of them, -and she had every reason to be, he remembered, with Tom, her _fiance_, -ensconced in Paris, safe after all his perils. Dorothy, though like -everybody else she had worked hard during the war, had seen nothing and -lost nothing. And she had never had any imagination. All the same, he -was thankful when she rescued him from the woman who would talk to him -idiotically about his poetry (she evidently hadn't understood a word of -it), and took him into a quiet nook near the piano. - -It might, then, have been mere consanguinity, for he had never before -found intimacy possible where Dorothy was concerned; or it might have -been a symptom of his state (his being at Aunt Emily's tea-party at all -was that!); but, at all events after admitting that Mrs. Dickson had -been boring him, he found himself presently confessing his terrors about -the motor-buses, his terror of the dark, his sleeplessness and general -disintegration. His nervous laugh was a concession to Dorothy's possible -misunderstanding; but as he went on, he felt himself almost loving her -for the matter-of-factness she infused into her sympathy. After all, -even good old Dorothy wasn't stupid enough to suspect him of cowardice; -and although, from a military point of view, he had made such a mess of -it (invalided home again and again on account of digestive complaints, -and finally, last spring, transferred to his small official post in -London), to any one, really, who had at all followed his career, it -would be apparent that no one could have stuck harder to the loathly -job. He had felt it that, and only that, even while, prompted by pride, -he had made his effort to enlist, in the first months of the war. It had -been with a deep relief that he had found himself at once rejected and -free to stay behind, free to serve humanity with his gift rather than -with his inefficiency; for he took his poetic vocation with a youthful -seriousness. And when, later on, through one of the blunders of medical -examinations, he was drawn into the net of conscription, no one could -have denied that he marched off to the shambles with unflinching -readiness. - -Dorothy, he saw, took courage all along for granted: "It's simply a case -of shell-shock," she said, as if it were her daily fare; "you're queer -and jumpy, and you can't stand noise. It's quite like Tommy." - -He couldn't associate Tommy, short-nosed, round-headed, red-eared Tommy, -with anything of the sort, and said so in some resentment. But Dorothy -assured him that for some months--just a year ago--Tommy had been at -home on sick leave, and really bad enough for anything. "He suffered in -every way just as you do." - -Guy was quite sure he hadn't, but he did not want to argue about it. For -nothing in the world would he have defined to Dorothy what he really -suffered. - -"It's country air you need; country food and country quiet," Dorothy -went on. "You _can_ get away?" - -"Oh, yes; I can get away all right. Old Forsyth is most decent about it. -He was telling me this morning that I ought to take a month." - -"I wonder if Mrs. Baldwin could have you at Thatches," Dorothy mused. -"Tommy got well directly." - -"Mrs. Baldwin?" His voice, he knew, expressed an unflattering -scepticism, but he couldn't help it. "Is she at home--an institution?" -He saw Mrs. Baldwin, hatefully tactful, in a Red Cross uniform. "No, -thank you, my dear." - -"Of course not. What do you take me for?" Dorothy kept her competent -eyes upon him. "It's not even a P.G. place--at all events, not a regular -one, though of course you do pay for your keep. She has very narrow -means and takes friends sometimes, and, since the war, it's just -happened--by people telling each other, as I'm telling you--to be -shell-shock cases rather particularly. It's a lovely country, and a -dear, quaint little cottage, and she does you most awfully well, Tommy -said." - -"I don't like the idea of settling down like that on a stranger." - -"But she wouldn't be a stranger. You'd go through me, and I feel as if I -knew her already through Tommy. He said he was at home at once. 'Cosy,' - was how he expressed it. And you get honey on your bread at tea and -cream in your coffee at breakfast, and all sorts of delightful things -_en casserole_, that she cooks with her own hands, quite equal, Tommy -said, to the French. And, Tommy knows, _now_, you see." - -"It's Mrs. Baldwin herself who frightens me. She frightens me more than -the motor-buses in Whitehall." - -"That's just what she won't do. She's perfectly sweet. Cosy. -Middle-aged. A widow. Her nice old father lives with her, and Tommy -liked him so much, too. You help her to garden, and with the bees, you -know. And the old father plays chess with you in the evenings. There's a -stream near by where you can fish if you want to. It's late for that, -of course; but Tommy got some quite good sport; he was there at just -this time of year. And he said that it was most awfully jolly country, -and that the meadows all about were full of autumn crocuses." - -"Autumn crocuses? In the fields? I've never seen them wild." - -"They do grow wild, though, in some parts of England. They are wild -there. Tommy particularly wrote about them. He said one walked down to -the stream among the autumn crocuses." - -Dorothy was baiting her hook very prettily, and he gloomily smiled his -recognition of it. "They do sound attractive," he owned. He hadn't -imagined Tom a man to notice crocuses, and he was the more inclined to -trust his good impressions further. After all, apart from Mrs. Baldwin -and her father, the country, with honey, cream, and autumn crocuses, was -a happy combination, if he had been in condition for feeling anything -happy. - -What would Dorothy have thought of him, could she have known that, while -they talked, her rosy, bonnie face kept constantly, before his haunted -eyes, dissolving into a skull? Faces had a way of doing this with him -since his last encounter with the war in the spring. And all the people -talking in the room squeaked and gibbered. How could they go on talking? -How could they go on living--after what had happened? How could he? The -familiar nausea rose in him even as he forced himself to smile and say, -"Well, could she have me--Mrs. Baldwin?" - -He could not have made an effort to find a place for himself. Such -efforts, he felt sure, would have landed him at some God-forsaken -farmhouse miles from the station, where the beds were damp and the meat -tough; or, even worse, at a Bournemouth hotel, amid orchestras and -people who made a point of dressing for dinner. But, if some one found -it for him, he would let himself be pushed off. - -"I'm sure she could," said Dorothy with conviction. "I have her address -and I'll write to-night and tell her all about you: that you're a rising -poet, and that your friends and relations will be _so_ grateful if -she'll do for you what she did for Tommy." - -He had an ironic glance for her "rising." His relations--and Aunt Emily -and her brood were the nearest left to him--had never in the least taken -in his standing or realized that he was, among people who knew, looked -upon as completely risen. At the same time, sunken was what he felt -himself; drowned deep; too deep, he sometimes thought, for recovery. His -last little volume had been like a final fight for breath. He had -written most of it over there, after Ronnie's death and before his own -decisive breakdown, and he knew it a result as much of his malady as of -his war experience. - -He wondered now, anew, whether these people had really read the poems. -If they had, it only showed how impervious to reality they must remain. -And there had actually been one, written after one of his leaves, called -"Eating Bread-and-Butter," that should indeed have embarrassed them, had -they remembered it, inviting them to eat it with him in a trench with -unburied comrades lying in No-Man's Land before them. His head, as he -thought of that,--from unburied comrades passing to unburied -friends,--gave a nervous, backward jerk, for he had told himself before -that he _must_ stop thinking in certain directions; and indeed the poems -had helped to exorcise the obsession at the time when they had been -written. - -All the same, it was very strange--such a poet at such a tea-party. He -had plunged into Aunt Emily's tea-party as he plunged nowadays into -anything that presented itself as offering distraction. And now, as he -said, "Well, if you'll put it through, I'll go, and be very grateful to -you," he felt that he was making another plunge into Mrs. Baldwin's -cottage. - - -II - -It was a pretty cottage he found, as, on the September evening, his -station fly drew up at the wicket-gate. They had come a long way from -the station, and, after leaving a small village, the winding lane, too, -had seemed long. He saw, nevertheless, as he alighted, that the rustic -building, old stones below and modern thatch above, could not be far -from the central group of which it formed an adjunct; for it had been -contrived, by devices dear to the heart of the week-ender, from two or -three labourers' cottages thrown into one and covered all over with the -capacious and brooding thatch. "Quaint," Dorothy's really inevitable -word, altogether expressed it, from the box hedges that ran on either -side of the flagged path, to the pale yellow hollyhocks beside the door. - -A round-cheeked country girl, neatly capped and aproned, opened the door -on a square, rush-matted hall; and beyond that he saw a room full of the -sunset, where a table was being laid and from which Mrs. Baldwin came -out to greet him. - -She was not tall, and had thick, closely bound braids. He had