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+ margin-bottom: 1em; + word-spacing: 0em; + letter-spacing: 0em; + line-height: 1; } + h2.pgx { text-align: center; + clear: both; + font-weight: bold; + font-size: 135%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + word-spacing: 0em; + letter-spacing: 0em; + page-break-before: avoid; + line-height: 1; } + h3.pgx { text-align: center; + clear: both; + font-weight: bold; + font-size: 110%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + word-spacing: 0em; + letter-spacing: 0em; + line-height: 1; } + h4.pgx { text-align: center; + clear: both; + font-weight: bold; + font-size: 100%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + word-spacing: 0em; + letter-spacing: 0em; + line-height: 1; } + hr.pgx { width: 100%; + margin-top: 3em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + height: 4px; + border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ + border-style: solid; + border-color: #000000; + clear: both; } + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1 class="pgx" title="">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Legend, by Clemence Dane</h1> +<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States +and most other parts of the world 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 <a +href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not +located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> +<p>Title: Legend</p> +<p>Author: Clemence Dane</p> +<p>Release Date: November 15, 2020 [eBook #63775]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEGEND***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4 class="pgx" title="">E-text prepared by ellinora, Barry Abrahamsen,<br /> + and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (https://www.pgdp.net)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Internet Archive<br /> + (https://archive.org)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive. See + https://archive.org/details/legenddane00daneiala + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="pgx" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<div class='figcenter id001'> +<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' /> +<div class='ic001'> +<p><span class='small'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</span></p> +</div> +</div> +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c000' /> +</div> +<div> + <h1 class='c001'><b>LEGEND</b></h1> +</div> +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c002' /> +</div> +<div class='figcenter id002'> +<img src='images/publogo.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' /> +</div> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div><span class='large'>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span></div> + <div><span class='small'>NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS</span></div> + <div><span class='small'>ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</span></div> + <div class='c000'><span class='large'>MACMILLAN & CO., <span class='sc'>Limited</span></span></div> + <div><span class='small'>LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA</span></div> + <div><span class='small'>MELBOURNE</span></div> + <div class='c000'><span class='large'>THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class='sc'>Ltd.</span></span></div> + <div><span class='small'>TORONTO</span></div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c002' /> +</div> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> +<div class='nf-center c003'> + <div><span class='c004'>LEGEND</span></div> + <div class='c002'><span class='xlarge'>BY</span></div> + <div class='c000'><span class='c005'>CLEMENCE DANE</span></div> + <div class='c000'><span class='large'>Author of “Regiment of Women” and “First the Blade”</span></div> + <div class='c002'><span class="blackletter">New York</span></div> + <div>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</div> + <div class='c000'>1920</div> + <div class='c000'><i>All rights reserved</i></div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c003' /> +</div> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> +<div class='nf-center c002'> + <div><span class='sc'>Copyright</span>, 1920</div> + <div><span class='sc'>By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</div> + <div>──────</div> + <div>Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1920.</div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c002' /> +</div> +<div class='figcenter id003'> +<img src='images/beethoven-op-57.png' alt='' class='ig001' /> +</div> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> +<div class='nf-center c002'> + <div><b><span class='large'>Listen:</span></b> [<a href="music/beethoven-op-57.mp3">MP3</a>]</div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c002' /> +</div> +<div class='chapter'> + <h2 class='c006'><span class='xlarge'>LEGEND</span></h2> +</div> +<p class='c007'><i>Messrs. Mitchell and Bent will shortly issue +‘The Life of Madala Grey’ by Anita Serle: a +critical biography based largely on private correspondence +and intimate personal knowledge.</i></p> + +<p class='c008'>That was in <i>The Times</i> a fortnight ago. And +now the reviews are beginning—</p> + +<p class='c008'><i>The Cult of Madala Grey</i>....</p> + +<p class='c008'><i>The Problem of Madala Grey</i>....</p> + +<p class='c008'><i>The Secret of Madala Grey</i>....</p> + +<p class='c008'>I wish they wouldn’t. Oh, I <i>wish</i> they wouldn’t.</p> + +<p class='c008'><i>No admirer of the late Madala Grey’s arresting +art can fail to be absorbed by these intimate and +unexpected revelations</i>....</p> + +<p class='c008'><i>Delicately, unerringly, Miss Serle traces to its +source the inspiration of that remarkable writer.... +And—this will please Anita most of all</i>—</p> + +<p class='c008'><i>We ourselves have never joined in the chorus of +praise that, a decade ago, greeted the appearance +of ‘Eden Walls’ and its successors, and in our +opinion Miss Serle, in her biographical enthusiasm, +uses the word genius a little too often and too +easily. Madala Grey has yet to be tried by that +subtlest of literary critics, the Man with the +Scythe. But whether or not we agree with Miss +Serle’s estimate of her heroine, there can be no</i> +<i>two questions as to the literary value of the ‘Life’ +itself. It definitely places Miss Serle among the +Boswells, and as we close its fascinating pages we +find ourselves wondering whether our grandchildren +will remember Miss Serle as the biographer of +Madala Grey, or Madala Grey as the subject matter +merely, of a chronicle that has become a classic.</i></p> + +<p class='c008'>That is to say—<i>La reine est morte. Vive la +reine!</i> Anita will certainly be pleased. Well, I +suppose she’s got what she wants, what she’s always +wanted. She isn’t a woman to change. The new +portrait in the <i>Bookman</i> might have been taken +when I knew her: the mouth’s a trifle harder, the +hair a trifle greyer; but no real change. But it +amuses me that there should be her portrait in all +the papers, and none of Madala Grey; not even in +the <i>Life</i> itself. I can hear Anita’s regretful explanations +in her soft, convincing voice. She will +make a useful little paragraph out of it—</p> + +<p class='c008'><i>Miss Serle, whose ‘Life of Madala Grey’ is +causing no small stir in literary circles, tells us that +the brilliant novelist had so great a dislike of being +photographed that there is no record of her +features in existence. An odd foible in one who, +in our own recollection, was not only a popular +writer but a strikingly beautiful woman.</i></p> + +<p class='c008'>And yet, from her heavy, solitary frame (we +have no other pictures in our den) that ‘beautiful +woman,’ with her flowered scarf and her handful +of cowslips, is looking down at this moment at +me—at me, and the press cuttings, and <i>The +Times</i>, and Anita’s hateful book. And she says, +unmistakably—‘Does it matter? What does it +matter?’ laughing a little as she says it.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Then I laugh too, because Anita knows all about +the portrait.</p> + +<p class='c008'>After all, does it matter? Does it matter what +Anita says and does and writes? And why should +I of all people grudge Anita her success? Honestly, +I don’t. And I don’t doubt that the book +is well written: not that I shall read it. There’s +no need: I know exactly what she will have written: +I know how convincing it will be. But it +won’t be true. It won’t be Madala Grey.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Of course Anita would say—‘My dear Jenny, +what do you know about it? You never even met +her. You heard us, her friends, her intimates, +talking about her for—how long? An hour? +Two hours? And on the strength of that—that +eaves-dropping five years ago’ (I can hear the nip +in her voice still) ‘you are so amusing as to challenge +my personal knowledge of my dearest friend. +Possibly you contemplate writing the story of +Madala Grey yourself? If so, pray send me a +copy.’ And then the swish of her skirt. She always +wore trains in those days, and she always +glided away before one could answer.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But I could answer. I remember that evening +so well. I don’t believe I’ve forgotten a word or +a movement, and if I could only write it down, +those two hours would tell, as Anita’s book never +will, the story of Madala Grey.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I ought to be able to write; because Anita is my +mother’s cousin; though I never saw her till I was +eighteen.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mother died when I was eighteen.</p> + +<p class='c008'>If she had not been ill so long it would have been +harder. As it was—but there’s no use in writing +down that black time. Afterwards I didn’t know +what to do. The pension had stopped, of course. +I’d managed to teach myself typing, though +Mother couldn’t be left much; but I didn’t know +shorthand, and I couldn’t get work, and my money +was dwindling, and I was getting scared. I was +ready to worship Anita when her letter came. +She was sorry about Mother and she wanted a +secretary. If I could type I could come.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I remember how excited I was. I’d always +lived in such a tiny place and we couldn’t afford +Mudie’s. To go to London, and meet interesting +people, and live with a real writer, seemed too +good to be true. And it helped that Anita and her +mother were relations. Mother used to stay with +Great-aunt Serle when she was little. Somehow +that made things easier to me when I was missing +Mother more than usual.</p> + +<p class='c008'>In the end, after all those expectations, I was +only three weeks with Anita. They were a queer +three weeks. I was afraid of her. She was one +of those people who make you feel guilty. But +she was kind to me. I typed most of the day, for +she was a fluent worker and never spared either +of us; but she took me to the theatre once, and I +used to pour out when interesting people came to +tea. In the first fortnight I met nine novelists and +a poet; but I never found out who they were, because +they all called each other by their Christian +names and you couldn’t ask Anita questions. She +had such a way of asking you why you asked. +She used to glide about the room in a cloud of +chiffon and cigarette smoke—she had half-shut +pale eyes just the colour of the smoke—and pour +out a stream of beautiful English in a pure cool +voice; but if they interrupted her she used to +stiffen and stop dead and in a minute she had +glided away and begun to talk to someone else. +Old Mrs. Serle used to sit in a corner and knit. +She never dropped a stitch; but she always had +her eyes on Anita. She was different from the +rest of my people. She had an accent, not cockney +exactly, but odd. She had had a hard life, I believe. +Mother said of her once that her courage +made up for everything. But she never told me +what the everything was. Great-aunt’s memory +was shaky. One day she would scarcely know +you, and another day she would be sensible and +kind, very kind. She liked parties. People used +to come and talk to her because she made them +laugh; but every now and then, when Anita was +being brilliant about something, she would put up +her long gnarled finger and say—‘Hush! Listen +to my daughter!’ and her eyes would twinkle. +But I never knew if she were proud of her or +not.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Everybody said that Anita was brilliant. She +could take a book to pieces so that you saw every +good bit and every bad bit separated away into little +compartments. But she spoiled things for you, +books and people, at least she did for me. She +sneered. She said of the Baxter girl once, for +instance—‘She’s really too tactful. If you go to +tea with her you are sure to be introduced to your +oldest friend.’ And again—‘She always likes the +right people for the wrong reasons.’</p> + +<p class='c008'>Of course one knows what she meant, but I liked +the Baxter girl all the same. Beryl Baxter—but +everyone called her the Baxter girl. She was +kind to me because I was Anita’s cousin, and she +used to talk to me when Anita wasn’t in the mood +for her. She asked me to call her ‘Beryl’ almost +at once. Anita used to be awfully rude to her +sometimes, and then again she would have her to +supper and spend an evening going through her +MSS. and I could tell that she was giving her valuable +help. The Baxter girl used to listen and +agree so eagerly and take it away to re-write. I +thought she was dreadfully grateful. I hated to +hear her. And when she was gone Anita would +lean back in her chair with a dead look on her +face and say—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“God help her readers! Jenny, open the window. +That girl reeks of patchouli.” And then—“Why +do I waste my time?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>And Great-aunt Serle in her corner would +chuckle and poke and mutter, but not loud—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why does she waste her time? Listen to my +daughter!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The next time the Baxter girl came Anita would +hardly speak to her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl seemed to take it as a matter of +course. But once she said to me, with a look on +her face as if she were defending herself—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah—but you don’t write. You’re not keen. +You don’t know what it means to be in the set.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But such heaps of people come to see Anita,” +I said, “people she hardly knows.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“They’re only the fringes,” said the Baxter girl +complacently. “They’re not in the Grey set. +They don’t come to the Nights. At least, only +a few. Jasper Flood, of course—You’ve met him, +haven’t you?—and Lila Howe—<i>Masquerade</i>, +you know, and <i>Sir Fortinbras</i>.” The Baxter girl +always ticketed everyone she mentioned. “And +the Whitneys. She used to stay with the Whitneys. +And Roy Huth. And of course Kent +Rehan.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Kent Rehan?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“<i>The</i> Kent Rehan,” said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Then I remembered. The vicar’s wife always +sent Mother the Academy catalogue after she had +been up to town. I used to cut out the pictures I +liked, and I liked Kent Rehan’s. They had wind +blowing through them, and sunshine, and jolly +blobs that I knew must be raw colour, and always +the same woman. But you could never see her +face, only a cheek curve or a shoulder line. They +were in the catalogue every year, and so I told the +Baxter girl. She laughed.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, he’s always on the line. Anita says that’s +the worst she knows of him. And of course the +veiled lady——” she laughed again, knowingly, +“But there is one full face, I believe. <i>The Spring +Song</i> he calls it. But it’s never been shown. +Anita’s seen it. She told me. He keeps it locked +away in his studio. They say he’s in love with +her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“With whom?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Madala Grey, of course.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I said—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Who is Madala Grey?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl had sunk into the cushions until +she was prone. I had been wondering with +the bit of mind that wasn’t listening what the people +at home would have said to her, with her +cobweb stockings (it was November) and her coloured +combs and her sprawl. It was a relief to +see her sit up suddenly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“‘Who’s Madala Grey!’” Her mouth stayed +open after she’d finished the sentence.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes,” I said. “Who is she?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You mean to say you’ve never heard of Madala +Grey? You’ve never read <i>Eden Walls</i>? Is there +anyone in England who hasn’t read <i>Eden Walls</i>?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Heaps,” I said. She annoyed me. She—they—they +all thought me a fool at Anita’s.</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl sighed luxuriously.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“My word, I envy you! I wish I was reading +<i>Eden Walls</i> for the first time—or <i>Ploughed +Fields</i>. I don’t care so much about <i>The Resting-place</i>.” +She laughed. “At least—one’s not +supposed to care about <i>The Resting-place</i>, you +know. It’s as much as one’s life’s worth—one’s +literary life.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What’s wrong with it?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Sentimental. Anita says so. She says she +doesn’t know what happened to her over <i>The +Resting-place</i>.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I like the title,” I said.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, so do I. And I love the opening where——Oh, +but you haven’t read it. And you’re +Anita’s cousin! What a comedy! Just like +Anita, though, not to speak of her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why? Doesn’t Anita like her?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl was flat on the cushions again. +She looked at me with those furtive eyes that +always so strangely qualified her garrulity.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Are you shrewd? Or was that chance?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“‘Doesn’t Anita like her?’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Doesn’t she then?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah, now you’re asking! Officially, very much. +Too much, <i>I</i> should say. And too much is just +the same as the other thing, I think. Would you +like Anita for your bosom friend?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Naturally I said—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Anita’s been very kind to me.” Anita’s my +cousin, after all. I didn’t like the Baxter girl’s +tone.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, she’s been kind to me.” The Baxter girl +caught me up quickly. She was like a sensitive +plant for all her crudity. “Oh, I admire Anita. +She’s the finest judge of style in England. Jasper +Flood says so. You mustn’t think I say a word +against Anita. Very kind to me she’s been.” +Then, innocently, but her eyes were flickering again—“She +was kind to Madala too, till——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well?” I demanded.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Till Madala was kind to her. Madala’s one +of those big people. She’ll never forget what she +owes Anita—what Anita told her she owed her. +After she made her own name she made Anita’s. +Anita, being Anita, doesn’t forget that.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“How d’you mean—made Anita’s name?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, look at the people who come here—the +people who count. What do you think the +draw was? Anita? Oh yes, <i>now</i>. But they +came first for Madala. Oh, those early days when +<i>Eden Walls</i> was just out! Of course Anita had +sense for ten. She ran Madala for all she was +worth.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Then you do like Madala Grey?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I?” The Baxter girl looked at me oddly. +“She read my book. She wrote to me. That’s +why Anita took me up. She let me come to the +Nights. She started them, you know. Somebody +reads a story or a poem, and then it’s talk till the +milkman comes. Good times! But now Madala’s +married she doesn’t come often. Anita carries +on like grim death, of course. But it’s not the +same. Last month it was dreary.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Is it every month?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes. It’s tomorrow again. Tomorrow’s +Sunday, isn’t it? It’ll amuse you. You’ll come, +of course, as you’re in the house.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Will she? Herself?” I found myself reproducing +the Baxter girl’s eagerness.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not now.” The common voice had deepened +queerly. “She’s very ill.” She hesitated. +“That’s why I came today. I thought Anita +might have heard. Not my business, of course, +but——” She made an awkward, violent gesture +with her hands. “Oh, a genius oughtn’t to marry. +It’s wicked waste. Well, so long! See you tomorrow +night!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She left me abruptly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I found myself marking time, as it were, all +through that morrow, as if the evening were of +great importance. The Baxter girl was always +unsettling, or it may have been Anita’s restlessness +that affected me. Anita was on edge. She was +writing, writing, all the morning. She was at her +desk when I came down. There was a mass of +packets and papers in front of her and an empty +coffee cup. I believe she had been writing all +night. She had that white look round her eyes. +But she didn’t need any typing done. Early in +the afternoon she went out and at once Great-aunt, +in her corner, put down her knitting with +a little catch of her breath. But she didn’t talk: +she sat watching the door. I had been half the +day at the window, fascinated by the fog. I’d +never seen a London fog before. I found myself +writing a letter in my head to Mother about +it, about the way it would change from black to +yellow and then clear off to let in daylight and +sparrow-talk and the tramp-tramp of feet, and +then back again to silence, and the sun like a ball +that you could reach up to with your hand and +hold. I was deep in my description—and then, of +a sudden, I remembered that she wasn’t there to +write to any more. It was so hard to remember +always that she was dead. I got up quickly and +went to Anita’s shelves for a book. Great-aunt +hadn’t noticed anything. She was still watching +the door.</p> + +<p class='c008'>The little back room that opened on to the staircase +was lined to the ceiling with books, all so tidy +and alphabetical. Anita lived for books, but I +used to wonder why. She didn’t love them. Her +books never opened friendlily at special places, and +they hadn’t the proper smell. I ran my finger +along the ‘G’s’ and pulled out <i>Eden Walls</i>.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I began in the middle of course. One always +falls into the middle of a real person’s life, and a +book is a person. There’s always time to find out +their beginning afterwards when you’ve decided to +be friends. It isn’t always worth while. But it +was with <i>Eden Walls</i>. I liked the voice in which +the story was being told. Soon I began to feel +happier. Then I began to feel excited. It said +things I’d always thought, you know. It was +extraordinary that it knew how I felt about things. +There’s a bit where the heroine comes to town and +the streets scare her, because they go on, and on, +and on, always in straight lines, like a corridor +in a dream. Now how did she know of that dream? +I turned back to the first page and began to read +steadily.</p> + +<p class='c008'>When Anita’s voice jerked me back to real life +it was nearly dark. She was speaking to Great-aunt +as she took off her wraps—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The fog’s confusing. I had to take a taxi +to the tube. A trunk call is an endless business.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well?” said Great-aunt.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Nothing fresh.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Did <i>he</i> answer?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita nodded.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Was he——? Is she——? Did you +ask——? What did he tell you, Anita?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita stabbed at her hat with her long pins. +She was flushing.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The usual details. He spares you nothing. +Have you had tea, Mother?” She rang the bell.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Great-aunt beat her hand on the arm of her +chair in a feeble, restless way. When I brought +her tea she said to me in her confidential whisper—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Give it to my daughter. She’s tired. She’ll +tell us when she’s not so tired.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She settled herself again to watch; but she +watched Anita, not the door.</p> + +<p class='c008'>And in a few minutes Anita did say, as the +Baxter girl had said—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She’s very ill.” And then—“I always told +you we ought to have a telephone. I can’t be running +out all the evening.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Do they come tonight?” said Great-aunt +Serle.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita answered her coldly—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“They do. Why not?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Great-aunt tittered.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why not? Why not? Listen, little Jenny!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita, as usual, was quite patient.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Mother, you mustn’t excite yourself. Jenny, +give Mother some more tea. What good would it +do Madala to upset my arrangements? Besides, +Kent will have the latest news. I think you may +trust him.” She gave that little laugh that was +Great-aunt’s titter grown musical. Then she +turned to me.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“By the way, Jenny, I expect friends tonight. +You needn’t change, as you’re in mourning. +You’ll see to the coffee, please. We’ll have the +door open and the coffee in the little room. You +might do it now while I dress.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The big drawing-room was divided from the little +outer room by a curtained door. It was closed in +the day-time for cosiness’ sake, but when it was +flung back the room was a splendid one. The small +room held the books and a chair or two, and a +chesterfield facing the door that opened on to the +passage and the narrow twisting stairs. They +were so dark that Anita kept a candle and matches +in the hall; but one seldom troubled to light it. +It was quicker to fumble one’s way. Anita used to +long for electric light; but she would not install it. +Anita had good taste. The house was old, and +old-fashioned it should stay.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I fastened back the door and re-arranged the +furniture, and was sitting down to <i>Eden Walls</i> +again when Great-aunt beckoned me.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Go and dress, my dear!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But Anita said——” I began.</p> + +<p class='c008'>She held me by the wrist, all nods and smiles and +hoarse whispers.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The pretty dress—to show a pretty throat—isn’t +there a pretty dress somewhere? I know! +Put it on. Put it on. What a white throat! +I’ve a necklace somewhere—but then Anita would +know. Mustn’t tell Anita!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She pulled me down to her with fumbling, shaky +hands.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Tell me, Jenny, where’s my daughter?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Upstairs, Auntie.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Tell me, Jenny—any news? Any news, +Jenny?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I didn’t know what to say to her. I was afraid +of hurting her. She was so shaking and pitiful.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Is it about Miss Grey, Auntie?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Carey, Jenny—Carey. Mrs. John Carey. +Good name. Good man. But Anita don’t like +him. Anita won’t tell me. You tell me, Jenny!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Auntie, it’s all right. It’s all right. She’ll +tell you, of course, when she hears again.” And +I soothed her as well as I could, till she let me +loosen her hand from my wrist, and kiss her, and +start her at her knitting again, so that I could finish +making ready the room. But as I went to wash +my hands she called to me once more.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, Auntie?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Put it on, Jenny. Don’t ask my daughter. +Put it on.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She was a queer old woman. She made me want +to cry sometimes. She was so frightened always, +and yet so game.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But I went upstairs after supper and put on the +frock she liked. Black, of course, but with Mother’s +lace fichu I liked myself in it too. I did my +hair high. I don’t know why I took so much trouble +except that I wanted to cheer myself up. It +had been a depressing day in spite of <i>Eden Walls</i>. +I looked forward to the stir of visitors. And then +I was curious to see Kent Rehan.</p> + +<p class='c008'>When I came down the Baxter girl was already +there, standing all by herself at the fire. She was +strikingly dressed; but she looked stranded. I +wondered if Anita had been snubbing her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita was shaking hands with Mr. Flood and +with a lady whom I had not seen before. She was +blonde, with greenish-golden hair and round eyes, +very black eyes that had no lights in them, not even +when she smiled. She often smiled. She had a +drawling voice and hardly spoke at all, except to +Mr. Flood. If he talked to anyone else or walked +away from her, she would watch him for a minute, +and then say—‘Jasper’ with a sort of purr, not +troubling to raise her voice. But he always heard +and came. She wore a wonderful Chinese shawl, +white, with gold dragons worked on it, and whenever +she moved it set the dragons crawling. She +was powdered and red-lipped like a clown, and I +didn’t really like her, but nevertheless there was +something about her that was queerly attractive. +When she smiled at me because I gave her coffee, I +felt quite elated. But I didn’t like her. Mr. +Flood called her ‘Blanche.’ I never heard her +other name.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita seemed very pleased to see them. I +caught scraps.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Am so glad—one’s friends about one—such +a strain waiting for news. I phoned this afternoon. +No, the usual phrases. Anxious, of course, +but I should certainly have heard if——Good +of you to come! No chance of the Whitneys, I’m +afraid—too much fog. And what are you reading +to us?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl, as I greeted her, stripped and +re-dressed me with one swift look.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“My dear, it suits you! I wish I could look +Victorian. But I’m vile in black. Have you seen +Lila? I met her on the step. They’ve turned +down <i>Sir Fortinbras</i> in America. Isn’t it rotten +luck? Anita said they would. Anita’s always +right. Any more news of Madala?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita overheard her. She was suddenly gracious +to the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You may be sure I should always let you know +at once. And what is this I hear about Lila? +Poor Lila! It’s the last chapter, I’m afraid. I +advised her from the beginning that the American +public will not tolerate—but dear Lila is a law +unto herself.” And then, as Miss Howe came in—“Lila, +my dear! How good of you to venture! +A night like this makes me wonder why I continue +in London. Madala has urged me to move out +ever since——No. No news. But Jasper’s +been energetic——” She circled mazily about +them while I brought the coffee.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Kent coming?” said Mr. Flood, fumbling with +his papers.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita shrugged her shoulders.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Who can account for Kent? It may dawn on +him that he’s due here—and again, it may not. +It depends as usual, I suppose, on the new picture.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh yes, there’s a new one,” recollected the +Baxter girl carefully.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“There must be! He was literally flocculent +yesterday.” Miss Howe chuckled. “That can +only mean one of two things. Art or——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“—the lady! Who can doubt? Well, if +Carey doesn’t object to his brotherly love continuing, +I’m sure I don’t. But I wish it need not involve +his missing his appointments.” Mr. Flood +eyed his typescript impatiently.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita was instantly all tact.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, we won’t wait. Certainly not. Pull in +to the fire. Now, Jasper!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But Miss Howe, as she swirled into Anita’s special +chair, her skirts overflowing either arm, abolished +Mr. Flood and his typescript with a movement +of her soft dimply hands.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, I’m not in the mood even for Jasper’s efforts. +I want to let myself go. I want to damn +publishers—and husbands! Damn them! Damn +them! There! Am I shocking you, Miss Summer?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She smiled at me over their heads. She was +always polite to me. I liked her. She was like +a fat, pink pæony.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, if you take my advice——” began +Anita.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“My darling, I love you, but I don’t want your +advice. I only want one person’s advice—ever—and +she has got married and is doing her duty in +that state of life——Hence I say—Damn husbands! +I tell you I want Madala to soothe me, +and storm at the injustice of publishers for me, +and then—no, not give me a brilliant idea for the +last chapter, but make me tell her one, and then +applaud me for it. <i>You</i> know, Anita!” She dug +at her openly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I caught a movement in Great-aunt’s corner.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Coffee, Auntie?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She gave me a goblin glance.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“My daughter!” She had an air of introducing +her triumphantly. “Listen! She don’t like +fat women.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>We listened. Anita’s voice was mellow with +cordiality.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes indeed. Madala has often said to me that +she thought you well worth encouraging.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe laughed jollily.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I admire your articles, Nita. I wilt when +you review me. But you’ll never write novels, darling. +You’ve not the ear. Madala may have said +that, but she didn’t say it in that way.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She certainly said it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Some day I’ll ask her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Some day! Oh, some day!” The Baxter +girl was staring at the fire. “Shall we ever get +her back?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“In a year! Let us give her a year!” Mr. +Flood looked up at the lady beside him with a thin +smile. I couldn’t bear him. He sat on the floor, +and he called you ‘dear lady,’ and sometimes he +would take hold of your watch-chain and finger it +as he talked to you. But he was awfully clever, +I believe. He wrote reviews and very difficult poetry +that didn’t rhyme. Anita was generally mellifluous +to him and she quoted him a good deal. +She turned to him with just the same smile—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah, of course! You’ve met John Carey too.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“For my sins, dear lady—for my sins.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not the same sins, surely,” breathed the blonde +lady.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“As the virtuous Carey’s? Don’t be rude to +me! It’s a fact—the man’s a churchwarden. +He carries a little tin plate on Sundays! Didn’t +you tell me so, Anita? No—we give her a year. +Don’t we, Anita?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But what did she marry him for?” wailed the +Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>They all laughed.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Copy, dear lady, copy!” Mr. Flood was enjoying +himself. “Why will you have ideals? +Carey was a new type.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But she needn’t have married him!” insisted +the Baxter girl. The argument was evidently an +old one.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She, if I read her aright, could have dispensed +with the ceremony, but the churchwarden had his +views. Obviously! Can’t you imagine him—all +whiskers and wedding-ring?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But I thought he was clean-shaven! I thought +he was good-looking!” I sympathized with the +Baxter girl’s dismay.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah—I speak in parables——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You do hate him, don’t you?” said Miss Howe +with her wide, benevolent smile. “Now, I wonder——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood flushed into disclaimers, while the +woman beside him looked at Miss Howe with half-closed +eyes.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I? How could I? Our orbits don’t touch. +<i>I</i> approved, I assure you. An invaluable experience +for our Madala! A year of wedded love, another +of wedded boredom, and then—a master-piece, +dear people! Madala Grey back to us, a +giantess refreshed. Gods! what a book it will be!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I wonder,” said Miss Howe vaguely.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita answered her with that queer movement +of the head that always reminded me of a pouncing +lizard.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No need! I’ve watched Madala Grey’s career +from the beginning.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“For this I maintain—” Mr. Flood ignored +her—“<i>Eden Walls</i> and <i>Ploughed Fields</i> may be +amazing (<i>The Resting-place</i> I cut out. It’s an indiscretion. +Madala caught napping) but they’re +preliminaries, dear people! mere preliminaries, believe +me.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I sometimes wonder——” Miss Howe made +me think of Saladin’s cushion in <i>The Talisman</i>. +She always went on so softly and imperviously +with her own thoughts—“Suppose now, that she’s +written herself out, and knows it?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl gave a little gasp of horrified +appreciation.