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THE
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A.F. MORRISON

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'' 
'' 
'' 
''THE WORKS OF
JOHN GALSWORTHY

NOVELS

VILLA RUBEIN: AND OTHER FIVE TALES

STORIES SAINT S PROGRESS
THE ISLAND PHARISEES IN CHANCERY
THE MAN OF PROPERTY TO LET
THE COUNTRY HOUSE THE BURNING SPEAR
FRATERNITY THE WHITE MONKEY
THE PATRICIAN THE SILVER SPOON
THE DARK FLOWER SWAN SONG
THE FREELANDS MAID IN WAITING
BEYOND FLOWERING WILDERNESS
THE FORSYTE SAGA A MODERN COMEDY

WORSHIPFUL SOCIETY
SHORT STORIES AND STUDIES

A COMMENTARY TATTERDEMALION
A MOTLEY CAPTURES
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY CASTLES IN SPAIN: AND OTHER
THE LITTLE MAN SCREEDS
A SHEAF TWO FORSYTE INTERLUDES
ANOTHER SHEAF ON FORSYTE ’CHANGE

CANDELABRA

CARAVAN

VERSES NEW AND OLD

MEMORIES (Illustrated) AWAKENING (Illustrated)
ADDRESSES IN AMERICA
PLAYS
First Series THE SILVER BOX Fourth Series A BIT O’ LOVE
FOUNDATIONS

STRIFE THE SKIN GAME

Second Series THE ELDEST SON Fifth Series A FAMILY MAN
THE LITTLE DREAM LOYALTIES
JUSTICE WINDOWS

Third Series THE FUGITIVE Sixth Series THE FOREST
THE PIGEON OLD ENGLISH
THE MOB THE SHOW

ESCAPE THE ROOF

All the above plays issued separately

Six Short Plays THE FIRST AND THE LAST DEFEAT
tin One Volume THE LITTLE MAN THE SUN
HALL-MARKED PUNCH AND GO

PLAYS BY JOHN GALSWORTHY—ONE VOLUME
THE GROVE EDITION

The Novels, Stories, and Studies of John Galsworthy in small
volumes
''THREE NOVELS OF LOVE
'' 
''THREE NOVELS
OF LOVE

THE DARK FLOWER
BEYOND

SAINT’S PROGRESS

BY
JOHN GALSWORTHY

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1933
''THE DARK FLOWER
CopyricuT, 1913, By
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

BEYOND
CopyricHT, 1917, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Copyricut, 1916, 1917, By INTERNATIONAL MAGAzINE Co.

SAINT’S PROGRESS
Copyricut, 1919, py
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Copyricut, 1918, 1919, By INTERNATIONAL MacazineE Co.
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this book

may be reproduced in any form without
the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons

MORRISON MEMOPIAIL } IBRARY

 
''CONTENTS

BOOK I
THE DARK FLOWER

Part I

SPRING .

Part II
SUMMER .

Part III
AUTUMN .

BOOK II
BEYOND

BEYOND .

BOOK III

SAINT’S PROGRESS
SAINT’S PROGRESS .

804501

PAGE

77

151

219

483
'' 
''THREE NOVELS OF LOVE
'' 
''BOOK I
THE DARK FLOWER

“Take the flower from my breast, I pray thee;
Take the flower, too, from out my tresses;
And then go hence, for see, the night is fair,
The stars rejoice to watch thee on thy way.”

—From “The Bard of the Dimbovitza.”
'' 
''. PART I
SPRING
i

He walked along Holywell that afternoon of early June with
his short gown drooping down his arms, and no cap on his thick
dark hair. A youth of middle height, and built as if he had
come of two very different strains, one sturdy, the other wiry
and light. His face, too, was a curious blend, for, though it
was strongly formed, its expression was rather soft and moody.
His eyes—dark grey, with a good deal of light in them, and
very black lashes—had a way of looking beyond what they saw,
so that he did not seem always to be quite present; but his
smile was exceedingly swift, uncovering teeth as white as a
negro’s, and giving his face a peculiar eagerness. People stared
at him a little as he passed—since in eighteen hundred and
eighty he was before his time in not wearing a cap. Women
especially were interested ; they perceived that he took no notice
of them, seeming rather to be looking into distance, and making
combinations in his soul.

Did he know of what he was thinking—did he ever know
quite definitely at that time of his life, when things, especially
those beyond the immediate horizon, were so curious and inter-
esting ?—the things he was going to see and do when he had got
through Oxford, where everybody was “awfully decent” to him,
and “all right,” of course, but not so very interesting.

He was on his way to his tutor’s to read an essay on Oliver
Cromwell; and under the old wall, which had once hedged in
the town, he took out of his pocket a beast. It was a small
tortoise, and, with an extreme absorption, he watched it move
its little inquiring head, feeling it all the time with his short,
broad fingers, as though to discover exactly how it was made.
It was mighty hard in the back! No wonder poor old Adschylus
felt a bit sick when it fell on his head! The ancients used it to
stand the world on—a pagoda world, perhaps, of men and beasts
and trees, like that carving on his guardian’s Chinese cabinet.

3
''Rides ‘NOVELS OF LOVE

The iis ade ie séity beasts and trees, as if they believed in
everything having a soul, and not only being just fit for people
to eat or drive or make houses of. If only the Art School would
let him model things “on his own,” instead of copying and
copying—it was just as if they imagined it would be dangerous
to let you think out anything for yourself!

He held the tortoise to his waistcoat, and let it crawl, till,
noticing that it was gnawing the corner of his essay, he put it
back into his pocket. What would his tutor do if he were to
know it was there ?—cock his head a little to one side, and say:
“ Ah! there are things, Lennan, not dreamed of in my phi-
losophy!” Yes, there were a good many not dreamed of by
“old Stormer,” who seemed so awfully afraid of anything that
wasn’t usual; who seemed always laughing at you, for fear that
you should laugh at him. There were lots of people in Oxford
like that. It was stupid. You couldn’t do anything decent if
you were afraid of being laughed at! Mrs. Stormer wasn’t
like that; she did things because—they came into her head.
But then, of course, she was Austrian, not English, and ever so
much younger than old Stormer.

And having reached the door of his tutor’s house, he rang
the bell, ...
''II

Wuewn Anna Stormer came into the study she found her hus-
band standing at the window with his head a little on one side—
a tall, long-legged figure in clothes of a pleasant tweed, and
wearing a low turn-over collar (not common in those days)
and a blue silk tie, which she had knitted, strung through a
ring. He was humming and gently tapping the window-pane
with his well-kept finger-nails. Though celebrated for the
amount of work he got through, she never caught him doing
any in this house of theirs, chosen because it was more than half
a mile away from the College which held the “dear young
clowns,” as he called them, of whom he was tutor.

He did not turn—it was not, of course, his habit to notice
what was not absolutely necessary—but she felt that he was
aware of her. She came to the window seat and sat down. He
looked round at that, and said: “ Ah!”