dreaded -finding himself at once dealt with as a case; but Mrs. Baldwin's manner -was not even that of one accustomed to paying guests. Her murmur of -welcome, her questions about his journey, her mild directions as she led -him up to his room, "Be careful at this landing, the level of the floor -goes up and the beam comes down so low,"--were rather those of a shy and -entirely unprofessional hostess. - -He thought, as soon as he took in his room, with its _voile-de-Genes_ -hangings and dear old furniture, that he pleased her by saying, "What a -delicious room!" and even more when, on going to the wide, low, -mullioned window, its panes open to the west, he added, "And what a -delicious view!" There were meadows and tall hedgerow elms, and, running -in a tranquil band of brightness, the stream that reflected the sky. - -She did not say that she was glad he liked it, but her very gentle smile -at the welcome it all made for him was part of the welcome. What she did -say was, with the little air of shy preoccupation, while she wrung her -finger-tips together, those of one hand in those of the other, "I think -the water's very hot. I have a rather young little maid. You'll tell me -if you want anything. Are three blankets and the down quilt enough? The -nights are rather cold already." - -He said that three would be perfect, secure, from his glance at the -deep, comely bed, that they would be beautifully thick and fleecy. - -"Then you'll come down to us when you are ready." She stood in the door -to look round again. "Matches here, you see; biscuits in the little -earthenware box; and the spirit-lamp is in case you should wake in the -night--you could make yourself a cup of cocoa? Everything is -there--cocoa, milk, and sugar. It usually sends one off again directly." - -It was all the slightly shy hostess rather than the businesslike soother -and sustainer; and, no, it wasn't a bit cosy. He repudiated that word -indignantly, while he washed--the water _was_ very hot, admirably hot; -there was a complacency about cosy, and Mrs. Baldwin had no complacency, -though she was, for all her shyness and the unconscious gestures of -physical nervousness, composed. Her hands, he remembered, recalling -their little trick,--he had noticed it in the hall,--were like a -child's; not the hands of a practical housewife. Yet, from the look of -that bed (yes, thank heaven, a box-spring mattress!), from the heat of -the water, and, above all, the deft and accessible grouping of the -spirit-lamp and its adjuncts, she proved that she knew how to make one -comfortable. - -There were the meadows and--going again to the window, he wondered -leaning out,--could he see the autumn crocuses? Yes, surely; even at -this evening hour his eyes distinguished the pale yet delicately -purpling tint that streaked the pastoral verdure. What a delicious -place, indeed! He stood, absorbed in looking out, until the maid came to -say that supper would be ready in five minutes. - -The long room, the living-room,--for it combined, he saw, all social -functions,--also faced the meadows at the back of the house, and the -primrose coloured sunset still filled it as he entered. Mrs. Baldwin was -busying herself with the table, and an old gentleman with a very long -white beard rose, with much dignity, from the grandfather's chair near -a window-seat. Mr. Haseltine, so his daughter named him, had more the -air of seeing the visitor as a P.G., perhaps even as a shell-shock -patient; but he was a nice old man, Guy felt, although his beard was too -long. He wore a brown velveteen jacket, and Guy surmised that he might -have been a writer or scholar of some not very significant sort. - -"Yes, we think ours a very favored nook indeed," he said, as Guy again -praised the prospect. "Yes; three cottages. Very happily contrived, is -it not? There is a clever builder in the next town. He kept the old -fireplace, you see; that end was a kitchen and the beams are all the old -ones. Three gardens, too, thrown into one; but that is entirely my -daughter's creation. Pig-styes used to be in that corner." - -Guy looked out at the squares of colour, the low beds of mignonette, the -phloxes, larkspurs, and the late sweet-peas a screen of stained-glass -tints against the sky. Where the pig-styes had been was a little -thatched summer-house with rustic seat and table. The bee-hives were -just outside the hedge, at an angle of the meadow. Mr. Haseltine -continued to talk while Mrs. Baldwin and the maid came in and out, -carrying tea and eggs and covered dishes. - -"I hope you don't mind high tea," she said. "It seems to go with our -life here." - -He felt that high tea was his favourite meal. There was a big white -earthenware bowl on the table, filled with sweet-peas. "Where do you get -the old-fashioned colours?" he asked her. "I thought the growers had -extirpated them; one sees only the long-stemmed ones nowadays, with the -tiresome artistic shades." - -He pleased her again, he felt sure, and she told him that she always -saved the seed, liking the old bright colours better, too. - -He was glad that he had come, although Mr. Haseltine's beard was too -long and he feared that he would prove talkative in the worst way, the -deliberate and retaining way. He liked the smell of everything,--a -mingling of sweet-peas, rush-matting, and China tea,--and the look of -everything; good, unpretentious old oak furniture, fresh, if faded, -chintzes, and book-lined walls; and he presently liked the taste of -everything too. - -"I feel already as if I should sleep to-night," he said to Mrs. Baldwin. - -She sat behind the tea-urn a little distracted, if anything so mild -could be called distraction, by the plunging movements of the little -maid as she moved about the table. "That will do nicely, Cathy," she -said. "We can manage now. You can bring in some more hot water if I -ring.--Oh, I do hope you'll sleep. People usually sleep here." - -She was hardly middle-aged, though, after Dorothy's bright browns and -pinks, Tommy might well have thought her so. Many years older than -Dorothy, of course, yet how many he could not in the least compute. -There was an agelessness, with something tough and solid, about her; she -was as little slender as she was stout; she might, with her neutral -tints,--hair, skin, dress,--have looked almost the same at sixty as she -did now. She wasn't pale, or sallow, or sunburned; yet her complexion -seemed so to go with her hair that the whole head might have been carved -in some pleasantly tinted stone. Only her eyes gave any depth of -difference; gentle eyes, like a grey-blue breadth of evening. She had a -broad, short face and broad, beautifully drawn lips, and looked almost -mysteriously innocent. - -Guy took her in to this extent, swift as he was at taking people in, and -sensitive as he was to what he found. He felt sure--and the depth of -comfort it gave him made him aware of all the reluctances Dorothy's -decision had overborne--that she hadn't the ghost of a method or of a -theory. Shell-shock people had merely happened to come and had happened -to get well quickly. He even gathered, as the peaceful evening wore -on,--Cathy clearing, placid lamps lighted, the windows still left open -to the twilight--that she didn't really think very much about her cases, -in so far as they were cases and not guests. Having done her best in the -way of blankets, hot water, and spirit-kettles, and seen them settled -down into the life she had made for herself,--and not at all for -them,--she went her own way, irresponsible and unpreoccupied. - -To-night she didn't attempt to entertain him. It was Mr. Haseltine, at -supper, who kept up the conversation, and with the air of always keeping -it up, with even the air, Guy imagined once or twice, of feeling it -specially his part to make amends, in that sort of resource, for his -dear daughter's deficiency. She was, Guy saw, very much his dear -daughter; but he felt sure that it had never entered the old gentleman's -head that any one would find her interesting when he himself was there. - -After supper she was occupied for a little while at her desk, adding up -figures, it appeared, in house-books; for she came to her father and -asked him if he would do a column for her. "It has come out differently -three times with me," she confessed, but without ruefulness. "I'm so -dull at my accounts!" - -Guy, as Mr. Haseltine fumbled for his large tortoise-shell eyeglasses, -offered to help her, and then came over and sat beside the desk and did -the rest of the sums for her. She was tidying up for the month, she told -him, and always found it rather confusing. "It's having to put the -pennies, which are twelves, into pounds, which are twenties, isn't it?" -she said, and thanked him so much. - -But this could hardly be called entertaining him, nor could it, when he -accompanied her across the lane in the now deepening dusk, to shut up -her fowls. After that, there was the game of chess, during which Mrs. -Baldwin absented herself a good deal, helping Cathy, Guy imagined, with -the beds and hot-water bottles; and at nine-thirty they all lighted -their candles and went upstairs. - -Bedtime had been, for many months, his most dreaded moment. The door -shut him in and shut away the last chance of alleviation. There was -nothing for it but to stretch himself haggardly on his couch and cling -to every detail in the day's events, or in the morrow's prospects, that -might preserve him from the past. To fight _not_ to remember was a -losing game, and filled one's brain with the white flame of insomnia. He -had found that it was when, exhausted by the fruitless effort, he -suffered the waiting vultures