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“So the marriage——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“An emergency exit.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But Anita pitied them aloud—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It shows how little you know Madala, either +of you.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Does anyone? Do you?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita smiled securely.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The type’s clear, at least.” Mr. Flood looked +round the circle. His eyes shone. “<i>Une grande +amoureuse</i>—that I’ve always maintained. Carey +may be the first—but he won’t be the last.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Is he the first? How did she come to write +<i>The Resting-place</i> then? Tell me that!” Anita +thrust at him with her forefinger and behind her, +in the corner, I saw the gesture duplicated.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“So I will when I’ve read the new book, dear +lady.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“If ever it writes itself,” Miss Howe underlined +him.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“As to that—I give her a year, as I say. +Once this business is over—” his voice mellowed +into kindliness—“and good luck to her, dear +woman——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah, good luck!” said Miss Howe and smiled +at him.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Once it’s over, I say——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But she <i>will</i> be all right, won’t she?” said the +Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I should certainly have been told——” began +Anita.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe harangued them—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Have you ever known Madala Grey fail yet? +She’ll be all right. She’ll pull it off—triumphantly. +You see! But as for the book—if it +comes——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“When it comes,” corrected Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What’s that?” said Anita sharply.</p> + +<p class='c008'>There was a sound in the passage, a heavy sound +of feet. It caught at my heart. It was a sound +that I knew. They had come tramping up the +stairs like that when they fetched away Mother. +Thud—stumble—thud! I shivered. But as +the steps came nearer they belonged to but one +man. The door opened and the fog and the man +entered together. Everyone turned to him with a +queer, long flash of faces.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Kent!” cried Anita, welcoming him. Then +her voice changed. “Kent! What’s wrong? +What is it?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>He shut the door behind him and stood, his back +against it, staring at us, like a man stupefied.</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl broke in shrilly—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“He’s wired. He’s had a wire!” She pointed +at his clenched hand.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Then he, too, looked down at his own hand. +His fingers relaxed slowly and a crush of red and +grey paper slid to the floor.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“A son,” he said dully.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah!” A cry from the corner by the fire eased +the tension. Great-aunt Serle was clapping her +hands together. Her face was wrinkled all over +with delight. “The good girl! The pretty——And +a son too! A little son! Oh, the good girl!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita turned on her, her voice like a scourge—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Be quiet, Mother!” Then—“Well, Kent? +Well?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well?” he repeated after her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Madala? How’s Madala? What about Madala +Grey?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Dead!” he said.</p> + +<p class='c008'><i>Dead.</i> The word fell amongst the group of us +in the circle of lamp-light, like a plummet into a +pool. <i>Dead.</i> For an instant one could hear the +blank drop of it. Then we broke up into gestures +and little cries, into a babel of dismay and concern +and rather horrible excitement.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Instinctively I separated myself from them. It +was neither bad news nor good news to me, but it +recalled to me certain hours, and they—it was as +if they enjoyed the importance of bereavement. +Anita talked. Miss Howe was gulping, and dabbing +at her eyes. The Baxter girl kept on saying—‘Dead?’ +‘Dead?’ under her breath, and +with that wide nervous smile that you sometimes +see on people’s faces when they are far enough +away from laughter. Great-aunt had shrunk into +her corner. I could barely see her. The blonde +lady had her hand on her heart and was panting a +little, as if she had been running, and yet, as always, +she watched Mr. Flood. He had pulled out +a note-book and a fountain-pen and was shaking at +it furiously, while his little eyes flickered from one +to another—even to me. I felt his observance +pursue me to the very edge of the ring of light, +and drop again, baulked by the dazzle, as I slipped +past him into the swinging shadows beyond. It’s +odd how lamp-light cuts a room in two: I could +see every corner of the light and shadow alike, and +even the outer room was not too dim for me to +move about it easily; but to those directly under +the lamp I knew I had become all but invisible, a +blur among the other blurs that were curtains and +pictures and chairs. They remembered me as little +as, absorbed and clamorous, they remembered +the man who had brought them their news, and then +had brushed his way through question and comment +to the deep alcove of the window in the outer room +and there stood, rigid and withdrawn, staring out +through the uncurtained pane at the solid night +beyond. I could not see his face, only the outline +of a big and clumsy body, and a hand that twitched +and fumbled at the tassel of the blind.</p> + +<p class='c008'>And all the while Anita, white as paper, was +talking, talking, talking, saying how great the +shock was, and how much Miss Grey had been to +her—a stream of sorrow and self-assertion. It +was just as if she said—‘Don’t forget that this is +far worse for me than for any of you. Don’t forget——’</p> + +<p class='c008'>But the others went on with their own thoughts.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Dead? Gone? It’s not possible.” Miss +Howe was all blubbered and deplorable. “What +shall we do without her?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes—that’s it!” The Baxter girl edged-in +her chair to her like a young dog asking for comfort.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“For that matter, from the point of view of +literature,” Anita’s voice grated, “she died a year +ago.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It’s not possible! That’s what I say—it’s +not possible!” It was strange how even the Baxter +girl ignored Anita. “Dead! I can’t grasp +it. It’s—it’s too awful. She was so vivid.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Awful?” Mr. Flood was biting his fingers. +“Awful? Nothing of the kind. You know that +Holbein cut—no, it’s earlier stuff—‘Death and +the Lady,’ crude, preposterous. And <i>that’s</i> what +it is. Old Bones and Madala Grey? That’s not +tragedy, that’s farce! Farce, dear people, +farce!” Then his high tripping voice broke suddenly. +“Dead? Why, she wasn’t thirty!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She was twenty-six last June,” said Anita +finally. “Midsummer Day. I know.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“June!” He caught it up. “Just so—June! +Isn’t that characteristic? Isn’t that +Madala all over? Of course she was born in June. +She would be. She <i>was</i> June. June——</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c009'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Her lips and her roses yet maiden</div> + <div class='line in1'>A summer of storm in her eyes——”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c010'>Miss Howe winced.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“For God’s sake don’t Swinburnize, Jasper! +She’s not your meat. Oh, I want to cry—I want +to cry! Dead—at twenty-six——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“In child-bed,” finished Anita bitterly, and her +voice made it an unclean and shameful end.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood’s glance felt its way over her, hatefully. +It never lifted to her face.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Of course from your point of view, dear +lady——” he began, and smiled as he made his +little bow of attention.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I thought him insolent, and so, I believe, did +Miss Howe. She lifted her head sharply and I +thought she would have spoken; but Anita gave her +no time. There was always a sort of thick-skinned +valiance about Anita.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, but you all know my point of view. She +knew it herself. I never concealed it. You know +how I devoted myself——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“A bye-word, a bye-word!” said Miss Howe +under her breath.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“—but not so much to her as to her gift. I +should never allow a personal sentiment to overpower +me. I haven’t the time for it. But she had +the call, she had the gift, and because she had it I +say, as I have always said, that for Madala Grey, +marriage——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And all it implies——” Mr. Flood was still +smiling.</p> + +<p class='c008'>She accepted it.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Marriage and all that it implies was apostasy. +I stand for Literature.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And Literature,” with a glance at the others, +“is honoured.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>They wearied me. It seemed to me that they +sparked and fizzled and whirred with the sham life +of machinery: and like machinery they affected +me. For at first I could not hear anything but +them, and then they confused and tired me, and +last of all they faded into a mere wall-paper of +sound, and I forgot that they were there, save +that I wondered now and then, as stray sentences +shrilled out of the buzz, that they were not yet +oppressed into silence.</p> + +<p class='c008'>For there was grief abroad—a grief without +shape, without sound, without expression—a +quality, a pulsing essence, a distillation of pure +pain. From some centre it rayed out, it spread, +it settled upon the room, imperceptibly, like the +fall of dust. It reached me. I felt it. It soaked +into me. I ached with it. I could not sit quiet. +I was not drawn, I was impelled. <i>Dead</i>—the +dull, bewildered voice was still in my ears. <i>That</i> +I heard. But it was statement, not appeal. It +was not his suffering that demanded relief, but +some responding capacity for pain in me that +awoke and cried out restlessly that such anguish +was unlawful, beyond endurance, that still it I +must, I must!</p> + +<p class='c008'>I rose. I looked round me. Then I went very +softly into the outer room.</p> + +<p class='c008'>He was still standing at the window. The street +lamp, level with the sill, was quenched to a yellow +gloom. It lit up the wet striped branches and +dead bobbins of the plane-tree beside it, and the +sickly undersides of its shrivelled last leaves. I +never thought a tree could look so ghastly. +Against that unnatural glitter and the luminous +thick air the man and the half-drawn curtain stood +out in solid, unfamiliar bulk of black.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I came and stood just behind him. He was so +big that I only reached his shoulder. He may +have heard me: I think he did; but he did not turn. +I was not frightened of him. That was so queer, +because as a rule I can’t talk to strangers. I get +nervous and red, and foolish-tongued, especially +with men. Of course I knew all the usual men, the +doctor at home, and the church people, and husbands +that came back by the five-thirty, and now +all Anita’s friends, and Mr. Flood; but I never +had anything to say to them or they to me. But +with Kent Rehan, somehow, it was different. He +was different. I never thought—‘This is a +strange man.’ I never thought—‘He doesn’t +know me: it’s impertinent to break in upon him: +what will he think?’ I never thought of all that. +I never thought about myself at all. I was just +passionately desiring to help him and I didn’t know +how to do it.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I think I stood there for four or five minutes, +trying to find words, opening my lips, and then +catching back the phrase before a sound came, +because it seemed so poor and meaningless. And +all the while the Baxter girl’s words were running +in my head—‘They say he was in love with her.’</p> + +<p class='c008'>With her—with Madala Grey. She was the +key. I had the strangest pang of interest in this +unknown woman. Who was she? What was she? +What had she been? What had she done so to +centre herself in so many, in such alien lives? +What had she in common for them all? Books, +books, books—<i>I’d</i> never heard of her books! +And she was married. Yet the loss of her, unpossessed, +could bring such a look (as he turned restlessly +from the window at last) such a look to Kent +Rehan’s face. I was filled with a sort of anger +against that dead woman, and I envied her. I +never saw a man look so—as if his very soul had +been bruised. It was not, it was never, a weak +face, and it was not a young one; yet in that instant +I saw in it, and clearly, its own forgotten +childhood, bewildered by its first encounter with +pain. It was that fleeting look that touched me +so and gave me courage, so that I found myself +saying to him, very low and quickly, and with a +queer authority—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It won’t always hurt so much. It will get +easier. I promise you it will. It does. Truly it +does. In six months—I <i>do</i> know.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>He looked down at me strangely.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I went on because I had to, but it was difficult. +It was desperately difficult. I could hear myself +blundering and stammering, and using hateful +slangy phrases that I never used as a rule.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I had to tell you. It isn’t cheek. I know—it +hurts like fun. It’ll be worst out of doors. +You see them coming, you see them just ahead of +you, and then it isn’t them. But it won’t always +hurt so horribly. I promise you. One manages. +One gets used to living with it. I know.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>He looked at my black dress.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Your husband?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No. Mother.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>He said no more. But he did not go away from +me. We stood side by side at the window.</p> + +<p class='c008'>The voices in the other room insisted themselves +into my mind again, against my will, like the ticking +of a clock in the night. I was thinking about +him, not them. But Anita called to me to put +coal on the fire and, once among them, I did not +like to go back to him again.</p> + +<p class='c008'>They had re-grouped themselves at the hearth. +Miss Howe was in the chair with the chintz cover +that was as pink and white and blue-ribboned as +she herself. The Baxter girl crouched on the pouf +and the fire-light danced over her by fits and +starts till, what with her violet dress and her black +boy’s head with the green band in it and that +orange glow upon her, she looked like one of the +posters in the Tube. The blonde lady had pushed +back her chair to the edge of the lamp-light, so +that her face was a blur and her white dress yellow-grey. +Her knees made a back for Mr. Flood sitting +cross-legged at her feet, and watching the +Baxter girl as if he admired her. Once the blonde +lady put her hand on his shoulder, and he caught it +and played with the rings on it while he listened to +her, and yet still watched the Baxter girl. She +went on whispering, her hand in his, till at last he +put back his head and caught her eye and laughed. +Then she leaned back again as if she were satisfied. +But I thought—‘How I should hate to have that +dank hair rubbing against my skirt.’ Beside Mr. +Flood lay the MS. he had brought, but I think +Anita had forgotten it. She, sitting at the table +in her high-backed chair (she never lolled), was +still talking, indeed they were all talking about this +Madala Grey. Anita’s voice was as pinched as +her face.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, I knew from the first what it would be! +She could never do anything by halves. She had +no moderation. The writing, the work, all that +made her what she was, tossed aside, for a whim, +for a madness, for a man. I can’t help it—it +makes me bitter.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Do you grudge it her so?” The Baxter girl +looked at her wonderingly. “I kicked at it too, +of course. We all did, didn’t we? But now, I +like to think how happy she looked the last time she +came here. Do you remember? I liked that blue +frock. And the scarf with the roses—I gave her +that. Liberty. She was thin though. She always +worked too hard. Poor Madala! Heigh-ho, +the gods are jealous gods.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita stared in front of her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Just gods. She served two masters. She +was bound to pay.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You are hard,” said the Baxter girl in a low +voice.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe rocked herself.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But don’t you know how she feels? I do. +It’s the helplessness——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita’s pale eye met and held her glance as +if she resented that sympathy. Then, as if indeed +she were suddenly grown weak, she acquiesced.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I suppose so. Yes, it’s the helplessness. ‘If +this didn’t happen’—‘If that weren’t so’—Little +things, little things—and they govern one. A +broken doll—a cowslip ball—stronger than all +my strength. And she needn’t have met Carey. +It was just a chance. If I’d known—that day! +I used to ask her questions, just to make her talk. +I remember asking her about her old home—more +to set her off than anything. I said I’d like to +see it some day. It was true. I was interested. +But it was only to make her talk. But she—oh, +you know how she foamed up about a thing. ‘My +old home! Would you, Anita? Would you like +to come? Wouldn’t it bore you, Anita? It’s all +spoiled, you know. But I go down now and then. +Nobody remembers me. It’s like being a ghost. +Oh, I <i>feel</i> for ghosts. Would you really like to +come? Shall we go soon? Shall we go today?’ +And then, of course, down we go. And then we +meet Carey. And then the play begins.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe shook her head.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ends.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita accepted it.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ends. Then the play ends.” And then, +frowning—“If I’d known that day—if I’d +known! I was warned, too. That’s strange. +I’ve never thought of it from that day to this. If +I were an old wife now——” She shivered.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What happened?” said the Baxter girl curiously.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, well, off we went! We had a carriage to +ourselves. I was glad. I thought she might +talk.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And you always tried to make her talk,” said +Miss Howe softly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita went on without answering her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She grew quite excited as we travelled down, +talking about her ‘youth.’ She always spoke as +if she were a hundred.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She put something into that youth of hers, I +shouldn’t wonder,” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She did. The things she told me that day. I +knew she had been in America, but I never +dreamed——She landed there, if you please, +without a penny in her pocket, without a friend in +the world.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I never understood why she went to America,” +said Miss Howe. “I asked her once.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What did she say?” said Anita curiously.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“To make her fortune. But I never got any +details out of her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Didn’t you know?” said Anita. “Her people +emigrated. The father failed. It happened when +Madala was eighteen, and she and her mother persuaded +him, expecting him, literally, to make their +fortunes. The mother seems to have been an erratic +person. Irish, I believe. Beautiful. Extravagant. +I have always imagined that it was +her extravagance—but Madala and the husband +seem to have adored her. I remember Madala saying +once that her father had been born unlucky, +‘except when he married Mother!’ I suspect, +myself, that that was the beginning of his ill-luck. +Anyhow, when the crash came, they gathered together +what they had and started off on some romantic +notion of the mother’s to make their fortune +farming. America. Steerage. The <i>Sylvania</i>.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“<i>Sylvania?</i> That’s familiar. What was it? +A collision, wasn’t it?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, that was the <i>Empress of Peru</i>. The <i>Sylvania</i> +caught fire in mid-ocean—a ghastly business. +There were only about fifty survivors. +Both her people were drowned.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, that’s what she meant,” began Miss Howe, +“that time at the Academy. We were looking at +a storm-scape, and she said—‘People don’t know. +It’s not like that. They wouldn’t try to paint it +if they knew.’ She was quite white. Of course I +never dreamed——Poor old Madala! Well, +what happened?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, she reached America in what she stood up +in. There was a survivors’ fund, of course, but +money melts in a city when you’re strange to it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Couldn’t she have come back to England?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I believe she had relations over here, but her +mother had quarrelled with them all in turn. They +didn’t appreciate her mother and that was the unforgivable +sin for Madala. She’d have starved +sooner than ask them to help her. I shouldn’t +wonder if she did, too!—half starve anyway. I +shouldn’t wonder if those first bare months haven’t +revenged themselves at last.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, if one had known!” began the Baxter girl. +“How is it that no one ever knows—or cares?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You? You were a schoolgirl. Who had +heard of her in those days? But she made friends. +There was a girl, a journalist, who had been sent +to interview the survivors. She seems to have +helped her in the beginning. She found her a +lodging—oh, can’t you see how she uses that +lodging in <i>Eden Walls</i>?—and gave her occasional +hack jobs, typing, and now and then proof-reading. +Then she got some work taken, advertisement +work, little articles on soaps and scents and +face-creams that she used to illustrate herself. +She was comically proud of them. She kept them +all.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I suppose in her spare time she was already +working at <i>Eden Walls</i>?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No. I asked her. And she said—‘Oh, no, I +was too miserable. Oh, Anita, I <i>was</i> miserable.’ +And then she began again telling funny stories +about her experiences. No, she was back in England +before she began <i>Eden Walls</i>. However, she +seems to have made quite a little income at last, +even to have saved. And then, just when she began +to see her way before her to a sort of security, +then she threw it all up and came home.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Just like Madala! But why?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Heaven knows! Homesick, she said.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But she hadn’t got a home!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It was England—the English country—the +south country—the Westering Hill country. +She used to talk about it like—like a lover.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Isn’t that more probable?” said Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“A lover.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Carey?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not necessarily Carey.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita looked at him with a certain approval.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah—so you’ve thought of that, too? Now +what exactly do you base it on?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>He shrugged and smiled.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Delightfullest—my thoughts are thistle-down.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But you have your theory?” She pinned him +down. “I see that you too have your theory.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Our theory.” He bowed.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You’ve got wits, Jasper.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What are you two driving at?” Miss Howe +fidgeted.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“We’re evolving a theory—a theory of Madala +Grey. Who lived in the south country, +Anita?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Carey, for that matter.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Matters not. She didn’t come home for +Carey. You can’t make books without copy. +Not her sort of book. Any more than you can +make bricks without straw. But she didn’t make +her bricks from his straw, that I’ll swear.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, she didn’t come home for Carey,” said +Anita. “I tell you, that was the day she met +him. It’s barely a year ago. She had made her +name twice over by then. She was already casting +about for her third plot. I think it was that that +made her so restless. She’d grown very restless. +But she certainly didn’t come home for Carey.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Then why?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Homesick.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“That’s absurd.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I’m telling you what she said. She insisted on +it. She used a queer phrase. She said—‘I +longed for home till my lips ached.’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The lady with Mr. Flood stirred in her shadows.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She didn’t imagine that. That happens. +That is how one longs——” She broke off.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“For home?” he said, with that smile of his +that ended at his mouth and left his eyes like chips +of quartz.</p> + +<p class='c008'>She answered him slowly, him only—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I suppose, with some women, it could be for +home. If she says so——That is what confounds +one in her. She knows—she proves that +she knows, in a phrase like that, things that (when +one thinks of her personality) she <i>can’t</i> know—couldn’t +know. It’s inexplicable. ‘Till one’s lips +ache’——Oh, Lord!” She laughed harshly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita looked at them uncertainly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, that’s what she said. And to judge +from her description Westering was something to +be homesick for. I expected a paradise.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Westering? That’s quite a town.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, I know. There’s a summer colony. +Madala mourned over it. She was absurd. She +raced me out of the station and up the hill, and +would scarcely let me look about me till we were +at the top, because the lower end of the village had +been built over. It might have been the sack of +Rome to hear her—‘Asphalt paths! Disgraceful! +The grocer used to have <i>blue</i> blinds. +They’ve spoiled the village green.’ And so it went +on until we reached Upper Westering.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, where they live now?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes. And then she turned to me and beamed—‘<i>This +is</i> my <i>country</i>.’ It certainly is a pretty +place. There’s a fine view over the downs; but too +hilly for me. We climbed up and down lanes and +picked ridiculous bits of twig and green stuff till +I protested. Then she took me into the churchyard. +We wandered about: very pleasant it was: +such a hot spring day, and pretty pinkish flowers—what +did she call the stuff?—cuckoo-pint, +springing from the graves—and daffodils. Then +we sat down in the shadow of the church to eat our +lunch. We began to discuss architecture and I +was growing interested, really beginning to enjoy +myself—some of it was pre-Norman—when a +man climbed over the stile from the field behind the +church, and came down the path towards us. As +he passed, Madala looked up and he looked down, +and up she jumped in a moment. ‘Why,’ she said, +‘I do believe—I <i>do</i> believe—’ You know that +little chuckly rise in her voice when she’s pleased—‘I +do believe it’s you!’ ‘Oh, Madala,’ I said, +‘the sandwiches!’ They were in a paper on her +lap, you know. She had scattered them right and +left. But I might have talked to the wind. I +must say he had perfectly respectable manners. +He turned back at once, and smiled at her, and +hesitated, and began to pick up the sandwiches, +though he evidently didn’t know her. ‘Oh,’ she +said, ‘don’t you remember? Aren’t you Dr. +Carey? You mended my camel when I was little. +I’m Madala!’ She was literally brimming over +with pleasure. But, you know, such a silly way +to put it! If she had said ‘Madala Grey’ he +would have known in a moment. There were a +couple of <i>Eden Walls</i> on the bookstall as we went +through. I saw them. However, he remembered +her then. He certainly seemed pleased to see her, +in his awkward way. He stood looking down at +her, amused and interested. People always got so +interested in Madala. Haven’t you noticed it? +Even people in trams. Though I thought to myself +at the time—‘How absurd Madala is! What +can they have in common?’ Yes, I thought it +even then.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, what had they in common?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Heaven knew! She was ten and he was twenty-five +when they last met. He knew her grand-people: +he had mended her dolls for her: he lived +in her old home: that, according to her, was all +that mattered. She said to me afterwards, I remember, +‘Just imagine seeing him! I <i>was</i> pleased +to see him. He belongs in, you know.’ ‘No, Madala,’ +I said, ‘I don’t know. Such a fuss about a +man you haven’t seen since you were a child! I +call it affectation. It’s a slight on your real +friends.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but he belongs in.’ She +looked quite chastened. She said—‘Nita, it +wasn’t affectation. I believe he was pleased too—honestly!’ +He was. Who wouldn’t be? You +know the effect she used to make.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What did he say?” asked the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, he looked down at her as if he were shy. +Then he said—‘You’ve a long memory, Madala!’ +Yes, he called her Madala from the first. It annoyed +me. She said—‘Oh, do you remember when +Mother was so ill once? You were very kind to +me then.’ Then she said something which amazed +me. I’d known her for two years before she told +me anything about that <i>Sylvania</i> tragedy, but to +him she spoke at once. ‘They’re dead,’ she said, +‘Mother and Father. They’re drowned. There +isn’t anyone.’ But her voice! It made me quite +nervous. I thought she was going to break down. +He said, with a stiff sort of effort—‘Yes. I +heard.’ That was all. Nothing sympathetic. +He just stood and looked at her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well?” said Miss Howe impatiently.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh—nothing else. I finished picking up the +sandwiches. She introduced me, but I don’t think +he realized who I was. It annoyed me very much +that she insisted on his eating lunch with us. As +I said to her afterwards, it wasn’t suitable. Buns +in a bag! But there he sat on a damp stone (he +gave Madala his overcoat to sit upon) perfectly +contented. I confess I wasn’t cordial. But he noticed +nothing. Obtuse! That was how I summed +him up from the first—obtuse! And no conversation +whatever. Madala did the talking. I believe +she asked after every cat and dog for twenty +miles round. And her lack of reticence to a comparative +stranger was amazing. She told him +more about herself in half an hour than she had +told me in four years. But she was an unaccountable +creature.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, that’s just it. One never knew what +Madala would do next, and yet when she’d done it, +one said—‘Of course! Just what Madala <i>would</i> +do!’ But it wasn’t like her to neglect you, Nita!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, she noticed after a time. She began to +be uncomfortable. I—withdrew myself, as it +were. You know my way. She didn’t like that. +She tried—I will say that for her—she did try +to direct the conversation towards my subjects. +Useless, of course. He was, not illiterate—no, +you can’t say illiterate—but curiously unintellectual. +Socialism now—somehow we got on to +socialism. That roused him. I must say, though +he expressed himself clumsily, that he had ideas. +But so limited. He had never heard of Marx. +Bernard Shaw was barely a name to him. Socialism—his +socialism—when we disentangled it, +was only another word for the proper feeding of +the local infants—drains—measles—the village +schools. Beyond that he was mute. But Madala +chimed in with details of American slum life, and +roused him at once. They grew quite eloquent. +But not one word, if you please, of her own work. +Anything and everything but her work. He did +ask her what she was doing. ‘Oh,’ said she in an +offhand way, ‘I scribble. Stories.’ And then—‘It +earns money, and it kills time.’ Yes, that’s +exactly how she put it. ‘Madala!’ I said, ‘that’s +not the spirit—’ I’d never heard her use such a +tone before. She had such high ideals of art. It +jarred me. I thought that she ought to have +known better. But she looked at me in such a +curious way—defiant almost. She said—‘It’s +my own spirit, Nita. Oh, let me have a holiday!’ +And at that up she jumped and left us sitting +there, and wandered off to the stile and was over it +in a second. We sat still. The hedge hid her. +Then we heard her call—‘Cowslips! Oh, cowslips!’ +I thought he would go when she called, +but he sat where he was, listening. It was one of +those hot, still days, you know. There was a sort +of spell on things. There were bees about. We +heard a cart roll up the road. I wanted to get up +and talk, make some kind of diversion, and yet I +couldn’t. We heard her call again—‘Hundreds +of cowslips! I’m going to make a cowslip ball.’ +Her voice sounded far away, but very clear. And +there was a scent of may in the air, and dust—an +intoxicating smell. It made me quite sleepy. +It was just as if time stood still. Three o’clock’s +a drowsy time, I suppose. And he never stirred—just +sat there stupidly. But I was too sleepy to +be bored with him. Presently back she came. +She had picked up her skirt and her petticoat +showed—it was that lavender silk you gave her, +Lila. So unsuitable, you know, on those dirty +roads. And her skirt was full of cowslips. She +was just a dark figure against the sky until she +was close to us; but then, I thought that she looked +pretty, extremely pretty. Bright cheeks, you +know, and her eyes so blue——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Grey—” said Mr. Flood, “the grey eyes of a +goddess.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“They looked blue, and she didn’t look like a +goddess. She looked like a little girl. Well, there +she stood, with her grey skirt and her lavender silk, +and her cowslips—you know they have a sweet +smell, cowslips, a very sweet smell—and tumbled +them all down on the tombstone. Then she wanted +string. Carey seemed to wake up at that. He’d +been looking at her as if he had dreamed her. He +produced string. He was that sort of man. +Then she made her cowslip ball. I held one end of +the string and he held the other, and she nipped +the stalks off the flowers and strung them athwart +it. That is the way to make a cowslip ball.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Nita, I love you!” cried Miss Howe for the +second time, and the others laughed.</p> + +<p class='c008'>She stopped. She stiffened.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t know what you mean.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ne’ mind! Go on!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She said offendedly—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“There’s nothing more to tell. We got up and +came away.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But as we sat silently by, still waiting, the storyteller +crept back into her face.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, yes—” up went her forefinger. “It was +then that it happened. We went stumbling over +the graves, round to the east end, to see the lepers’ +window, a particularly interesting one. Ruskin +mentions it. Yes, Carey came with us. There’s +a little bit of bare lawn under the window before +the stones begin again, and as we crossed it Madala +gave a kind of shuddering start. He said—‘Cold?’ +smiling at her. She shivered again, in +spite of herself as it were, for she’d been joking +and laughing, and said—‘Someone must be walking +over my grave.’ And at that he gave her such +a look, and said loudly in a great rough voice—‘Rubbish! +don’t talk such rubbish!’ Really, you +know, the tone! And I thought to myself then as +I’ve thought many times since—‘At heart the +man’s a bully—that’s what the man is.’ But Madala +laughed. We didn’t stay long after that. +The window was a disappointment—restored. +There was nothing further to see and Madala was +quite right—it was chilly. The sky had clouded +over and there was a wind. I thought it time to +go. Madala made no objection. She had grown +curiously quiet. She tired easily, you know. And +he didn’t say another word. Quite time to go. +I thought we might try for the earlier train, so +we went off at last in a hurry. No, he didn’t +come with us: we shook hands at the gate. And +when I looked back a minute later he had turned +away. We caught our train.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>There was a little pause that Miss Howe ended.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Queer!” she said.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita stared at them. Her hands twitched.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, I’m a practical person, but—‘You’re +walking on my grave,’ she said. And there or +thereabouts, I suppose, she’ll lie.