It was a murmur almost of admiration, not usual from him,
since, with the exception of certain portions of the classics, it
was hardly his custom to admire. But she knew that she was
looking her best sitting there, her really beautiful figure poised,
the sun shining on her brown hair, and brightening her deep-set,
ice-green eyes under their black lashes. It was sometimes a
great comfort to her that she remained so good-looking. It
would have been an added vexation indeed to have felt that she
ruffled her husband’s fastidiousness. Even so, her cheekbones
were too high for his taste, symbols of that something in her
character which did not go with his—the dash of desperation,
of vividness, that lack of a certain English smoothness, which
always annoyed him.

“ Harold! ”—she would never quite flatten her r’s—*I want
to go to the mountains this year,’

The mountains! She had not seen them since that season at
San Martino di Castrozza twelve years ago, which had ended in
her marrying him.

“ Nostalgia ! ”

i don’t know what that means—I am homesick. Can we
gor”

5
''6 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Tf you like—why not? But no leading up the Cimone della
Pala for me!”

She knew what he meant by that. No romance. How splen-
didly he had led that day! She had almost worshipped him.
What blindness! What distortion! Was it really the same man
standing there with those bright, doubting eyes, with grey al-
ready in his hair? Yes, romance was over! And she sat silent,
looking out into the street—that little old street into which she
looked day and night. A figure passed out there, came to the
door, and rang.

She said softly: “ Here is Mark Lennan!”

She felt her husband’s eyes rest on her just for a moment,
knew that he had turned, heard him murmur: “ Ah, the angel
clown!” And, quite still, she waited for the door to open.
There was the boy, with his blessed dark head, and his shy,
gentle gravity, and his essay in his hand.

“ Well, Lennan, and how’s old Noll? Hypocrite of genius, eh?
Draw up ; let’s get him over!”

Motionless, from her seat at the window, she watched those
two figures at the table—the boy reading in his queer, velvety
bass voice; her husband leaning back with the tips of his fingers
pressed together, his head a little on one side, and that faint,
satiric smile which never reached his eyes. Yes, he was dozing,
falling asleep; and the boy, not seeing, was going on. Then
he came to the end and glanced up. What eyes he had! Other
boys would have laughed; but he looked almost sorry. She
heard him murmur: “I’m awfully sorry, sir.”

* Ah, Lennan, you caught me! Fact is, term’s fagged me out.
We’re going to the mountains. Ever been to the mountains?
What—never! You should come with us, eh? What do you
say, Anna? Don’t you think this young man ought to come
with us?”

She got up, and stood staring at them both. Had she heard
aright ?

Then she answered—very gravely:

“ Yes; I think he ought.”

“Good ; we'll get him to lead up the Cimone della Pala! ”
''III

Wuen the boy had said good-bye, and she had watched him
out into the street, Anna stood for a moment in the streak of
sunlight coming in through the open door, her hands pressed
to cheeks which were flaming. Then she shut the door and
leaned her forehead against the window-pane, seeing nothing.
Her heart beat very fast; she was going over and over again the
scene just passed through. This meant so much more than it
had seemed to mean....

Though she always had Heimweh, and especially at the end
of the summer term, this year a different feeling altogether had
made her say to her husband: “I want to go to the moun-
tains!”

For twelve years she had longed for the mountains every
summer, but had not pleaded for them ; this year she had pleaded,
but she did not long for them. It was because she had suddenly
realised the strange fact that she did not want to leave Eng-
land, and the reason for it, that she had come and begged to go.
Yet why, when it was just to get away from thought of this
boy, had she said: “Yes, I think he ought to come!” Ah!
but life for her was always a strange pull between the con-
scientious and the desperate; a queer, vivid, aching business!
How long was it now since that day when he first came to lunch,
silent and shy, and suddenly smiling as if he were all lighted up
within—the day when she had said to her husband afterwards:
“ Ah, he’s an angel!” Not yet a year—the beginning of last
October term, in fact. He was different from all the other boys;
not that he was a prodigy with untidy hair, ill-fitting clothes,
and a clever tongue, but because of something—something
Ah! well—different; because he was—he; because she longed
to take his head between her hands and kiss it. She remembered
so well the day that longing first came to her. She was giving
him tea, it was quite early in the Easter term; he was strok-
ing her cat, who always went to him, and telling her that he
meant to be a sculptor, but that his guardian objected, so that,
of course, he could not start till he was of age. The lamp on the
table had a rose-coloured shade; he had been rowing—a very
cold day—and his face was glowing; generally it was rather

a

 
''8 NOVELS OF LOVE

pale. And suddenly he smiled, and said: “It’s rotten waiting

» =
~
~

for things, isn’t it?” It was then she had almost stretched out
her hands to draw his forehead to her lips. She had thought
then that she wanted to kiss him, because it would have been
so nice to be his mother—she might just have been his mother,
if she had married at sixteen. But she had long known now
that she wanted to kiss, not his forehead, but his lips. He was
there in her life—a fire in a cold and unaired house ; it had even
become hard to understand that she could have gone on all these
years without him. She had missed him so those six weeks of
the Easter vacation, she had revelled so in his three queer little
letters, half-shy, half-confidential ; kissed them, and worn them
in her dress! And in return had written him long, perfectly
correct epistles in her still rather quaint English. She had
never let him guess her feelings; the idea that he might shocked
her inexpressibly. When the summer term began, life seemed to
be all made up of thoughts of him. If, ten years ago, her baby
had lived, if its cruel death—after her agony—had not killed
for good her wish to have another; if for years now she had
not been living with the knowledge that she had no warmth to
expect, and that love was all over for her; if life in the most
beautiful of all old cities had been able to grip her—there would
have been forces to check this feeling. But there was nothing
in the world to divert the current. And she was so brimful of
life, so conscious of vitality running to sheer waste. Sometimes
it had been terrific, that feeling within her, of wanting to live—
to find outlet for her energy. So many hundreds of lonely walks
she had taken during all these years, trying to lose herself in
Nature—hurrying alone, running in the woods, over the fields,
where people did not come, trying to get rid of that sense of
waste, trying once more to feel as she had felt when a girl,
with the whole world before her. It was not for nothing that
her figure was superb, her hair so bright a brown, her eyes so
full of light. She had tried many distractions. Work in the
back streets, music, acting, hunting; given them up one after the
other; taken to them passionately again. They had served in
the past. But this year they had not served. . . . One Sunday,
coming from confession unconfessed, she had faced herself.
Tt was wicked. She would have to kill this feeling—must fly
from this boy who moved her so! If she did not act quickly,
. she would be swept away. And then the thought had come:
Why not? Life was to be lived—not torpidly dozed through in
''THE DARK FLOWER 9