to settle upon him, abandoned himself to -the beaks and talons, that, through the sheer passivity of anguish, -oblivion most often came. - -To-night, from the habit of it, his mind braced itself as he came into -the room, and he was aware, as he had been for nearly a year now, that -Ronnie's face was waiting, as it were, on the outskirts of -consciousness, to seize upon him. But, after he had lighted the candles -on his dressing-table and the candles on the mantelpiece, taken off his -coat, and started undressing, he found that his thoughts, quite -effortlessly, were engaged with his new surroundings, old Mr. -Haseltine's beard and eyeglasses occupying them, and the clucking noise -he made in drinking the glass of hot ginger and water that had been -brought to them on a tray while they played; Mrs. Baldwin's accounts, -her fowls, and the colour of her eyes. He decided that the colour was -Wedgwood, or perhaps periwinkle blue--some very dense, quiet colour. - -As he moved about the room, this protective interest came to him from -the little objects he made acquaintance with: the round Venetian box, -dim gilt and blue and red, on the chest of drawers in which he found a -handful of tiny shells--shells, no doubt, that Mrs. Baldwin had picked -up during a seaside outing; the faded old blue leather blotter on the -writing-table, marked E. H., which had probably been hers since maiden -days (and did E stand for Ethel or Edith or Ellen?); the pretty -lettering in fine black script of the writing-paper so pleasantly -stacked; the dear old Dutch coffee-pot and jug on the mantelpiece, and -the bowl of mignonette that she, of course, had arranged. He sank his -face into its fragrance, and peace seemed breathed upon him from the -flowers. - -He was wondering, as he got into bed, with a glance, before he blew out -the candle, at the birds and branches, the whites and blacks and roses -of the _voile-de-Genes_, whether he would find the autumn crocuses open -in the meadows next morning; it had looked like the evening of another -fine day. Then, the candle out, his thoughts, for a little while, were -tangled in the magical dreamland of the _voile-de-Genes_, and the breath -of the mignonette seemed to lie upon his eyelids with a soft compulsion -to peace, until, all thought sliding suddenly away, he dropped into -delicious slumber. - - -III - -He found the crocuses open, before breakfast. Only Cathy was in the -living-room, sweeping, when he crossed it, though he thought he heard -Mrs. Baldwin in the kitchen. A robin was singing on a spray over the -summer-house. The sky arched pale and high; and though there was no mist -in the air, its softness made him think of milk. - -From the garden he passed into the meadows, and, almost at once, saw, -everywhere, the fragile, purple flowers about him, if purple were not -too rich a word for their clear, cold tint. Lower down, near the stream, -they made him think of the silver bobbins set playing by great rain -drops when they fall heavily upon wide, shallow pools of water; and they -seemed to grow even more thickly in the farther meadow beyond the wooden -bridge. A sense of bliss was upon him as he walked among the flowers. He -had never seen anything more lovely, and all but the darker buds were -open, showing pale golden hearts to the sun. - -Yet, by the time that he had crossed the bridge, leaning on the high -rail to look down into the limpid, sliding water, he knew that it could -never stay at that or mean that for him. He had seen fields of flowers -in France, and, while the horrors there had been enacted, these fields -of crocuses, year after year, had bloomed. What they meant for his mind -was the unbridged chasm between nature and the sufferings of man. Only -when one ceased to be a man, ceased to remember and to think, could such -a day, such sights, bring the unreasoning joy. - -Walking back, he saw, as he approached the house, that Mrs. Baldwin was -standing at the garden-gate, and, bare-headed, in the linen dress of -pale lavender, she made him at once think of the crocuses, or they of -her. Their gentleness was like her, their simplicity, and something, -too,--for he felt this in her,--of unearthliness. More perhaps, than any -other flower they seemed to belong to the air rather than to the ground, -and, with their faint, pale stalks, their fragile petals unconfined by -leaf or calyx, to be rising like emanations from the sod and ready to -dissolve in mist into the sunlight. - -"You've had a little walk?" Mrs. Baldwin asked him as they met. - -He said he had been looking at the crocuses. "Are they really crocuses?" -he questioned. "I've never seen them wild before." - -"They're not real crocuses," she said, "though those grow wild, too, in -a few places in England. These flowers are always called autumn crocuses -hereabouts; but they are really, botanically, meadow saffron; and they -grow wild in a great many places. You see they are not so dark a purple -as the wild crocus, and they are much taller, and the petals are more -pointed. Much more beautiful flowers, I think." - -"Meadow saffron. That's a pretty name, too. But I think I'll go on -calling them autumn crocuses. They were one of the reasons that made me -want to come here," he told her. - -They were leaning on the little garden-gate looking over the meadows. - -"Really? Did you hear about them?" - -He told her what Dorothy had said, passed on from the appreciative -Tommy, and she said again, "Really!" and with surprise, so that, -laughing a little, he said that he believed she would never have thought -of Mr. Barnet as an appreciator of crocuses. She laughed a little, too, -confessing to a community of perception where Tommy was concerned, and -remarked that it was very nice of him to have cared. "What he talked -about," she said, "was the food. He was never done praising my coffee. -It's time for coffee now," she added. - -Guy, as they went in, said that, after all, if that was what Tommy -talked about, he wondered that his caring for the crocuses should have -surprised her, for he was sure that the one was almost as poetical as -the others. It was poetical, indeed, as she made it, in a delightful and -complicated apparatus, glass and brass and premonitory scented steam; -and the milk was as hot as the water had been, and there was cream. "How -do you manage it, in these days?" he asked. But she said that it wasn't -wickedness and bribery, really: she and Cathy skimmed it from the milk -that was brought from the nearest farm. - -He realized that he was himself talking about the food just as Tommy had -done; just as the chattering women at Aunt Emily's tea-party had done; -just as everybody, of course, had been doing in England ever since food -became such an important matter. But it was Mrs. Baldwin who made him do -it; for though unearthly, she was deliciously prosaic. He felt that anew -when he heard her going about the house in her low-heeled little shoes, -with Cathy. They did, evidently, all the work, and how fresh, composed, -and shining everything was. The living-room, with its happy southern -windows, its tempting writing-tables, its flowers and books, was an -embodiment of the poetry that only such prose can secure. - -Guy, while Mr. Haseltine sat behind his rustling _Times_, strolled -before the shelves, surprised, presently, at their range of subject. -Surely not Mrs. Baldwin's, such reading; hardly, he thought, Mr. -Haseltine's. He took down a volume of Plotinus and found, on the -fly-leaf, "Oliver Baldwin," written in a small, scholarly hand. That -explained it, then. Her husband's. The Charles d'Orleans, too, the -Fustel de Coulanges, the Croce, and the Dante, with marginal notes. He -had been a man of letters, perhaps. Of the dozen books he took down to -examine, only one was initialled "E. H.," and that, suitably, was -_Dominique_. But it had been given her by "O. B." - -As in the garden, presently, he and the old gentleman walked up and -down, smoking, Guy asked him, with the diffidence natural to the -question, whether his son-in-law, Mrs. Baldwin's husband, had been -killed in the war; though he couldn't imagine her a war-widow. One -didn't indeed think of her in connection with marrying and giving in -marriage--that was part of the unearthliness; yet widowhood, permanent -widowhood, seemed a suitable state. She was not girlish, nor was she -wifely. She was widowed, and it had happened, he felt sure, in spite of -his question, long ago. - -As he had expected, his companion replied, "Ah, no; he died eight, nine -years since." And Mr. Haseltine then went on to tell, taking the war as -the obvious interest, and not without the satisfaction that Guy had so -often met and so often loathed, that he had lost dear ones. "Children of -my eldest son. Fine lads. Brave boys. One in the first month--at the -Marne; the other only last year, flying. Yes; I've done my bit," said -Mr. Haseltine, with the fatuity that he was so plentifully companioned -in displaying. - -"Bit." Odious word. His "bit." Why his? Had any one written a poem on -the formula coming from the lips of those for whom others had died? A -scattered, flagellating line or two floated through Guy's mind. -Something about barbed wire came in. He wondered how old Mr. Haseltine -would have felt about his "bit," hung up on that and unable to die. He -wondered where the fine lads now lay. No more coffee for them, with -cream in it; no more robins singing; no more strolling smokes among -mignonette in the sunlight. How they were forgotten, already, except for -trophies, for self-glorification to display! How pleased, how smug this -rescued, comfortable world! Something of his distaste attached