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Coincidence,” said Mr. Flood quickly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Of course. I never thought of it again. Nor +did Madala for that matter, though she was quiet +enough in the train. There she sat, looking out of +the window and smiling to herself. But then she +was always like that after any little excitement, +very quiet for an hour, re-living it—literally. I +think, you know,” she hesitated, “that that was +the secret of her genius. Her genius was her +memory. <i>She liked whate’er she looked on</i>——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And her looks were certainly everywhere,” said +the blonde lady in her drawling voice.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Just so. But it didn’t end there. She remembered. +She remembered uncannily. She was like +a child picking up pebbles from the beach every +holiday, and spending all the rest of its year polishing. +She turned them into jewels. The process +used to fascinate me—professionally, you +know. You could see her mind at work on some +trifling incident, fidgeting with it, twisting it, +dropping it, picking it up again, till one wearied. +And then a year later, or two years, or three years, +or ten years maybe, you’ll pick up a novel or a +story, and there you’ll find it, cut, graved, polished, +set in diamonds, but—the same pebble, if one +has the wit to see.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, what did she say?” Miss Howe cut +through the theory impatiently.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita frowned. She disliked being hurried.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, that day? Very little. I was surprised. +She usually enjoyed pouring herself out to me. +But no, she just sat and smiled. It irritated me. +‘What is it, Madala?’ I said at last. She stared +at me as if she had never seen me before. ‘I don’t +know,’ she said in her vague way. And then—‘Wasn’t +it a lovely day?’ I waited. I knew she +would go on sooner or later. Presently she said—‘That +stone we sat on <i>was</i> damp. He was quite +right.’ Then she said, thinking aloud as it were—‘You +know, if a man has a really pleasant voice, +I like it better than women’s voices. It’s so +steady.’ And then—‘What did you think of him, +Anita?’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe chuckled.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And you said?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, I said what I could. I didn’t want to hurt +her feelings. It was so obvious that the place and +everyone in it was beglamoured for her. I said +that he seemed a worthy, harmless person, or something +to that effect. I forget exactly how I +phrased it—I was tactful, of course. Oh, I remember, +I said that she ought to put him into a +book—that the old country doctors were disappearing, +like the farmers and the parsons. I’m +sure I appeared interested. But all she said was—‘Old? +He’s not old. Would you call him old?’ +‘That was a figure of speech,’ I said. ‘I was +thinking of the type. But all the same you can’t +describe him as young, Madala.’ ‘Oh, he’s not a +boy,’ she said. ‘No one ever said he was a <i>boy</i>.’ +She didn’t say any more. But just as we were +getting out at Victoria she cried—‘My cowslips! +Anita, my cowslips! I’ve forgotten my +cowslip ball.’ I told her that it wouldn’t have +lasted anyway, with the stalks nipped off so +short. But she looked as if she had lost a +kingdom.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I believe I know that cowslip ball.” Miss +Howe looked amused. “<i>A</i> cowslip ball, anyway. +She had one sent to her once when I was there. +I thought it was from her slum children.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, he sent it on.” My cousin went on +quickly with her own story. “How he knew the +address puzzled me. Her publishers wouldn’t have +given it and I know she didn’t.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Telephone book,” said the Baxter girl, as one +experienced.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah, possibly. I went round to her that morning, +and—yes, you were there, Lila,” she conceded, +“for I remember I wondered how Madala +could compose herself to work with anyone else in +the room. I always left her to herself when she +stayed with me.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She didn’t mind me,” said Miss Howe firmly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She always said that she didn’t, I know. And +of course I know that it is possible to withdraw +oneself as it were, but I confess I disapproved. +Her room was a regular clearing-house in those +days. Oh, not you particularly, Lila, but——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You came in yourself that morning, didn’t +you?” said Miss Howe very softly and sweetly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I was telling you so. And what did I find? +Her desk littered over with string and paper and +moss and damp cardboard, and that story Hooper +published (it had been freshly typed only the day +before) watering into purple under my eyes, while +she sat and gloated over those wretched flowers. +‘Madala!’ I said, ‘your manuscript! Really, +Madala!’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And Madala—” Miss Howe began to laugh—“Oh, +I remember now.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What did Madala say?” demanded the Baxter +girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It wasn’t like her.” Anita fidgeted. “She +knew how I disliked the modern manner.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But she said,” Miss Howe caught it up—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t know what possessed her,” said my +cousin with a rush. “She actually stamped her +foot at me. Yes, she did, and then held out her +wretched posy and said—‘Oh, damn the manuscript, +Nita! Smell!’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What did Nita do?” enquired the blonde lady +softly of Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Sniffed,” Mr. Flood struck in. “Obviously! +Satisfied Madala and relieved her own feelings. +That is called tact.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And just then, you know,” Miss Howe glanced +over her shoulder and lowered her voice, “<i>he</i> came +in.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Kent?” The lady with Mr. Flood did not +lower her voice. I believe she wanted him to hear. +She was like a curious child poking at a hurt +beastie. Her smile was infantine as she looked +across at him. But the man at the window never +stirred.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Sh!” Miss Howe frowned at her. And then, +still whispering—“Yes, don’t you remember? he +had his studio in the same block all that year. He +always came across to Madala when he wanted a +sardine tin opened, or change for his gas, or someone +to sit to him.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Someone was saying that he couldn’t keep a +model.” Mr. Flood glanced at them in turn.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe flushed surprisingly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It’s not that. You ought to know better, +Jasper. It’s only that he’s exigeant—never +knows how the time goes, and” (she lowered her +voice still more), “and Madala spoilt him. She +could sit by the hour looking like a Madonna, and +getting all her own head-work done, and never stirring +a hair. Of course he doesn’t like the shilling +an hour type after her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I know, I know! The explanation is quite +unnecessary.” He smiled and waved his hand.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Then why——?” She was still flushed and +annoyed.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“One gets at other people’s views. I merely +wondered how the—er—partnership appeared +to your—er—intelligence. Now I know.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She did spoil him.” Anita disregarded them. +“The time she wasted on him! In he came, you +know, that day, and she went to meet him with the +cowslips still in her hand, and shielding her eyes +from the sun. That room of hers got all the morning +sun.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What did she wear—the blue dress?” The +Baxter girl was like a child being told a story.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I forget. Anyway he stood looking her up +and down till she reddened and began to laugh at +him. And then he said—‘And cowslips too! +What luck! Come along! Come <i>along</i>!’ ‘Oh, +my good man!’ I said, ‘she’s in the middle of her +writing!’ But it was useless to expostulate. He +wanted her and so she went. I heard him as he +dragged her off. ‘Madala, I’ve got such a notion!’ +No, it was the great fault of her character, +I consider, that she could never deny anyone, +not even for her work’s sake. Still, I suppose one +had to forgive it in that case, for that was the beginning, +you know, of <i>The Spring Song</i>. She is +painted just as she stood there that morning, +literally gilded over with sunshine, and the flowers +in her hands.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It’s the best thing he’s ever done, isn’t it?” +said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Best thing? It’s a master-piece. It’s Madala +Grey.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“When is he going to show it?” asked Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita shrugged.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Heaven knows! He insists that it isn’t finished. +I believe he sits and prays over it. He +was annoyed that Madala took me there one day. +You know how touchy he is.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“He won’t show it now,” said the blonde lady.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why not? Why not?” Anita hovered, on the +pounce, like a cat over a bowl of goldfish, and +like a fish the blonde lady glided out of reach.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And <i>she</i> asks!” she appealed to the others.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita frowned.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You’re cryptic.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, wasn’t there a certain—rivalry? You +should have a fellow-feeling.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh—” she resented quickly, “Kent always +wanted to keep her to himself, if you mean that.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The blonde lady smiled.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And now he keeps her to himself. I mean just +that. I go by your account, of course. <i>I</i> haven’t +glimpsed <i>The Spring Song</i>.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“So that started it.” The Baxter girl mused +aloud. “I think that’s romantic now—to make +a famous picture and to pick up one’s husband, all +in twenty-four hours.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“‘Pick up!’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You know what I mean—fall in love.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“‘Fall in love!’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Nita, don’t trample.” Miss Howe threw the +Baxter girl a cigarette.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I only mean—it was romantic, meeting like +that so long ago and nobody knowing a word until +just before they were married, except you, Miss +Serle. And I don’t believe you guessed?” She +questioned her with defiant eyebrows.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“How could I guess what never happened? +‘In love!’ I suppose it deceived some good +folks.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It wasn’t so long ago,” Miss Howe soothered +them. She had a funny little way of slipping people +into another subject if she thought that they +sounded quarrelsome. ‘Let’s be comfortable!’ +was written all over her. And yet she could +scratch. I think that a great many women are +like Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Long ago? Of course not!” Anita picked it +up at once. “How long is it? A year? Eighteen +months? April, wasn’t it? She wrote <i>The +Resting-place</i> in the next three months. Scamped. +I shall always say so. She was three years over +<i>Ploughed Fields</i>. Yes, April began it. <i>The +Resting-place</i> was out for the Christmas sales. +She married him at Easter. And now it’s November. +The year’s not gone. But Madala Grey is +gone.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Where?” said the Baxter girl intensely.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Don’t!” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But the Baxter girl looked as if she couldn’t stop +herself.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“We—we put her into the past tense—d’you +notice how easily we’re doing it already?—but—is +she less alive to you, less lovable, less Madala +Grey to you, because of a telegram and a funeral +service? is she?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No,” said Miss Howe. “If you put it like +that—no.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes,” said Mr. Flood. “When you put it like +that—yes.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She must be somewhere,” argued the Baxter +girl. “She can’t just stop.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why not?” said Mr. Flood, with his bored +smile.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She can’t. I feel it,” she said with her hand +at her heart and her large eyes on him.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t,” he said to her, and he lost his smile. +“‘Dust to dust——’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The woman behind him moved restlessly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Jasper, <i>dear</i>! How trite!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But the spirit?” said the Baxter girl, “the +spirit?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Nobody answered. The little blue flames on the +hearth capered and said ‘Chik-chik!’ Anita shivered.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The room’s getting cold,” she said sharply. +And then—“Jenny, is that door open? There’s +such a draught.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I got up and went to see. But the door was +shut. When I came back they were talking again. +Anita was answering the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, I stayed there once. A pretty place. +The sort of place she would choose. All roses. +No conveniences. And what with the surgery and +the socialism, the poor seemed to be always with +us. Only one servant——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She <i>ought</i> to have made money,” said Miss +Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, the first two books were a <i>succès d’estime</i>, +I wept over her contract. She did make a considerable +amount of money on <i>The Resting-place</i>. +But it was all put by for the child. She told me +so. He, you know, a poor man’s doctor! She +told me that too—flung it at me. She had an extravagant +way of talking, manner more than anything, +of course, but to hear her you would almost +think she was proud of the life they led. She was +always unpractical.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I’d like to have gone down there once,” said +Miss Howe. “If I’d known—heigh-ho!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I—I wished I hadn’t gone,” said Anita +slowly. “It wasn’t a success.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The husband, I suppose,” the Baxter girl +hinted delicately.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, I hardly saw him. It was Madala herself. +Changed. Affectionate—she was always +that to me but——I remember sitting with her +once. We had been talking, about Aphra Behn I +believe, and she had grown flushed and had begun +to stammer a little. You know her way?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I know.” The Baxter girl leaned forward +eagerly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And she was tracing a parallel between the +development of the novel and the growth of the +woman’s movement—her old vein. Brilliant, she +was. And all at once she stopped and began staring +in front of her. You know that trick she had +of frowning out her thoughts. I was careful not +to interrupt. I knew something big was coming. +She could be—prophetic, sometimes. At last she +said in a worried sort of way—‘I’ve a dreadful +feeling that we’re out of coffee and it’s early closing.’ +No, I’m not exaggerating—her very words. +And then some long rigmarole about Carey’s appetite, +and that if she made the coffee black strong +she could persuade him to take more milk with it. +Oh—pitiful! And in a moment she’d dashed off +on a three mile walk to the next village where there +was a grocer that did open on Wednesdays. Oh, +it was most pathetic. It made me realize the effect +that he was having on her—stultifying! I always +did dislike him.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Just so—you don’t know. Naturally, you +were not so intimate with Madala. Well, that +very afternoon, I remember, he came in at tea-time. +That was unusual: he was generally late for seven-thirty +dinner, and then he didn’t change. I used +to wonder how Madala allowed it. Well, as I was +telling you, he came in, stamping through the hall, +calling to her, and when he opened the drawing-room +door and found that she was out, you should +have seen his look! Sour! No other word! And +off he went at once to meet her, on his bicycle, +though I was prepared to give him tea. They +didn’t come back for hours. In fact I had gone +up to change. I saw them from the window, coming +up the drive. And there was Madala Grey, +perched on <i>his</i> bicycle, with a great bunch of that +white parsley that grows in the hedges, and a +string bag dangling down, while he steadied her, +and both of them <i>talking</i>! and as he helped her off, +she kissed him—in front of the kitchen windows. +And, if you please, not a word of apology to me. +All she said was—why hadn’t I seen that he had +some tea before he went after her? I think it’s the +only time I’ve ever seen Madala annoyed. No, +you can’t say the marriage improved her.” She +paused. “It was so unlike her,” she meditated, +“as if I could help it! You know, I’d always +thought her so considerate. Carey’s influence, of +course. Oh,” she cried out suddenly and angrily, +“I’ve got nothing against Carey. I’m not prejudiced. +But if he’d been the sort of man one could +approve—someone——” Her eye wandered +from Kent Rehan to Mr. Flood—“but he was +dragging her down——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe shook her head.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Anita, you’re wrong. I’ve only met him a +couple of times but I liked what I saw of him. An +honest, straightforward sort of person. Oh, not +clever, of course. He’d have bored me in a +week——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah?” said the woman behind Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, yes, dull—distinctly. But I had the impression +that if I’d been one of his patients I +should have done everything he told me to do.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita shrugged.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, I’ve no doubt he had every virtue, but it’s +idle to pretend that he made any attempt to appreciate +Madala Grey.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You don’t suggest that the man didn’t love his +wife, do you?” said Miss Howe in her downright +way.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I suggest nothing. But the fact remains—I +give it for what it is worth—but the fact does +remain that John Carey has never read one of her +books—not one!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What?” The Baxter girl’s mouth opened +and stayed so.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You don’t intend to say——” began Mr. +Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t believe it,” said Miss Howe contemptuously.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why not? I’ve known a man jealous of his +wife before now. I suppose he knew enough to +know that she had the brains.” The blonde lady +was smiling.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita shook her head reluctantly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Jealousy? H’m—it might have been, of +course. But I didn’t get that impression. I believe +that it was a perfectly genuine lack of interest.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, but I don’t believe it. How d’you know +he didn’t? It’s not a thing he’d own to. Who +told you?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Madala. Madala herself. She used to make +a joke of it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She never showed when she was hurt,” said +the Baxter girl emotionally.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, but it almost seemed as if she were not +hurt, as if her—her sensitiveness, her better feelings, +had been blunted. I’ve known her use it as a +<i>weapon</i> almost,” said Anita conscientiously recollecting. +“He—that annoyed me so—he was +very peremptory with her sometimes, most rude in +his manner. Of course, you know, she <i>was</i> dreamy. +Not that that excused him for a moment. I remember +a regular scene——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Before you?” Miss Howe cast instant doubt +upon it.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“My room was next to theirs. I could hear +them through the wall. I can assure you that he +stormed at her in a most ungentlemanly way——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What about?” said the Baxter girl breathlessly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Something about his razors. A parcel had +come by the early post, and just because she had +cut the string—but I couldn’t follow it all. He +was a man who was easily irritated by trifles. +Well, as I say, after he had raged at her for five +minutes or more, till I could have gone in and +spoken to him myself, all that that patient woman +said, was—‘Darling, have you begun <i>Eden Walls</i> +yet?’ I tell you the man never said another +word.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“He didn’t prevent her writing, did he?” said +Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“There’s no doubt that he discouraged her. He +was selfish. It was his wretched doctoring all day +long—and you know how sensitive Madala was. +I did persuade her to do some work while I was +staying with them, but I soon saw that it was +labour thrown away. Her heart wasn’t in it. +When it wasn’t Carey it was the baby clothes. +For the sake of her reputation,” her voice hardened, +“it’s as well that she has died when she has.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Anita!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I mean it.” She was quick and fierce. “Do +you think it was a little thing for me to see that +pearl of great price—oh, not Madala Grey! I +grew to hate her almost, that new Madala Grey—but +the gift within her, her great, blazing genius—flung +away, trampled on——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe turned her head in slow denial.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, Anita! Not genius. Charm, if you like. +Talent, as much as you please. But Madala Grey +wasn’t a genius, and she knew it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita flung up her head.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She will be when I’ve done with her. She +will be when I’ve written the <i>Life</i>.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah, the poor child!” said Great-aunt startlingly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita never heeded. She was wrapt away in +some cold passion of her own, a passion that +amazed me. I had always thought of her as what +she looked, an ordered, steely woman, all brain and +will; yet now of a sudden she revealed herself, a +creature convulsed, writhing in flames. But they +were cold flames. Cold fire, is there such a thing? +Ice burns. There is phosphorus. There is the +light of stars. I know what I mean if only I had +the words. Star-fire—that’s it. She was like a +dead star. She warmed no one, she only burned +herself up.</p> + +<p class='c008'>It was the impression of a moment. When I +looked again it was as if I had been withdrawn +from a telescope. She was herself once more. +The volcano had shrunk to a diamond twinkle, to a +tiny, gesticulating creature with a needle tongue. +It was bewildering: while I listened to her I was +still thinking—‘Yes, but which is Anita? Diamond +or star? What makes the glitter? Frost +or flame?’</p> + +<p class='c008'>But that blonde woman in the shadows went off +into noiseless laughter that woke the dragons and +stirred Mr. Flood to an upward glance. Then he +hunched himself closer against her knees, his chin +low on his chest, so that his tiny beard and mouth +and eyes were like triangles standing on their +points. The pose gave him a glinting air of mockery +and yet, somehow, you did not feel that he was +amused. You only felt—‘Oh, he’s practised that +at a looking-glass.’</p> + +<p class='c008'>He drawled out—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The <i>Life</i>, dear lady? Enlighten our darkness.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“That,” came the murmur behind him, “is precisely +what she is going to do. How dense you +are, Jasper!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>And at the same moment from Miss Howe—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Be quiet, you two! Tell us, Anita! A life +of her? Is that it? Ah, well, I always suspected +your note-book. Did she know you Boswellized?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She?” There was the strangest mixture of +scorn and admiration in the voice. “As if one +could let her know! That was the difficulty with +Madala Grey: she wouldn’t take herself seriously. +She had—” a pause and a search for the correct +word—“what I can only call a <i>perverted</i> sense of +humour. If she’d known that I—noted things, +she’d have been quite capable of falsifying all her +opinions, misrepresenting herself completely, just +to—throw me out, as it were. Not maliciously, +I don’t mean that. But she teases,” finished Anita +petulantly. “She will do it. She laughs at the +wrong things. Of course she’s young still.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, she’s young—now. She stays young +now. She gains that at least,” said the woman in +the shadows.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita made a quick little sound, half titter and +half gasp.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh!” she cried—and her voice was as grey as +her face—“I forgot. Do you know—I forgot! +It’s going to be ghastly. I believe I shall always +be forgetting.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I glanced up at Kent Rehan. It made me realize +that I had been listening with anxiety, that I +was afraid of their expressive sentences. They +had words, those writing people. They knew what +they thought: they could say what they thought: +and what they thought could hurt. I didn’t want +him to be hurt. I said, under my breath—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, why do you stay here? They aren’t your +sort.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But he had heard nothing. He was poring over +the long tassel of the blind, weaving it into a six-strand +plait. I couldn’t help watching his fingers. +He had the most beautiful hands that I’ve ever +seen on a man. They looked like two alive and +independent creatures. They looked as if they +could do anything they chose, whether he were +there to superintend or not. And he was miles +away. I was glad. Anita’s voice was rising like +a dreary wind.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Just that is so strange. All the time I’ve +known her I’ve thought of her in the past tense. +Her moods, her ways, her actions, were finished +things to me—chapters of the <i>Life</i>. I <i>wrote</i> her +all the time. But now, when she <i>is</i> mine, as it +were, now that she exists only in my notes and papers +and remembrance of her, now it comes that +I’m shaken. I can’t think of her as a subject +any more. I shall be wanting her—herself. +I can’t think clearly. It’s frightening me, the +work there is ahead of me. Because I’ve got to +do it without her. She’s lying dead down there +in Surrey—now—at this minute. And there’s +that man—and a child. One’s overwhelmed. +It’s so cruel. The only creature who ever cared +for me. Think of Madala, quite still, not answering, +not lighting up when you speak to her, staring +at the ceiling, staring at her own coffin-lid. In two +days she’ll be under the ground. Do you ever +think what that means—burial—the corruption—the——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Stop it, Nita!” Miss Howe’s movement +blotted out my cousin’s face. “Do you hear? I +can’t stand it. Here—drink some coffee. Jasper! +Say something!” I heard the coffee-cup +dance in its saucer.</p> + +<p class='c008'>There came Aunt Serle’s anxious quaver—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Anita! Nita! What’s the matter, my dear? +What’s the matter with my daughter?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Nobody answered. She was like a tortoise as +she poked her head from the hood of her chair.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Jenny!” she called cautiously. “Jenny!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I slipped across the room to her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What’s it about, Jenny? Eh? Speak up, my +dear! Not crying, is she? Temper, that’s it. +Don’t say I said so.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It’s all right, Auntie. She—they—it’s the +bad news. It’s upset them all.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Bad news? Fiddlesticks! Temper, I call it. +Why shouldn’t the girl get married? Not much +money, but a pleasant fellow. Time for her to +settle. I said to her—‘My dear, you follow your +heart.’ But Nita tried to stop it. Nita couldn’t +get over it. Cried. Temper. That’s it. Look +at her now. ’Sh! Don’t let her see you.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But Anita wasn’t looking at me and she wasn’t +crying. I suppose Great-aunt must have known +what she was talking about; but it wasn’t easy to +imagine my cousin soft and red-eyed like that +great, good-natured Miss Howe. Her little sharp +face looked as controlled as if it were carved. +Yet, as she said herself, she was shaken. That +showed in the jerkiness of her movements, the +sharpening of her voice, in the break-up of her accustomed +flow of words into staccato, like a river +that has come to some rocks: and her hands had a +clock-work, incessant movement, clutch-clutch, fingers +on palm, that her eyes repeated. They were +everywhere at once, resting, flitting, settling again, +yet seeing nothing, I think, while she listened to +Mr. Flood and grew more irritated with every +word.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why bad news?” said Great-aunt in my ear. +“It’s a son, isn’t it?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I hesitated.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, Auntie, didn’t you hear?” (She had +heard, you know. I had seen her shrinking back +when Anita screamed at her, with that dreadful +shrinking that you see in an animal threatened by +a head-blow. She had been leaning forward, and +eager. She must have heard.)</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Hear? They all talk,” she quavered. “‘Be +quiet,’ says Anita. Ah, I’ve spoilt her. Now +Madala——What’s the time, my dear? Why +don’t she come?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Auntie—Auntie——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Eh?” she said. “Why don’t Madala come?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Auntie—you’ve forgotten. She’s been ill.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah—and she’ll be worse before she’s better,” +said Great-aunt briskly. “’Sh! Listen to my +daughter.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>We listened: at least, I listened. Great-aunt +cocked her head on one side, still as a bird, for a +minute; then, like a bird, she was re-assured and +fell to her knitting again.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita and Mr. Flood were quarrelling.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why shouldn’t I? Tell me that! Is anyone +better fitted? Who knows as much about her as +I do? Didn’t I discover her, hacking on two +pounds a week? Didn’t I recognize what she was? +Who sent her to Mitchell and Bent? Who introduced +her everywhere? Who bullied her into writing +<i>Ploughed Fields</i>? Who was the best friend +she ever had—even if I didn’t make the parade of +being fond of her that——Oh, I’ve no patience! +What would the world know of Madala Grey if it +weren’t for me?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But—oh, of course we all know how good you +were to her, Miss Serle, indeed I can guess by what +you’ve done for me——” began the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood’s tongue tip showed between his red +lips. I think he would have made some comment +but for the hand pressing on his shoulder.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But——?” said the woman behind the hand.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I only mean—‘genius will out,’ won’t it?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Genius? Big word!” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not too big.” The Baxter girl reddened enthusiastically.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“‘Genius will out?’ Not Madala Grey’s. +She didn’t know she had any. I don’t believe she +ever fully realized——Why, it was the merest +chance that <i>Eden Walls</i> didn’t go into the fire. +If it hadn’t been for me—if it hadn’t been for +me——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah—<i>you</i>!” Miss Howe squared up to her. +“Now just what (among friends) have you stood +to gain? Fond of her? Oh yes, you were, Anita! +Don’t tell me! But in spite of yourself, eh? But +that wasn’t what you were after. You didn’t get +the pleasure out of her that—I did, for instance. +You used to exhaust Madala. I’ve seen you do it. +You—you drained her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, I did. I meant to,” said Anita with her +laugh. “Pleasure!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And she thought you were fond of her. She +used to flare if anyone attacked you. Poor Madala!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Poor? Why? I shall give it all back.” +Anita gave her a long cool look. “I—I hate +debts,” said Anita.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe flushed brightly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“If you were cursed with the artistic temperament——” +She broke off and began again. “If +I were a poor devil of a Bohemian in a hole, it’s +not to you I’d go——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“—twice!” said Anita.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Again they eyed each other. Miss Howe, still +flushing, chose her words.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Madala never lent. That wasn’t in her. She +gave. Time, money, love—she gave. You took, +it was understood, rather than hurt her feelings by +refusing. But it was always free gift.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not to me.” Anita held her head high. “I +shall pay. And interest too.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, the <i>Life</i>! Are you really going to attempt +a <i>Life</i>?” Miss Howe recovered herself with a +laugh, while Mr. Flood repeated curiously—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, but then what were you after, Anita? +What do you stand to gain?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Reflected glory,” came from behind him.</p> + +<p class='c008'>She turned as if she had been stung.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Reflected? Let her keep it! Reflected? Am +I never to have anything of my own? Oh, wait!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You can’t get much of yourself into a life of +Madala Grey though. You’ve too much sense of +style for that,” Mr. Flood insisted. “We both +hate a biographer who ‘I says, says I.’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, it shall be all Madala Grey. I promise +you that,” she said with her thin smile.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Humph! It’s a notion.” Miss Howe was +really interested, I could see—yet with a flush on +her cheek still. “It’s your sort of work too, +Anita! You’re—happier—in critical work.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, don’t hedge. Don’t be delicate with me. +I can’t create, that’s what you mean. Do you +think that’s news to me? Is there a critic who has +failed to make it clear to me? I can record—but +I can’t create. Good! I can’t create. I +can’t do what she did—what you do, Jasper—what +even Beryl here does. But——” she paused +an instant, “you should be afraid of me for all +that. I can pry. Little, nasty, mean word, isn’t +it? It’s me!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl laughed uncertainly and then +stopped because Anita’s eyes were on her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I’ve eyes. I”—she opened and shut her tiny +hands before them—“I’ve claws. I can pry you +open, any of you—if I choose. I haven’t chosen. +You’ve not been worth while. But—Madala!” +and here she released the uneasy Baxter girl—“Madala’s +my chance—my chance—my chance! +Madala Grey—look at her—coming into her +kingdom at twenty—that babe! And me! Look +at me! Do you know what my life has been, any +of you? Oh, you come to my house to meet my +lionets, and we’re very good friends, and you’re +afraid of my reviews, and so I have my position, +I suppose. But what do you know about me? +When I was fifteen—and it’s thirty years ago—I +said to myself, ‘Now what shall I do with my +life?’ Mother—” she shot her a glance: she +didn’t even trouble to lower her voice, “she’d have +drudged me and dressed me and married me, I suppose, +to three hundred a year and the city—oh, +with the best of motives. I fought. I fought. +That’s why I’m an ungrateful daughter. I’m supposed +to be, I think. My people were so sorry for +my mother. My people thought me a fool. I saw +through them. Yes, and I saw through myself. +That’s the kind of a fool I was. Didn’t I reckon +it out? I hadn’t a charm. I hadn’t a talent. I +had my <i>will</i>. That’s all I had. I taught myself. +Work? You don’t know what work means, you +ten and five-talented. There’s not a book worth +reading that I haven’t read. There’s not the style +of a master that I haven’t studied, that I couldn’t +reproduce at a pinch. There’s not a man or a +woman in London today, worth knowing—from +my point of view—that I haven’t contrived to +know. The people who’ve arrived—how I’ve +studied them, the ways of them, the methods of +them. And what’s the end of it all? That” —she +jerked her head to the row of her own books +on the shelf behind her—“and my column in the +<i>Matins</i>, and some comforting hundreds a year, +and—my knowledge of myself. Oh, I’ve turned +out good work. I know that. I have judgment. +That’s why I judge myself. I’ve always been rigid +with myself. And so I know when I look at my +books—though I can say that they are sounder, +better work, in better English, that they have more +knowledge behind them, than the books of a dozen +of you people who arrive—yet I know that they +have failed. People don’t read me. People don’t +want me. Why? I have my name. I’ve the +name of a well-known critic, but—I’m only a +name. I’m not alive. The public doesn’t touch +hands with me. Now why? Oh, how I’ve tormented +myself. Nearly thirty years I’ve given, of +unremitting labour, to my art, to my career. +There’s not a thought or a wish that I haven’t +sacrificed to it. And then that child of twenty +comes along, without knowledge, without training, +without experience, and gets at one leap, mark you +all, at one leap, more than I’ve achieved in thirty +years. Some people, I suppose, would submit. +Well, I won’t. I wouldn’t. Does my will go for +nothing? I <i>will</i> have my share. ‘Reflected glory,’ +yes, I’ve stooped to that. I’ve exploited her, if +you like to call it that. When I think of the day +I discovered her——” She paused an instant, +dragging her hand wearily over her eyes—“I was +at my zero that day. The <i>Famous Women</i> had +been out a week. The reviews—oh, the reviews! +Respectful, courteous, lukewarm. If they’d attacked +me, if they’d slated, I’d have rejoiced. +But they respect me and they’re bored. They +know it’s sound work and they’re bored. I bore +people. I bore you—all of you. Do you think +I’m blind? That night I read the manuscript of +<i>Eden Walls</i>. (Wasn’t it kind of me—it wasn’t +even typed!) And then I saw my chance. I saw +how far she’d got at twenty, and I thought—‘I’ll +take my chance. I’ll take this genius. I’ll make +her fond of me. I’ll help her. I’ll worm myself +into her. I’ll abase myself. I’ll toady. I’ll do +anything. But I will find out how she does it. I +will find out the secret. I’ll find it and I’ll make +it my own. I’ll serve for her as Jacob served for +Rachel; but she shall serve me in the end.’ I have +watched. I have studied. I have puzzled. I believe +I’ve grasped it at last. I know myself and +I know her. If genius is life—the power to give +life—is it that?—then I’m barren. I can’t +make life as Madala can. But—listen to me! +Listen to me, all of you! I can take a living +thing—I can cut it open alive. That’s what I +shall do with this life-maker—this easy genius. +I’ve taken her to pieces, flesh and blood, bone and +ligament and muscle, every secret of her mind +and her heart and her soul. The life, the <i>real</i> life +of Madala Grey, the rise and fall of a genius, +that’s what I’m going to make plain. She’s been +a puzzle to you all, with her gifts and her ways +and her crazy marriage—she’s not a mystery to +me. I tell you I’ve got her, naked, pinned down, +and now I shall make her again. Isn’t it fair? +She ought to thank me. ‘Dead,’ he says. Who’s +to blame? She chose to kill herself. What right +had she to take risks? I—I’ve refrained. She +couldn’t. She threw away her lamp. But I—I +take it. I light it again. Finding’s keeping. +It’s mine.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Her voice ripped on the high note like a rag on +a nail, and she checked, panting. Her hand went +up to her throat as the fumy air rasped it.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Mine!” she cried again, coughing. There was +wild-fire in her eyes as she challenged them.</p> + +<p class='c008'>The little space between her solitariness and +their grouped attention was filled with fog and +silence and lamp-light, woven as it were into a +fifth element. It was like a pool to be crossed. +And across it, in answer, a laugh rippled out.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I don’t know who it was that laughed. I did +not recognize the voice. Sometimes, looking back, +I think it was the laugh of their collective soul.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh!” cried Anita, and stopped as if she had +been awakened suddenly by a blow—as if the +little wondering, wincing cry had been struck out of +her by a blow on the face. She stood thus a moment, +uncertain. Then she, too, laughed, nervously, +apologetically.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“One talks,” she said, “among friends.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe made a wry face.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Lord, we’re a queer set of friends! How we +love one another!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You’ve all of you been awfully good to me,” +said the Baxter girl. But her gratitude was too +general to be acceptable. Even I could have told +her that.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, we do our best for you,” said Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>She looked at him from under her lashes.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, and she’s thinking this minute what a +nice little scene this would make for her new book—touched +up, of course,” said the woman behind +him.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Art—selection—Jimmy Whistler——” +Mr. Flood was one indistinct murmur.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“With herself her own heroine again, eh?” +Miss Howe baited her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I didn’t. I wasn’t.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Better folk than you do it, child! Anita says +so. Don’t they, Anita?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh,” said Anita heavily, “I wish Madala Grey +were here. I wish she hadn’t died. If she were +here she wouldn’t—you’d never—she wouldn’t +let you laugh at me.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe looked at her intently. There was +a quick little run of expression across her large +handsome face, like a hand playing a scale. It +showed, that easily moved, easily read face, surprise, +interest, concern, and, in the end, the sentimental +impulse of your kind fur-clad woman to the +beggar on the curb. ‘Why! I believe she’s cold! +I don’t like it! Give her tuppence, quick!’ She +was out of her chair, overwhelming Anita, in one +impetuous heave of drapery.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You’re right, Nita! We’re pigs! Something’s +wrong with us. ’Pologize. You know we +don’t mean it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita endured her right-and-left kisses.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You do mean it,” was all she said.</p> + +<p class='c008'>She was shrunk to such a small grey creature +again. I thought to myself—‘Fire? It’s not +even diamond-sparkle. She’s as dull as stone.’</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe was eagerly remorseful.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“We don’t. I don’t know what’s got into us +tonight. It’s the fog. There’s something evil +about a fog. Distorting. It yellows over one’s +soul.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It isn’t only tonight,” said the Baxter girl, +with her sidelong, ‘can-I-risk-it?’ look at them. +“The fog’s been coming on for months.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And you mean——?” The blonde lady +never snubbed the Baxter girl. It struck me suddenly, +as their eyes met, that there was the beginning +of a likeness between them. The Baxter +girl at fifty—with dyed hair——? But it was +only an idea of mine. I’m always seeing imaginary +likenesses. I remember that those Academy +pictures of Kent Rehan’s always set me to work +wondering—‘That woman with the face turned +away—I’ve seen her somewhere—of whom does +she remind me?—where have I seen her?’ And +yet, of course, in those days I knew nothing of +Madala Grey.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But the Baxter girl was answering—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It—it’s cheek, I know, but it’s true. When +I first came—” then, with a swift propitiatory +glance at Anita—“when you first let me come—the +Nights weren’t like this. You weren’t like +this, any of you——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Upon—my—word!” said Miss Howe with +her benevolent chuckle. “Nita! Listen to the +infant!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Like what?” Mr. Flood moved uneasily.</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl turned to him enthusiastically.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, I used to think you such wonderful people——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Did you now?” Miss Howe teased her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Let be! let be!” said Mr. Flood impatiently. +“Well, dear lady?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, I did! I’d read all your stuff. I believe +I could write out <i>The Orchid House</i> from memory +still.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>His eyes lit up as he challenged her—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c009'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“‘Sour!’ said the fox at her feet,</div> + <div class='line in1'>‘How can she ripen windy-high?</div> + <div class='line in1'>Sour!’ said the fox with his nose to the sky—”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c011'>He was as pleased as a child with a toy when she +capped it—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c009'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Then a grape dropped off. It was rotten sweet.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c011'>There!” she flushed at him triumphantly. And +then—“Now did you mean——? Who was in +your mind? Were they anyone we know? I’ve +always wanted to ask you.”</p> +<p class='c008'>But before he could answer her the blonde lady +leaned forward and whispered in his ear. He +turned to her with a glance of interest and amusement, +but with his lips still moving and his mind +still running on an answer to the Baxter girl. +The blonde lady whispered again, and then he +turned right round to answer her, shelving his +arms on her knees. I couldn’t hear what they said, +but it was just as if she had beckoned him into +another room. He was withdrawn from the conversation +and from the Baxter girl for as long as +that blonde lady chose.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe looked at them with her broad +smile.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Tell us, Beryl! We’re listening, anyhow!” +she said invitingly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But the Baxter girl’s chin went up. The touch +of annoyance in her voice made it twang, made +her commonness suddenly noticeable. She was +bearable when she was in awe of them, but now +she was asserting herself, and that meant that +she was inclined to be noisy.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, my opinion doesn’t count, of course! +But”—she swung like a pendulum between her +two manners—“oh, I <i>did</i> enjoy myself at first. +It was the way you all talked. You knew everyone. +You’d read everything. You frothed adventures. +Like champagne it was, meeting all +the people. I used to write my head off, the week +after. And you were all kind to me from the +first. I suppose it was Madala. She never let +one feel out of it. But I thought it was all of +you. I had the feeling—‘the gods <i>aren’t</i> jealous +gods.’ But now it’s”—she looked at them +pertly—“it’s fog on Olympus.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You needn’t—honour us, you know, Beryl,” +said Anita sharply.</p> + +<p class='c008'>She answered with her furtive look.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I know. And I don’t think—I don’t want +to come as much as I did.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“In that case——” Anita ruffled up.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Fog! Fog!” cried Miss Howe clapping her +hands. And then—“All the same, Nita, people +are dropping off. The Whitneys haven’t been +for weeks. When did Roy Huth come last? And +the Golding crowd? I marvel that <i>he</i> turns up +still.” She nodded towards Kent Rehan. “Oh, +you know, we’re like a row of beads when the +string’s been pulled out. We lie in a line for +a time, but a touch will send us rolling in all +directions.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes,” said the Baxter girl vehemently, “the +heart’s out of it somehow. I’m not ungrateful. +It’s just because I used to love coming so.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe looked down at Anita, not unkindly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Give it up, Nita! The Nights have served +their turn. It sounds ungracious, but things have +to end sometime or other. Hasn’t the time come? +Hasn’t it come tonight?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But you’ve been coming all this year just the +same,” said Anita stubbornly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe shrugged her shoulders. It was the +Baxter girl who answered—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah, but there was always just a chance of +seeing Madala.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>At that Anita, who had been sitting as steely +stiff as a needle in a pin-cushion, got up, shaking +off Miss Howe’s persuasive, detaining hand and the +overflow of her skirts. The cushions tumbled +after her on to the floor.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“As to that,” she said, “and don’t imagine that +I haven’t known what you came for, all of +you——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Eh?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Her voice was sharp enough to have recalled +anyone and it recalled Mr. Flood. He returned +to the conversation with the air of dragging the +blonde lady after him. She had the manner of +one hanging back and protesting, and laughing still +over some secret understanding. “Eh?” said +he. “What’s that about Madala?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita looked from one to another.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I’m telling you,” she said. “I’ve told you +already, I can give you Madala Grey. Come +here and I’ll give you Madala Grey still. That’s +what you want, isn’t it, to be amused? She +amused you.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She did, bless her!” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It was her brains,” said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“A beautiful creature,” said Mr. Flood slowly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not she!” The lady behind him was smiling. +“She made you think so. She made men think +so. But how? That intrigued me. Oh, she was +prettyish: but that was all. I used to watch +her——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Envy?” said he.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, not envy,” said that woman slowly. “She +was too—innocent—how could one envy? She +didn’t know her own strength. She said—‘Don’t +hurt me,’ with a sword at her side.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Excalibur.” It came from Mr. Flood. +“Magic.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, Madala—just Madala.” Miss Howe +sighed. “It’s no good, Anita, you can’t give +us back Madala.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But my cousin, looking at them, laughed in +her turn.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Madala? You fools! You’ve never had her. +But you shall! Oh, wait! My books are dull, +aren’t they? Yet you’ll be here, you know, every +month, thick as bees, to listen to me. A chapter +a month, that’s all I’ll give to you. <i>I</i> don’t write +three novels a year. But you’ll come, you’ll come. +Proof? There’s plenty of proof. See here.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She went swiftly across to the outer room. +There was a large carved desk standing on the +little table by the window. She picked it up. It +was too big for her. It filled her arms so that +she staggered under the weight.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, Kent!” she called.</p> + +<p class='c008'>He came back to the foggy room with a visible +wrench.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Here, that’s too heavy for you. Let me.” +He took it from her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The table—here. Thank you, oh, thank +you, Kent.” She veiled her voice as she spoke +to him. “It’s heavy—it’s so full—books—papers——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>He put it down for her and nodded, and was +straying away again when she stopped him.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Kent! Don’t sit by yourself. We”—her +voice was for him alone—“we’re talking about—her. +I was going to show them—Kent, stay +here with us.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>He waited while she talked to him. And she +talked very sweetly and kindly. She was the quiet, +chiffony little creature again with the pretty, pure +voice. <i>I</i> couldn’t make her out. She looked up +at him and said something too low for me to +catch, and then—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“There’s your chair. Isn’t that always your +chair?” And so left him and turned to the table +and the box and the others.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But he did not take the saddle-bag near Anita’s +own seat. He looked irresolutely from one to +another of the group that watched Anita fumbling +with her keys. He looked, and his face softened, +at Great-aunt, muttering over her needles. He +looked at the empty chair beside me. He looked +at me and found me watching him. Then, as I +smiled at him just a little, he came to me and sat +down. But he said nothing to me, and so I was +quiet too.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But Anita was busy, hands and eyes and tongue +all busy.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“When she married, you know, in that hole-and-corner +fashion——” Then, as if in answer, +though nobody had spoken—“Well, what else was +it, when nobody knew?—when even I didn’t +know——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>There was a movement in the chair beside me, +and turning, I caught the ending of a glance towards +my cousin. A new look, I found it, on that +passive face, a roused and wondering and scornful +look that transformed it. But, even as I +caught it, it faded again to that other look of +bleak indifference, a look to know and dread on any +creature’s face, a look that must not stay on any +fellow-creature’s face. I knew that well enough. +So I said the first words that came, in my lowest +voice, lest they should hear.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But they were talking. They did not hear.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I’m sure that Great-aunt knew.” Indeed I +thought so. I think that Great-aunt would always +be kind and guessing with a girl. Then I +wondered at myself for daring it and thought nervously—‘He’ll +snub me. He’ll be right to snub +me——’</p> + +<p class='c008'>But he looked across at Great-aunt kindly and +said, in just such a withdrawn voice as mine—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, of course, if ever there was a time +when——” Then he half smiled. “Poor old +lady! But she’s changed. She used to be so +brisk and managing, more like fifty than seventy. +But this year’s aged her. She wanted, you know, +to give some pearls—her own pearls. But pearls +spell sorrow. And Anita would have objected. +She told me all about it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She was speaking of them tonight.” We both +turned again and looked at her. She had dropped +her knitting, or it had slipped from her knee, and +she sat in her chair staring down at it with a terrible, +comical air of helplessness. Then she caught +his eye and forgot the knitting and nodded at +him.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I think—” I said, “I don’t think she understands. +She asked me—she forgets I’m a +stranger. She asked me——” I broke off. I +couldn’t say to him—‘She asked me about Miss +Grey and she doesn’t realize that she’s dead.’ +One’s afraid of the brutality of words. But he +understood. There was a simplicity about him +that re-assured one. And he never said—‘It’s +Anita’s business. It’s not your business,’ as anyone +else might have done. He just said, once +again—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Poor old lady!” and hesitated a minute. +Then he got up and went across to her and picked +up her wools. I don’t think the others noticed +him go. Anita didn’t. She was talking too fast.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“—left a trunk-full of papers and so on. I’d +often stored boxes for her. Somehow it never got +sent down. I came across it only yesterday. I +thought to myself that there was no harm in putting +things straight. You know I’m literary +executor? Oh yes. She said to me soon after +her marriage, half in joke, that she supposed she +had got to make a will—and what about her +MSS.? ‘I can’t have <i>him</i> worried.’ I offered at +once. You see I know so exactly her attitude in +literature. There’s a good deal of unpublished +stuff—early stuff. But all in hopeless confusion. +Tumbled up with bills and programmes and one or +two drafts of letters—or so I imagine. She had +that annoying habit—that ugly modern habit—of +beginning without any invocation, and never a +date. But there’s one letter—there’s the draft of +a letter that’s important from my point of view.” +She broke off with a half laugh. “It sounds a +ridiculous statement to make about Madala Grey +of all people, but do you know that she couldn’t +express herself at all easily on paper?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe nodded.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Do I know? I’ve known her re-write a letter +half a dozen times before she got it to her liking—no, +not business letters, letters to her intimates. +A most comical trick. Scribble, scribble, scribble—slash! +and then crunch goes the sheet into a ball, +into the grate, or near it, till it looked as if she +were playing snow-balls, and then Madala begins +again—and again—and again. Yet she talked +well. She talked easily.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Isn’t that in keeping?” Mr. Flood struck in. +“She didn’t express so much herself in her speech +as the mood of the moment.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“As the mood of the companion of the moment +more likely,” the blonde lady corrected.</p> + +<p class='c008'>He nodded agreement.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But for herself—go to her books.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Or her letters—her careful, conscientious letters. +But she was careless about her drafts,” said +Anita significantly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood looked at her curiously.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What’s up that sleeve of yours, Anita?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She was quick.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You shall read it, in its place. But the +trouble is——” She hesitated. She gave the little +nervous cough that always ushered in her public +lectures. “We’ve all written books,” she said, +“all except you, Blanche——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The blonde lady blinked her sleepy eyes.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You’re all so strenuous,” she purred. “I +love to watch you being strenuous. So soothing.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, I was going to say, it’s easy enough to +end a book, but have you ever got to the beginning? +I never have. One steps backward, and +backward again——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I know,” cried the Baxter girl. “Till you +get tired of it at last and begin writing from where +you are, but you never really get your foot on +the starting-point, on the spring-board, as you +might say.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“That’s it. Yes, Jasper, I’ve got material up +my sleeve, but frankly, I don’t know how to place +it. I don’t know where to begin. The facts of +her life, her conversation, her literary work, her +letters—I go on adding to my material till I am +overwhelmed with all that I have got to say about +her. But I don’t want to begin with facts. Facts +are well enough, but think how one can twist them! +I want the woman behind the facts. I want the +answer to the question that is the cause of a +biography such as mine is to be—the question—‘What +was Madala Grey?’ Not who, mark you, +but further back, deeper into herself—‘<i>What</i> was +Madala Grey?’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why, a genius,” said the Baxter girl glibly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita neither assented nor dissented.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah—” she said, frowning, “but that’s not +the beginning either. At once we take our step +backward again—‘What is genius?’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Isn’t talent good enough?” said Mr. Flood +acidly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But does one mean talent?” She was still +frowning. “Everyone’s got talent. I’m sick of +talent. But she—she mayn’t be a great one—how +she’d have laughed at being called a great +one!—but she makes her dolls live. And isn’t +that the blood-link between the greatest gods and +the littlest gods? Life-givers? Life-makers? +Oh, I only speak for myself; but she made her +book-world real to me, therefore for me she had +genius. Whether or not I convince you is the test +of whether my life-work, my <i>Life</i> of her—fails +or succeeds.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I suppose you wouldn’t trust it to Madala?” +said Miss Howe softly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Trust what?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“To convince us.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She answered, suspicious rather than comprehending, +for indeed Miss Howe’s tone was very +smooth—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What do you mean? <i>I</i>’m writing her life.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe was inscrutable.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Of course you are. Fire ahead. Genius, +wasn’t it?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita shrugged her shoulders.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What’s in a name? It’s the quality itself +that fascinates me. I want to account for it. I +want to trace it to its source. Worth doing, isn’t +it? But do you realize the difficulties? Sometimes +I feel hopeless. I’ve known her five years, +and her books I know by heart, and I’m only just +beginning to decide whether to call her a romantic +or a realist.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“A realist. Look at <i>Eden Walls</i>,” said the +Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“A romantic. Look at <i>The Resting-place</i>,” +said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood over-rode them.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Dear ladies, you confuse the terms. It amazes +me how people always confuse the terms. Your +so-called realist, your writer who depicts what we +call reality, the outward life, that is, of flesh and +dirt and misery—don’t you see that he is in +truth a romantic—a man (or woman) who lives +in a fair world of his own, a paradise of the imagination? +Out of that secure world of his he +peers curiously at ours, and writes of it as we +dare not write, writes down every sordid, garish, +tragic-comic detail. Your so-called realist can +afford the humour of Rabelais, the horror of +Dostoevsky, the cheerful flesh and blood of Fielding. +Why shouldn’t he be truthful? It’s not his +world. Don’t you see? But your so-called +romantic, he lives in this real world. He knows +it so well that he has to shut his eyes or he would +die of its reality. So he escapes into the world +of romance, the world of beauty within his own +mind—nowhere but in his own mind. Who is +our dreamer of dreams? Shelley, the realist! +Blake jogged elbows with poverty and squalor all +his life, and he was the prophet and the king of +all spirits. Don’t you see? And Goethe—the +biographers will tell you that Goethe began as a +realist and ended as a romantic. I say it was the +other way round. What did he know of reality in +the twenties? Its discovery was the romantic +adventure of his young genius. But when he was +old and worldly and wise—then he wrote his +romances, to escape from his own knowledge. Oh, +I tell you, you should turn the words round. Now +take Shakespeare——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It’s not fair to take Shakespeare,” said Miss +Howe. “It’s the Elephant and the Crawfishes +over again. Let’s keep to the crawfishes! Let’s +keep to our own generation!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, if I were Anita I should begin by showing +Madala as a romantic—as the young +romantic producing the most startlingly realistic +book we’ve had for a decade. Indeed to me, you +know, her development is marked by her books +in the sharpest way. It’s the young, the curious, +the observant Madala in <i>Eden Walls</i>. The whole +book is a shout of discovery, of young, horrified +discovery, of the ugliness of life. It’s as if she +said—‘Listen! Listen! These things actually +happen to some people. Isn’t it awful?’ She +dwells on it. She insists on every detail. She +can’t get away from it. And yet she can hardly +believe it, that young Madala. But in <i>Ploughed +Fields</i> already the tone’s changing. It’s a pleasanter +book, a more sophisticated book. It interests +profoundly, but it’s careful not to upset one—an +advance, of course. Yet I, you know, hear +our Madala’s voice in it still, an uneasy voice—‘Hush! +Hush! These things happen to most +people. Pretend not to notice.’ And in the last +book, in the pretty, impossible romance, there you +have your realist full-fledged—‘Shut your eyes! +Come away quickly! These things are happening +to <i>me</i>!’” He leant back again, folding his arms +and dropping his chin. And then, because Miss +Howe was looking at him as if she were amused—“I +tell you I know. I recognize the symptoms. +I’m a realist myself. That’s why I write romantic +poetry. Have to. It’s that or drugs. How else +shall one get through life?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Jasper!” said the blonde lady. But for once +he didn’t turn to her. He shrugged his shoulders.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Don’t worry. Who’ll believe me?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl was breathless.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, but I do. It’s a new Madala, of course. +But I believe it explains her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But the facts of her life don’t agree,” began +Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah, Anita’s got to make ’em,” said Mr. Flood +languidly. “Isn’t that the art of biography?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But Anita was deadly serious.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You don’t begin far enough back. My spring-board +is not—what is Madala? but—what is +genius? How does it happen? Is it immaculate +birth? or is it begotten of accident upon environment? +That is to say—is it inspiration or is it +experience? I speak of the divine fire, you understand, +not of the capacity for resolving it into +words or paint or stone. That’s craft, a very different +thing. You say that Madala was not a +genius in the big sense—yes, I’ll admit that even, +for the argument’s sake—but even you will concede +her the beginnings of it. So my difficulty is +just the same. I’ve never believed in instinctive +genius. Yet how can she, at twenty, have had the +experience (that she had the craft is amazing +enough) to cope with <i>Eden Walls</i>? Romantic +curiosity isn’t enough explanation, Jasper! Look +at her certainty of touch. Look at her detail. +Look how she gets inside that woman’s mind. +That’s the fascination of it. It’s such a document. +Now how does she know it? That’s what +intrigues me. Madala and a street woman! +Where’s the connection? How does she get inside +her? Because she does get inside her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, it’s real enough,” said the blonde lady.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It must be. You should have seen the letters +she received! Amazing, some of them.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Anita, they amazed <i>her</i>. I remember her getting +one while she was staying with us. She +looked thoroughly frightened. She said—‘But, +Lila, I didn’t realize—it was just a story. But +this poor thing, she says it’s true! She says it’s +happened to her! What are we to do?’ You +know, she was nearly crying. It was some hysterical +woman who had read the book. But +Madala always believed in people. I know she +wrote to her. I believe she helped her. But she +never told you much about her doings.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, her sentimental side doesn’t interest me. +What I ask myself is—how does she know, as she +obviously does know, all that her wretched drab +of a heroine thought and felt and suffered?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Instinct! Imagination!” said the Baxter +girl. “It must be the explanation.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It isn’t. It isn’t. Oh, I’ve puzzled it out. +I’m convinced that from the beginning it’s experience. +Don’t flare, Lila, I don’t mean literal +experience. Not in <i>Eden Walls</i>, anyhow. Later, +of course—but we’re discussing <i>Eden Walls</i>. +Imagination, do you say, Beryl? But the imagination +must have a fact for its root. I’ll grant +you that imagination is so essentially a quality of +youth that the merest rootlet of a reality is enough +to set a young artist beanstalk climbing. But the +older he grows, the wiser, the more versed in reality, +the less he trusts his imagination, the more, +in consequence, his imagination flags and withers; +till he ends—one sees it happen again and again—as +the recorder merely of his own actual experiences +and emotions. It’s only the greatest who escape +that decay of the imagination. Do you +think that Madala did? Look at <i>Eden Walls</i>. +Remember what we know about her. Can’t you +see that the skeleton of <i>Eden Walls</i> is Madala’s +own life? Consider her history. She leaves what +seems to have been a happy childhood behind her +and sets out on adventure—very young. So does +the woman in <i>Eden Walls</i>. The parallel’s exact. +Madala’s Westering Hill and the <i>Breckonridge</i> +of the novel are the same place. The house, the +lane, the country-side, she doesn’t trouble to disguise +them. Again—Madala’s adventure is ushered +in by calamity: and tragedy—(you can see +the artist transmuting the mere physical calamity +into tragedy) tragedy happens to the woman in +<i>Eden Walls</i>. Remember how much more Madala +dwelt on the sense of loneliness and lovelessness, +on the anguish of the loss of something to love +her, than on what one might call the—er—official +emotions of a betrayed woman. Didn’t it +strike you? Doesn’t that show that she was depending +on her experience rather than on her +imagination, fitting her own private grief to an +imaginary case? Then, in America, she has the +struggle for meat and drink, for mere existence. +So does the woman in <i>Eden Walls</i>. Madala does +not go under. The woman in <i>Eden Walls</i> does. +It’s the first real difference. But I maintain that +in reality the parallel still continues, that, in imagination, +Madala did go under over and over +again: that she had ever in front of her the ‘suppose, +suppose,’ that, in drawing the woman in +<i>Eden Walls</i>, she is saying to herself—‘Here, but +for the grace of God, go I.’ And then, you know, +when you think of her, hating that big city, saving +up her pennies, and coming home at last in +a passion of homesickness (if it was homesickness—sickness +anyhow), can’t you see how it makes +her write of that other woman? It’s the gift, the +genius, stirring in her: born, not immaculately, +but of her own literal experience. Jasper’s right—you +can always make facts fit if you think +them out: and because I possess that underlying +shadow-work (I admit it’s no more) of fact to +guide me in deciphering her method in the first +book, therefore, in the second book and the third +book, I find it safe to <i>deduce</i> facts to cover the +stories, even when I don’t possess them. I consider +that I’m justified, that <i>Eden Walls</i> justifies +me. Don’t you?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It’s plausible,” said Mr. Flood thoughtfully.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, it’s convincing,” said the Baxter girl reverently. +“I feel I’ve never known Madala Grey +before. What it will be when you get it into +shape, Miss Serle——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“In fact,” said Miss Howe, “there’s only one +drawback——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And that?” said Anita swiftly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Only Madala’s own account.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She never discussed her methods,” said Anita +sharply.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Just so! You’re not the only person who’s—pumped. +I remember seeing her once surrounded, +in her lion days. I remember her ingenuous +explanations. She did her best to oblige +them—‘Honestly, I don’t know. One just sits +down and imagines.’ And then—‘That’s quite +easy. But it’s awfully difficult writing it down.’ +That’s the explanation, Nita. A deliberate, even +unconscious self-exploitation is all nonsense. +Madala’s not clever enough.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not clever enough!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No. You’re much cleverer than she was. +You have twice her brains. You can’t think, +Anita, what brains you’ve got. You’ve got far +too many to understand a simple person. I don’t +agree, you know, with ‘genius.’ I can’t throw a +word like that about so lightly. But as far as it +went with Madala, it was the same sort of genius +that makes a crocus push in the spring. Your +theory—oh, it’s plausible, as Jasper says, but +don’t you see that it destroys all the charm of +her work? It’s the innocence of her knowledge, +the simplicity of her attitude to her own insight +that to me is moving. She touches pitch, yet her +fingers are clean. It’s her view of her story that +arrests one, not her story, not her facts, not her +mere plot.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, the plot is conventional, I’ll grant you +that. She was always content with old bottles.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, and when the new wine burst them and +made a mess on the carpet, Madala was always so +surprised and indignant.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood giggled.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Pained is the word, dear lady—surprised and +pained. Do you remember when <i>Eden Walls</i> was +banned?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t suppose she talked to you about it, +Jasper,” said Miss Howe sharply.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I? I was never of her counsels. But I got +my amusement out of the affair. Dear, delightful +woman? She behaved like a schoolgirl sent +to Coventry. I remember congratulating her on +the advertisement, and she would hardly speak +to me. But it suited her, the blush.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“<i>Wasn’t</i> it an advertisement!” said the Baxter +girl longingly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“If one could have got her to see it,” said +Anita. “But no, she insisted on being ashamed of +herself. She said to me once that the critics had +‘read in’ things that she had never dreamed of—that +it made her doubt her own motives—that +she felt dirtied and miserable. And yet she +wouldn’t alter one of those scenes. Obstinate! +She could be very obstinate.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, which scenes?” The Baxter girl stuck +her elbows on the table and her chin in her fists. +Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, then, Miss Serle, did +you—? did she come to you in the early days? +Did you help her too?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“My daughter—very kind to young people!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>It was a mere mutter, but I recognized the +swing of the phrase. Anita didn’t. She was busy +with the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t say that there would be no Madala +Grey today if I——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“<i>But</i>——” said Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“<i>But</i>—” said Miss Howe, “she’s Anita’s discovery. +We’re never to forget that, are we, +darling?