this queer cultured place, where age was in the blood! Life
was for love—to be enjoyed! And she would be thirty-six
next month! It seemed to her already an enormous age. Thirty-
six! Soon she would be old, actually old—and never have known
passion! The worship, which had made a hero of the distin-
guished-looking Englishman, twelve years older than herself,
who could lead up the Cimone della Pala, had not been passion.
It might, perhaps, have become passion if he had so willed.
But he was all form, ice, books. Had he a heart at all, had he
blood in his veins? Was there any joy of life in this too beauti-
ful city and these people who lived in it—this place where even
enthusiasms seemed to be formal and have no wings, where
everything was settled and sophisticated as the very chapels and
cloisters? And yet, to have this feeling for a boy—for one
almost young enough to be her son! It was so—shameless! The
thought haunted her, made her flush in the dark, lying awake
at night. And desperately she would pray—for she was devout—
ray to be made pure, to be given the holy feelings of a mother,
to be filled simply with the sense that she could do everything,
suffer anything for his sake, for his good. After these long
prayers she would feel calmed, drowsy, as though she had taken
a drug. For hours, perhaps, she would stay like that. And then
it would all come over her again. She never thought of his
loving her ; that would be—unnatural. Why should he love her?
She was very humble about it. Ever since that Sunday, when
she avoided the confessional, she had brooded over how to make
an end—how to get away from a longing too strong for her.
And she had hit on this plan—to beg for the mountains, to go
back to where her husband had come into her life, and try if this
feeling would not die. If it did not, she would ask to be left
out there with her own people, away from this danger. And
now the fool—the blind fool—the superior fool—with his satiric
smile, his everlasting patronage, had driven her to overturn her
own plan. Well, let him take the consequences ; she had done her
best! She would have this one fling of joy, even if it meant
that she must stay out there, and never see the boy again!
Standing in her dusky hall, where a faint scent of woodrot
crept out into the air, whenever windows and doors were closed,
she was all tremulous with secret happiness. To be with him
among her mountains, to show him all those wonderful, glittering
or tawny crags, to go with him to the top of them and see the
kingdoms of the world spread out below; to wander with him
''10 NOVELS OF LOVE

in the pine woods, on the Alps in all the scent of the trees and
the flowers, where the sun was hot! The first of July; and it
was only the tenth of June! Would she ever live so long? They
would not go to San Martino this time, rather to Cortina—some
new place that had no memories!

She moved from the window, and busied herself with a bowl
of flowers. She had heard the humming sound which often
heralded her husband’s approach, as though warning the world
to recover its good form before he reached it. In her happiness
she felt kind and friendly to him. If he had not meant to give
her joy, he had nevertheless given it! He came downstairs two
at a time, with that air of not being a pedagogue, which she
knew so well; and, taking his hat off the stand, half turned
round to her.

“Pleasant youth, young Lennan; hope he won’t bore us out
there! ”

His voice seemed to have an accent of compunction, to ask
pardon for having issued that impulsive invitation. And there
came to her an overwhelming wish to laugh. To hide it, to find
excuse for it, she ran up to him, and, pulling his coat lapels
till his face was within reach, she kissed the tip of his nose. And
then she laughed. And he stood looking at her, with his head
just a little on one side, and his eyebrows just a little raised.
''IV

WHEN young Mark heard a soft tapping at his door, though out
of bed, he was getting on but dreamily—it was so jolly to watch
the mountains lying out in this early light like huge beasts.
The one they were going up, with its head just raised above its
paws, looked very far away out there! Opening the door an
inch, he whispered:

€ Ie it late? 77

“ Five o’clock; aren’t you ready?”

It was awfully rude of him to keep her waiting! And he
was soon down in the empty dining-room, where a sleepy maid
was already bringing in their coffee. Anna was there alone.
She had on a flax-blue shirt, open at the neck, a short green skirt,
and a grey-green velvety hat, small, with one blackcock’s feather.
Why could not people always wear such nice things, and be as
splendid-looking! And he said:

“You do look jolly, Mrs. Stormer

She did not answer for so long that he wondered if it had been
rude to say that. But she did look so strong, and swift, and
happy-looking.

Down the hill, through a wood of larch-trees, to the river, and
across the bridge, to mount at once by a path through hay-fields.
How could old Stormer stay in bed on such a morning! The
peasant girls in their blue linen skirts were already gathering
into bundles what the men had scythed. One, raking at the
edge of a field, paused and shyly nodded to them. She had the
face of a Madonna, very calm and grave and sweet, with delicate
arched brows—a face it was pure pleasure to see. The boy
looked back at her. Everything to him, who had never been
out of England before, seemed strange and glamorous. ‘The
chalets, with their long wide burnt-brown wooden balconies
and low-hanging eaves jutting far beyond the walls; these bright
dresses of the peasant women; the friendly little cream-coloured
cows, with blunt, smoke-grey muzzles. Even the feel in the air
was new, that delicious crisp burning warmth that lay so lightly
as it were on the surface of frozen stillness; and the special
sweetness of all places at the foot of mountains—scent of pine-
gum, burning larch-wood, and all the meadow flowers and

ou

{>
''12 NOVELS OF LOVE

grasses. But newest of all was the feeling within him—a sort of
pride, a sense of importance, a queer exhilaration at being alone
with her, chosen companion of one so beautiful.

They passed all the other pilgrims bound the same way—
stout square Germans with their coats slung through straps, who
trailed behind them heavy alpenstocks, carried greenish bags,
and marched stolidly at a pace which never varied, growling, as
Anna and the boy went by: “ Aber etlen ist nichts!”

But those two could not go fast enough to keep pace with their
spirits. This was no real climb—just a training walk to the top
of the Nuvolau; and they were up before noon, and soon again
descending, very hungry. When they entered the little dining-
room of the Cinque Torre Hiitte, they found it occupied by a
party of English people, eating omelettes, who looked at Anna
with faint signs of recognition, but did not cease talking in
voices which all had a certain half-languid precision, a slight
but brisk pinching of sounds, as if determined not to tolerate
a drawl, and yet to have one. Most of them had field-glasses
slung round them, and cameras were dotted here and there about
the room. Their faces were not really much alike, but they all
had a peculiar drooping smile, and a particular lift of the eye-
brows, which made them seem reproductions of a single type.
Their teeth, too, for the most part were a little prominent, as
though the drooping of their mouths had forced them forward.
They were eating as people eat who distrust the lower senses,
preferring not to be compelled to taste or smell.

“From our hotel,” whispered Anna; and, ordering red wine
and schnitzels, she and the boy sat down. The lady who seemed
in command of the English party inquired now how Mr.
Stormer was—he was not laid up, she hoped. No? Only lazy?
Indeed! He was a great climber, she believed. It seemed to the
boy that this lady somehow did not quite approve of them. The
talk was all maintained between her, a gentleman with a
crumpled collar and puggaree, and a short thickset grey-bearded
man in a dark Norfolk jacket. If any of the younger members
of the party spoke, the remark was received with an arch lifting
of the brows, and drooping of the lids, as who should say: “ Ah!
Very promising!”

“Nothing in my life has given me greater pain than to
observe the aptitude of human nature for becoming crystallised.”
It was the lady in command who spoke, and all the young people
swayed their faces up and down, as if assenting. How like they
''THE DARK FLOWER 13

were, the boy thought, to guinea-fowl, with their small heads
and sloping shoulders and speckly grey coats!

“ Ah! my dear lady ”—it was the gentleman with the crum-
pled collar— you novelists are always girding at the precious
quality of conformity. The sadness of our times lies in this
questioning spirit. Never was there more revolt, especially
among the young. To find the individual judging for himself
is a grave symptom of national degeneration. But this is not a
subject-——”

“Surely, the subject is of the most poignant interest to all
young people.” Again all the young ones raised their faces and
moved them slightly from side to side.