itself -even to Mrs. Baldwin when she next appeared. Something irritating him in -her peacefulness. She, too, had seen nothing and lost nothing. But, at -all events, she wouldn't, he knew that, take any stand on the two -nephews to claim her "bit." There was nothing fatuous about Mrs. -Baldwin. The slight distaste still lingered, however, and he found -himself wondering once or twice, during the day that passed, in spite of -it, so pleasantly, whether she wasn't, for all his idealizing similes, a -stupid as well as a sweet woman. It was not because of filial -self-effacement that she let her father do all the talking at meals: it -was simply because she had nothing to say, and the good old boy was -quite right in taking his responsibility for granted. The person who -could talk was the responsible person. Her mind, though so occupied, was -quite singularly inactive and, he was sure, completely uncritical. She -didn't find her father in the least a bore, or suspect that anybody else -might find him so. She did find, Guy felt sure, satisfaction in all her -occupations. He heard her laughing--a quiet little laugh--with Cathy in -the kitchen; and in the afternoon, when he helped her to prick out -seedlings, her attentive profile--as, after he had dug each hole, she -dropped in the little plant, pressed the earth about its roots, and -fixed it in its place--made him think of the profile of a child putting -its dolls to bed. They planted three beautiful long rows, and Guy was -quite tired by tea-time, for though they had high tea at half-past six, -they were not deprived of the precious afternoon pause, taking place as -it did at the unaccustomed but pleasing hour of four. - -After tea she went to see some people in the village, Mr. Haseltine -dozed in his chair, and Guy took a long walk. - -So the days went on, and at the end of a week he was able to write to -Dorothy and tell her that he was sleeping wonderfully and that Mrs. -Baldwin's cottage was all that she had pictured it. By the end of the -week he had even grown rather attached to Mr. Haseltine, and he enjoyed -playing chess with him every evening; and sometimes they had a game in -the afternoon when tea was over. The undercurrent of irritation still -flowed, but he had learned to put up with the old gentleman and to -circumvent his communicativeness, and in the case of Mrs. Baldwin he -more and more felt that she was the sort of person to whom one would, -probably, forgive anything. It had become evident to him that what might -be dulness might also be unawareness. That was a certain kind of -dulness, it was true, but it didn't preclude capacity for response if -the proper stimulus were applied. It amused him to note that if none of -the nearly inevitable jars of shared life seemed ever to occur between -her and her father, it was simply because, when a difference arose, she -remained unconscious of it unless it were put before her. Nothing could -have been less in the line of selfishness; it was she who thought of -him, of his comfort and happiness, and who ordered her life to further -them; he, in this respect, was passive; but Guy felt that the poor old -boy often brooded in some disconsolateness over small trials and -perplexities that a companion more alert to symptoms would have -discerned and dispelled at once. Mr. Haseltine even, sometimes, confided -such grievances to the P.G. - -"I don't want to bother Effie about it," he said;--E. had stood for -Effie--"she's a dreamy creature and very forgetful. But it's quite -evident to me that the rector and his wife have been expecting to be -asked to tea to meet you. I've just been talking to them in the lane, -and I saw it plainly. They had asked us to bring you before you arrived, -hearing we were to have another guest,--they've always been most kind -and neighbourly in helping us to entertain our new friends,--and I -really don't know why Effie should have got out of it. I usually have to -remind her, it's true. But I sometimes get tired of always having to. -She doesn't care for them herself; but that's no reason why you might -not. We have few enough interests to offer visitors." - -Guy was glad to have escaped the rectory tea, though he did not say this -in assuring Mr. Haseltine that the entertainment offered at Thatches was -absolutely to his taste. He was completely out of place at any rectory; -he could imagine no rector who would not find his poems pernicious; but -he felt that there was justice in Mr. Haseltine's contention. He _might_ -have cared for them. As it was, Mr. Haseltine was brought once again to -reminding her. It was evident then that she was ready to please anybody -or everybody. - -"Ask them? Ought I to ask them?" - -"My dear, it's ten days since they sent their invitation. They spoke -again--and it's the second time--of having been so sorry not to see us, -when I met them yesterday, in the lane. I don't know why you did not -go." - -"I thought it would bore Mr. Norris, father. He came here for quiet, you -know. But would it bore you?" she asked Guy. "They are very nice. I -don't mean that." - -"It's certainly very pleasant being quiet," said Guy; "but if Mr. -Haseltine likes having them, I assure you that people don't frighten me -in the least." - -"Oh, not on my account," Mr. Haseltine protested. "I see our good -friends continually. It is of them I am thinking, as well as of Mr. -Norris. He might find them more interesting than you do, Effie, and they -will, I fear, be hurt." - -Now that it was put before her, Mrs. Baldwin did it every justice, -rising from the breakfast-table, where she had just finished, to go to -her desk, and murmuring as she went, "I hadn't thought of that. They -might be hurt. So, if it _won't_ bore you, Mr. Norris." - -And the Laycocks were asked, and did indeed bore Guy sadly. - -It was on the night after their visit--Mr. Laycock had questioned him -earnestly about his personal impressions of the war and to evade him had -been wearying--that Guy, for the first time, really, since he had come, -found sleep difficult and even menaced. It was because of that, he felt -sure, looking back on it, that the curious occurrence of the next day -took place--curious, and, had it taken place in the presence of any one -else, embarrassing. But what made it most curious was just that; he had -not felt it embarrassing to break down and sob before Mrs. Baldwin. - -The morning had begun badly. The breakfast-table papers had been full of -the approaching victory. Mr. Haseltine read out passages from the -_Times_ as he broke his toast and drank his coffee. He had reiterated -the triumph of his long conviction, and Mrs. Baldwin had murmured -assent. "All's well with the world," was the suffocating assurance that -seemed to breathe from them both. "All's blue." Was hell forgotten like -that? What if the war were won? Of course, it had to be won--that was an -unquestioned premise that had underlain his rebellions as well as Mr. -Haseltine's complacencies since the beginning. But what of it? No -victory could redeem what had been done. - -He went out into the garden, to be away from Mr. Haseltine, as soon as -he could, and took a book into the summer-house; and it was here, a -little later, that Mrs. Baldwin, seeing him as she passed, her -garden-basket on her arm, paused to ask him, with her smile of the shy -hostess, if he were all right. She didn't often ask him that, and he saw -at once that his recent recalcitrancy to rejoicing had pierced even her -vagueness. He knew that he still looked recalcitrant, and he was -determined not to soften the overt opposition rising in him; so he -raised his eyes to her over his book and said that he was not, perhaps, -feeling very fit that morning. - -Mrs. Baldwin hesitated at the entrance to the summer-house. She looked -behind her at the garden and up at the roses clustering over the lintel -under the thatch; she even took out her scissors, in the uncertainty -that, evidently, beset her, and snipped off a dead rose, and she said -presently, "It was all that talk about the war, wasn't it--when what you -must ask is to forget it." - -"Oh, I don't ask that at all," said Guy. "I should scorn myself for -forgetting it." She glanced in again at him, mildly. "I want to forget -what's irrelevant, like victory," he said; "but not what is relevant, -like irremediable wrong." - -Her awareness had not, of course, gone nearly as far as this. She kept -her eyes on him, and he was glad to feel that he could probably shock -her. "You see," he found himself saying, "I saw the wrong. I saw the -war--at the closest quarters." - -"Yes--oh, yes," Mrs. Baldwin murmured. - -"For me, tragedy doesn't cease to exist when it's shovelled underground. -If one goes down into hell, one doesn't want to forget the fact--though -one may hope to forget the torments and horrors; one wants, rather, to -remember that hell exists--and to try and square life with that -actuality." - -There was silence after this for a moment, and he imagined that she was -very much at a loss. Her next words seemed indeed to express nothing so -much as her failure to follow--that and a silliness really rather -adorable, had he been in a mood to find it anything but exasperating. -"But, still--hell doesn't exist, does it?" she offered him for his -appeasement. - -Guy laughed. "Doesn't it? When things like this war can happen? How -could it ever have existed but in men's hearts? It's there that it -smoulders and, when its moment comes, leaps out to blast the world." - -He could talk to her like this because she was too simple to suspect in -him a poetical attitudinizing; any one else would of course suspect it. -Guy was even aware that to any