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, I knew that,” said the Baxter girl, trying +to be tactful. “But <i>Eden Walls</i> was written before +you knew her, wasn’t it? I understood—I +didn’t know, I mean,” she explained to them, +“that Miss Serle had—blue-pencilled——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I did and I didn’t.” Anita laughed, as if in +spite of herself. “I confess I thought at the time +that it needed revision. Mind you, I never questioned +the quality, but I knew what the public +would stand and what it wouldn’t. Of course, I +didn’t want the essentials altered. But there were +certain cuts——However, nothing would move +her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“That’s funny. She never gave me the impression +that she believed in herself so strongly.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, her <i>pose</i> was diffidence,” said the blonde +lady.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But she didn’t believe in herself. It was obvious. +When I went through her MS. and blue-pencilled, +she was most grateful. She agreed to +everything and took the MS. away to remodel.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And then?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I heard nothing more of her—for weeks. +Finally I wrote and asked her to come and see me. +She came. She was delightful. I had told her, +you know, about the <i>Anthology</i> the first time I +met her. I remember that I was annoyed with +myself afterwards. I’m not often indiscreet. +But she had a—a knack—a way with her. I +hardly know how to describe it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“One told her things,” said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Just so. One told her things. And she had +brought me a mass of material—some charming +American verse (you remember? in the last section +but one) that I had never come across. She +had been reading for me at the British Museum +in her spare time. I confess I was touched. We +talked, I remember——” She sighed reminiscently. +“It was not until she made a move to +go that I recollected myself. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘and +how about <i>Eden Walls</i>?’ She fidgeted. She +looked thoroughly guilty. At last it came out. +She hadn’t altered a line. She had tried her utmost. +She had drafted and re-drafted. She had +finally given it up in despair and just got work in +some obscure newspaper office—‘a most absorbing +office!’ But there—you know Madala when +she’s interested—was interested——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Don’t,” said Miss Howe softly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But Anita went on—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“‘Well but—’ I said to her—‘that’s all very +well. But you’re not going to abandon <i>Eden +Walls</i>, are you?’ Then it all came out. Yes, +she was. She knew I was right. She wasn’t +conceited. She quite saw that the book was useless. +It just meant that she couldn’t write novels +and that she mustn’t waste any more time. ‘But, +my dear Miss Grey,’ I said, ‘you mean to say +that you’d rather leave the book unpublished than +alter a couple of chapters, remodel a couple of +characters?’ ‘But I can’t,’ she said, ‘I can’t. +They happened that way.’ ‘Then make them +happen differently,’ I said. But no, she couldn’t. +‘Oh well,’ I said at last—‘if you’re so absolutely +sure of yourself, if you’re prepared to set up +your judgment——’ That distressed her. I +can hear her now. ‘But I don’t set up my judgment. +I’ll burn the wretched stuff tomorrow if +you say it’s trash. I knew it would be, in my +heart. But—I can’t alter it, because—because +it happened that way.’ Then I had an idea. ‘To +you?’ I said. She looked at me. She laughed. +She said—‘Miss Serle, you’ve written ten books +to my one. Don’t pretend you don’t know how +a story happens.’” Anita nodded at us. “You +see? Evasive. I think it was from that moment +that I began to have my theory of her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well—and what next?” demanded Miss +Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She would have said good-bye if I had let +her. I stopped her. ‘Reconsider it,’ I said. +She beamed at me, chastened but quite cheerful. +‘Oh, I’ll try another some day,’ she said. ‘I +suppose I’m not old enough. I was a fool to +think I could.’ At that, of course, I gave in. +I wasn’t going to lose sight of <i>Eden Walls</i>. I +told her to bring it as it was and I’d see what I +could do. As you know, Mitchell and Bent +jumped at it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But it was banned,” said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, but everybody read it. You can get it +anywhere now. And I can say now—‘Thank the +gods she didn’t touch it.’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Then she was right?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Of course she was right. I knew it all the +time.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And she didn’t?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Of course she didn’t. Mine was critical +knowledge. Hers the mere instinct of—whatever +you choose to call it. I was afraid of the +critics. She didn’t know enough to be afraid.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“There’s something big about you, Anita!” +said Miss Howe suddenly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood gave the oblique flicker of eyes and +mouth that was his smile.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes,” he said slowly, “it fits her quite well.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What?” said Anita sharply.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The mantle, dear lady.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She shrugged her shoulders.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah—<i>Gentle dullness ever loves a joke</i>. +What, Beryl?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t see,” the Baxter girl had harked back, +“how you can call a book that has been banned +conventional.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Only the plot——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah, that plot!” Nobody could snub Mr. +Flood. “Think, dear lady! Village maiden—faithless +lover—lights o’ London—unfortunate +female—what more do you want?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Of course.” Anita resumed the reins. “It’s +as old as <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i>.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, <i>that</i>!” The Baxter girl looked interested. +“Do you know, I’ve never seen it. One +of Irving’s shows, wasn’t it?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I laughed. I couldn’t help it. But they were +all quite solemn, even Anita. But then she never +did listen to the Baxter girl. She had talked +straight through her sentences.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But it’s not the material. It’s the way it’s +handled. It’s never been done quite so thoroughly, +from the woman’s point of view—so unadornedly. +People are afraid of their ‘<i>poor girls</i>.’ There’s a +formula that even the Immortals follow. They +are all young and beautiful, and they all die. +They must. They wouldn’t be tragic in continuation. +But Madala’s woman doesn’t. That’s the +point. There’s no pretence at making her a heroine. +She’s just the ordinary stupidish sheep of a +creature, ‘gone wrong.’ There’s no romantic +halo, no love-glamour, no pity and terror, just the +chronicle of a sordid life. And yet you can’t put +the book down. At least I couldn’t put it down.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Do <i>you</i> like it?” I said to Kent Rehan, as he +paused beside me in his eternal pacing from room +to room.</p> + +<p class='c008'>He looked at me oddly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I respect it,” he said. “I don’t like it. People +misjudged——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“If it had been the recognized love story”—Mr. +Flood’s high voice silenced him—“the regularized +irregularity, so to speak, it wouldn’t have +been banned. It was the absence of a love story +that the British public couldn’t forgive. It was +cheated. It was shocked.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But there is a love story at the beginning, +isn’t there?” I said. “I haven’t read far.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Instantly the Baxter girl exhibited me—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, imagine! She hasn’t read it!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I’ve read <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i>,” I said. +And then I was annoyed that I had shown I was +annoyed. But at once Miss Howe helped me. +Miss Howe was always nice to me.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“How far have you got? Where the man tires +of her? Ah, yes! Well, after that it’s just her +struggle. She—she earns her living—in the inevitable +way. She grows into a miser. She +hoards.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood looked acute.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“That’s what upset them. They don’t mind a +Magdalen; but Magdalen unaware, unrepentant, +Magdalen preserving her ill-gotten gains—no, +that’s not quite nice.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Howe. “If +anyone can’t feel the spirit it’s written in, the +passion of pity—I think it’s the most pitiful +thing I’ve ever read. It made me shiver. That +wretched creature, saving and sparing——” +And then to me, for I suppose I showed I was interested—“She +wants to get away, you know, to +get back into the country. It’s her dream. The +homesickness——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I suppose such a woman could——?” said +the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I used to argue it with Madala. Madala always +said that, with some people, that animal +craving for some special place was like love—a +passion that could waste you. She said that +every woman must have some devouring passion, +for a man, or a child, or a place—<i>every</i> woman. +And that for a beaten creature like that, it would +be <i>place</i>—the homing instinct of a cat or a bird. +And mixed up with it, religion—the vague shadowy +ideal of peace and cleanly beauty—all that +the wretched creature tries to express in her +phrase—‘getting out and living quiet’—that +Madala typifies in the word ‘Eden.’ It meant +much to Madala. Don’t you remember that passage +towards the end of the book where she meets +the man, the first man, and brings him home with +her—and he doesn’t even recognize her, and she +doesn’t even care.” She picked up a bundle of +tattered proofs and turned them over. “Where is +it? What an appalling hand she had!” She +stood a moment, reading a page and pursing her +lips. “Oh, well, what’s the use of reading it? +We all know it.” She flung it down.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Let me see,” I said to the Baxter girl. She +drew it towards me. It was the first proof I’d +ever seen. It was corrected till it was difficult to +read. But I made it out at last.</p> + +<p class='c012'>With the closing of the door she dismissed him with +one phrase for ever from her mind—</p> + +<p class='c013'>“And that’s that!”</p> + +<p class='c013'>She had long been accustomed thus to summarize her +clients, dispassionately, as one classes beasts at a show; +and she judged them, not by their clothing or their +speech, not by the dark endured hours of their love or +by the ticklish after-moment of the reckoning, but rather, +as she hovered at the door with her provocative night +smile dulled to a business friendliness, by their manner +of leaving her.</p> + +<p class='c013'>Always there was the fever to be gone; but some went +furtively, with cautious, tiptoe feet that set the stairs +a-squeak with mockery. Her smile did not change for +the swaggerer who stayed long and took his luck-kiss twice, +but her eyes would harden. Mean, cheating mean, to kiss +again and never pay again! And some she watched and +smiled upon who left her in a brutal silence. For them +she had no resentment, rather the sullenness beneath her +smile reached out to the revulsion of their bearing as to +something welcomed and akin. And some gave back her +smile with kindly words—and those she hated.</p> + +<p class='c013'>But when, after his manner, the man had gone, she had, +as always, her ritual.</p> + +<p class='c013'>She locked her easy door and pulling out the key, put +it before her on the table at the bedside. Left and right +of it she laid her money down, adding to the night’s gains +the meagre leavings of her purse. Left and right the little +piles grew, one heaped high for the needs of her day +and her night, for food and roof and livery, and one a +thin scatter of coppers and small silver that took long +weeks to change into the dear, the exquisite, the Eden-opening +gold. It was the bigger pile that she thrust so +carelessly back into her bag, and the scattered ha’pence +that she warmed in the cup of her two hands, holding them, +jingle-jingle, at her ears, dropping them to her lap again +to count anew, piling them before her to a little, narrowing +tower, before she opened the child’s jewel-case beside her, +and, lifting the sheaf of letters that she never read but +kept still and would always keep, for the savage pain they +gave her when her eyes saw them and her fingers touched +them, she poured out the new treasure upon the sacred +hoard beneath.</p> + +<p class='c013'>Tenpence saved—and yesterday a shilling! Five shillings +last week. Fifty pounds! She would soon have fifty +pounds!</p> + +<p class='c013'>She put away the box of money, and so, surrendering +at last to the awful bodily fatigue, lay down again upon +the tousled bed, not to sleep—her sleeping time was later +in the day—but to shut her eyes.</p> + +<p class='c013'>For, by the amazing pity of God, a secret that is not +every man’s, was hers—the secret of the refuge appointed, +behind shut eyes, of the return into eternity that is the +shutting down of lids upon the eyes. The window glare, +the screaming street below, the blank soiled ceiling with +the flies, the walls, the unending pattern of the hateful +walls, the clock, the finery, the beastly scents, the loathed +familiars of stuff and wood and brass that blinked and +creaked at her like voices crying—“Misery! misery! misery!”—these +were her world. Yet not her only world. +She, who was so dim and blunted a woman-thing, could +pass, with the warm dark velvet touch of dropping lids, +not into the nullity of sleep, but into the grey place, limitless, +timeless, where consciousness knows nothing of the flesh.</p> + +<p class='c013'>She shut her eyes with the sigh of a tired dog, and instantly +her soul lay back and floated, resting.</p> + +<p class='c013'>There was no time, no thought, no feeling. There was +peace—quiet—greyness. At unmeasured intervals realization +washed over her like waves, waves of peace—quiet—greyness. +Greyness—she worshipped the blessed greyness. +She wanted to give it a beloved name and knew none. +‘When I am dead!’—‘For ever and ever, Amen!’—So +she came nearest to ‘Eternity.’</p> + +<p class='c013'>Peace—quiet—greyness: greyness enduring for ever, +that could yet be rent asunder like a temple veil and let in +misery—the window glare, the reeking room, the clodding +footsteps, the fingers tapping at her door—a frail eternity +whose walls were slips of flesh.</p> + +<p class='c013'>She called harshly—</p> + +<p class='c013'>“Get out! Get away! Put it down outside then, can’t +you?”</p> + +<p class='c013'>There was a mutter and the clank of a scuttle-lid, and a +thud. The footsteps shuffled out of hearing.</p> + +<p class='c013'>She shut her eyes again.</p> + +<p class='c013'>Peace—quiet—greyness. The waves were rocking her.</p> + +<p class='c013'>She did not dream. There are, by that same pity of +God, no dreams permitted in the place of refuge. But, +as she lay in peace, she watched her own memorial thoughts +rising about her, one by one, like bubbles in a glass, like +cocks crowing in the dark of the dawn.</p> + +<p class='c013'>A white road ... the hill-top wind panting down it like +a runner ... dust ... bright blue sky ... sky-blue succory +in the gutter ... succory is so difficult to pick ... +tough ... it leaves a green cut on one’s finger ... succory +in a pink vase on the mantel-piece ... the fire’s too +hot for flowers ... hot buttered toast ... the armchair +wants mending ... the horsehair tickles one’s ears as one +lies back in it and warms one’s toes and watches the rain +drowning the fields outside ... empty winter fields, all +tousled and tussocky from cow dung ... grey skies ... +snow ... not a soul in sight ... and succory in a pink +vase on the mantel-piece ... because one’s back in Eden +... summer and winter are all one in Eden ... picking +buttercups in Eden as one used to do ... all the fields +grown full of buttercups ... fifty buttercups make a bunch +... fifty golden buttercups with the King’s head on them +... hurry up with the buttercups ... one more bunch of +buttercups will buy back Eden—Eden—ah!</p> + +<p class='c013'>So, with a long gasping sigh would come the end. +“Eden—” and the longing would be upon her, tearing like +a wild beast at her eyes and her throat and her heart—“I +want to go home. Oh, God, let me go home! Let me +out! I want to go home——”</p> + +<p class='c010'>The chapter ended.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And does she?” I looked up at the Baxter +girl. “I’m always afraid of a bad ending. Does +she get back in the end?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl fluttered through the pages.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The money’s stolen first—a man takes it—while +she’s asleep——Oh, it’s beastly, that +scene. She has to save it all up again. It takes +her years. But—oh, yes, she does go back.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The railway journey,” said Miss Howe. “Do +you remember?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“If you want happy endings”—the Baxter girl +flattened out the last page with a jerk—“there +you are!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I read over her shoulder. The strong scent +that hung about her seemed to float between me +and the page.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Here we are—where she gets to the station. +‘Eden,’ Madala calls it, but the woman calls it +‘Breckonridge.’</p> + +<p class='c012'>At last and at last the station-board with the familiar +name flashed past her window. She thrilled. The station +lamps repeated it as the train slowed down. She thought—how +long the platform’s grown! ... a bookstall! ... a +bookstall on each side! ... there used not to be ... wasn’t +the station smaller?...</p> + +<p class='c013'>She spoke to the ticket collector shyly, blushing, like +a girl going to an assignation and thinking that all the world +must know it.</p> + +<p class='c013'>He answered, already catching at the ticket of the traveller +behind her—</p> + +<p class='c013'>“How far to Breckonridge? A mile, maybe—but you +get the tram at the corner.”</p> + +<p class='c013'>She stared. She would have questioned him again, but +the throng of people pressed her forward.</p> + +<p class='c013'>A tram through the village? ... queer! ... not that +it mattered to her ... she would take the old short cut +through the fields outside the station yard.... There was +a stile ... and a wild cherry tree....</p> + +<p class='c013'>She left the yard, the unfamiliar yard with asphalt and +motors and a great iron bridge, crossed the road, and +stopped bewildered.</p> + +<p class='c013'>There were no fields.</p> + +<p class='c013'>‘Station Road.’ The labelled yellow villas were like a +row of faces. Eyes, nose, mouth—windows, porch, steps—steps +like teeth. They grinned.</p> + +<p class='c013'>In a sort of panic she ran past them down the road, a +lumbering, clumsy woman. She trod on her skirt, and +recovered herself with difficulty. She heard a small boy +laugh and call after her. She clambered on to the tram.</p> + +<p class='c013'>“I want to go to the village—to Breckonridge——”</p> + +<p class='c013'>“It’s all Breckonridge. ’Ow far?”</p> + +<p class='c013'>She stared.</p> + +<p class='c013'>“I don’t remember. He said a mile.”</p> + +<p class='c013'>“Town ’All, I expect.” He took his toll and passed on.</p> + +<p class='c013'>She turned vaguely to a neighbour.</p> + +<p class='c013'>“Town Hall? I don’t remember. The road’s all different +Where are the fields?”</p> + +<p class='c013'>The neighbour nodded.</p> + +<p class='c013'>“Built over. When were you here last? Thirty years? +My word, you’ll find changes! I notice it, even in five. +Very full it’s getting. Good train service. My husband +can get to his office under the hour.”</p> + +<p class='c013'>She said dazedly—</p> + +<p class='c013'>“It was—it is—a little village.”</p> + +<p class='c013'>The woman laughed.</p> + +<p class='c013'>“I daresay. But how long ago?”</p> + +<p class='c013'>“There were fields,” she said under her breath. “There +were flowers——”</p> + +<p class='c013'>“Here’s the Town Hall. Didn’t you want the Town +Hall?”</p> + +<p class='c013'>Unsteadily she rose and got out. The tram clanged forward.</p> + +<p class='c013'>She stood on an island where four roads met and looked +about her. The sun stared down at her, a brazen city sun. +The asphalt was hot and soft under her feet. Road-menders +were at work in the fair-way. They struck alternately at +the chisel between them and it was as if the rain of blows +fell upon her. She felt stupid and dizzy. She did not know +where to turn. There was nothing left of her village, and +yet the place was familiar. There were drab houses and +rows of shops and a stream of traffic, and the figures of +women and men—menacing, impersonal figures of men—that +hurried towards her down the endless streets.</p> + +<p class='c010'>“Well?” said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But that’s not the <i>end</i>?” I said.</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl looked at me oddly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why not?” And then—“How else could it +end? How would you make it end?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, I don’t mean——” I began. I hesitated. +“I don’t think I quite understand,” I said.</p> + +<p class='c008'>That was the truth. At the time I couldn’t +follow it. It moved me. It swept me along. But +whether it was good or bad I didn’t know. I +hadn’t the faintest idea of what it was driving +at. I felt in a vague way that the people at home +wouldn’t have liked it.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What does it mean?” I said to the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“That you can’t eat your cake and have it, I +suppose. You can get out of Eden, but you can’t +get back.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita answered her contemptuously—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Is that all it means to you?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>And yet we had spoken very softly. But Anita +had eyes that ate up every movement in a room, +and her small pretty ears never seemed to miss a +significant word though ten people were talking. +I had seen her glance uneasily at us and again at +the two in the other room. I knew Great-aunt’s +mutter was too low even for her, and Kent Rehan +only nodded now and then, but even that annoyed +her. She lifted her own voice to be sure that they +should hear all that she said, as if afraid lest, even +for a moment, she should be left out of their +thoughts.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh!” she said loudly and contemptuously, “I +tell you what <i>I</i> see.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>She succeeded, if that pleased her. Kent Rehan +raised his head and stared across at her with that +impersonal expression of attention that, I was +beginning to realize, could always anger her on any +face. She had said a little while ago that she only +cared for Miss Grey as an artist, and I believe that +she believed it. But I don’t think—I shall never +think it true. I think Anita depended—depends, +on other people more than she dreams. Poor +Anita! I can see her now, her whole personality +challenging those dark abstracted eyes. But she +spoke to the Baxter girl—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“When Madala Grey chose <i>Eden Walls</i> for her +title—when she flung it in the public face——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I saw him give a shrug of fatigue or distaste—I +couldn’t tell which. Great-aunt, who had been +sitting, her head on one side, with her sharp +poll-parrot expression, crooked her finger at me. +I went across to her and behind me I heard the +Baxter girl—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You talk as if she were in a passion——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>And Anita—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“So she was. I’m telling you. It’s the wrongs, +not of one woman, but of all women, of all ages +of women, that burn behind it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Votes for Women!” It was Mr. Flood’s +voice.</p> + +<p class='c008'>There was a laugh and I lost an answer. I +caught only a vehement blur of words, because +Great-aunt had me by the wrist.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Chatter, chatter! I can’t hear ’em. What’s +my daughter talking about?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I hesitated.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“About books, Auntie.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Whose books?” she pounced.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Some writer, Auntie.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What’s she saying about her, eh?” She held +me bent down to her. I glanced at Kent Rehan. +He was listening to us. I felt harried.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“About—oh—whether a genius—whether +she was a genius——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Madala, eh?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, Auntie.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I thought I heard him sigh. And at that—why, +I don’t know—I turned on him. I was +rude, I believe. I sounded silly and cruel, I know. +Yet, heaven knows, that that was the last thing +I wanted to be.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I said angrily to him—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, why do you stand there and listen? Don’t +you see that I can’t help myself? Why don’t you +go away? What good can it do you to stay here, +to stay and listen to it all?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Then I stopped because he looked at me for a +moment, and flushed, and then did turn away, back +again to his old dreary post at the street window.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Great-aunt chuckled.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“That’s right, little Jenny. Take your own +way with them, Jenny!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>I said—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Let me go, Auntie dear,” and I loosed her hand +from my wrist and went after him; for of course +the instant the words were out of my mouth I was +ashamed of myself. I couldn’t think what had +possessed me. I was badly ashamed of myself.</p> + +<p class='c008'>I came to him and said—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Mr. Rehan—I don’t mean to be rude. +Great-aunt—she doesn’t understand. She made +me talk. It wasn’t rudeness; but you stood there, +and I knew—I thought I knew, what you must +think, must be thinking—” (but ‘feeling’ was the +word I meant) “and I was sorry. I was angry because +I was sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>He said—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It’s all right. I didn’t think you rude.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Then I said—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But I meant it. Why do you stay? What +good can it do you? Why don’t you go away +from it all?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>And he—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Where is there to go? I’ve been tramping all +day.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Where?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t know. Up and down streets. It’s—it’s +blinding, it’s stifling——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The fog is,” I said quickly. But we didn’t +mean the fog.</p> + +<p class='c008'>He let himself down into the low wicker chair. +I stood leaning against the sill, watching him.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You’re just dead tired,” I said.</p> + +<p class='c008'>He nodded. Then, as if something in my words +had stung him—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Where else? I’ve always come here. Every +month. It was natural to come.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But now” I said (and I was so urgent with +him because of all their talk that drummed still in +my mind like a wasps’ nest)—“I’d go away if I +were you. What good does it do you? They +talk. It’s—it’s rather hateful. I’ve been listening. +I’d go.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Where?” he said again. And I—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Haven’t you anyone—at home?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But as I asked I knew that he hadn’t. He +had the look. Oh, he wore good clothes and I +knew he wasn’t poor. But it was written all over +him that he looked after himself and did it expensively +and badly. He had, too, that other look +that goes with it—of a man who has never found +anyone more interesting to him than himself. And +the queer part was that it didn’t seem selfish in +him—and I’m sure it wasn’t. It was just like +the way a child takes you for granted, and tells +you about its own big affairs, and never guesses +that you have your own little affairs too. I suppose +it was a fault in him; but it made me like him. +And he talked to me simply and almost as if he +needed helping out; as if he’d been just anybody. +I never had to help out anyone before: it had +always been the other way round. I’d thought, +too, that celebrated people were always superior +and brilliant and overwhelming, like Anita and +Mr. Flood. But he wasn’t. He was as simple as +A, B, C. I liked him. I did like him. I felt +happier, more at peace, standing there with him +than I had felt since I had been in Anita’s house. +I think he would have gone on talking to me too, +if it hadn’t been for the Baxter girl. She spoilt +it. She tilted back her chair, yawning, and so +caught sight of us, and laughed, and leaning over +to Miss Howe, whispered in her ear. She was a +crazy girl. At once I got up and came across to +them, panic-stricken, hating her. I had to. I +didn’t want him worried, and you never knew what +hateful thing the Baxter girl wouldn’t say, and +think that she was pleasing you.</p> + +<p class='c008'>But without knowing it, Anita helped me. Her +voice, rising excitedly in answer to some word of +Mr. Flood’s, recalled the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Mystery? Of course there’s a mystery! She +was at the height of her promise in <i>Ploughed +Fields</i>. It’s as good as <i>Eden Walls</i> in matter and, +technically, better still. The third book ought to +have settled her place in modern literature for good +and all. It ought to have been her master-piece. +But what does she do? We expect a chaplet of +pearls, and she gives us a daisy-chain. Isn’t that +a mystery worth solving? Won’t people read +the <i>Life</i> for that if for nothing else? Am I the +only person who has asked what happened to her +between her second and her third books?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I tell you, but you won’t listen,” Mr. Flood +insisted. “Your romantic has become a realist +and is flying from it to the resting-place of romance.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I do listen. Just so. You use your words +and I use mine, but we mean the same thing. +She’s been bruising herself against facts. She +has been walled up by facts. Her vision is gone. +Now what was, in her case, the all-obscuring +fact?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She was a woman,” said the blonde lady. “It +could only be one thing. Don’t I know the signs? +She even lost her sense of humour.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, she did, didn’t she?” cried the Baxter +girl in a voice of relief. “Oh, I remember one +day, just before the engagement was announced——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“As if that had anything to do with it,” said +Anita scornfully.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“—and she’d been so absent-minded I couldn’t +get anything out of her. I thought I knew her +well enough to tease her. I had told her all <i>my</i> +affairs. So—‘I believe you’re in love,’ I said. +‘Oh, well, you’ll get over it. It’s a phase.’ Was +there any harm in that? It was only repeating +what you had said to me about her, you know,” +she reminded the blonde lady. “But she froze +instantly. She made no comment. She just +changed the subject. But I felt as if I had been +introduced to a new Madala. I wished I hadn’t +said it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You are a little fool, Beryl,” said the blonde +lady tolerantly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But she <i>was</i> altered,” insisted the Baxter girl. +“The old Madala would have laughed.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, she was altered,” said Anita. “Her +whole attitude to herself and her work changed +that spring. How she horrified me one day. It +was soon after <i>Ploughed Fields</i> came out, and we +were talking about her new book, at least I was, +pumping a little, I confess, and suddenly she said—‘Anita, +I don’t think I’ll write any more. This +stuff—’ she had her hands on <i>Eden Walls</i>, ‘it’s +harsh, it’s ugly; and so’s <i>Ploughed Fields</i>. Isn’t +it?’ ‘It’s true to life,’ I said, ‘that’s the triumph +of it.’ ‘Is it?’ she said. She looked at me in an +uneasy sort of way. And then—‘I’d like to write +a kind book, a beautiful book.’ I told her that +she couldn’t, that she was a realist. ‘That’s +why,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I’ll write any more.’ +I laughed, of course. Anybody would have +laughed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I mean it. I haven’t +an idea in my head. I’m tired and empty. I +think I shall go away for a wander. There’s always +the country, anyhow.’ ‘Well, Madala,’ I +said, ‘I think you’re ungrateful. You’re a made +woman. You’ve got your name: you’ve got your +line: you’ve got your own gift——’ ‘Oh, that!’ +she said, as if she were flicking off a fly. I was +irritated. It was so arrogant. ‘What more do +you want?’ I asked her. ‘What more <i>can</i> you +want?’ She said—‘I don’t know,’ looking at me, +you know, as if she expected me to tell her. I disliked +that mood of hers. One did expect, with a +woman of her capacity, to be entertained as it +were, to have ideas presented, not to be asked to +provide them. Then she began, à propos of nothing +at all—‘If I ever marry——’ That +startled me. We’d never touched on the subject +before. ‘Oh, my dear Madala,’ I said, ‘you must +never think of anything so—so unnecessary. +For you, of all people, it would be fatal. It +would waste your time, it would distract your +thoughts, it would narrow your outlook, it would +end by spoiling your work altogether. I’ve seen +it happen so often. It’s terrible to me even to +think of a woman with a future like yours, throwing +it away just for the——’ She interrupted +me. ‘I wouldn’t marry for the sake of getting +married, if you mean that. Not even for children.’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“You didn’t mean that, did you, Anita?” said +Miss Howe smiling a little.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Certainly not. But I had always been afraid +that she might be tempted to marry for the +adventure’s sake, for the mere experience, for +the——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Copy,” said Mr. Flood. “I always said so. +Yes?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“‘Oh well, Madala,’ I said to her, ‘you know +what I think. I’m not one to quote Kipling, but—<i>He +travels fastest who travels alone</i>.’ She +looked at me so strangely. ‘Alone?’ she said. +‘Alone. Its the cruellest word in the language. +There’s drowning in it.’ ‘Well, without conceit, +Madala,’ I said, ‘I can affirm that I have been +alone, spiritually, all my life.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ she +said, ‘but you’re different.’ And that,” Anita +broke off, “was what I liked in Madala. She did +recognize differences. She could appreciate. She +wasn’t absorbed in herself. She said to me quite +humbly—‘I’m not strong, I suppose; but I don’t +suffice myself. I can’t bear myself sometimes. I +can’t bear the burden of myself. Can’t you understand?’ +‘Frankly,’ I said, ‘I can’t. I’m a modern woman, +and the modern woman is a pioneer. +She’s the Columbus of her own individuality. She +must be. It’s her career. It’s her destiny.’ She +answered me pettishly, like a naughty child—‘I +don’t want to be a pioneer.’ ‘You’re that,’ I +said, ‘already, whether you want to be or not.’ +Then she said to me, with that dancing, impish +look that her eyes and her lips and her white teeth +used to manage between them—‘All right! If +I’ve got to be, I will. But I’ll be a pioneer in +my own way. I swear I’ll shock the lot of you.’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“<i>Oho!</i>” said Mr. Flood with exaggerated unction.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Exactly!” Anita gave his agreement such +eager welcome. “That put me on the qui-vive. +Knowing her as I did, it was a very strong hint. +I awaited developments. Frankly, I was prepared +for a scandal, a romance, anything you please in +the way of extravagance. That’s why the Carey +marriage, that tameness, upset me so. It was +not what I was expecting. Really, I don’t know +which was more of a shock to me, <i>The Resting-place</i> +or the marriage. Hardly had I recovered +from the one when——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, <i>The Resting-place</i> was the shock of my +life too.” He giggled. “I mourned, I assure +you that I mourned over it. That opening, you +know—‘There was once’—And the end again—‘So +they were married and had children and lived +happily ever after.’ Pastiche! And then to be +invited to wade through a conscientious account +of how they achieved it! Too bad of Madala! As +if the poor but virtuous artist’s model weren’t a +drug on the market already! And the impecunious +artist himself—<i>stooping</i>, you know! Oh, I +sat in ashes.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe clapped her hands.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Jasper, I love you. I <i>do</i> love you. Did she +pull your leg too? Both legs? She did! She +did! Oh, there’s only one Madala!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood’s vanity was in his cheeks while she +rattled on.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Darling Jasper, I thought better of you! +Can’t you see the whole thing’s a skit? Giving +the jampot public what they wanted! Why, it’s +been out a year and they’re sucking the spoon +still. It’s the resting-place! Ask the libraries! +Oh, can’t you see?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“If it is parody,” said Mr. Flood slowly, “then, +I admit, it’s unique.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What else? You’ll not deny humour to +her?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I do!” the blonde lady nodded her head. +“Once a woman is in love she’s quite hopeless.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t see how parody could be in question,” +Anita broke in. “Anybody reading the book +carefully must see that she’s in earnest. That’s +the tragedy of it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The literary tragedy?