“My dear lady, we are too prone to let the interest that things
arouse blind our judgment in regard to the advisability of
discussing them. We let these speculations creep and creep
until they twine themselves round our faith and paralyse it.”

One of the young men interjected suddenly: “ Madre e
and was silent.

“T shall not, I think””—it was the lady speaking— be ac-
cused of licence when I say that I have always felt that specula-
tion is only dangerous when indulged in by the crude intelligence.
If culture has nothing to give us, then let us have no culture;
but if culture be, as I think it, indispensable, then we must
accept the dangers that culture brings.”

Again the young people moved their faces, and again the
younger of the two young men said: “ Madre ie

“Dangers? Have cultured people dangers?”

Who had spoken thus? Every eyebrow was going up, every
mouth was drooping, and there was silence. The boy stared
at his companion. In what a strange voice she had made that
little interjection! There seemed a sort of flame, too, lighted
in her eyes. Then the little grey-bearded man said, and his
rather whispering voice sounded hard and acid:

“We are all human, my dear madam.”

The boy felt his heart go thump at Anna’s laugh. It was
just as if she had said: “ Ah! but not you—surely!” And he
got up to follow her towards the door.

The English party had begun already talking—of the weather.

The two walked some way from the “hut” in silence, before
Anna said:

“You didn’t like me when I laughed?”

* You hurt their feelings, I think.”

 

 

 
''14 NOVELS OF LOVE

“T wanted to—the English Grundys! Ah! don’t be cross
with me! They were English Grundys, weren’t they—every
one?”

She looked into his face so intently that he felt the blood
rush to his cheeks, and a dizzy sensation of being drawn for-
ward. ‘

“They have no blood, those people! Their voices, their
supercilious eyes that look you up and down! Oh! I’ve had so
much of them! That woman with her Liberalism, just as bad
as any. I hate them all!”

He would have liked to hate them, too; but they had only
seemed to him amusing.

“They aren’t human. They don’t feel! Some day you'll
know them. They won’t amuse you then!”

She went on, in a quiet, almost dreamy voice:

“Why do they come here? It’s still young and warm and
good out here. Why don’t they keep to their Culture, where
no one knows what it is to ache and feel hunger, and hearts
don’t beat. Feel!”

Disturbed beyond measure, the boy could not tell whether it
was in her heart or in his hand that the blood was pulsing so.
Was he glad or sorry when she let his hand go?

“ Ah, well! They can’t spoil this day. Let’s rest.”

Growing at the edge of the larch-wood where they sat were
numbers of little mountain pinks, with fringed edges and the
sweetest scent imaginable; and she got up presently to gather
them. But he stayed where he was, and odd sensations stirred
in him. The blue of the sky, the feathery green of the larch
trees, the mountains, were no longer to him what they had been
early that morning.

She came back with her hands full of the little pinks, spread
her fingers and let them drop. They showered all over his face
and neck. Never was so wonderful a scent; never such a strange
feeling as they gave him. They clung to his hair, his forehead,
his eyes, one even got caught on the curve of his lips; and he
stared up at her through their fringed petals. There must have
been something wild in his eyes then, something of the feeling
that was stinging his heart, for her smile died ; she walked away,
and stood with her face turned from him. Confused, and un-
happy, he gathered the strewn flowers; and not till he had
collected every one did he get up and shyly take them to her,
where she still stood, gazing into the depths of the larch-wood.
''Vv

Wuart did he know of women, that should make him understand ?
At his public school he had seen none to speak to; at Oxford,
only this one. At home in the holidays, not any, save his sister
Cicely. The two hobbies of their guardian, fishing, and the
antiquities of his native county, rendered him averse to society ;
so that his little Devonshire manor-house, with its black oak
panels and its wild stone-walled park along the riverside was,
from year’s end to year’s end, innocent of all petticoats, save those
of Cicely and old Miss Tring, the governess. Then, too, the boy
was shy. No, there was nothing in his past, of not yet quite
nineteen years, to go by. He was not of those youths who are
always thinking of conquests. The very idea of conquest seemed
to him vulgar, mean, horrid. There must be many signs indeed
before it would come into his head that a woman was in love
with him, especially the one to whom he looked up, and thought
so beautiful. For before all beauty he was humble, inclined to
think himself a clod. It was the part of life which was always
unconsciously sacred, and to be approached trembling. The
more he admired, the more tremulous and diffident he became.
And so, after his one wild moment, when she plucked those
sweet-scented blossoms and dropped them over him, he felt
abashed ; and walking home beside her he was quieter than ever,
awkward to the depths of his soul.

If there were confusion in his heart which had been innocent
of trouble, what must there have been in hers, that for so long
had secretly desired the dawning of that confusion? And she,
too, was very silent.

Passing a church with open door in the outskirts of the vil-
lage, she said: .

“ Don’t wait for me—I want to go in here a little.”

In the empty twilight within, one figure, a countrywoman in
her black shawl, was kneeling—marvellously still. He would
have liked to stay. That kneeling figure, the smile of the sun-
light filtering through into the half darkness! He lingered long
enough to see Anna, too, go down on her knees in the stillness.
Was she praying? Again he had the turbulent feeling with
which he had watched her pluck those flowers. She looked so

15
''16 NOVELS OF LOVE

splendid kneeling there! It was caddish to feel like that, when
she was praying, and he turned quickly away into the road.
But that sharp, sweet stinging sensation did not leave him. He
shut his eyes to get rid of her image—and instantly she became
ten times more visible, his feeling ten times stronger. He
mounted to the hotel; there on the terrace was his tutor. And
oddly enough, the sight of him at that moment was no more
embarrassing than if it had been the hotel concierge. Stormer
did not somehow seem to count; did not seem to want you to
count him. Besides, he was so old—nearly fifty!

The man who was so old was posed in a characteristic atti-
tude—hands in the pockets of his Norfolk jacket, one shoulder
slightly raised, head just a little on one side, as if preparing to
quiz something. He spoke as Lennan came up, smiling—but
not with his eyes.

“Well, young man, and what have you done with my wife?”

* Left her in a church, sir.”

“Ah! She will do that! Has she run you off your legs?
No? Then let’s walk and talk a little.”

To be thus pacing up and down and talking with her husband
seemed quite natural, did not even interfere with those new
sensations, did not in the least increase his shame for having
them. He only wondered a little how she could have married
him—but so little! Quite far and academic was his wonder—
like his wonder in old days how his sister could care to play
with dolls. If he had any other feeling, it was just a longing
to get away and go down the hill again to the church. It seemed
cold and lonely after all that long day with her—as if he had
left himself up there, walking along hour after hour, or lying
out in the sun beside her. What was old Stormer talking about?
The difference between the Greek and Roman views of honour.
_ Always in the past—seemed to think the present was bad form.
And he said:

“We met some English Grundys, sir, on the mountain.”

“ Ah, yes! Any particular brand?”

“Some advanced, and some not; but all the same, I think,
really.”

“T see. Grundys, I think you said?”

“ Yes, sir, from this hotel. It was Mrs. Stormer’s name for
them. They were so very superior.”

“ Quite.”