one else that was what it would have -been. She looked kind and troubled and as much as ever at a loss. She -didn't know at all how to deal with the patient, and she was evidently -uncertain what to do, since it might seem heartless to go away and leave -him to his black thoughts, yet intrudingly intimate to come and sit down -beside him. Nothing could be less intimate than Mrs. Baldwin. It was he, -of course, who was tasteless in talking to her in a vein appropriate -only to intimacy. - -"Don't bother over me," he said, offering her the patent artifice of a -smile. "I'm simply a bad case. You mustn't let me trouble you. You must -just turn your back on me when I'm like this." - -It was not poetic attitudinizing now; there was in his voice a quaver of -grief and she responded to it at once. - -"Oh, but I don't like to do that. I do wish I could be of some help. I -see you haven't slept, for you look so tired, as you did when you first -came. And Mr. Laycock did bore you. It's wrong of people to talk to you -about the war." - -For the first time he saw in the eyes fixed upon him, pity, evident pity -and solicitude. And before it he felt himself crumble suddenly. He saw -all the reasons she had for pitying him, did she but know. He saw -Ronnie's face again; he saw his own haunted night and his own grief. He -wanted her to see it. "Oh--one can't be guarded like that," he murmured; -"I must try to get used to it. But--I didn't sleep; that's true. I'm so -horribly afraid of not sleeping. You can't imagine what it is. I've the -most awful visions." And leaning his elbows on the table, he put his -hands before his face and began to cry. - -She stood there; he did not hear her move at first; and then she entered -and sat down on the seat beside him. But she said nothing and did not -touch him. He had had in all the tumult of his disintegration, a swift -passage of surmise; would she not draw his head upon her shoulder, like -a mother, and comfort him? But that would have broken him down heaven -knew how much further. - -He cried frankly, articulating presently, "It's my nerves, you know; -they have all gone to pieces. I lost my friend; my dearest friend. For -months I didn't sleep." - -Mrs. Baldwin's silence was not oppressive, or repressive either. He -heard her hands move slightly on the basket she held on her knees and -the soft chafing in the folds of her linen bodice that her breathing -made. It was an accepting stillness and it presently quieted him; more -than that, it enabled him at last to lift his head and look at her -without feeling ashamed of himself. Oddly enough, he knew that he, -perhaps, ought to be. He _could_ have helped himself. There had been an -element of wilfulness in his breakdown; he had wanted her to see; but, -even had she known this about him, he would not have felt ashamed. She -was so curiously a person with whom one could not associate blames and -judgments. She was an accepting person. - -She wasn't looking at him, but out at the sweet, bright, autumnal little -garden; and as her eyes came to him, he felt them full of thought; felt, -for the first time, sure that, whatever she might be, she was not dull. - -He could not remember, looking back at the little scene, that she had -said a single further word. He did not think that he had said anything -further. He was helping her, a little while after, to prune the Aimee -Vibert rose that had grown with great unruliness over the little -tool-house near the kitchen door. "It will really pull it down unless we -cut out some of these great branches," she had said, as, equipped with -stout gloves, they had worked away together, unfastening the tangled -trails and stretching them out on the ground. So displayed, the Aimee -Vibert was drastically dealt with, and it was midday before they -finished fastening the thinned and shortened shoots into place. - -She had said nothing further; but he believed that, for the first time, -her thought really included him. He had been put before her. She was -different afterwards. He had become an individual to her, and had ceased -to be merely the paying guest. - - -IV - -The third week came. There was rain, rather sad September rain, for a -day or two. They sat in the evenings before the wide fireplace where -logs blazed. Mrs. Baldwin, at his suggestion, read aloud to them Fabre's -_Souvenirs Entomologiques_. She read French prettily, better than he did -himself, and he was a little chagrined once or twice to find that she -knew it better, priding himself on his French as he did. He had lived -for a year in Paris, with Ronnie, before the war. - -The horrors of the grim, complicated underworld revealed by the French -seer distressed him. Mrs. Baldwin did not feel them as he did, feeling -the marvels rather than the horrors, perhaps. She laughed a little, -rather callously, at the ladies who devoured their husbands, and seemed -pleased by the odious forethought of the egg-laying mothers. She shared -Fabre's humorous dispassionateness, if not the fond partiality which, -while it made him the more charming, didn't, Guy insisted, make his -horrid wasps and beetles a bit more so. As usual, she vexed him a -little, even while, more and more, he felt her intelligent; perhaps she -vexed him all the more for that. - -"She's so devilishly contented with the world," he said to himself -sometimes, even while he smiled, remembering her laughter. - -Old Mr. Haseltine fell asleep one night while she read, and to be -together there before the fire, the old man sleeping beside them, made -them nearer than they had ever been before. Guy was aware of this -nearness while he listened and while he watched her hand, short, like a -child's (and her face was so short) support the book, and her eyelashes -dropping down the page or raised to a fresh one. - -When he went to his room that night, he stood still for a long time, his -candle in his hand, listening to the soft beat of the rain against the -window. He was hardly ever now afraid of being alone, or of the dark, -and he stood there musing and listening, while he still seemed to see -Mrs. Baldwin's hand as it held the book, and her reading profile. Her -life seemed to breathe upon him and he rested in it. He slept -deliciously. - -"Did you know that I write?" he asked her next day. He had wondered -about this once or twice before. - -"Oh, yes; your cousin, in her letter, you know, told me that you wrote," -said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They were in the living-room after midday dinner, and alone. She looked -up at him very kindly from the papers and letters she was sorting at her -desk. - -"You've never heard of my effusions otherwise, though?" He put on a -rueful air. "Such is fame!" - -"Are you famous?" Her smile was a little troubled. "I don't follow -things, you know, living here as I do." - -"You read the papers. I _have_ had reviews: good ones." - -"I don't read them very regularly," she admitted. "And I so often don't -remember the names of people in reviews, even when I've liked what is -said of them. Have you any of your poems here? Perhaps you'll let me -read them." - -He felt, with the familiar chagrin, that she would never, of herself, -have thought of asking him. - -"Yes, my last volume. It's just out." - -He was going for a walk in the rain with Mr. Haseltine that afternoon. -There was an old church in the neighbouring village that his friend -wanted him to see. Mrs. Baldwin had letters to write. "Will you have -time to look at it while we are out?" he asked. - -Although she had shown so little interest in him, he was eager, -pathetically so, he felt, that she should read and care about his poems. -She said that it was just the time: her letters would not take long. And -so he ran up to his room and got the little book for her: _Burnt -Offerings_. - -All the time that he was walking with Mr. Haseltine and seeing the -church, and the old manor house that took them a half mile further, he -wondered what she was thinking about his poems. - -By the time they had returned the rain had ceased. A warm September -sunlight diffused itself. Veils lifted from the stream and trailed upon -the lower meadows. The sky grew clear and the leaves all sparkled. They -found that Mrs. Baldwin had had her cup of tea, for it was past four; -but all had been left in readiness for them, the kettle boiling; and -after Guy had swallowed his, he went out and saw her walking down among -the crocuses. - -"Oh, you are back?" she said when he joined her. "I wanted to be there -to give you your tea. Was it all right?" - -"Perfectly," he said. "We put in just your number of spoonfuls." - -Mrs. Baldwin wore her little knitted jacket and had put on her white, -rubber-soled canvas shoes against the wet; but her head, with its thick, -close braids, was bare to the sunlight. - -"I had to come out as soon as it stopped raining," she said; "and I'm -afraid I simply forgot to look out for you and father." - -Her gentleness had always seemed contentment; this afternoon it seemed -happiness, and he had never seen her look so young. He wondered if she -were going to take him so dreadfully aback as not even to mention his -poems; if she had simply forgotten them, too. Already her demeanour, -unclouded, almost radiant, inflicted a wound; she had either forgotten, -or she had cared little indeed, since she could look like that. But, -after he had commented, consentingly, on the lovely hour, she went on -with a change of tone, a voice a little shy, "I've read the poems. Thank -you so much for letting me see them." - -"You read all of them?" - -"Yes. I didn't write my letters." - -"I hope you read them, then, because you cared for them." - -She