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not only literary. The psychological value is +enormous. It’s not art, it’s record. It’s photography. +That happened. That happened, tragically, +to Madala. Oh, not the trimmings, of +course, not the happy-ever-after. But to me it’s +perfectly clear that that lapse into <i>Family Herald</i> +romance has had its equivalent in Madala’s own +life. I’ve always felt a certain weakness in her +character, you know—a certain sentimentalism.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“In the author of <i>Eden Walls</i>?” said Miss +Howe contemptuously.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, dear lady! But in the author of <i>The +Resting-place</i>.” Mr. Flood had recovered himself.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Skit, I tell you, skit!” she insisted. And +they continued to bicker in undertones while Anita +summed up the situation.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, my theory is this—Madala Grey met +some man——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Carey?” asked Mr. Flood, dividing his allegiance.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, Carey comes later. There was—an +episode——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Episodes?” he amended.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Possibly. But an episode anyhow, that I +place myself at the end of the <i>Ploughed Fields</i> +period. It may have been later, it may have +been the following summer while she was working +at <i>The Resting-place</i>. I’m open to conviction +there. But an episode there must have been. +In <i>The Resting-place</i> she wrote it down as it +ought to have happened.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why ought?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, obviously it didn’t happen or she +wouldn’t have become Mrs. Carey.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The gentleman loved and rode away, you +mean?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Something of the sort. Something went +wrong.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I see.” Miss Howe was interested. “It’s a +theory, anyhow. And then in sheer savage irony +at her own weakness——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not a bit. In sheer weak longing——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I see. If your theory is correct—I don’t +know what you base it on——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Internal evidence,” said Anita airily.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Then I can imagine that <i>The Resting-place</i> +was a relief to write. Poor Madala!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And then,” concluded Anita triumphantly, +“then appears Carey, and she’s too worn out, too +exhausted with her own frustrated emotions to +care what happens. The book’s in her head still, +and she her own heroine. He appears to her—I +admit that it’s possible that even Carey might appear +to her—as a refuge, a resting-place.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, but you don’t like Mr. Carey,” said the +Baxter girl. “But if Madala did? Isn’t it possible +that in Madala’s eyes——? Why shouldn’t +the hero be Mr. Carey himself?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita’s eyes were bright with the cold anger +that she always showed at the name.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“My good girl, you know nothing about John +Carey, or you’d rule that out. Have you ever seen +him? I thought not. And yet you <i>have</i> seen +him. All day. Every day. When you talk of +the man in the street, whom do you mean? What +utterly common-place face is in your mind? Shall +I tell you what is in mine? John Carey. Ordinary! +Ordinary! The apotheosis of the uninspired! +Oh, I haven’t any words. Look for yourself.” +She rummaged furiously in the half-opened +desk and flung out a fading snapshot on a +mount. “There he is! That’s the thing she +married!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What’s he doing in your holy of holies?” +Mr. Flood’s eyes seemed to bore into her desk.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita, still thrusting down the overflowing +papers, answered coldly—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Madala sent it to Mother. She said that it +wasn’t good enough but that it would give her an +idea.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It certainly gives one an idea,” said the blonde +lady languorously.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And then she put in a post-script that it didn’t +do him justice because the sun was in his eyes. +Defiantly, as it were. Isn’t that significant? +She’d never own to a mistake. Pride! She had +the devil’s own pride. Look at the way she took +her reviews! And in this case she would be bound +to defend him. She’d defend anything she’d once +taken under her wing.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, you know,” drawled the blonde lady, +her eyes on the photograph, “according to this +he topped her by two inches. I don’t somehow +see him <i>under</i> Madala’s wing.” And then—“After +all, there’s something rather fascinating +in bone and muscle.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Yes, and I don’t see,” the Baxter girl hurried +into defiance, “honestly I don’t see, Miss +Serle, why she shouldn’t have been in love with +him. Of course, it’s not a clever face, but it’s +good-tempered, and it’s good-looking, and there’s +a twinkle. Madala loved a twinkle. And I don’t +see——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita crushed her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“We’re discussing the standards of Madala +Grey.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“That’s not the point either, Anita.” Mr. +Flood would sometimes rouse himself to defend the +Baxter girl. “You know something. You own +to it. What do you know?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Simply that she was in love with someone +else. I’ve papers that prove it. Now it was +either some man whom none of us know, whom for +some reason she wouldn’t let us know, or——” +she hesitated. Then she began again—“Mind +you, I don’t commit myself, but—has the likeness +never struck you? <i>Hugh Barrington</i> in <i>The +Resting-place</i> and——?” Her eyes flickered towards +Kent Rehan.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood whistled.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Be careful, Anita.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“He?” Miss Howe laughed, but kindly. +“He’s lost to the world. He’ll be worse than ever +now.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“There!” Anita dropped upon the sentence +like a hawk upon a heather bird. “You see! +You say that! And yet you tell me there was +nothing—nothing—between them? Didn’t she +rave about him? his talents? his personality? his +charm? And then she goes and writes the story +of an artist’s model!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe laughed again.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“When a thing’s as obvious as that, it probably +isn’t so. Besides, the artist’s model marries the +artist.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Exactly. She leaves them, and us, cloyed with +love in a cottage. I repeat, the artist’s model +marries the artist because Madala Grey didn’t. +It’s the merest shadow of a solution as yet, but—isn’t +that a living portrait in <i>The Resting-place</i>? +Oh, I know it by heart—</p> + +<p class='c012'>“Maybe it was his height that gave you the impression, +less of weakness than of vagueness, as if his high forehead +touched cloud-land, and were obscured by dreams; for his +cold eyes guarded his mind from you, and his dark beard +hid his mouth.”</p> + +<p class='c010'>“You <i>do</i> know it by heart!” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Of course I know it by heart. It was the first +clue. Can anybody read those lines without recognizing +him?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The Baxter girl persisted—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But I don’t see it. Oh, of course it is like +him—but because she borrowed his face, the +story needn’t be about him. Why couldn’t she +just imagine the story? If she was a genius?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“That remains the point,” said Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She was,” insisted Anita stubbornly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe smiled and said nothing.</p> + +<p class='c008'>He continued—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“The mere fact that she was a genius would +prevent such a descent into milk and sugar, unless +she were money-making or love-sick.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>The blonde lady spoke—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Just so! Love-sick—sick of love—savage +with love—savaging her holy of holies. A parody. +Lila’s right.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But Miss Howe shook her head.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“No, no. I didn’t mean that sort of parody. +Madala may have had her emotions, but she’d always +be good-tempered about them. She’s laughing +at herself in <i>The Resting-place</i> as well as at +us.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But why do you cavil at it so?” said the +Baxter girl slowly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Only at its plain meaning. Grant the parody +and——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But why can’t you just read it as it stands? +Why do you say sentimental? I—I liked it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita took the book from her hand.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But, my dear child, <i>any</i>body can write this +sort of thing. Where’s the passage the ladies’ +papers rave about, where they have a day on the +river together?” She whipped over the pages +while I said to the Baxter girl—</p> + +<p class='c008'>“What is it? What’s it about? What’s the +plot?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, there isn’t any. That’s what they complain +of. It’s just a little artist’s model who sits +to an elderly, broken-down dreamer, and thinks +him a god. The duke and door-mat touch. It’s +just how two people fall in love and find it out. +It’s as simple as A, B, C. But people ate it when +it came out.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Treacle, I tell you,” insisted Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita overheard him.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Exactly! Listen to this—</p> + +<p class='c012'>... and they landed at last in a meadow of brilliant, +brook-fed grass.</p> + +<p class='c013'>She had no words in which to say a thousand times +‘How beautiful!’ Words? She had never known a country +June. She had never seen whole hedges clotted with +bloom, she had never in all her life breathed the perfume +of the may or heard a lark’s ecstasy. She had never—and +to her simplicity there was no break in the chain of thought—she +had never before been alone with him, unpaid, not +his servant but his equal and companion. How should she +have words?</p> + +<p class='c013'>She sat in the grass with the tall ox-eyes nodding at her +elbow and looked at him from under her hat with a little +eased sigh. This, after the dust of the journey, of the day, +of her life, was bliss. She prepared herself for this bliss, +deliberately, as she did everything. She was too poor and +too hungry to be wasteful of her happiness: she must have +every crumb. Therefore she had looked first at herself, +critically, with her trained eye, fingering the frill of her +blouse, flinging a scatter of skirt across her dusty city feet, +lest her poverty should jar his thoughts of her.</p> + +<p class='c013'>Then she looked at him. She saw him for a moment with +undazzled eyes, the blue sky enriched with clouds behind +him. She was saying to herself—‘I’m not a fool. I can see +straight. I know what he is. He’s just an ordinary man +in a hot, black suit. He stoops, I suppose. He’s worn out +with work. He’ll never be young again. And there’s nothing +particular about him. Then what makes me like him? +But I do. I do. He has only to turn and smile at +me——’</p> + +<p class='c013'>Then he turned and smiled at her, and it seemed to her +that the glamour of the gilded day passed over and into +him as he smiled, glorifying him so that she caught her +breath at his beauty. She knew her happiness. She knew +herself and him. He was the sum of the blue sky and +green, green grass, and the shining waters and the flowers +with their sweet smell, and the singing birds and the hum +of the little things of the air. All beauty was summed up +in him: he was food to her and sunshine and music: he was +her absolute good: and she thought that someone ought to +see that his socks were mended properly, for there was a +great ladder down one ankle, darned with wrong-coloured +wool.</p> + +<p class='c010'>“Well?” She shut the book.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I like it,” said the Baxter girl stubbornly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Mr. Flood twisted uneasily in his seat.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, pretty, of course. Of course it’s pleasant +enough in a way. But Madala oughtn’t to be +pretty. Think of the stuff she <i>can</i> do.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But can’t you see,” Miss Howe broke in, “how +it parodies the slush and sugar school?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita shook her head.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She used another manner when she was +ironical. I wish you were right. Oh, you may be—I +must consider—but I’m afraid that she is in +earnest. That phrase now—‘The green, green +grass,’ (why double the adjective?) ‘the shining +waters, the singing birds’—pitiful! And that +anti-climax—‘He was her absolute good: and she +thought that someone ought to see that his socks +were mended properly.’ I ask you—is it art?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Not as serious work, of course,” said Miss +Howe, “but——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I wish I could think so,” said Anita.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well, I wish I could do it,” said the Baxter +girl. “What do you say, Jenny?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>But it had brought back the country to me. It +had brought back home. I hadn’t anything to say +to them.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And she wouldn’t discuss it, you know. She +came in after supper that night, just as I was +reading the last chapter. It had only been out a +day. There she sat, where you are now, Lila, +smiling, with her hands in her lap and her eyes +fixed on her hands, waiting for me to finish.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh—” Miss Howe gave a little gushing +scream, “that reminds me—d’you know, Anita, +somebody actually told me that nobody had seen +<i>The Resting-place</i> before it was published, not +even you. I was amused. I denied it, of course.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Why?” said Anita coldly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe screamed again.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Then you didn’t? Oh, my dear?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Emancipation with a vengeance,” said Mr. +Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It had to come, Anita,” said Miss Howe with +deadly sympathy.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It was not that. It was only—she was +so extraordinarily sensitive about the <i>Resting-place</i>—unlike +herself altogether. I think, I’ve +always thought that she herself knew how unworthy +it was of her. She—what’s the use of disguising +it?—she, at least, had a value for my +judgment,” her eyes, wandering past Miss Howe, +brooded upon the Baxter girl, “and she knew what +my judgment would be. She owned it. She anticipated +it. I had shut the book, you know, +quietly. She sat so still that I thought she was +asleep. She had had one of those insane mornings——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Of course. She used to take a crowd of children +into the country, didn’t she?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Once a week. Slum children.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I know. ‘To eat buttercups,’ she told me,” +said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It was ridiculous, you know. She couldn’t +afford it. Look at the way she lived! I always +said to her, ‘If you can afford mad extravagances +of that sort, you can afford a decent flat in a +decent neighbourhood’——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, but I loved those rooms,” said the Baxter +girl, “with the Spanish leather screen round the +wash-hand-stand.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita glanced behind her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Ah, you’ve noticed? I happened to admire it +one day and—you know what she is—‘Would +you like it? Why, of course, it would just suit +the rest of your things. Oh, you must have it. +I’d like you to. It’s far too big for this room.’ +‘Oh,’ I said, ‘if you want it housed——’ So +that’s how it comes to be here. One couldn’t hurt +her feelings. And you know, it was quite unsuitable +to lodging-house furniture.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe laughed.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It disguised the wash-hand-stand. That was +all Madala cared. Only then she always took +you round to show you how beautifully it did disguise +it.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Typical,” said Mr. Flood. “Her reserves +were topsy-turvy.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But she had her reserves,” said Miss Howe +quickly.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I doubt that,” he answered her.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, but she had.” Anita recovered her place +in the talk. “Curious reserves. You know how +she came to me over <i>Eden Walls</i> and <i>Ploughed +Fields</i>. I saw every chapter. But as I was telling +you, she wouldn’t hear a criticism of <i>The Resting-place</i>. +That evening she pounced on me. She +was as quick as light. She said—‘You don’t like +it! I knew you wouldn’t! Never mind, Anita. +Forget it! Put it in the fire! You like me. +What do the books matter?’ She’d been watching +me all the time.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She had eyes in the back of her head,” said +Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Kind eyes,” said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“And I assure you she wouldn’t have said another +word on the subject if I hadn’t insisted. I +told her not to be ridiculous. How could I help +being disappointed? How could I separate her +from her work? I was disappointed, bitterly. I +made it clear. I said to her—‘Well, Madala, all +I can say is that if your future output is to be +on a level with this—this pot-boiler——’”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It’s not a pot-boiler,” said the Baxter girl +loudly and quite rudely. “I don’t know exactly +what it is, but it’s not a pot-boiler.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Anita stared her down.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“‘—pot-boiler,’ I said, ‘then—I wash my +hands of you.’ I wanted to rouse her. I couldn’t +understand her.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Well?” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>They all laughed.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, you can guess.” Anita was petulant, but +she, too, laughed a little. “You know her way. +She just sat smiling and twisting a ring that she +wore and looking like a scolded child.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But what did she say?” said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Nothing to the point. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but, +Anita, if I’d never written anything, wouldn’t +you be just as fond of me?’ Such a silly thing +to say! She was distressing at times. She embarrassed +me. Fond of her! She knew my interests +were intellectual. Fond of her! For a +woman of her brains her standard of values was +childish.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“But you were fond of her, you know,” said +Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Oh, as for that—there was something about +her—she had a certain way——After all, +if it gave her pleasure to be demonstrative, it was +easier to acquiesce. But she made a fetish of such +things. I was only trying to explain to her, as I +tell you, that it was quite impossible to separate +creator and creatures, and that to me she was +<i>Eden Walls</i> and <i>Ploughed Fields</i>, and if you believe +me, she was upon me like a whirlwind, shaking +me by the shoulders, and crying out—‘No, +no, stop! You’re to stop! It’s me you like, not +the books. I hate them. I hate all that. I shall +get away from all that one day.’ And I said—‘I +don’t wonder you’re ashamed of <i>The Resting-place</i>. +I advise you to get to work at once on +your new book. You’ll find that if you pull yourself +together——’ And all she said was—‘Nita! +Nita! <i>Don’t!</i> And she looked at me in such +a curious way——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“How?” somebody said.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I don’t know—laughing—despairing. +She’d no right to look at me like that. It was I +who was in despair.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I’d like to have seen you two,” said Miss +Howe.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“I didn’t know what had got into her. Of +course I blame myself. I ought to have followed +it out. I might have prevented things. But I +was annoyed and she saw it, and she——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>Miss Howe twinkled.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She wouldn’t let you be annoyed with her +long. What did she do with you, Anita?”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She? I don’t know what you mean. We +changed the subject. And as a matter of fact I +was much occupied at the time with the <i>Anthology</i>.” +She paused. “She had excellent taste,” +said Anita regretfully. “Naturally I reserved to +myself the final decision, but——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Just so,” said Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Be quiet, Jasper.” The blonde lady’s draperies +dusted his shoulder intimately.</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She’d brought me a delicious thing of Lady +Nairn’s, I remember, that I’d overlooked. And +from talking of the <i>Anthology</i> we came, somehow, +to talking about me. Yes—” Anita gave an +embarrassed half laugh—“She began to talk to +me, turning the tables as it were—about myself. +She’s never, in all the years I’d known her, taken +such a tone. Astonishing! As if—as if I were +the younger.” She stared at them, as one combating +an unuttered criticism. “I—liked it,” +said Anita defiantly. “There was nothing impertinent. +It was heartening. She made me feel +that one person in the world, at least, knew me—knew +my work. I realized, suddenly, that while +I had been studying her, she must have been +studying me, that she understood my capacities, +my limitations, my possibilities, almost as well as +I did myself. The relief of it—indescribable! +She was extraordinarily plain-spoken. As a rule, +you know, I thought her manner——”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“Insincere?” said the Baxter girl. “Yes, +I’ve heard people say that.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“It had that effect. It didn’t seem possible +that she could like everyone as much as she made +them think she did. But with me, at least, she was +always frankness itself. She believes, you know,—she +believed, that is, that all my work so far, +even the <i>Anthology</i> and the <i>Famous Women</i> series, +not to mention the lighter work, is still preliminary: +that my——” she hesitated—“my master-piece, +she called it, was still to come. She said +that, though she appreciated all my work, I hadn’t +‘found myself.’ Yes! from that child to me it was +amusing. But right, you know. She said that +my line, whether I dealt with a period or a person, +would always be critical, but that I’d never +had a big success because so far I’d been merely +critical: that I’d never become identified with my +subject: that I’d always remained aloof—inhuman. +Yes, she said that. A curious theory—but +it interested me. But she said that it was +only the real theme I needed, the engrossing subject. +She said that my chance would come: that +‘she felt it in her bones.’ I can hear her voice now—‘Don’t +you worry, Nita! It’ll come to you one +day. A big thing. Biography, I shouldn’t wonder. +And I shall sit and say—I told you so—I +told you so!’ Yes, she talked like that. Oh, +it’s nothing when I repeat it, but if you knew +how it seemed to pour new life into me. It was +the belief in her voice!”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“She always believed in you,” said Miss Howe +with a certain harshness. “Insincere! You +should have heard her talk of your <i>Famous</i> +<i>Women</i>!” And then—“Yes. She believed in +you right enough.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>“More than I did in her that night. I couldn’t +forget <i>The Resting-place</i>. It lay on the table, +and every now and then, when I felt most comfort +in her, my eyes would fall on it, and it would +jar me. She felt it too. When I saw her off at +last—it had grown very late—she stopped at +the gate and turned and came running back. I +thought that she had forgotten her handbag. She +nearly always forgot her handbag. But no, it +was <i>The Resting-place</i> that was on her mind. +It was—‘Nita! try it again. Maybe you’d like +it better.’ And then—‘Nita! I enjoyed writing +it so.’ ‘That’s something, at any rate,’ I said, +not wanting, you know, to be unkind. Then she +said—‘I wish you liked it. Because, you know, +Nita—’ and stopped as if she wanted to tell me +something and couldn’t make up her mind. ‘Well, +what?’ I said. It was cold on the steps. She +hesitated. She looked at me. For an instant I +had an absurd impression that she was going to +cry. Then she kissed me. She’d kissed me goodnight +once already, though, you know, we never +did as a rule. And then, off she went without another +word. I was quite bewildered by her. I +nearly called her back; but it was one of those +deep dark blue nights: it seemed to swallow her +up at once. But I heard her footsteps for a long +while after—dragging steps, as if she were tired. +I wasn’t. It was as if she had put something into +me. I went back into the house and I worked +till daylight. And all the next day I worked—worked +well. I felt, I remember, so hopeful, so +full of power. By the evening I had quite a mass +of material to show her, if she came. I half expected +her to come. But instead—” she fumbled +among her papers—“I got this.”</p> + +<p class='c008'>It was a sheet of note-paper, a sheet that looked +as if it had been crushed into a ball and then +smoothed out again for careful folding. Anita’s +fingers were still ironing out the crinkled edge while +she read it aloud.</p> + +<p class='c012'>“I want to tell you something. I tried to tell you yesterday, +but somehow I couldn’t. It oughtn’t to be difficult, yet +all this afternoon I’ve been writing to you in an exercise +book, and crossing out, and re-phrasing, and putting in +again as carefully and dissatisfiedly as if it were Opus 4. +I wish it were, because then you’d be very much pleased with +Madala Grey and forget the dreadful shock of Opus 3! I +was always afraid you wouldn’t like it, and sorry, because +I like it more than all my other work put together. Have +you never even begun to guess why? But how should you, +when I didn’t know myself until after it was finished? +Coming events, I suppose. It’s quite true—one isn’t overtaken +by fate: one prepares one’s own fate: one carries it +about inside one, like a child. I hear you say—‘Can’t +you come to the point?’ No, I can’t. Partly because I’m +afraid of what you’ll say, because I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed, +and partly, selfishly, because there is a queer +pleasure in beating about the bush that bears my flower. +It’s too beautiful to pick straight away in one rough snatch +of a sentence. Am I selfish? You’ve been so kind to me. +I know you will be sorry and that troubles me. And yet—Anita, +I am going to be married. You met him once in +the churchyard at home, do you remember? I’ve seen him +now and then when I took the children down there in the +summer. He——</p> +<p class='c011'>There’s something scratched out here,” said Anita.</p> + +<p class='c014'>“I think we shall be happy. When you get accustomed to +the idea I hope you will like him.”</p> + +<p class='c011'>She paused.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Now what do you make of that?” said Anita.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It explains the expeditions with the children,” +said Mr. Flood. “They were always too—philanthropic, +to be quite—eh?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, but she began those outings ages ago,” +said Miss Howe quickly.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Besides,” said Anita, “she didn’t go every +week that summer. That’s the point. She told +me herself that she was so busy that she had to +get help—one of those mission women. Now +why was she so busy?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Diversions in the country <i>and</i> attractions in +town?” said Mr. Flood. “It all takes time.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita nodded.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You think that? So do I. <i>And</i> attractions +in town! Exactly! At any rate I shall make +that the big chapter, the convincing chapter, of the +<i>Life</i>. I think I shall be able to prove that that +summer was the climax of her affairs. I grant +you that she met Carey that summer, but as she +says herself, a few times only. We must look +nearer home than Carey.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, but there’s such a thing as love at first +sight,” protested the Baxter girl, and Anita dealt +with her in swift parenthesis—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I was there when they first met. Shouldn’t I +have realized——?” And then, continuing—“Well, +reckon up my points. To begin with—the +difference in her that we all noticed, the restlessness, +the—unhappiness one might almost say, +the aloofness—oh, don’t you know what I mean? +as if she didn’t belong to us any more.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“As if she didn’t belong to herself any more.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes, yes, that’s even more what I mean. Then +comes the fact that we saw so little of her. What +did she do with her time? Writing <i>The Resting-place</i>, +was her explanation, but—is that gospel? +Do you really believe that she sat at home writing +and dreaming all those long summer days and +nights, except when she was—eating buttercups—with +Carey and her chaperons? And then +comes <i>The Resting-place</i> with its appalling falling-off, +and following on that, this letter, this +sudden engagement. Now doesn’t it look—I ask +you, doesn’t it look as if something had been going +on behind all our backs and had at last come +to a head?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, that she was in love is certain,” said Mr. +Flood. “Was there ever a woman of genius who +wasn’t?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Exactly. It’s a moral certainty. And this +letter to me proves that, whoever it was, it wasn’t +Carey. ‘I think we shall be happy.’ ‘I hope +you will like him.’ Is that the way a woman writes +of her first love or her first lover?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, but that sentence just before——” the +Baxter girl stretched out her hand for the letter—“‘The +bush that bears my flower——’” +She spoke sympathetically; but it jarred me. I +wondered how I should feel if I thought that the +Baxter girl would ever read my letters aloud.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Ah, that’s the literary touch. Madala could +never resist embroideries. Besides—she wants +to confuse me. That means nothing. But here, +you, see——” she took the letter out of the Baxter +girl’s hand—“as soon as she comes to the +point, the real point, the confession, the apologia—then +the baldest sentences. Try to remember +that Madala Grey has written one of the strongest +love scenes of the decade, and all she can say +of the man she is to marry is—‘I hope you will +like him.’”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“H’m! It’s curious!” Miss Howe was frowning.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Isn’t it? And then you know, the whole +manner of the engagement was so unlike her usual +triumphant way. She always swept one along, +didn’t she? But in the matter of the marriage +she seems, as far as I can make out, to have been +perfectly passive. She left everything to the man—arrangements—furniture—I +imagine she +even bought her clothes to please him. And the +wedding itself—no reception, no presents, no notice +to anyone, so sudden, so private. Not a +word even to her oldest friends——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Great-aunt stirred in her corner.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“—there was something so furtive about it all: +as if she were running away from something.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Miss Howe sat up.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“D’you mean?—what do you mean, Anita? +Are you hinting——?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita looked at her in a puzzled way that relieved +me, I hardly knew why.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Why, only that it carries out my theory—of +Carey as a refuge.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“From what?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Life—frustration—what did you think I +meant?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I don’t know. Nothing. It was my evil +mind, I suppose.” She flushed.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“How she harps on the child!” the Baxter girl +carried it on.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“That’s a mere simile——” said Miss Howe +swiftly.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But a queer simile!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“The marriage <i>was</i> sudden,” said Mr. Flood +from the floor in his silky voice. “Anita’s theory +has its points.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“A seven months’ child!” It was the first +word that the blonde lady had said for some time. +There was something sluggishly cold, slimily cold, +in her abstracted voice.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita started.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I never suggested that,” she said sharply. +But there was a quiver in her voice that was more +excitement than anger.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“My dear lady, nobody suggests anything. We +are only remarking that the union of our Madala +and her ‘refuge’—the soubriquet is yours, by the +way—was as surprising as it was—er—sudden. +That was your idea?” He turned to the +shadows and from them the blonde lady nodded, +smiling.</p> + +<p class='c015'>At the time, you know, I didn’t understand +them. They were so quick and allusive. They +said more in jerks and nods and pauses than in +actual speech. But I saw the smile on that +woman’s face, and heard the way he said ‘our +Madala.’ I felt myself growing angry and panic-stricken, +and I was quite helpless. I just went +across the room to that big man sitting dully in +his corner, in his dream, and I caught his arm and +cried to him under my breath—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You must come. You must come and stop +them. They’re talking about her. Come quickly. +They—they’re saying beastly things.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He gave me one look. Then he got up and went +swiftly from one room to the other. But swiftly +as he moved and I followed, someone else was +there before us to fight that battle.</p> + +<p class='c015'>It was Great-aunt Serle.</p> + +<p class='c015'>She was a heavy old woman and feeble. She +never stirred as a rule without a helping arm; but +somehow she had got herself out of her seat and +across the floor to the table, and there she stood, +her knitting gripped as if it were a weapon, the +long thread of it stretched and taut from the ball +that had rolled round the chair-leg, her free hand +and her tremulous head jerking and snapping and +poking at that amazed assembly as she rated +them—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I won’t allow such talk. Anita, I won’t have +it. If I let you bring home friends—ought to +know better! And you——” the blonde lady was +spitted, as it were, on that unerring finger, +“you’re a wicked woman. That’s what you are—a +wicked, scandalous woman. And you, Anita, +ought to be ashamed of yourself, to let her talk so +of my girl. Such a woman! Paint and powder! +Envy, hatred, malice! And in my house too! +Tell her to wash her face!” She glowered at +them.</p> + +<p class='c015'>There was a blank pause and then a sound somewhere, +like the end of a spurting giggle. It must +have been the Baxter girl. There was a most +uncomfortable moment, before Anita cried out +“Mother!” in a horrified voice, and Miss Howe +said “Beryl!” in a voice not quite as horrified.</p> + +<p class='c015'>But the blonde lady sat through it all quite +calmly, smiling and moistening her lips. At last +she drawled out—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Nita! Your dear mother’s quite upset. So +sorry, Nita!” Then, a very little lower, but we +could all hear it—“Poor dear Nita! Quite a +trial for poor dear Nita!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>But Anita had jumped up. She was very much +flustered and annoyed. I think, too, that she was +startled. I know that I was startled. Great-aunt +didn’t look like herself. She was like a witch +in a picture-book, and her voice had been quite +strong and commanding.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita tried to quiet her and get her away.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Mother! You must be quiet! D’you hear +me, Mother? You don’t know what you’re saying. +You’ve been up too long. You’re overdone. It’s +time you went to bed.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>She took her firmly by the arm. But Great-aunt +struggled with her.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I won’t. Leave me alone. It’s your fault, +Anita. You sat and listened. You let them talk +that way about my girl.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Now, Mother, what nonsense! Your girl! +Madala’s not your daughter.” And then, in +apology—“She’s always confusing us. She +gets these ideas.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Not mine? Ah! That’s all you know! +‘Anita upstairs?’ That’s how she’d come running +in to me. ‘Are you busy, Mrs. Serle?’ Always +looked in to my room first. Brought me violets. +Talked. Told me all her troubles. <i>You</i> +never knew. Not mine, eh? Didn’t I see her married, +my pretty girl? ‘Hole-and-corner business!’ +That’s what you tell them? ‘Nobody +knew.’ But I knew.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita’s hand dropped from her mother’s arm. +She stared at her.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You, Mother? You there?” And then, angrily, +“Oh, I don’t believe it.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Don’t believe it, eh? But it’s true, for all I’m +lumber in my own house. I’m to go to bed before +the company comes, before she comes. Don’t she +want to see me then? Who pinned her veil for her +and kissed her and blessed her, and took her to +church, and gave her to him? Not you, my daughter. +She didn’t come to you for that.” And then, +with a slacking and a wail, “Eh, but we were never +to tell!