There was something unusual in the tone of that little word.
''THE DARK FLOWER 17

And the boy stared—for the first time there seemed a real man |
standing there. Then the blood rushed up into his cheeks, for
there she was! Would she come up to them? How splendid she
was looking, burnt by the sun, and walking as if just starting!
But she passed into the hotel without turning her head their way.
Had he offended, hurt her? He made an excuse, and got away
to his room.

In the window from which that same morning he had watched
the mountains lying out like lions in the dim light, he stood
again, and gazed at the sun dropping over the high horizon.
What had happened to him? He felt so different, so utterly
different. It was another world. And the most strange feeling
came on him, as of the flowers falling again all over his face and
neck and hands, the tickling of their soft-fringed edges, the
stinging sweetness of their scent. And he seemed to hear her
voice saying: “ Feel!” and to feel her heart once more beating
under his hand.
''VI

ALONE with that black-shawled figure in the silent church, Anna
did not pray. Resting there on her knees, she experienced only
the sore sensation of revolt. Why had Fate flung this feeling
into her heart, lighted up her life suddenly, if God refused her
its enjoyment? Some of the mountain pinks remained clinging
to her belt, and the scent of them, crushed against her, warred
with the faint odour of age and incense. While they were there,
with their enticement and their memories, prayer would never
come. But did she want to pray? Did she desire the mood of
that poor soul in her black shawl, who had not moved by one
hair’s breadth since she had been watching her, who seemed
resting her humble self so utterly, letting life lift from her,
feeling the relief of nothingness? Ah, yes! what would it be to
have a life so toilsome, so little exciting from day to day and
hour to hour, that just to kneel there in wistful stupor was the
greatest pleasure one could know? It was beautiful to see her,
but it was sad. And there came over Anna a longing to go up
to her neighbour and say: “ Tell me your troubles; we are both
women.” She had lost a son, perhaps, some love—or perhaps
not really love, only some illusion. Ah! Love. . . . Why should
any spirit yearn, why should any body, full of strength and
joy, wither slowly away for want of love? Was there not enough
in this great world for her, Anna, to have a little? She would
not harm him, for she would know when he had had enough of
her; she would surely have the pride and grace then to let him
go. For, of course, he would get tired of her. At her age she
could never hope to hold a boy more than a few years—months,
perhaps. But would she ever hold him at all? Youth was so
hard—it had no heart! And then the memory of his eyes came
back—gazing up, troubled, almost wild—when she had dropped
on him those flowers. That memory filled her with a sort of
delirium. One look from her then, one touch, and he would
have clasped her to him. She was sure of it, yet scarcely dared
to believe what meant so much. And suddenly the torment that
she must go through, whatever happened, seemed to her too
brutal and undeserved! She rose. Just one gleam of sunlight
was still slanting through the doorway; it failed by a yard or so
18
''THE DARK FLOWER 19

to reach the kneeling countrywoman, and Anna watched. Would
it steal on and touch her, or would the sun pass down behind
the mountains, and fade away? Unconscious of that issue, the
black-shawled figure knelt, never moving. And the beam crept
on. “If it touches her, then he will love me, if only for an
hour; if it fades out too soon » And the beam crept on.
That shadowy path of light, with its dancing dust-motes, was it
indeed charged with Fate—indeed the augury of Love or Dark-
ness? And, slowly moving, it mounted, the sun sinking; it rose
above that bent head, hovered in a golden mist, passed—and sud-
denly was gone.

Unsteadily, seeing nothing plain, Anna walked out of the
church. Why she passed her husband and the boy on the terrace
without a look she could not quite have said—perhaps because
the tortured does not salute her torturers. When she reached
her room she felt deadly tired, and lying down on her bed, almost
at once fell asleep.

She was awakened by a sound, and, recognising the delicate
“rat-tat”’ of her husband’s knock, did not answer, indifferent
whether he came in or no. He entered noiselessly. If she did
not let him know she was awake, he would not wake her. She
lay still and watched him sit down astride of a chair, cross his
arms on its back, rest his chin on them, and fix his eyes on her.
Through her veil of eyelashes she had unconsciously contrived
that his face should be the one object plainly seen—the more
intensely visualised, because of this queer isolation. She did not
feel at all ashamed of this mutual fixed scrutiny, in which she
had such advantage. He had never shown her what was in him,
never revealed what lay behind those bright satiric eyes. Now,
perhaps, she would see! And she lay, regarding him with the
intense excited absorption with which one looks at a tiny wild-
flower through a magnifying-lens, and watches its insignificance
expanded to the size and importance of a hothouse bloom. In
her mind was this thought: He is looking at me with his real
self, since he has no reason for armour against me now. At first
his eyes seemed masked with their customary brightness, his
whole face with its usual decorous formality; then gradually he
became so changed that she hardly knew him. That decorous-
ness, that brightness, melted off what lay behind, as frosty dew
melts off grass. And her very soul contracted within her, as if
she had become identified with what he was seeing—a something
to be passed over, a very nothing. Yes, his was the face of one

 
''20 NOVELS OF LOVE

looking at what was unintelligible, and therefore negligible; at
that which had no soul; at something of a different and inferior
species and of no great interest to a man. His face was like a
soundless avowal of some conclusion, so fixed and intimate that
it must surely emanate from the very core of him—be instinc-
tive, unchangeable. This was the real he! A man despising
women! Her first thought was: And he’s married—what a fate!
Her second: If he feels that, perhaps thousands of men do! Am
I and all women really what they think us? The conviction in
his stare—its through-and-through conviction—had infected her ;
and she gave in to it for the moment, crushed. Then her spirit
revolted with such turbulence, and the blood so throbbed in
her, that she could hardly lie still. How dare he think her like
that—a nothing, a bundle of soulless inexplicable whims and
moods and sensuality? A thousand times, No! It was he who
was the soulless one, the dry, the godless one; who, in his sick-
ening superiority, could thus deny her, and with her all women!
That stare was as if he saw her—a doll tricked out in garments
labelled soul, spirit, rights, responsibilities, dignity, freedom—all
so many words. It was vile, it was horrible, that he should see
her thus! And a really terrific struggle began in her between
the desire to get up and cry this out, and the knowledge that
it would be stupid, undignified, even mad, to show comprehension
of what he would never admit or even understand that he had
revealed to her. And then cynicism came to her rescue. What
a funny thing was married life—to have lived all these years
with him, and never known what was at the bottom of his heart!
She had the feeling now that, if she went up to him and said:
“T am in love with that boy!” it would only make him droop
the corners of his mouth and say in his most satiric voice:
“Really! That is very interesting! Shall you invite me to the
wedding ? ”—that it would only confirm him in the conviction
that she was neglible, inexplicable, an inferior strange form of
animal, of no real interest to him.

And then, just when she felt that she could not hold herself
in any longer, he got up, passed on tiptoe to the door, opened
it noiselessly, and went out.

The moment he had gone, she jumped up. So, then, she was
linked to one for whom she, for whom women, did not, as it
were, exist! It seemed to her that she had stumbled on knowl-
edge of almost sacred importance, on the key of everything
puzzling and hopeless in their married life. If he really, secretly,
''THE DARK FLOWER 21

whole-heartedly despised her, the only feeling she need have for
one so dry, so narrow, so basically stupid, was just contempt.
But she knew well enough that contempt would not shake what
she had seen in his face; he was impregnably walled within his
clever, dull conviction of superiority. He was for ever in-
trenched, and she would always be only the assailant. Though—
what did it matter, now?