didn't answer for a moment, walking along and placing the small -white feet carefully among the crocuses. "They are very sad," she then -said. - -He was aware, after an instant of adjustment to the blow, that she made -him very angry. Terrible, his poems, searing, scorching; wicked, if one -would; but not sad. - -"Oh!" he murmured; and he wondered if the divided feeling she had from -the first roused in him had been this hatred, not perhaps of her, but of -her unvarying acquiescence, her untroubled inadequacy. - -"They interested me very much," she said, feeling, no doubt, that, -whatever he was, he was not pleased. "They made me see, I mean, all the -things you have been through." - -"Sad things, you call them. You know, I rather feel as if I'd heard you -call hell sad." - -She looked up at him quickly, and it was now she who was taken aback -and, as she had been the other day, at a loss. And, as on the other day, -she found the same answer, though she offered it deprecatingly, feeling -his displeasure. "But hell doesn't exist." - -"Don't you think anything horrible exists?" - -They turned at the end of the meadow. It seemed to him, although he felt -as if he hated her, that they were suddenly intimate in their -antagonism. He would force that antagonism, and its intimacy, upon -her--to its last implication. - -"Horrible? Oh, yes, yes!" she said, startled, and that was, he reflected -grimly, to the good. "But it would have to be irretrievable, wouldn't -it, to be hell?" she urged. - -"Do you suggest that it's not irretrievable? You own it's horrible. -Irretrievably horrible, I call it. And that's what I call hell. Yet all -that you can find to say of my poems is that they are sad." - -She hesitated, feeling her way, hearing in the recurrent word how it had -rankled. "I meant sad, I think, because of you; because you had suffered -so much." - -"You seem always to imply that one might _not_ have suffered!" And -thrusting aside her quickly murmured, "Oh, no, no!" he went on: "I can't -understand your attitude of mind. Do you realize at all, I sometimes -wonder, what it has all meant, this nightmare we are living in--we, that -is, to whom it came? Can you imagine what it was to me to see boys, dead -boys, buried stealthily, at night, under fire? Boys so mangled, so -disfigured--you read that poem, 'Half a Corpse'?--that their mothers -wouldn't have known them; featureless, dismembered boys, heaped one upon -the other in the mud. Has your mind ever dwelt upon the community of -corruption in which they lie, as their mothers' minds must dwell? I do -not understand you. I do not understand how you can dare to call such -things sad." - -His own wrath shook and yet sustained him, though he knew a fear lest he -had gone too far; but in her silence--they had reached the other end of -the meadow and turned again in their walk--he felt that there was no -resentment. It was as if she realized that those who have returned from -hell cannot be asked to stop and pick their words with courtesy, and -accepted his vehemence, if not his blame; and again, when she spoke at -last, he felt that her bewilderment had settled into thought. - -"Yes, I can imagine," she said. "But no, I don't think that my mind has -dwelt on those things. If I were their mothers, I don't think that my -mind would dwell, as you say. Something would burn through. There are -other kinds of suffering--better kinds; they help, I believe. And, for -that kind, it is worse, but is it so much worse than in ordinary life? -That is what happens all the time when there is no war; dreadful changes -in the dead; and burials. They are not quite so near each other in a -churchyard, and their graves are named; but do you think that makes it -easier to bear?" - -He felt now as if it were insult she was offering him. - -"You deny all tragedy to war, then? It's all to you on a level with an -Elegy in a Country Churchyard, with curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths? You read 'His Eyes,'"--Guy's voice had a hoarser -note, but, mingled with the sincerity of what, at last, he knew he was -to tell her, the very centre of his sick heart, went a surface -appreciation of what he had just said and of how curfew and rector and -primrose-wreaths would go into a bitter poem one day,--"you read that -poem of mine at the end of the book. 'His Eyes' is about myself and my -friend Ronnie Barlow, the artist; you never heard of him, I know. He -hung, with shattered legs, dying, just in front of us, on the barbed -wire, for three days and nights. When he could speak, it was to beg to -be shot. We tried to get to him, four, five times; it was no good. There -was barbed wire between, and the Germans spotted us every time. He died -during the third night, and next morning I found him looking at me--as -he had looked during these three days--his torment and his reproach. And -so he went on looking until the rats came and he had no more eyes to -look with. Will you tell me that that is no worse than the deaths died -in the parishes of England? Will you tell me that it's the sort of death -died by the cheery, mature gentlemen who ate their dinners and slept -warm and dropped a tear--while they did their 'bit' in their Government -offices--over the brave lads saving England?" - -He had taken refuge from Ronnie in hatred of those whom, in the poem, he -called his murderers, and his voice was weighted with its fierce -indictment. In the pause that followed he had time to wonder if she -found him, at last, intolerable. She walked beside him, still looking -down, and it might well have been in a chill withdrawal. He almost -expected to hear her, in another moment, find the conventional phrase -with which to leave him. But no,--and in his own long sigh he recognized -the depth of his relief,--she was not going to punish him with -convention; she was not going to leave him. And what she said at last -was, "I'm so sorry! Please believe that I'm so very, very sorry! -Only--why do you speak, and write, as though it were some one's fault?" - -Ah, here then, at last, they had come to it, the barrier, on one side of -which he stood with his hell and she on the other in her artificial -paradise. - -"I write it and speak it because it is the truth," he said. "Millions of -innocent creatures, of gifted, beautiful creatures, like my friend, have -been slaughtered, tortured, driven mad, because of greasy, greedy -wire-pullers in their leather chairs at home." - -"In this war, too?" - -"In this war preeminently." - -"You don't feel that the crime was Germany's?" - -"Oh, of course!" his laugh sneered the facile acquiescence. "Let us put -it on Germany, by all means. We'll sleep the sounder! Certainly, I grant -it to you freely--Germany struck the match and lighted the fuse." - -"And weren't we all responsible for the fuse--you and I, I mean, as much -as the people in the leather chairs?" There was no irony in her -repetition. "The people who fought, as much as the people who didn't -fight? Wasn't the fuse simply our conception of our national safety? of -our national honour? That is what I feel so sad about your -poems,--though I should never have wanted to explain it,--that you are -so wrong, so ungenerous, so vindictive." - -In all his life it had rarely been his lot to know such astonishment. -Astonishment came first; and then the deep, deep hurt that rose, wave -after wave, within him. Was this, then, what she felt for him--only -this? Hadn't he told her about Ronnie--her alone of all the world? -Should not that have made her reverent of him, and pitiful? Should a man -who had endured such griefs receive such blows? Waves of colour, too, -flooded his face and tears rushed to his eyes. He thought, when he was -able at last to gather thoughts together, that it should now be for him -to find the conventional phrase and leave her. But, glancing again at -her profile, finding it, though singularly pale, so much more gentle -than severe, the impulse dropped. He was not strong enough for -convention. He was shaken, shattered; too weak even for -self-preservation. - -He walked, miserable, and his mind full of a whirling darkness, beside -her, determining only that she should be the first to speak again. She -was. She had quite come out of her shyness,--if it had ever been -that,--and though it was with something faltering, something that was, -he made out, sorry for them both in the predicament to which, after all, -he, and not she, had brought them, it was more than all with resolution -that she said,-- - -"I am so sorry if I seem presumptuous. But you asked me. And your poems -aren't the first I've read. So many young men, who have been so brave, -like you, and who have been through it all so that they have the right -to speak, seem to feel more than anything that hatred, not against -war,--we all hate war,--but against people, some groups of people, they -make responsible. There are bad and selfish people everywhere,--among -poets, I feel sure, just as much as among statesmen; but hasn't this war -proved--since everybody has gone--that no one group is bad and selfish; -that there are men in every group who have been glad to die for their -country? I know I have no weight with young men like you; I am not a -person of any importance for opinion; but how I wish that I could make -you believe that you ought not to write like that--with hatred in your -heart. Can great poetry be written out of hatred? And it's not only -yourself it hurts: it hurts other people; harms them, I mean. It spreads -a mood of darkness and fever just when they are so in need of light and -calm. And for the mothers, for people who have lost, cruelly, those whom -they loved