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Mother, you’d better come to bed. I——” +there was the faintest suggestion of menace in her +voice—“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>The old woman shrank away.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I won’t come. I know. You want me out of +the way. You don’t want me to see her. What +are you going to say about me? You’ll say things +to her about me. I’ve heard you.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Quite obviously Anita restrained herself.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Now, Mother, you know you don’t mean that.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Hush!” Great-aunt pulled away her hand. +“Quiet, child, quiet! Wasn’t that the cab? I’ve +listened all the evening, all the long evening.” Her +old voice thinned and sharpened to a chirp. +“Soft, soft, the wheels go by. The wheels never +stop. Wait till the wheels stop. It’s the fog +that’s keeping her. There’s fog everywhere. +Maybe she’s lost in the fog.” Then she chuckled +to herself. “Naughty girl to be so late. But +she’s always late. Why should I go to bed? I’ve +got to finish my knitting, Nita. Only two rows, +Nita. They’ll just last me till she comes.” And +then, “Anita, she will come?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita turned to the others.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Don’t be alarmed. It’s nothing. I’m afraid +she hasn’t realized——” She began again—“Now, +Mother! It’s bed-time, Mother dear.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“‘Dear’—‘dear’—why do you speak kindly? +Madala’s not here to listen.” And then—“Nita, +Nita child, let me stay till she comes.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita was quite patient with her, and quite unyielding.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Now listen, Mother! It’s no use waiting. +Come upstairs with me. She won’t——” her voice +altered, “she can’t come tonight.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Beside me Kent Rehan spoke—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I can’t stand it,” he said. “I can’t stand it. +I can’t stand it.” He didn’t seem to know that he +was speaking.</p> + +<p class='c015'>But Great-aunt heard his voice if she didn’t hear +the words. She broke away from Anita and went +shuffling over the floor towards him with blind +movements. She would have fallen if he hadn’t +been beside her in an instant, holding her.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Kent, d’you hear her? You know my daughter. +You know Madala too. You speak to her! +You tell her! Madala always comes, doesn’t she? +Always comes. You tell her that! I want to see +Madala. Very good to me, Madala. Brought me +a bunch of violets.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita followed.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Kent, for goodness’ sake, try to help me. +She’ll make herself ill. I shall have her in +bed for days. Now, Mother——Now come, +Mother!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Great-aunt clung to his arm.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“She’s not kind. My daughter’s very hard on +me.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>For the first time Anita showed signs of agitation. +She was almost appealing.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Kent! You mustn’t believe her. It’s not +fair. You see my position. One has to be firm. +And you don’t know how trying——What am I +to do? Shall I tell her? She’s as obstinate—I’ll +never get her to bed. Ought I to tell her? +She’ll have to be told sooner or later. She’ll have +to realize——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He said—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I’ll talk to her if you like.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita looked at him intently.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It’s good of you. She has always listened to +you. Since you and I were children together. +Do you remember, Kent? Yes, you talk to her.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“What’s she saying?” demanded Great-aunt. +Her old eyes were bright with suspicion. “Talking +you over, eh? Talk anyone over, my daughter +will—my clever daughter. So clever. Madala +thinks so too. ‘Dripping with brains.’ +That’s what Madala said. Made me laugh. +Quite true, though. Hasn’t Madala come yet?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Now, look here, Mrs. Serle——” he put his +arm round her bent shoulders, “it’s very foggy, +you know, and it’s very late. Nobody could travel—nobody +could come tonight. You’ll believe us, +won’t you?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Wait! What’s that?” She stood a moment, +her finger raised, listening intently. Then she +straightened her bowed body and looked up at him. +One so seldom saw her face lifted, shone upon by +any light, that that alone, I suppose, was enough +to change her. For changed she was—her countenance +so wise and beaming that I hardly knew +her. “Now I know,” she said, “she will come. +Wait for her, Kent. She will come. I—I hear +her coming. She’s not so far from us. She’s not +so far away.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>They stared at each other for a moment, the +man and the old woman. Then her face dropped +forward again, downward into its accustomed +shadow, as he said to her—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It’s too late, Mrs. Serle. She won’t come—now. +Not now any more. And Anita thinks—truly +you’re very tired, aren’t you? Now, aren’t +you?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Very tired,” she quavered.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I know you are. Won’t you let me help you +upstairs?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“And stay a bit?” she said, clutching at him. +“Stay and talk to me?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes, yes,” he humoured her.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“About Madala?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He was very white.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“About Madala. Anita, take her other arm. +That’s the way.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>They helped her out of the room, and we heard +their slow progress up the stairs.</p> + +<p class='c015'>It was the blonde lady who broke the silence +with her tinkling laugh—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Poor dear Nita!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Kent’s a good sort,” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“What’s Hecuba to him now?” Mr. Flood’s +smile glinted from one to another.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“A very old friend,” said the blonde lady. +“You heard what dear Nita said to him.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“‘Children together!’ I didn’t know that.” +He was still smiling.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“And they always kept in touch,” put in Miss +Howe.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Trust Nita for that,” said the blonde lady.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Miss Howe nodded.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“She told me once that from the first she realized +that he would do big things.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“So Nita kept in touch!” Mr. Flood laughed +outright.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But it’s only the last few years that she’s +been able to produce him at will, like a conjuror’s +rabbit.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Since Madala’s advent, you mean,” said the +blonde lady.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said Anita +to the fly. ‘It’s a literary parlour——’” murmured +Mr. Flood. And then—“No. Kent’s not +likely to have walked in without a honey-pot in the +parlour. Madala must have been useful.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“That’s what Miss Serle will never forgive her, +<i>I</i> think,” said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“What?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“That she was useful. Do <i>you</i> believe in the +other man?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“The unknown influence?” His eyes narrowed. +“H’m!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“And yet of course there’s been someone.” +The Baxter girl never quite deserted Anita, even +in her absence.</p> + +<p class='c015'>The blonde lady nodded.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Of course. Nita’s always nearly right. The +influence—the adventures—the <i>mariage de convenance</i>—she’s +got it all so pat—and the man +too. She knows well enough; yet she fights against +it. She won’t have it. I wonder why. ‘Very old +friends’ I suppose.” She laughed again. “But +of course it was Kent. Can’t you see that’s why +Nita hates her? What a <i>Life</i> it will be! I just +long for it to come out. Nita’s a comedy.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“A tragedy.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Nita? My dear Lila! What do you mean?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I’m only quoting,” said Miss Howe. And +then—“But when she isn’t actually annoying me +I think I agree.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Who said it?” said the Baxter girl inquisitively.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Madala. It’s the only thing I’ve ever heard +her say of Anita. She never discussed Anita. +Now of Kent she would talk by the hour. Which +proves to me, you know, that the affair with him +didn’t go very deep. Nita quoted that description +of Kent just now, but only so far as it served her. +She carefully forgot how it goes on. Here, where +is it? Ah——</p> + +<p class='c014'>He brooded like a lover over his colour-box, and as she +watched him her thoughts flew to her own small brothers +at home. Geoff with his steam-engine, Jimmy sorting +stamps—there, there was to be found the same ruthlessness +of absorption, achieving dignity by its sheer intensity. +She smiled over him and them.</p> + +<p class='c016'>“Keep your face still,” he ordered.</p> + +<p class='c016'>She obeyed instantly, flushing; and as she did so she +thought to herself—‘I could be afraid of that man,’ but a +moment afterwards—‘He <i>is</i> like a small boy.’</p> + +<p class='c011'>“Now that may be Kent—oh, it is Kent, of course—but +it’s not Madala’s attitude to Kent. She +was not in the least afraid of him.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Ah, but that later passage, the country passage—that’s +pure Madala.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes. Just where it ceases to be Kent—‘He +stoops, I suppose. He’s worn out with work. +He’s quite ordinary.’ That’s not Kent.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“No, that’s true. One doesn’t know where to +have her. She muddles her trail,” said Mr. Flood.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I call it weakness of touch not to let you know +whom she drew from,” said the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Ah, but she always insisted that she didn’t +draw portraits.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Of course. They always do. If one believed +<i>them</i> one would never get behind the scenes, and +if one can’t get behind the scenes one might as +well be mere public and read for the story,” said +the Baxter girl indignantly.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Well, you know,” Miss Howe sat turning over +the pages of <i>The Resting-place</i> with careful, almost +with caressing fingers, “I don’t believe she +meant to draw portraits. She had queer, old-fashioned +notions. I think she would have thought it—treacherous.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“The portraits are there though, if you look +close enough,” insisted the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes, but they happened in spite of her. Anyone +she was fond of she took into her, in a sense: +and when her gift descended upon her and demanded +expression, then, all unconsciously, she expressed +them too. But gilded! We find ourselves +in her books, and we never knew before how lovable +we are. You’re right, Blanche, <i>she liked whate’er +she looked on</i>. And you’re right too, Jasper, +<i>Grande amoureuse</i>, she was that. That capacity +for loving made her what she was. The technical +facility was her talent and her luck; but it was her +own personality that turned it into genius.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Then after all you admit the genius,” said the +Baxter girl triumphantly.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“No. No. No. My judgment says no. +When I read her books in cold blood—no. But +we’ve been talking about her. It’s as if she were +with us, and when she’s with us my judgment goes! +That’s the secret of Madala Grey. She does what +she likes with us. But the next generation, the +people who don’t know her, whether they’ll find in +her books what we do, is doubtful. Who wants a +dried rose?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes, but Miss Serle—in the <i>Life</i>? Won’t +she—preserve her?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Preserve—exactly! But not revive. No, +I’d sooner pin my faith to <i>The Spring Song</i>, although +I haven’t seen it. It ought to be a revelation. +She eluded Nita, impishly. I’ve seen her +do it. But there’s no doubt that she gave Kent +his chance.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Every chance. She’d deny it, I suppose.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, she did.” Miss Howe laughed. “Have +you ever seen her in a temper? I have. I was a +fool. I told her one day (you know how things +come up) just something of the gossip about Kent +and her. I thought it only kind. But you should +have heard her. She was as healthily furious as a +schoolgirl. That was so comfortable about Madala. +She hadn’t that terrible aloofness of really +big people. She didn’t withdraw into dignity. +She just stormed.” Miss Howe laughed again. +“I can see her now, raging up and down the room—‘Do +you mean to say that people——? I +never heard of anything so monstrous! What has +it got to do with them? Why can’t they leave +me alone? I’ve never done them any harm. I +wouldn’t have believed it, pretending they liked +me, and letting me be friends with them, and then +saying hateful things behind my back. I’ll never +speak to them again—never! That they should +go about twisting things—Why can’t they mind +their own business? And dragging in Kent like +that! Oh, it does make me so wild!’ ‘Oh, well, +my dear,’ I said to her, ‘when two people see as +much of each other as you and Kent do, there’s +bound to be talk.’ At that she swung round on +me. ‘But he’s my <i>friend</i>,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ I +said, ‘that’s just it.’ ‘But I’m not expected to +marry everyone I’m fond of!’ ‘Are you fond of +him, Madala?’ I asked her. ‘Yes,’ she said directly, +‘I am. I’m awfully fond of him. I’d do +anything for him, bless his heart!’ ‘Well,’ I said, +‘you needn’t be so upset. That’s all that people +mean. If you’re fond of him and he—he’s obviously +in love with you——’ But at that she +caught me up in her quick way—‘In love? Oh, +you don’t understand him. Nobody understands +Kent. He doesn’t understand himself. Dear old +Kent!’ Then she began walking up and down the +room again, but more quietly, and talking, half to +herself, as if she had forgotten I was there, justifying +herself, justifying him. ‘Dear old Kent! +Poor old Kent! I’m awfully fond of Kent. So is +he of me. But not in the right way. He’s got, +when he happens to think of it, a great romantic +idea of the woman he wants, of the wife he wants; +but the truth is, you know, that he doesn’t want a +wife. He wants a mother, and a sister, and a—a +lover. A true lover. A patienter woman than I +am. A woman who’ll delight in him for his own +sake, not for what he gives her. A woman who’ll +put him first and be content to come second with +him. He’ll always put his work first. He can’t +help it. He’s an artist. Oh, not <i>content</i>. I +didn’t mean that. She must be too big for that—big +enough to know what she misses. But a wise +woman, such a loving, hungry woman. ‘Half a +loaf,’ she’ll say to herself. But she’ll never have to +let him hear. He’s chivalrous. He’d be horrified +at giving her half a loaf. He’d say—“All or +nothing!” But he couldn’t give her all. He +couldn’t spare it. So he’d give her nothing out of +sheer respect for her. That’s Kent. He’s got his +dear queer theories of life—oh, they’re all right +as theories—but he fits people to them, instead +of them to people. Procrustes. He’d torture a +woman from the kindest of motives. It’s lack of +imagination. Haven’t you noticed?’ ‘Considering +he’s one of the great imaginative artists of the +day, Madala,’ I said to her, ‘that’s rather sweeping.’ +‘But that’s why,’ she said. ‘It’s just because +he’s a genius. He lives on himself, in himself. +Kent’s an island.’ I said—‘No chance of a +bridge, Madala?’ She shook her head. ‘Not my +job.’ I said I was sorry. I was, too. It would +have been so ideal, that pair. I wanted to argue +it with her; but she wouldn’t listen. She said—‘If +I weren’t an artist too, then maybe—maybe. +I’m very fond of Kent. But no—I’d want too +much. But, you know, there’s a woman somewhere, +rather like me—I hope he’ll marry her. +I’d love her. She’d never be jealous of me. She’d +understand. She’s me without the writing, without +the outlet. She’ll pour it all into loving him. +I hope she’s alive somewhere. He’d be awfully +happy. And if he had children—that’s what he +needs. I can just see him with children. But not +my children. If I married——’ And then she +flushed up to the eyes in that way she had, as if +she were fifteen. ‘I—I’d like to be married for +myself, for my faults, for the bits I don’t tell anyone. +Kent would hate my faults. I’d have to +hide my realest self.’ She stood staring out of the +window. Then she said, still in that rueful, childish +voice—‘I would like to be liked.’ ‘But, my +dear girl,’ said I, ‘what nonsense you talk! If +ever a woman had friends——’ She flung round +at me again—‘If I’d not written <i>Eden Walls</i> +would Anita have looked at me—or any of you?’ +I said—‘That’s not a fair question. Your books +<i>are</i> you, the quintessence, the very best of you.’ +‘But the rest of me?’ she said, ‘but the <i>rest</i> of +me?’ I laughed at her. ‘Well, what about the +rest of you?’ Then she said, in a small voice—‘It +feels rather out of it sometimes, Lila.’”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I say,” Mr. Flood twinkled at her, “are you +going to present all this to Anita? She’d be +grateful.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Not she,” said Miss Howe sharply. “Too +much fact would spoil her theory. Let her spin +her own web.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Agreed. There’s room for more than one biography, +eh?” They laughed together a little +consciously.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You know,” the blonde lady recalled them, +“she must have been quite a good actress. She +always seemed perfectly contented.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Imagine Madala Grey discontented,” said the +Baxter girl. “How could she be?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, Kent was at the root of that,” said Miss +Howe, “for all her talk.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Mr. Flood nodded.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes, the lady did protest too much, if your +report’s correct.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It’s the only explanation and, as you said, +Blanche, in her heart Anita knows it. After all, +he’s a somebody. Madala wouldn’t be the only +one who’s found him attractive, eh?” She cocked +an eyebrow.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Don’t be scandalous, Lila,” said the blonde +lady virtuously, and Mr. Flood gave his little sniff +of enjoyment.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, give me five minutes,” said Miss Howe +cosily. “She’ll be down in five minutes. I’ve +been good all the evening. But I’m inclined to +agree with her, you know, that Madala was attracted, +just because Madala denied it so vehemently. +Only Anita goes too far for me. She’s +right, of course, when she says of Kent—‘Not a +marrying man!’ but not in the way she means it. +There are dark and awful things in the history of +every unmarried man, to Anita. She scents intrigue +everywhere. I’m a spinster myself, but I’m +not such a spidery spinster. She may be partly +right. Some other man, some question-mark of a +man, may have treated Madala badly. But Kent +didn’t. Kent isn’t that sort. Intrigue would bore +him. Still, he wasn’t a marrying man in those +days, and I think Madala was perfectly honest +when she said—‘Just friends.’ But I think also, +if you ask me, that they were far too good friends. +It’s not wise to be friends with a man. You must +be a woman first and let him know it. I don’t believe +in these platonic friendships. So I think +that in time Madala found out where they were +making the mistake. And he didn’t, or wouldn’t. +Oh well!” she paused expressively, “he’s finding +it out now. He has been all the year. Didn’t you +see his face when he came in tonight? Madala +shouldn’t have hurried. Poor Madala! Though +I don’t think it broke her heart, you know.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“No.” The blonde lady nodded. “She was +too serene, too placid, for real passion. She could +draw it well enough, but always from the outside.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the Baxter girl. +“Think of the end of <i>Ploughed Fields</i>.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Let’s give her some credit for imagination, even +if we don’t say ‘genius’! I agree with Blanche. +Oh, perhaps her heart did crack just a little——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>The blonde lady struck in—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But then Carey’s a doctor. So convenient!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes,” said Mr. Flood. “I always said he +caught her on the rebound.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“And then, to mix metaphors, the fat was in +the fire. Then, Kent woke up to her. Isn’t it obvious? +He was fond of Madala Grey, but it was +Mrs. Carey that he fell in love with. Just like +a man!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, I hate you,” said Mr. Flood. “You destroy +my illusions. I’m like Anita. I demand the +tragic Madala.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You can have her, I should think,” said the +Baxter girl thoughtfully. “Oh, of course your +theory does seem probable as far as it goes, Miss +Howe, but——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But what?” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Well, she hardly ever came to town afterwards, +did she?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Ah, Madala was always wise,” said the blonde +lady.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Mr. Flood rubbed his hands.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Thank you, Beryl. We’re in sympathy. +And it’s quite a satisfying, tragical picture, isn’t +it? The two artists—he with his lay figure and +she with her Hodge, and the long year between +them. Can’t you see them, cheated, desirous, +stretching out to each other their impotent hands? +One could make something out of that.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You could, Mr. Flood,” said the Baxter girl +fervently.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Out of what?” Anita was always noiseless. +I jumped to hear her voice so close behind me.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Miss Howe looked up at her quizzingly.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Madala and——Where <i>is</i> Kent?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“With Mother still. He’s managed her extraordinarily. +She’s getting sleepy, thank goodness! +He’ll be down in a minute.” Then, with a +change of tone—“Madala and Kent? I think +not, Lila dear.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But you said yourself——” the Baxter girl +interposed.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh no! I flung it out—a suggestion—a +possibility. I haven’t committed myself—yet. +I wish I could be sure of Kent. He’s upset my +conception of him tonight. I should have said—selfish. +Especially over Madala. But all men are +selfish. Yet, tonight——” she hesitated, playing +with the papers that lay half in, half out of the +open desk. “But who was it, if it wasn’t Kent? +Because there <i>was</i> someone, you know——” And +then, as if Miss Howe’s smile annoyed her beyond +prudence—“Do you think I’m inventing? Do +you think I’ve talked for amusement’s sake? I +tell you, she was on the verge of an elopement. +<i>Without</i> benefit of clergy!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Anita!” Miss Howe half rose from her chair.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“We’re getting it at last.” Mr. Flood addressed +the room. “I knew she had something up +her sleeve.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I don’t believe—I won’t believe it,” said Miss +Howe.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Then Anita smiled.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Didn’t I say she was careless about her drafts? +I’ve a fragment here—no, I’ve left it in my writing-table——” +and she rose as she spoke—“no +name, but it’s proof enough. It’s an answer to +some man’s letter.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But does she definitely consent——?” began +the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Not in so many words. But it’s obvious there +was some cause or impediment, and he, whoever +he is, has evidently had qualms of conscience about +letting her call the world well lost for his sweet +sake.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“That would rule out Kent, of course,” said +Miss Howe thoughtfully. “There was no reason +why Kent shouldn’t marry.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“We know of none,” said Anita in her suggestive +voice. “Isn’t that as much as one can say +of any man?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Ah!” said the Baxter girl, illuminated. I +don’t know why—her round eyes, I suppose, and +her pursed mouth—but she reminded me of the +woodcut of Minerva’s owl in <i>Larousse</i>.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“So you see my prime difficulty. I’ve passed +under review every man of her acquaintance, till I +narrowed down the possible——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Affinities,” said the blonde lady.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“—to Kent Rehan, John Carey, and this probable +but unknown third. There I hang fire. Until +I make up my mind on which of the three her +love story hinges, I can’t do more than trifle with +the <i>Life</i>. And how shall I make up my mind?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Three?” said Mr. Flood. “Two. You can +eliminate the husband. He’s fifth act, not third.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes, of course. But I never jump a step. +Which leaves me the unknown—or Kent.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>The blonde lady leant forward rather eagerly—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Nita! Where’s that letter?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I’ll get it.” She went across the room to her +writing-table.</p> + +<p class='c015'>The Baxter girl twisted her head.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I say! He’s coming down the stairs.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“If she read aloud that draft——” the blonde +lady’s drawl had disappeared. She glittered like +an excited schoolgirl—“he might recognize——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You mean——?” Mr. Flood raised his eyebrows +but Anita, fumbling with her keys, did not +hear.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It would be nice to be sure,” said the blonde +lady.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It’s rather cruel, isn’t it?” said Miss Howe +uneasily.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Why? It’ll be printed in the <i>Life</i>. Besides, +it may not have been written to him.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“That’s why,” said Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It would be nice to be <i>quite</i> sure,” said the +blonde lady again. And as she spoke Kent Rehan +came into the room.</p> + +<p class='c015'>At once I got up, with some blind, blundering +idea, I believe, of stopping him, of frustrating +them, but Anita was nearer to him than I.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Is she asleep? Very good of you, Kent. Sit +here, Kent. Jenny, is the window open in the +passage? Very cold. I never knew such a +draught.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>I went out to see. I had to do as I was told. +Besides, how could I have stopped them or him? +Yet I was shaking with anger and disgust at them, +and at myself for my hateful tongue-tied youth +and insignificance. An older woman would have +known what to do. Shaking with cold too—Anita +was right—it was bitter cold in the passage. +I could hardly see my way to the window +for the fog. It was open an inch at the bottom, +and at my touch it rattled down with a bang that +echoed oddly. For an instant I thought it was +a knock at the hall door. I stood a minute, quite +startled, peering down into the black well of the +hall. But there was no second knock, only the +fog-laden draught of the passage came rushing up +at me again, and again Anita called to me to come +in and shut the door. I did so: and because it +rattled, wedged it with the screw of paper that lay +near it on the floor, the crumpled telegram that +Kent Rehan had dropped when he first came in. +Then, still shivering a little, I sat down where I +was. I didn’t want to go nearer. I knew my face +was tell-tale. I didn’t want to have the Baxter +girl looking at me, and maybe saying something. +I could hear them in the other room well enough. +Anita’s voice seemed to cut through the thick air. +There was a letter in her hand. She was twisting +it about as if she couldn’t find the first page.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“—obviously a draft.” She held it away from +her. Anita was long-sighted.</p> + +<p class='c014'>“Dear—dear——</p> + +<p class='c011'>Then it breaks off and begins again. You see?” +She displayed it to them.</p> + +<p class='c014'>“Dearest——”</p> + +<p class='c011'>“Why, how clearly it’s written!” The Baxter +girl peered at it. “That’s quite a beautiful hand. +That’s not Madala’s scrawl.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>The blonde lady looked at them through half-shut lids.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Ah! It’s been written slowly——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“As if she loved writing it!” The Baxter girl +flushed. “Did <i>she</i> know about that sort of thing—that +sentimental sort of thing? I should have +thought her too—oh, too splendid, removed—you +know what I mean.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I don’t suppose she talked about it,” said +Anita coldly. “She was not of your generation.” +And then, to the others—“I assure you, this letter +shook me. Even I never dreamed of this side of +her. Listen.” She read aloud in her measured +voice—</p> + +<p class='c014'>“Dearest—</p> + +<p class='c016'>I wanted your letter so. I reckoned out the posts, and +the distances, and your busyness. I thought that in two +days you would probably write, and then I gave you another +day’s grace because you hate writing letters, and because I +thought you couldn’t dream how much I missed you—how +much, how <i>soon</i>, I wanted to hear. And then to get your +letter the very next day, before I could begin to look for it +(but I did look!). Why, you must have written as soon as +the train was out of the station! You missed me just as +much then?</p> + +<p class='c016'>But it’s a mad letter, you know. It makes me laugh and +cry. It’s so sensible—and so silly. ‘Fame,’ ‘career,’ +‘reputation,’ ‘position’—why do you fling these words at +me? <i>I</i> am making a sacrifice? Darling, haven’t you eyes? +Don’t you understand that you’re my world? All these +other things, since I’ve known you, they’re shadows, they’re +toys, I don’t want them. The reviews of my new book—I’ve +never been so delighted at getting any—but why? +D’you know why? To show them to you—to watch you +shake with laughter as you read them. When a flattering +letter turns up, I save it to show you as if it were gold, +because I think—‘Perhaps it’ll make him think more of +me.’ Isn’t it idiotic? But I do. And all the while I glory +in the knowledge that all these things, all the fuss and fame, +don’t mean a brass button to you—or to me, my dear, or +to me.</p> + +<p class='c016'>And yet you write me a solemn letter about ‘making a +sacrifice,’ ‘abdicating a position.’</p> + +<p class='c016'>Don’t be—humble. And yet I like you in this mood. +Because it won’t last! I won’t <i>let</i> it. It’s I who am not +good enough. If you knew how I tip-toe sometimes. +You’re so much bigger than I am. I lie in bed at nights, +and all the things I’ve done wrong in my life, all the twisty, +tortuous, feminine things, all the lies and cowardices and +conceits, come and sting me. I’m so bitterly ashamed of +them. I feel I’ve got to tell you about them all, and yet +that if I do you’ll turn me out of your heart. If you did +that—if you were disappointed—if you got tired of me—it +turns me sick with fear.</p> + +<p class='c016'>I’m a fool to tear myself. I know you love me. And +when you’re with me I forget all that. I’m just happy. +When you’re there it’s like being in the blazing sunshine. +Can ‘celebrity’ give me that sunshine? Can ‘literature’ +All my emptiness? Are the books I write children to love +me with your eyes? Oh, you fool!</p> + +<p class='c016'>Oh, of course, I know you don’t mean it. It’s just that +you think you ought to protest. But suppose I took you +at your word? Suppose I said that, on careful consideration, +I felt that I wanted to lead my own life instead of +yours? that—how does the list run?—my Work, my Circle +of Friends, my Career, were too much to give up for—you? +What would you say—no, do? for even I, (and the +sun’s in my eyes) even I can’t call you eloquent! But +what would you do if I wouldn’t come to you?</p> + +<p class='c016'>Oh, my darling, my darling, you needn’t be afraid. I’d +rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God——</p> + +<p class='c016'>I’m changed. What have you done to me? Other people +notice it. My friends are grown critical of me. Only yesterday +someone (no one you know) sneered at me—‘In +love? Oh well, you’ll get over it. It’s a phase.’ You +know, they don’t understand. I’m not ‘in love,’ but I love +you. There’s the difference. I love you. I shall love you +till I die. Till——? As if death could blot you out for +me! I used to believe in death. I used to believe it ended +everything. But now, since I’ve known you, I can never +die. You’ve poured into me an immortal spirit——”</p> + +<p class='c011'>“Go on,” breathed the Baxter girl.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It breaks off there. It’s not signed. It was +never sent.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“She had that much wisdom, then.” The +blonde lady’s laughter came to us over Mr. Flood’s +shoulder. “That’s not the letter to send to any +man. Giving herself away?—giving us all +away——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“To any man? To what man? There’s the +point. You see the importance. It’s the heart of +the secret. Who is it? For whom was she ready +to give up, in her own words, name, friends, career——?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Well, practically she did that, didn’t she, when +she married Carey? She buried herself in the +country. She didn’t write a line. You said yourself +that she put her career behind her. Why +shouldn’t it be written to Carey?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, don’t be absurd. It’s Carey that makes +it impossible. How could Carey have written a +letter needing such an answer? Little he cared. +What was her genius to him? Isn’t it obvious, +isn’t it plain as print, that Carey happened, Carey +and all he stands for, <i>after</i> the writing of this letter, +because of some hitch? Why wasn’t the letter +sent? What happened? What folly? What +misunderstanding? What disillusionment? What +realization of danger?—to send her, with that letter +half written, into Carey’s arms? Carey, that +stick, that ordinary man! And on the top of it +<i>The Resting-place</i> comes out, the <i>cri du cœur</i>—or, +if you like, Lila, the satire—(for I’m beginning +to believe you’re right) the satire of <i>The +Resting-place</i>. I tell you, I smell tragedy.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It’s supposition, it’s mere supposition,” said +Miss Howe impatiently.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Isn’t all detective work supposition to begin +with? Wait till I’ve made my book. Wait till +I’ve sifted my evidence, till I’ve ranged it, stick +and brick, step by step, up, up, up, to the letter.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Suddenly from where he sat, half way between +me and them, Kent spoke—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Anita, you can’t publish that letter.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Her face, all their faces, turned towards us. +She stared.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Why not?” And then—“Why do you sit +out there? Come here. Come into the light.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He did not stir.</p> + +<p class='c015'>She frowned, puckering her eyes.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Such a fog,” she said fretfully. “I can’t see +you. Can’t you keep that door shut, Jenny?” +Then—“Well, Kent—why not? Why not?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He said slowly—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“It’s not decent.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>She flared at once.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Decent! Not decent! What on earth do you +mean?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He kept her waiting while he thought it out.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I mean—it’s not right, it’s not fair. To +whomever it was written, that’s her business, not +our business. And that letter——It’s vile, +anyway, publishing her letters.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>She stared at him in a sort of angry bewilderment.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But why? I shall write her life. One always +does print letters.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Not that sort of letter,” he said.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But don’t you see,” she cried, “that <i>that</i> letter, +just <i>that</i> letter——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He said—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“That’s why. How dare you read that letter +here—aloud—tonight? It—it’s ghoulish.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Kent!” There was outrage in her voice.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But, Kent——” Miss Howe intervened—“we +knew her—we care—it’s in all reverence——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>And Mr. Flood—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“My dear man, she’s not a private character. +The lives that will be written! Anita’s may be the +classic, but it won’t be the only one. Letters are +bound to be printed—every scrap she ever wrote. +Nobody can stop it. It’s only a question of time. +The public has its rights.