Usually swift, almost careless, she was a long time that evening
over her toilette. Her neck was very sunburnt, and she lingered,
doubtful whether to hide it with powder, or accept her gipsy
colouring. She did accept it, for she saw that it gave her eyes,
so like glacier ice, under their black lashes, and her hair, with
its surprising glints of flame colour, a peculiar value.

When the dinner-bell rang she passed her husband’s door
without, as usual, knocking, and went down alone.

In the hall she noticed some of the English party of the
mountain hut. They did not greet her, conceiving an immediate
interest in the barometer; but she could feel them staring at
her very hard. She sat down to wait, and at once became con-
scious of the boy coming over from the other side of the room,
rather like a person walking in his sleep. He said not a word.
But how he gazed! And her heart began to beat. Was this the
moment she had longed for? If it, indeed, had come, dared she
take it? Then she saw her husband descending the stairs, saw
him greet the English party, heard the intoning of their drawl.
She looked up at the boy, and said quickly: “ Was it a happy
day?” It gave her such delight to keep the look on his face,
as if he had forgotten everything except just the sight of her.
His eyes seemed to have in them something holy at that mo-
ment, something of the wonder-yearning of Nature and of inno-
cence. It was dreadful to know that in a moment the look would
be gone; perhaps never to come back on his face—that look so
precious! Her husband was approaching now! Let him see, if
he would! Let him see that someone could adore—that she was
not to everyone a kind of lower animal. Yes, he must have seen
the boy’s face ; and yet his expression never changed. He noticed
nothing! Or was it that he disdained to notice?
''VII

TuHeEN followed for young Lennan a strange time, when he never
knew from minute to minute whether he was happy—always try-
ing to be with her, restless if he could not be, sore if she talked
with and smiled at others; yet, when he was with her, restless
too, unsatisfied, suffering from his own timidity.

One wet morning, when she was playing the hotel piano, and
he listening, thinking to have her to himself, there came a young
German violinist—pale, and with a brown, thin-waisted coat,
longish hair, and little whiskers—rather a beast, in fact. Soon,
of course, this young beast was asking her to accompany him—
as if anyone wanted to hear him play his mouldy violin! Every
word and smile that she gave him hurt, seeing how much more
interesting than himself this foreigner was! And his heart grew
heavier and heavier, and he thought: If she likes him I ought
not to mind—only, I do mind! How can I help minding? It
was hateful to see her smiling, and the young beast bending
down to her. And they were talking German, so that he could
not tell what they were saying, which made it more unbearable.
He had not known there could be such torture.

And then he began to want to hurt her, too. But that was
mean—hbesides, how could he hurt her? She did not care for
him. He was nothing to her—only a boy. If she really thought
him only a boy, who felt so old—it would be horrible. It flashed
across him that she might be playing that young violinist against
him! No, she never would do that! But the young beast looked
just the sort who might take advantage of her smiles. If only
he would do something that was not respectful, how splendid it
would be to ask him to come for a walk in the woods, and, having
told him why, give him a thrashing. Afterwards, he would not
tell her, he would not try to gain credit by it. He would keep
away till she wanted him back. But suddenly the thought of
what he would feel if she really meant to take this young man
as her friend in place of him became so actual, so poignant, so
horribly painful, that he got up abruptly and went towards the
door. Would she not say a word to him before he got out of the
room, would she not try and keep him? If she did not, surely it
would be all over; it would mean that anybody was more to her

22
''THE DARK FLOWER 23

than he. That little journey to the door, indeed, seemed like a
march to execution. Would she not call after him. He looked
back. She was smiling. But he could not smile; she had hurt
him too much! Turning his head away, he went out, and dashed
into the rain bareheaded. The feeling of it on his face gave him
a sort of dismal satisfaction. Soon he would be wet through.
Perhaps he would get ill. Out here, far away from his people,
she would have to offer to nurse him; and perhaps—per-
haps in his illness he would seem to her again more interest-
ing than that young beast, and then Ah! if only he could
be ill!

He mounted rapidly through the dripping leaves towards the
foot of the low mountain which rose behind the hotel. A trail
went up there to the top, and he struck into it, going at a great
pace. His sense of injury began dying away; he no longer
wanted to be ill. The rain had stopped, the sun came out; he
went on, up and up. He would get to the top quicker than any-
one ever had! It was something he could do better than that
young beast! The pine-trees gave way to stunted larches, and
these to pine scrub and bare scree, up which he scrambled, clutch-
ing at the tough bushes, terribly out of breath, his heart pump-
ing, the sweat streaming into his eyes. He had no feeling now
but wonder whether he would get to the top before he dropped,
exhausted. He thought he would die of the beating of his
heart; but it was better to die than to stop and be beaten by a
few yards. He stumbled up at last on to the little plateau at the
top. For full ten minutes he lay there on his face without mov-
ing, then rolled over. His heart had given up that terrific
thumping; he breathed luxuriously, stretched out his arms along
the steaming grass—felt happy. It was wonderful up here, with
the sun burning hot in a sky clear-blue already. How tiny
everything looked below—hotel, trees, village, chdlets—little toy
things! He had never before felt the sheer joy of being high up.
The rain-clouds, torn and driven in huge white shapes along
the mountains to the South, were like an army of giants with
chariots and white horses hurrying away. He thought suddenly:
“Suppose I had died when my heart pumped so! Would it have
mattered the least bit? Everything would be going on just the
same, the sun shining, the blue up there the same; and those
toy things down in the valley. That jealousy of his an hour
ago, why—it was nothing—he himself nothing! What did it
matter if she were nice to that fellow in the brown coat? What

 
''24 NOVELS OF LOVE

did anything matter when the whole thing was so big—and he
such a tiny scrap of it?

On the edge of the plateau, to mark the highest point, some-
one had erected a rude cross, which jutted out stark against the
blue sky. It looked cruel somehow, sagged all crooked, and out of
place up here; a piece of bad manners, as if people with only
one idea had dragged it in, without caring whether or no it
suited what was around it. One might just as well introduce
one of these rocks into that jolly dark church where he had left
her the other day, as put a cross up here.

A sound of bells, and of sniffing and scuffling, roused him; a
large grey goat had come up and was smelling at his hair—the
leader of a flock, soon all round him, solemnly curious, with
their queer yellow oblong-pupilled eyes, and their quaint little
beards and tails. Awfully decent beasts—and friendly! What
jolly things to model! He lay still (having learnt from the
fisherman, his guardian, that necessary habit in the presence of
all beasts), while the leader sampled the flavour of his neck.
The passage of that long rough tongue athwart his skin gave him
an agreeable sensation, awakened a strange deep sense of com-
tadeship. He restrained his desire to stroke the creature’s nose.
It appeared that they now all wished to taste his neck; but some
were timid, and the touch of their tongues simply a tickle, so
that he was compelled to laugh, and at that peculiar sound they
withdrew and gazed at him. There seemed to be no one with
them ; then, at a little distance, quite motionless in the shade of
a rock, he spied the goatherd, a boy about his own age. How
lonely he must be up here all day! Perhaps he talked to his
goats. He looked as if he might. One would get to have queer
thoughts up here, get to know the rocks, and clouds, and beasts,
and what they all meant. The goatherd uttered a peculiar whis-
tle, and something, Lennan could not tell exactly what, happened
among the goats—a sort of “ Here, sir!” seemed to come from
them. And then the goatherd moved out from the shade and
went over to the edge of the plateau, and two of the goats feeding
there thrust their noses into his hand, and rubbed themselves
against his legs. The three looked beautiful standing together
on the edge against the sky... .