as much, perhaps even more, than you loved your friend--do -you not see how your poems must sicken them? Do you not see that it all -becomes just that--a community of corruption? You imprison them, force -them back into their helpless suffering; when what they pray for is -strength to rise above it and to feel all the goodness and love that has -been given for them; to feel what is beautiful, not what is horrible; so -as to be worthy of their dead." - -As he listened to her,--and with a slow revulsion of all his nature, as -if, against his very will and mind, she moved his heart to breaking with -something passionate that spoke in her words,--an overwhelming -experience befell him. - -The crocuses beneath their feet, her sunlit shape beside him, her voice, -as she spoke to him thus, with her very soul, blended together in a -rising wave of light, or music, piercing, sweeping him, lifting him up -to some new capacity, leaving the old inert and dangling, lifting and -still lifting him, until at last, as if with a great, emerging breath, -he came into a region bright and fair, whence, looking down on the dark -and tattered past, he saw all life differently, even Ronnie's death, -even Ronnie's eyes. Ronnie was with him, with Mrs. Baldwin, in the -bright stillness. - -Upborne, sustained, like a swimmer in some strange, new element, he -seemed to gaze down through its golden spaces at the inert, alien -darkness that had been himself. "Rubbish! Rubbish!" he seemed to hear -himself say. Yet all was not left behind; all was not rubbish; else how -could he be here, with her, with Ronnie? It was bliss to see himself as -he had been, since something else was so immeasurably secure. Oh--could -one stay always like this! This was to taste of everlasting life. His -longing, as if with a cry, a grasp from the swimmer, marked the soft -turning of the tide. He sank, but it was sweetly, if with a strange, an -infinite sadness, a sadness recorded, accepted, while he sank, as making -forever the portion of the temporal consciousness. And the bliss still -stayed in the acceptance, and purple ripples seemed to glide back -rhythmically as the crocuses swam before his eyes. It had all been only -an instant then, for her last words came to him as if she had but spoken -them and he heard his own voice murmuring, as if from very far away, -"Perhaps you are right." - -The ripples stayed themselves. He looked down at the crocuses and saw -Mrs. Baldwin's white shoes standing still among them. Lifting his eyes, -which felt heavy, he found her looking at him with attention, with -anxiety. - -"It's nothing," he tried to smile. "Nothing at all. I mean--you've done -me good." He saw that she hadn't an idea of how she had done it. - -"Do take my arm," she said. "I ought to have remembered that you are not -strong yet." - -He took her arm. Perhaps he needed it. His normal consciousness was -gathering about him once again, but no longer with the old close -texture. It was all more permeable to light--that was how he tried to -put it. And he heard his voice go on, "You see--what it all amounts -to--oh, I'm not thinking about the poems, I know that you must be -right--it's not what you say, is it? It's something far more right than -what you say. But I love you. That's why you can do it to me. I wonder I -didn't see it before. You made me angry with your peacefulness. I didn't -understand. I needed your peace. You, you were what I needed. You will -forgive my speaking? Surely you'll understand. Perhaps you feel you -hardly know me, while you are like my life. Is it possible that some day -you might love me back and marry me?" - -He had used the words that came. They were the words of the normal -consciousness. How else could he ask her to keep him always near her so -that he might never lose that sense of paradise? - -But she had stopped still and had drawn her arm from his. Was it -possible that after what she had done to him, for him, she could see him -only thus? "Oh, no," she said. "No. No." Never had he seen a human face -express with such ineffable gentleness such repudiation. And she -repeated it, as if he had given her too much to bear; as if for her own -reassurance; as if to efface even the memory of his words: "No; no; -no!" She began again to walk towards the house. - -Had it not been for the initiation that had passed he knew so clearly -now, in all unawareness from her spirit to his, he would have felt to -the full the shame of his rejection, the deserved shame. For he was a -stranger and she had given him no right to believe that she even liked -him. But he could feel no shame. Had he really thought that she could -love him? Had it not been only that he wanted to tell her that he loved -her, and had wanted her, as it were, to keep him safe? He found himself -trying to explain this to her,--not pleading,--only so that she should -not be angry. "I had to tell you. You'd done me so much good. Everything -came different. Really, I'm not so presumptuous. I never meant to ask -anything." - -But she was not angry. "Forgive me," she said. "I hardly know what I am -saying. You so astonished me. Forgive me. But I don't feel as if I knew -you at all. Please don't think me reproaching you. I begin to -understand. You are not at all strong. It was like the other day when -you cried, I mean--I feel sure you think you care for me; but you -couldn't have said it, when we know each other so little, if you had -been well." - -She was putting it aside, for his sake, as an aberration, and he really -smiled a little as he shook his head. "No; really, really, it's not -that; not because I've been on edge and ill. It was something that came -to me from what you are; something that's been coming ever since I saw -you. I know that I am nothing to you; but for a moment, just now, it -seemed, when I had received so much, that you must know what you had -given; it seemed that a person to whom so much could be given, could -not be so far away. But even then I saw quite clearly what you saw in -me; a vain, pretentious, emotional creature; insincere, too, and proud -of my suffering. I am that. But I had never seen it before. And when it -came to me from you and, instead of crushing me, lifted me up, I knew -that I loved you.--No; I won't try to explain. Only you do forgive me? -You will let me go on as if it hadn't happened? I promise you that I'll -never trouble you again." - -Oh, the gentleness, the heavenly gentleness! It breathed through him -like the colour of the crocuses, although she was as impersonal, as -untouched, and as mysterious as they. He was nothing to her--nothing; -but she stood before him, looking at him, and though she gave nothing -but the gentleness, he knew that he received all that he needed. It was -enough that she was there. - -"But it's _I_ to be forgiven--_I_," she repeated. "Of course we will go -on. Oh, you look very tired. Please take my arm again. I spoke so -strangely to you. But--but--" She had flushed: for the first time he saw -the colour darken her face as if with a veil of pain, and in her voice -was the passion, deeper, stiller, that he had heard a little while ago -and that had enfranchised him. "I am married--I mean, my husband is -dead, but I am married. Perhaps you don't understand. Perhaps you will -some day, if you should lose some one you love and feel them still your -very life. We were like that. He is always with me." - -They had said nothing more as they walked up the meadow to the house, -his arm in hers. He had no sense of loss; rather, from her last words -to him, came a sense of further gain. She would be like that. He saw now -that her peace, against which he had pressed and protested, was -something won, was depth, not emptiness. She, too, had lost and -suffered. She was made dearer to him, more sacred. As for his love, it -did not belong--he had seen this even before she told him why--to this -everyday world to which he had returned. But it was everything to have -found it, with that other world, and to know that there it had its -being, its reality, forever. What was it that had enlarged, transformed -his life, but that very certitude of an eternity where all good was -secure? He could not explain it to himself in any words. Words were the -keys of temporality. But he had seen, if only for the few shining -moments, that Ronnie was not lost; that nothing had been in vain. - -If he found no difficulty, it was evident to him that Mrs. Baldwin felt -none, and he was glad to believe that this might be because he showed -her so completely, in his candid contentment, that he would never -trouble her again. She was not more kind to him; but she took, perhaps, -even more care, as if feeling that she had miscalculated something in -his recovery. She inaugurated a glass of hot milk, instead of spiced hot -water, at bedtime, and a rest on the sofa, with a rug, before the midday -dinner. "You will look so much better when you go back than when you -came," she said. - -For the time of going back drew near, and he did not dread it, though -loving Thatches and all it meant more and more with every day. But of -course, even in the temporal world, he was not to lose Thatches. That -was quite understood between them. The P.G. would be welcome whenever -he cared to come. - - -V - -He was playing chess on the afternoon before his departure. Tea was over -and Mrs. Baldwin had gone out. Guy had noticed that she had been perhaps -a little stiller than usual that day, when he had seen her, and that he -had seen her little. The game did not go very well; they were neither of -them keen on it; and when the old gentleman had won an easy victory, he -leaned back in his chair, the board