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“To what?” He turned savagely. “You’ve +had her books. She’s given enough. Will you +leave her nothing private, nothing sacred?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But, Kent, can’t you see——” Anita had an +air of pushing Miss Howe and Mr. Flood from her +road—“aren’t you artist enough to see——? A +writer, a woman like Madala, she has no private +life. She lives to write. She lives what she writes. +She <i>is</i> what she writes. She gives her soul to the +world. She leaves her riddle to be read. Don’t +you see? to be read. That’s what I’m doing. +That’s what I’m going to do—read her—for the +rest of you, for the public. Because—because +they care, because we all care. It’s done in all +honour. It’s a tribute. And for what I am going +to do, such a letter is the key.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>She spoke softly, sweetly, persuasively. She +wooed him to agree with her. She was extraordinarily +eager for his approval. And the approval +of the others she did win. They were all murmuring +agreement.</p> + +<p class='c015'>His eyes strayed over them, undecidedly, seeking—not help. +I do not know what he sought, but +his eyes found mine.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“<i>You</i>——” he said to me—“would you want +your letter——?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita’s voice thrust in sharply. In the instant +the pleading, the beauty, the woman, was gone +from it. It was cold and shrill.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Jenny’s views can hardly concern us.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>But he did not listen to her. He had drawn +some answer from me that satisfied him. He got +up.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh,” I cried beneath my breath, and I think I +touched his arm—“you won’t let her?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He shook his head. Then he went across to +where Anita stood, her eyes on him, on me, while +she listened to Miss Howe whispering at her +shoulder.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Look here, Anita!” he began.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I’m looking,” she said.</p> + +<p class='c015'>He checked a moment, puzzled. Then he went +on—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“That letter—you can’t print it. You’ve no +right. It’s not your property.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>She waved it aside.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I shall be literary executor. She promised. +It’s mine if it’s anyone’s. It’s no good, Kent, it +goes into the book. Nothing can alter that. +Nothing——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Then she stopped dead. There was that same +odd look in her eye as there had been when she +watched us—that flicker of curiosity, and behind +it the same gleam of inexplicable anger.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Look here——” she said very deliberately—“look +<i>you</i> here—what has it got to do with +you?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>It was not the words, it was the tone. It was +shameless. It was as if she had cried aloud her +hateful questions—‘Did you love her?’ ‘What +was there between you?’ ‘I want to know it all. +It tears me not to know.’ But what she said to +him, and before he could answer, was—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“If, of course—anyone—had any right—could +prove any right——” She broke off, +watching him closely. But he said nothing. +“If,” she said, and poked with her finger, “if that +letter—if you recognized it—if that were the +rough draft of a letter that had been sent——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He stared down at her. His face was bleak.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You’ll get no copy from me, Anita!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh!” She caught her breath, fierce and +wicked as a cat with a bird, yet shrinking as a cat +does, supple, ears flat. “I only meant—I said +<i>right</i>. If anyone—if you could satisfy me—if +you have any right——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He said—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I have no right.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh well, then!” She shrugged her shoulders.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But,” he held stubbornly to his purpose, +“whoever has a right to it—you can’t print that +letter.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>She laughed at him.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You’ll see! You’ll see!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes,” he said, “I’ll see.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>They held each other’s eyes, angry, angry. I +felt how Kent Rehan loathed her. And she—yes, +she must have hated him. She was all bitterness +and triumph and defiance. Yet all the time I +was wanting to catch him by the arm and say—‘Be +kind to her. Say something kind and she’ll +give in.’ I knew it. He had only to say in that +instant—‘Anita, I beg of you——’ and she would +have given him the letter. I knew it. I know it. +I don’t know how I knew it, but I was sure. But +he was a man: of course he saw nothing. He was +very angry. He looked big and fine. I wondered +that she could stand outfacing him.</p> + +<p class='c015'>But she, for answer, picked up the letter, and +affected to search through it.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Had I finished? Where was I? Ah, yes—‘An +immortal spirit——’”</p> + +<p class='c015'>His hand came down heavily and swept the light +table aside.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You can’t do it. You shan’t do it. By God +you shan’t.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>How it happened I couldn’t see. He was too +quick. But at one moment she held the letter, and +in the next he had it, and was kneeling at the +grate, while she cried out—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Kent!” And then—“Lila! Jasper! Stop +him!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Nobody could have stopped him. There was no +flame, but the fire still burned, a caked red and +black lump, smouldering on cinders. He picked it +up—with his naked hands—thrust in the crumpled +stiff paper, and smashed it down again, so +that the lump split, and still held it pressed down, +with naked hands, till the sheet had charred and +shrivelled into nothing. I suppose it all happened +in a few seconds, but it seemed like hours. I was +in a train smash once: I wasn’t hurt; but I remember +that I came out of it with just the same sense +of being battered and aged. This scene I had only +watched: I had not shared in it: I was still in the +little outer room. Yet I was shaken. I heard +Mr. Flood call out—“Kent, you crazy fool!” I +heard Anita—“Let me <i>go</i>, Lila!” And then the +women were between me and him, and I could only +see their backs, and there was a babel of voices, +and I found myself sitting like a fool, clutching +at the arms of my chair, and saying over and over +again—“Oh, his hands, his hands, his poor +hands!” The tears were running down my +cheeks.</p> + +<p class='c015'>But nobody noticed me. They were all too +busy. The group had shifted a little. The Baxter +girl was edged out of it, and I watched her for +a moment as she sat down again, her cheeks flaming, +her eyes as bright as wet pebbles. She looked—it’s +the only word—consumptive with excitement. +Every now and then she tried not to cough. I +heard her saying—“It’s the fog, it’s the awful +fog!” defensively. But nobody listened. They +were all watching Anita.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita was dreadful. She was tremulous with +anger. She was like a pendulum with the check +taken away. Her whole body shook. She +couldn’t finish her sentences. She talked to everyone +at once.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Miss Howe had her by the arm. Miss Howe was +trying to quiet her—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“My dear woman—steady now! You don’t +want a row, you know! You’ve got the rest of the +papers.” But she might have talked to the wind.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“He comes into my house—my property—in +my own house——It’s an outrage! Kent, it’s +an outrage!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Kent Rehan rose to his feet. It was like a rock +breaking through that froth of women. He stood +a moment, nervously, brushing the black from his +hands and wincing as he did so. Then he looked +up. His eyes met her. He flushed.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Kent! Kent!” She flung off Miss Howe.</p> + +<p class='c015'>The intensity of reproach in her voice startled +me, and I think it startled him. I found myself +thinking—‘All this anger for what? for a burnt +paper? It’s impossible! But then—then what’s +the matter with her?’</p> + +<p class='c015'>He said awkwardly—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I’m sorry, Anita.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“<i>You!</i>” she cried, panting—“<i>You</i>, to interfere! +D’you know what you’ve done, what you’ve +tried to do? Will you take everything, you and +he? Haven’t I my work too? Oh, what you’ve +had from her, what you’ve had from her! And +now you cheat me!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He was bewildered. He said again—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I’m sorry, Anita.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>She came close to him. Her little hands were +clenched. There was a wail in her voice—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You! Aren’t you friends with me? Didn’t I +share her with you? Isn’t she my work too? +What would you say if I came to your house and +saw your work, your life work that she’d made possible, +your pictures that are her, all her—and +slashed them with a knife? What would you do if +I’d done that, if I’d cut it to ribbons, your <i>Spring +Song</i>?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>That moved him. I saw a sort of comprehension +lighting his stubborn face. The artist in her +touched the artist in him. Of what lay behind the +artist he had no knowledge. But he said, quite +humbly—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Anita, I’m sorry!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Yet I knew that he was not sorry for what he +had done.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Sorry! Sorry! Much good your sorrow +does!” she shrilled, and I saw him stiffen again. +She was strange. She valued him, that was so +plain, and yet, it almost seemed in self-defence, she +was always at her worst with him. “Sorry! It +was the key of the book. You’ve spoilt my book.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Nita! Nita! One letter!” Miss Howe was +almost comical in her dislike of the scene. “As if +you couldn’t pull it off without that.” She pulled +her aside, lowering her voice—“Nita, what’s the +use of a row? Pull yourself together. Put yourself +in his place. Besides—you can’t afford——” +She looked at Kent significantly. +Anita’s pale glance followed her and so their eyes +met again. She was angry and sullen and irresolute. +Another woman would have been near tears.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Kent,” she began. And then—“Kent—if +we quarrel——We’re too old to quarrel——If +you had a shadow of excuse——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He waited.</p> + +<p class='c015'>She took fire again because he did not meet her +half way.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But if you think you’ve stopped me——” she +cried. She broke off with a laugh and a new idea—“As +if,” she said slowly and scornfully, “as if +Madala would have cared!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He said distinctly—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You didn’t know her. You’d never understand——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Ah,” she said, pressing forward to him, “why +do you take that tone? What is it I don’t understand? +If you’d help me with what you know, it +could be big stuff. I’d forgive you for the letter +if you’d work with me.” She hung on his answer.</p> + +<p class='c015'>But he only said, not looking at her, in the same +tone—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You’d never understand.” And then, with an +effort—“I’ll go, Anita. I’m going. I’d better +go.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Without waiting for her answer he went across +the room to the little sofa near me where the hats +and coats lay piled. I heard him fumbling for +his things.</p> + +<p class='c015'>But Anita went back to the others. The watching +group seemed to open to receive, to enclose +her. Her head had touched the lamp as she passed +under it, and set it swaying wildly, so that I could +scarcely see their faces in that shift of light and +shadow through the thickened air. But I heard +her angry laugh, and her voice overtopping the +murmur—“Mad! He was always mad! If he +weren’t such an old friend——” And then the +Baxter girl’s voice—“Think of the sketches there +must be!” And Miss Howe—“What I say is—you +don’t want to quarrel!” And hers again—“Did +you hear him? <i>I</i> not understand Madala! +Mad, I tell you! If I don’t know Madala——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>It was at that moment that I looked up and saw +a woman standing in the doorway.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Anita!” I murmured warningly. But my +voice did not reach her, and indeed, she and the +little gesticulating group in the further room +seemed suddenly far away. The air had been +thickening for the last hour, and now, with the +opening of the door, the fog itself came billowing +in on either side of the newcomer as water streams +past a ship. It flooded the room, soundlessly, almost, +I remember thinking, purposefully, as if it +would have islanded us, Kent and me. It affected +me curiously. I felt muffled. I knew I ought to +get up and call again to Anita or attend to the +visitor myself, but the quiet seemed to dull my wits. +I found myself placidly wondering who she was and +why she did not come in; but I made no movement +to welcome her. I just sat still and stared.</p> + +<p class='c015'>She was a tall girl—woman—for either word +fitted her: she had brown hair. She was dressed +in—I should have said, if you had asked me, that +I could remember every detail, and I can in my +own mind; but when I try to write it down, it +blurs. But I know that there was blue in her +dress, and bright colours. It must have been some +flowered stuff. She looked—it’s a silly phrase—but +she looked like a spring day. I wanted her to +come into the room and drive away the fog that +was making me blink and feel dizzy. There was +a gold ring on her finger: yes, and her hands were +beautiful—strong, white hands. In one she held +the brass candle-stick that stood in the hall, and +with the other she sheltered the weak flame from +the draught. Yet not only with her hand. Her +arm was crooked maternally, her shoulder thrust +forward, her hip raised, in a gesture magnificently +protecting, as though the new-lit tallow-end were +fire from heaven. Her whole body seemed sacredly +involved in an act of guardianship. But half the +glory of her pose—and it was lovely enough to +make me catch my breath—was its unconsciousness; +for her attention was all ours. Her eyes, as +she listened to the group by the hearth, were +sparkling with amusement and that tolerant, deep +affection that one keeps for certain dearest, foolish +friends. It was evident that she knew them well.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Can’t you keep that door shut, Jenny? The +draught——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita’s back was towards me. Her voice, as she +spoke over her shoulder, rang high, muffled, +imperious, and—I laughed. In a flash the +stranger’s eyes were on me, and I found myself +thrilling where I sat, absurdly startled for the moment, +because—she knew me too! She knew me +quite well. She was smiling at me, not vaguely as +who should say—‘Oh, surely I’ve seen you somewhere?’ +but with intimate, disturbing knowledge. +It was the glance that a doctor gives you, the swift, +acquainted glance that, without offence, deciphers +you. I was not offended either, only curious and—attracted. +She looked so friendly. I half began +to say—‘But when? but where?’ but her +bearing overruled me. Her mouth was pursed +conspiratorially: if her hand had been free she +would have put a finger to her lip. I smiled back +at her, flattered to be partner in her uncomprehended +secret. But I was curious—oh, I was +curious! It was incredible to me that Anita and +the rest should stand, subduing their voices to the +soft, thick stillness that she and the fog between +them had brought into the room, and yet remain +unconscious of her vivid presence. I was longing +to see their faces when they should at last turn +and see her, and yet, if you understand, I was +afraid lest they should turn too soon and break the +pleasant numbness that was upon me. And upon +them—the spell was upon them too. It was the +look in her eyes, not glamorous, but kind. It +healed. It passed like a drowse across the squabblers +at the table: it stilled Anita’s feverish monologue. +Indeed the room had grown very still. +There was no sound left in it but the slurring of +the lamp. It rested upon Kent as he stood in +dumb misery, and I watched the strained lines of +his body slacken and grow easier beneath it. At +that—at that ease she gave him—suddenly I +loved her.</p> + +<p class='c015'>And as if I had spoken, as if I had touched her +with my hand, her eyes, that had grown heavy with +his trouble, turned, brightening, upon me, as if I +were the answer to a problem, the lifting of a care. +But what the problem was I could not then tell; +for, staring as she made me—as she made me—into +her divining eyes, I saw in them not her +thought but my own at last made clear to me—my +dream, my hope, my will and my desire, newborn +and naked, and, I swear it, bodiless to me +before that night and that hour. It was too soon. +I was not ready. It shamed me and I flinched, my +glance wandering helplessly away like a dog’s when +you have forced it to look at you. And so noticed, +idly, uncomprehending at first, and then with a +stiffening of my whole body, that her hand did not +show as other hands, blood-red against the light +she screened, but coldly luminous, like the fingers +of a cloud through which the moon is shining: and +that her breast was motionless, unstirred by any +breath.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Then I was afraid.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I felt my skin rising. I felt my bones grow +cold. I could not move. I could not breathe. I +could not think.</p> + +<p class='c015'>A voice came out of the fog that had thickened +to a wall between the rooms—a voice, thin, remote, +like a trunk call—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“<i>Can’t</i> you keep that door shut, Jenny? The +draught——” and was cut off again by the sudden +crash of an overturned chair. There was a +rush and a cry—a madman’s voice, shouting, +screaming, groaning—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Madala Grey! My God, Madala Grey!” and +Kent’s huge body, hurling against the door, pitched +and fell heavily.</p> + +<p class='c015'>For the door was shut.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I ran to him. He was shaken and half stunned, +but he struggled to his feet. It was dreadful to +see him. He was like a frightened horse, shivering +and sweating. His lips were loose and he muttered +unevenly as if the words came without his will. I +caught them as I helped him; the same words—always +the same words.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I got him to the sofa while the rest of them +crowded and clamoured, and then I found myself +taking command. I made them keep off. I sent +Anita for water and a towel and I bathed his forehead +where he had cut it on the moulding of the +door. Mr. Flood wanted to send for a doctor, but +I wouldn’t have it. I knew how he would hate it. +Then someone—the Baxter girl, I think—giggled +hysterically and said something about a black +eye tomorrow, and then—“How did it happen?” +“Did you see, Miss Summer?” And at that they +all began to clamour again like an orchestra after +a solo, repeating in all their voices—“Yes, what +happened? What on earth was it? Did you see +him? Some sort of a seizure? I told you twice +to shut that door. The draught——Are you +better now, old man? Kent—what happened?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>They were crowding round him again. He +pointed a shaking finger.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“She saw,” he said. “She knows——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Jenny?” Anita turned on me sharply, an +employer addressing a servant at fault. “Oh, of +course—you were in here too. What happened +then?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>I had a helpless moment.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Well?” she demanded.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I stared at her. It was incredible, but there was +actually jealousy in her voice. It said, pitifully +plainly—‘Again I have missed the centre of a +situation!’</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Well?” she repeated. And then—“If you +saw something——” She altered the phrase—“Tell +us what you saw.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>But I had not missed the quick fear that had +shown, for a moment, in Kent’s eyes—fear of betrayal +even while his tongue was betraying him.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I laughed. I thought to myself as I answered, +‘Oh, I am doing this beautifully!’ And I was. +My voice sounded perfectly natural, not a bit high. +I had plenty of words. I said, most jauntily—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Oh, Cousin Nita, I could hardly see my own +nose. The fog had been simply pouring in. My +fault—I didn’t latch the door properly, I suppose. +And then you called, and Mr. Rehan went +to shut it for me, and he slithered on the mat, +and——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I see!”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Of course! Parquet——” The Baxter girl +took a step or two and pirouetted back to us. +“Perfect! You ought to give a dance, Miss +Serle.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>Anita made no answer, but taking the can and +the towel she opened the door of dispute, and, +stooping an instant on the threshold to lift some +small object from the floor, went out of the room. +We heard her set down her load on the landing, and +the rattle of the sash as she threw up the window, +paused, and shut it again. She came back. A +fresh inflow of acrid vapour preceded her and set +us coughing. It was the stooping, I suppose, that +had reddened her cheeks, for she was flushed when +she came back to us. It was the only time that +I ever saw my cousin with a colour. She spoke to +us, a little gaspingly, as if the fog had caught +her too by the throat—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Jenny’s quite right. One can’t see an inch in +front of one. No—not a cab in hearing. You’ll +have to resign yourselves to staying on indefinitely. +What? oh, what nonsense, Kent! As if I’d let you +go in that state! Besides, there’s Jasper’s poem. +Are you going away without hearing it?” The +soft monologue continued as she shepherded them +to the fire. “That’s always the way—one talks—one +gets no work done. Get under the light, +Jasper! Beryl, help me to move the table. Oh +yes, Jasper, I forgot to tell you, I met Roy Huth +the other day and he had just read——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>I heard a movement behind me. I turned. +Kent had half risen. He spoke—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Sit down. Sit down here.” He touched the +cushion beside him.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I shook my head.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Not yet. My cousin——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Ah——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>We were silent.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I watched Anita. She stood a few moments in +unsmiling superintendence, while the women settled +themselves and Mr. Flood sorted his papers and +cleared his throat. Then, as I had known she +would do, she returned soft-footed to her purpose. +At the same moment I left Kent Rehan’s side. +When she reached the archway between the two +rooms, I was there.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“And now——” she confronted me—“what +happened?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I told you.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>She smiled.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Did you? I have forgotten. Tell me +again.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Anita—he slipped. He fell. He was shutting +the door.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Did he replace this?” She opened her little +hand. The wedge of paper that I had twisted lay +on her palm. “It was shut in the door when I +opened it just now.” She waited a moment. +Then, with a certain triumph—“Well?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>I said nothing. What was there to say?</p> + +<p class='c015'>She tossed it from her.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Don’t be silly, Jenny! What was it? <i>Who</i> +was it?” Her eyes were horribly intelligent.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“He slipped. He fell. He was shutting the +door.” I felt I could go on saying that for ever +and ever.</p> + +<p class='c015'>The red patches in her cheeks deepened. She +spoke past me, rudely, furiously—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I intend to know. I’ve a perfect right——Kent, +I intend to know.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>I put out my arms carelessly, though my heart +was thudding, and rested them against the doorposts.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“He’s shaken—a heavy man like that. Better +leave him alone.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I intend to know,” she insisted. And then—“Jenny! +<i>Jenny!</i> Let me pass.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“No!” I said.</p> + +<p class='c015'>For a second we stood opposed, and in that second +I realized literally for the first time (so dominating +had her personality been) that she was +shorter than I. She was dwindling before my +eyes. I found myself looking down at her with +almost brutal composure. That I had ever been +afraid of her was the marvel! For I was young, +and she was elderly. I was strong, and she was +weak. Her bare arms were like sticks, but mine +were round and supple, and I could feel the blood +tingle in them as my grip tightened on the woodwork. +She was only Anita Serle, the well-known +writer; but I was Jenny Summer, and Kent was +needing me.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Jenny—you will be sorry!” Her eyes and +her voice were one threat. Such eyes! Eyes +whose pupils had dilated till the irids were mere +threads that encircled jealousy itself—jealousy +black and bitter—jealousy that had stolen upon +us as the fog had done, obscuring, soiling, stifling +friend and enemy alike—jealousy of a gift and a +great name, of a dead woman and a living man +and their year of happiness—jealousy beyond +reason, beyond pity—jealousy insatiable, already +seeking out fresh food, turning deliberately, vengefully, +upon Kent and upon me.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I felt sick. I had never dreamed that there +could be such feelings in the world. And now she +was going to Kent, to probe and lacerate and poison—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“No!” I said.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Actually she believed that she could pass me!</p> + +<p class='c015'>I still held fast by the door-posts, and she did +not use her hands. We were silent and decorous, +but for an instant our bodies fought. She was +pressed against me, panting—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“<i>No!</i>” I said.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Then she fell away, and without another word +turned and went back into the other room.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I saw Miss Howe whisper some question. There +was an instant’s silence. Then her answer came—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Much better leave him alone. Yes—rather +shaken—a heavy man like that.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>It was defeat. She was using my very words, +because, for all her fluency, she had none with which +to cover it.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I was sorry. I felt a brute. But what else +could I have done? I stood a moment watching +her recover herself. Then I went back to Kent.</p> + +<p class='c015'>He did not look up, but he moved a little to give +me room. I sat down beside him. We were shut +away between the wall and the window, in the +shadow, out of sight of the others. It was very +peaceful. Now and then I looked at Kent, but he +was staring before him. He had forgotten all +about me again, I knew. But I was content. It +made me happy to be sitting by him. My +thoughts hopped about like birds after crumbs. I +remember wondering what I should do on the morrow—where +I should go? That Anita would +have me in the house another twenty-four hours +was not likely. I had ten pounds. I did not care. +I knew that I ought to be anxious, but I could not +realize the need. I could not think of anything +but him; yet I was afraid to speak to him. He sat +so still. His face was set in schooled and heavy +lines. There came a stir and a clash of voices from +the other room, but he did not seem to hear it. It +was only the end of a poem. In a little it had settled +down again into the same monotonous hum, +but for a moment I had thought that it was the +break-up, and after that I had no peace. It had +scared me. It made me realize that I had only +a few minutes—half an hour at most—and that +then he would be going away—and when should I +see him again? Never—maybe never! He had +his life all arranged. He didn’t even know my +name. I felt desperate. I couldn’t let him go. I +didn’t know what to do. I only knew that—that +I couldn’t bear it if he went away from me.</p> + +<p class='c015'>It was then that he moved and straightened himself +in his chair with a sigh, that heavy, long-drawn +sigh that men give when they make an end. +‘Work or play, joy or grief, it’s done with. And +now——?’ Such a sigh as you never hear from +women. But then we are not wise at ending +things.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I thought that he was getting up, that he was +going then and there, and instinctively I hurried +into speech, daring anything—everything—his +own thoughts of me—rather than let him go.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes—that’s over!” I translated softly.</p> + +<p class='c015'>He turned with such a stare that I could have +smiled.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I meant that. How did you know?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Why shouldn’t I know?” I did smile then. +It made him smile back at me, but doubtfully, unwillingly.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Can you read thoughts—too?” The last +word seemed to come out in spite of himself.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Not always. Yours I can.” My face was +burning. But I could have spared myself the +shame that made it burn, for he did not understand. +My voice said nothing to him. My face +showed him nothing. He was thinking about himself. +But he leant forward in that way he has—a +dear way—of liking to talk to you.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Can you? I never can. Only when I paint. +I can put them into paint, of course. But not +words. <i>She</i> said——” and all through the subsequent +talk he avoided the name—“she said it was +laziness, a lazy mind. But I always told her that +that was her fault. I—we—her people—were +just wool: she knitted us into our patterns. She +was a wonder. You know, she—she was good for +one. She was like bread—bread and wine——” +His voice strained and flagged.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I nodded.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes. I felt that too.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He glanced sideways at me.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Ah, then you knew her?” His voice (or I +imagined it) had chilled. It began to say, that +faint chill, that if I too were of ‘the set,’ he could +not be at ease. But I would not give him time to +think awry.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“No, no! Only tonight. But I do know her.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Tonight?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Tonight,” I said and looked at him.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Then——” his hand tightened on the chair, +“you saw? I was right? You <i>did</i> see?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I saw—something,” I admitted.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Some one?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>I nodded.</p> + +<p class='c015'>His face lighted up. He pulled in his chair to +me.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Her hands—did you notice her hands? I +have a drawing of them somewhere. I’ll show it +to you——” He stopped short: Then—“What +is your name?” he asked me.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Jenny. Jenny Summer.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He considered that fact for a moment and put +it aside again.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I’d like you to see it. Anita will want it for +that damned scrap-book of hers. She’ll be worrying +at me—they all will.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You won’t let it go?” I said quickly.</p> + +<p class='c015'>He shook his head.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“No. But they can’t understand why. They +can’t understand anything. They thought I was +mad just now. So I was, for that matter. To see +her again, you know—to see her again——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“I know,” I said.</p> + +<p class='c015'>He laughed nervously.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Hallucination, of course. Thought transference. +What you please. They’d say so. Do you +think so? And I’d been thinking of my picture of +her. Oh, I admit it. So we must look at the matter +in the light of common-sense.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But I saw her too.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>His eyes softened, and his voice.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes. You were there. That’s comfort. +You saw her too—standing there with her dear +hands full of cowslips——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“A torch,” I said.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Cowslips——” he checked on the word. +“<i>What?</i>”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“She was carrying a candle,” I insisted. “It +had just been lighted. She was holding it so carefully.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>We stared at each other.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“You’re sure?”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Sure.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>He fell back wearily in his chair.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“What’s the good of talking? She’s dead. +That’s the end of it. I was dreaming. Of course. +But when you said that you saw, for a moment I +believed——What does it matter? What does +it matter anyway? But her hands were full of +cowslips.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>I turned to him eagerly. I knew what to say. +It was as if the words were being whispered to me.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“That was your Madala Grey. But mine—how +could she be the same? Oh, can’t you see? +We’ve never seen the real Madala Grey. She gave—she +became—to each of us—what we wanted +most. She wrote down our dreams. She <i>was</i> our +dreams. Can’t you see what she meant to my +cousin? Anita toils and slaves for her little bit +of greatness. But <i>she</i> was born royal. That’s +why Anita hates her so—hates her and worships +her. Why, she’s been a sort of star to you all—a +symbol—a legend—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But the real Madala Grey—she wasn’t like +that. She was just a girl. She was hungry all +the time. She was wanting her human life. And +he, the man they laugh at, ‘the thing she married,’ +he did love that real Madala Grey. Why, he +didn’t even know of the legend. Don’t you see +that that was what she wanted? She could take +from him as well as give. Life—the bread and +wine—they shared it. Oh, and it’s him I pity +now, not you. Not you,” I said again, while my +heart ached over him. “You—can’t you see +what she showed you? Not herself——”</p> + +<p class='c015'>“What then?” he said harshly.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I made the supreme effort.</p> + +<p class='c015'>“But what—a woman—one day—would be +to you.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>I thought the silence would never break.</p> + +<p class='c015'>The strange courage that had been in me was +suddenly gone. I felt weak and friendless. I +wanted to cry. I waited and waited till I could +bear it no longer. Then I lifted my eyes desperately, +with little hope, to read in his face what +the end should be.</p> + +<p class='c015'>I found him looking at me fixedly—<i>at</i> me, you +understand, not through me to a subject that absorbed +him, but at me myself. It was as if he +were seeing me for the first time. No—as if he +recognized me at last.</p> + +<p class='c015'>Then the doubts went, and the shame and the +loneliness. It made me so utterly happy, that look +on his face. I felt my heart beating fast.</p> + +<p class='c015'>He said then, slowly—I can remember the +words, the tone and pitch of his voice, the very +shaping of his mouth as he said it—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Do you know—it’s strange—you remind +me of her. You are very like her. You are very +like Madala Grey.”</p> + +<p class='c015'>The hunger in his voice hurt me. I wanted to +put my arms round him and comfort him. I might +have done it, for I knew I was still but half real +to him. But I sat still—only, with such a sense +in my heart of a trust laid upon me, of an inheritance, +of a widening and golden future, I said +to him—</p> + +<p class='c015'>“Yes. I know.”</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p class='c015'>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p> + +<div class='pbb'> +<p> </p> + <hr class='pb c003' /> +</div> +<p class='c015'> </p> +<div class='tnbox'> + + <ul class='ul_1 c003'> + <li>Transcriber’s Notes: + <ul class='ul_2'> + <li>Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. + </li> + <li>Typographical errors were silently corrected. + </li> + <li>Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant + form was found in this book. + </li> + </ul> + </li> + </ul> + +</div> +<p class='c015'> </p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="pgx" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEGEND***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 63775-h.htm or 63775-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/3/7/7/63775">http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/7/7/63775</a></p> +<p> +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law 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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