That night, after dinner, the dining-room was cleared for
dancing, so that the guests might feel freedom and gaiety in
the air. And, indeed, presently, a couple began sawing up and
down over the polished boards, in the apologetic manner peculiar
''THE DARK FLOWER 25

to hotel guests. Then three pairs of Italians suddenly launched
themselves into space—twirling and twirling, and glaring into
each other’s eyes; and some Americans, stimulated by their
precept, began airily backing and filling. Two of the “ English
Grundys ” with carefully amused faces next moved out. To Len-
nan it seemed that they all danced very well, better than he
could. Did he dare ask her? Then he saw the young violinist
go up, saw her rise and take his arm and vanish into the dancing-
room; and leaning his forehead against a window-pane, with a
sick, beaten feeling, he stayed, looking out into the moonlight,
seeing nothing. He heard his name spoken; his tutor was stand-
ing beside him.

“ You and I, Lennan, must console each other. Dancing’s for
the young, eh?”

Fortunately it was the boy’s instinct and his training not to
show his feelings; to be pleasant, though suffering.

“Yes, sir. Jolly moonlight, isn’t it, out there?”

“ Ah! very jolly; yes. When I was your age I twirled the
light fantastic with the best. But gradually, Lennan, one came
to see it could not be done without a partner—there was the rub!
Tell me—do you regard women as responsible beings? I should
like to have your opinion on that.”

It was, of course, ironical—yet there was something in those
words—something !

“T think it’s you, sir, who ought to give me yours.”

“My dear Lennan—my experience is a mere nothing!”

That was meant for unkindness to her! He would not an-
swer. If only Stormer would go away! The music had stopped.
They would be sitting out somewhere, talking! He made an
effort, and said:

“T was up the hill at the back this morning, where the cross
is. There were some jolly goats.”

And suddenly he saw her coming. She was alone—flushed,

smiling; it struck him that her. frock was the same colour as the
moonlight.

“ Harold, will you dance?”

He would say “ Yes,” and she would be gone again! But his
tutor only made her a little bow, and said with that smile of
his:

“ Lennan and I have agreed that dancing is for the young.”

“Sometimes the old must sacrifice themselves. Mark, will
you dance?”
''_— NOVELS OF LOVE

Behind him he heard his tutor murmur:

“ Ah! Lennan—you betray me!”

That little silent journey with her to the dancing-room was
the happiest moment perhaps that he had ever known. And he
need not have been so much afraid about his dancing. Truly,
it was not polished, but it could not spoil hers, so light, firm,
buoyant! It was wonderful to dance with her. Only when the
music stopped and they sat down did he know how his head was
going round. He felt strange, very strange indeed. He heard
her say:

“ What is it, dear boy? You look so white!”

Without quite knowing what he did, he bent his face towards
the hand that she had laid on his sleeve, then knew no more,
having fainted.
''VIII

Growine boy—over-exertion in the morning! That was all!
He was himself very quickly, and walked up to bed without
assistance. Rotten of him! Never was anyone more ashamed
of his little weakness than this boy. Now that he was really a
trifle indisposed, he simply could not bear the idea of being
nursed at all or tended. Almost rudely he had got away. Only
when he was in bed did he remember the look on her face as he
left her. How wistful and unhappy, seeming to implore him to
forgive her! As if there were anything to forgive! As if she
had not made him perfectly happy when she danced with him!
He longed to say to her: “If I might be close to you like that
one minute every day, then I don’t mind all the rest!” Perhaps
he would dare say that to-morrow. Lying there he still felt a
little funny. He had forgotten to close the ribs of the blinds,
and moonlight was filtering in; but he was too idle, too drowsy
to get up now and do it. They had given him brandy, rather a
lot—that perhaps was the reason he felt so queer; not ill, but
mazy, as if dreaming, as if he had lost the desire ever to move
again. Just to lie there, and watch the powdery moonlight, and
hear far-away music throbbing down below, and still feel the
touch of her, as in the dance she swayed against him, and all
the time to have the scent about him of flowers! His thoughts
were dreams, his dreams thoughts—all precious unreality. And
then it seemed to him that the moonlight was gathered into a
single slip of pallor—there was a thrumming, a throbbing, and
that shape of moonlight moved towards him. It came so close
that he felt its warmth against his brow; it sighed, hovered, drew
back soundless, and was gone. He must have fallen then into
dreamless sleep... .

What time was it when he was awakened by that delicate “ rat-
tat i to see his tutor standing in the doorway with a cup of
teat

Was young Lennan all right? Yes, he was perfectly all right
—would be down directly! It was most frightfully good of Mr.
Stormer to come! He really didn’t want anything.

Yes, yes; but the maimed and the halt must be attended to!

His face seemed to the boy very kind just then—only to laugh

27
''28 NOVELS OF LOVE

at him a very little—just enough. And it was awfully decent
of him to have come, and to stand there while he drank the tea.
He was really all right, but for a little headache. Many times
while he was dressing he stood still, trying to remember. That
white slip of moonlight? Was it moonlight? Was it part of a
dream; or was it, could it have been she, in her moonlight-
coloured frock? Why had he not stayed awake? He would not
dare to ask her, and now would never know whether the vague
memory of warmth on his brow had been a kiss.

He breakfasted alone in the room where they had danced.
There were two letters for him. One from his guardian enclos-
ing money, and complaining of the shyness of the trout; the
other from his sister. The man she was engaged to—he was a
budding diplomat, attached to the Embassy at Rome—was afraid
that his leave was going to be curtailed. They would have to be
- married at once. They might even have to get a special licence.
It was lucky Mark was coming back so soon. They simply must
have him for best man. The only bridesmaid now would be
Sylvia . . . Sylvia Doone? Why, she was only a kid! And the
memory of a little girl in a very short holland frock, with flaxen
hair, pretty blue eyes, and a face so fair that you could almost
see through it, came up before him. But that, of course, was six
years ago; she would not still be in a frock that showed her
knees, or wear beads, or be afraid of bulls that were never there.
It was stupid being best man—they might have got some decent
chap! And then he forgot all—for there was she, out on the
terrace. In his rush to join her he passed several of the “ Eng-
lish Grundys,” who stared at him askance. Indeed, his conduct
of the night before might well have upset them. An Oxford
man, fainting in an hotel! Something wrong there! ...

And then, when he reached her, he did find courage.

“ Was it really moonlight?”

“ All moonlight.”

“ But it was warm!”