still on its little table between -them, and said, "Poor Effie! She's still in the church, or in the -churchyard, I expect." - -Guy felt the shock of a great surprise. Strangely enough, though Mrs. -Baldwin had spoken of her husband and of his death, and though his books -were there, he did not associate him with Thatches, nor with the -churchyard. And with the word, "churchyard," a painful anxiety rose in -him. - -"Is it an anniversary?" he asked. - -"Yes," Mr. Haseltine nodded, sighing and rubbing his hand over his head. -"September twenty-ninth. I'd forgotten myself till just a little while -ago. Oliver died on this day. Her husband. Poor Effie!" - -"They lived here?" Guy asked. He had imagined that it had been after her -bereavement that she and her father had found and made a home of -Thatches. - -"Oh, yes. They lived here. All their married life," said Mr. Haseltine. -"Ten years or so. It was a great love-match. They were very happy. I -never saw a happier couple--until the end." - -"Did anything part them?" - -Mr. Haseltine had put his hands into his pockets and was gazing at the -board as if with a painful concentration, and though he shook his head -he answered, "It was the malady. Cancer, you know. Cancer of the face. -Such a handsome fellow, too: beautiful, bright, smiling eyes; beautiful -mouth. All gone. All disfigured, cruelly disfigured, and with horrible -suffering." - -Guy felt his breath coming thickly. "Was it long?" he asked. - -"Yes. Long. Eighteen months, I think. Morphia did little good at last. -He couldn't swallow; could hardly speak; begged to be killed and put out -of his torment. She was with him in it all. She never left him, day or -night; nor could he have borne it if she had. Nothing quieted him except -her hand in his. But at the end," said Mr. Haseltine, pushing away the -table and rising, "at the end, it attacked his brain and then he raved -at her. She couldn't go into the room at the last." - -The old man, with step lagging, as if weighted, walked away to the -window and stood looking out, while Guy, at the table, felt his heart -turn to stone. - -"Poor Effie!" Mr. Haseltine repeated after a little while. He came back -into the room and moved up and down, pausing to look at the books and -pictures. "She has never been the same since. For a long while we were -afraid she couldn't live. She hardly slept for months; and when she did -sleep, she used to wake crying, crying, always for him. When she became -stronger, she used to walk up and down those meadows, sometimes for -hours at a time. Very gentle; no complaint; always ready to talk to -people, to go on with things as best she could; but changed; completely -changed. We speak very little of him; but when we do, it's quite -naturally. She goes to the church sometimes, and there are always -flowers on his grave; but I don't think she has any orthodox beliefs; I -don't know that she has any beliefs at all. Still, she seems helped. She -is a very dear, unselfish woman; a dreamer, she was always a dreamer; -but always meaning well; and she does good in her quiet way. And I think -she likes this plan of having people come and stay and seeing after -them; especially now that they are so often people who have had a bad -time. Dear me, dear me!" Mr. Haseltine again shook his head, stationed -again at the window and looking out. "You would hardly have recognized -her had you seen her ten years ago. She had bright hair and a charming -colour; and full of gaiety and mischief. You'd hardly believe it now." - -"I'm so sorry," Guy heard himself saying. He remembered that those were -the words Mrs. Baldwin had used to him about Ronnie. - -"Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Haseltine. "Life is certainly very -difficult for some of us, and Effie has had her share. Somehow one -doesn't remember it when one is with her. I only recalled the day by -chance." - -Guy was walking in the meadows when Mrs. Baldwin returned. He saw her in -the garden, reading the letters that the evening post had brought, and -his first impulse was to remove himself as speedily as might be from her -sight, to cross the bridge and the farther meadow, and turn into the -lane that led away from it. But then he saw, as he stood irresolute, -that she was coming down to him, and he stood there, helpless, watching -her approach in the soft radiance of the late afternoon. She wore one -of the lavender-coloured dresses and the little knitted jacket. In her -hand were the opened letters. Her face was tranquil. She was, of course, -unaware of what had happened to him. - -She joined him. "You are having your last look at the crocuses?" - -It was their last look together. That, of course, was why she had come, -full of care and of kindness. - -"Yes. Yes. My last look for the year." He heard that his voice was -strange. And his heart seemed to lie like a cold hard block in his side. - -"Aren't you feeling well?" she asked. - -He walked beside her in silence. What could he say? But how was it -possible not to tell her? - -They had turned towards the sunset and came now to the bridge. She was -looking at him, with solicitude. He stopped before they crossed. - -"I must say something to you," broke from him. "I must. I can't go away -without your knowing--my shame--my unutterable remorse." - -She looked at him with the look he knew so well. Kindly, firmly, if with -anxiety, she prepared to hear him thrust some new torment upon her. - -"Shame? Remorse?" she murmured. - -"About my poems. About my griefs. What I've said to you. What I've given -you to bear. I thought I'd borne so much. I thought you unfeeling, -without experience. I thought I'd been set apart--that all of us had -been set apart, who suffered in the war. Stop me at once if you won't -hear it from me. But your father told me, just now, about your husband's -death." - -She became very pale. She looked away from him, but she said nothing. - -"That's all," said Guy after a long silence. He saw that there was -nothing more to tell her. She had understood. - -"Let us walk up and down," said Mrs. Baldwin. - -They crossed the bridge. He saw the stream sliding brightly below them -between the old, black planks. In the farther meadows the crocuses grew -more thickly and opened widely their pale purple chalices. - -"We have all suffered," said Mrs. Baldwin. "You mustn't have remorse or -shame. Nothing is harmed between us." - -The horrible stricture around his heart relaxed, and as they went very -slowly up and down he felt his throat tighten and tears rising, rising -to his eyes. He could not keep them back. He wasn't really quite strong -enough for this. They fell and fell, and from time to time he put up his -hand to brush them away. - -"We have all suffered," Mrs. Baldwin repeated gently. - -"Some, more! some, more!" he said brokenly. "Some, most of all!" - -They came back to the bridge, but though they crossed over, they did not -pass out through the high gate that barred the other end. The gate was -closed, and Guy stopped at it and leaned on it and put his face on his -hands. Mrs. Baldwin stood at the gatepost beside him, her hand holding -it and her head leaned against her hand. - -"He would have liked you," she said. "He was so interested in young men, -young poets. He was not old himself; and he wrote, too, did you know? -All those books in the living-room are his. He used to work there. I -will give you his two books if you care to have them. They were thought -very good; I think you will like them.--It was because of the crocuses -we came here," she went on. "We found them one September, just like -this, and the three little ruined cottages, and we knew at once that we -must live here. He so loved them. When he was very ill--but before the -very end when nothing could come to him any longer, when he was quite -shut away--he used to lie at the window and look out at them--that big -window above the living-room." - -Divinely she was helping him. It was as if, taking him by the hand, she -led him again away from his darkness and into her own light. - -Yes, brokenly it came to him, it was there, secure; how won, he knew -not. Through her he had found it; but that was because her feet had -passed before him up the calvary. She had gone through everything; and -she knew everything. - -And, to his new hearing, something of the infinite weariness of that -ascent was in her voice when she next spoke, although it was a voice as -peaceful as the evening air around them. "Are they not beautiful?" she -said. - -He raised his head and looked at the flowers through his tears. They had -never been so beautiful. "They make me think of you," he told her. - -"Do they?" Mrs. Baldwin still leaned her head against her hand, still -looked out over the meadows. "But there are so many of them," she said. -"So many. That is what I feel first of all about them. I could not think -of them as like one person. Multitudes. Multitudes.--And so silent! They -make me think always of the souls of the happy dead." - -_The Riverside Press_ - -CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS - -U. S. A. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -embody the spendour=> embody the splendour {pg 105} - -in spite of Florre's good cheer=> in spite of Florrie's good cheer {pg -136} - - * * * * * - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Roses and Other Stories, by -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS ROSES AND OTHER STORIES *** - -***** This file should be named 40650.txt or 40650.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/6/5/40650/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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