And, when she did not answer that, he had within him just
the same light, intoxicated feeling as after he had won a race at
school.

But now came a dreadful blow. His tutor’s old guide had
suddenly turned up, after a climb with a party of Germans.
The war-horse had been aroused in Stormer. He wished to start
that afternoon for a certain hut, and go up a certain peak at
dawn next day. But Lennan was not to go. Why not? Because
''THE DARK FLOWER 29

of last night’s faint; and because, forsooth, he was not some
stupid thing they called “an expert.” As if ! Where she
could go he could! This was to treat him like a child. Of course
he could go up this rotten mountain. It was because she did not
care enough to take him! She did not think him man enough!
Did she think that he could not climb what—her husband—
could? And if it were dangerous she ought not to be going, leav-
ing him behind—that was simply cruel! But she only smiled,
and he flung away from her, not having seen that all this grief
of his only made her happy.

And that afternoon they went off without him. What deep,
dark thoughts he had then! What passionate hatred of his own
youth! What schemes he wove, by which she might come back,
and find him gone—up some mountain far more dangerous and
fatiguing! If people did not think him fit to climb with, he
would climb by himself. That, anyway, everyone admitted, was
dangerous. And it would be her fault. She would be sorry
then. He would get up, and be off before dawn; he put his things
out ready, and filled his flask. The moonlight that evening was
more wonderful than ever, the mountains like great ghosts of
themselves. And she was up there at the hut, among them! It
was very long before he went to sleep, brooding over his injuries
—intending not to sleep at all, so as to be ready to be off at three
o’clock. At nine o’clock he woke. His wrath was gone; he only
felt restless and ashamed. If, instead of flying out, he had made
the best of it, he could have gone with them as far as the hut,
could have stayed the night there. And now he cursed himself
for being such a fool and idiot. Some little of that idiocy he
could, perhaps, retrieve. If he started for the hut at once, he
might still be in time to meet them coming down, and accompany
them home. He swallowed his coffee, and set off. He knew
the way at first, then in woods lost it, recovered the right track
again at last, but did not reach the hut till nearly two o’clock.
Yes, the party had made the ascent that morning—they had
been seen, been heard jodelling on the top. Gewtss! Gewiss!
But they would not come down the same way. Oh, no! They
would be going home down to the west and over the other pass.
They would be back in house before the young /Terr himself.

He heard this, oddly, almost with relief. Was it the long walk
alone, or being up there so high? Or simply that he was very
hungry? Or just these nice friendly folk in the hut, and their
young daughter with her fresh face, queer little black cloth sailor

 
''380 NOVELS OF LOVE

hat with long ribbons, velvet bodice, and perfect simple manners ;
or the sight of the little silvery-dun cows, thrusting their broad
black noses against her hand? What was it that had taken away
from him all his restless feeling, made him happy and content?
. . » He did not know that the newest thing always fascinates
the puppy in its gambols! . . . He sat a long while after lunch,
trying to draw the little cows, watching the sun on the cheek of
that pretty maiden, trying to talk to her in German. And when
at last he said: “ Adieu!” and she murmured “ Kiiss die Hand.
Adieu!” there was quite a little pang in his heart. . . . Won-
derful and queer is the heart of a man!... For all that, as he
neared home he hastened, till he was actually running. Why
had he stayed so long up there? She would be back—she would
expect to see him; and that young beast of a violinist would be
with her, perhaps, instead! He reached the hotel just in time
to rush up and dress, and rush down to dinner. Ah! They were
tired, no doubt—were resting in their rooms. He sat through
dinner as best he could; got away before dessert, and flew up-
stairs. For a minute he stood there doubtful; on which door
should he knock? Then timidly he tapped on hers. No answer!
He knocked loud on his tutor’s door. No answer! They were
not back, then. Not back? What could that mean? Or could
it be that they were both asleep. Once more he knocked on her
door; then desperately turned the handle, and took a flying
glance. Empty, tidy, untouched! Not back! He turned and
ran downstairs again. All the guests were streaming out from
dinner, and he became entangled with a group of “ English
Grundys ” discussing a climbing accident which had occurred in
Switzerland. He listened, feeling suddenly quite sick. One of
them, the short grey-bearded Grundy with the rather whispering
voice, said to him: “ All alone again tonight? The Stormers
not back?” Lennan did his best to answer, but something had
closed his throat; he could only shake his head. ~

“ They had a guide, I think?” said the “ English Grundy.”

This time Lennan managed to get out: “ Yes, sir.”

“Stormer, I fancy, is quite an expert!” and turning to the
lady whom the young “ Grundys” addressed as “ Madre” he
added :

“To me the great charm of mountain-climbing was always
the freedom from people—the remoteness.”

The mother of the young “ Grundys,” looking at Lennan with
her half-closed eyes, answered:
''THE DARK FLOWER 31

“That, to me, would be the disadvantage; I always like to be
mixing with my own kind.”

The grey-bearded “ Grundy” murmured in a muffled voice:

“ Dangerous thing, that, to say—in an hotel!”

And they went on talking, but of what Lennan no longer
knew, lost in this sudden feeling of sick fear. In the presence
of these “ English Grundys,” so superior to all vulgar sensations,
he could not give vent to his alarm; already they viewed him
as unsound for having fainted. Then he grasped that there had
begun all round him a sort of luxurious speculation on what
might have happened to the Stormers. The descent was very
nasty; there was a particularly bad traverse. The “ Grundy,”
whose collar was not now crumpled, said he did not believe in
women climbing. It was one of the signs of the times that he
most deplored. The mother of the young “ Grundys ” countered
him at once: In practice she agreed that they were out of place,
but theoretically she could not see why they should not climb. An
American standing near threw all into confusion by saying he
guessed that it might be liable to develop their understandings.
LLennan made for the front door. The moon had just come up
over in the south, and exactly under it he could see their moun-
tain. What visions he had then! He saw her lying dead, saw
himself climbing down in the moonlight and raising her still-
living, but half-frozen, form from some perilous ledge. Hven
that was almost better than this actuality of not knowing where
she was, or what had happened. People passed out into the moon-
light, looking curiously at his set face staring so fixedly. One or
two asked him if he were anxious, and he answered: “ Oh no,
thanks!” Soon there would have to be a search party. How
soon? He would, he must ‘be, of it! They should not stop him
this time. And suddenly he thought: ‘ Ah, it is all because I
stayed up there this afternoon talking to that girl, all because I
forgot her!’

And then he heard a stir behind him. There they were, com-
ing down the passage from a side door—she in front with her
alpenstock and riicksack—smiling. Instinetively he recoiled be-
hind some plants. They passed. Her sunburned face, with its
high cheek-bones and its deep-set eyes, looked so happy; smiling,
tired, triumphant. Somehow he could not bear it, and when
they were gone by he stole out into the wood and threw ‘himself
down in shadow, burying his face, and choking back a horrible
dry sobbing that would keep rising in his throat.
''IX

Next day he was happy; for all the afternoon he lay out in the
shade of that same wood at her feet, gazing up through larch-
boughs. It was so wonderful, with nobody but Nature near.
Nature so alive, and busy, and so big!

Coming down from the hut the day before, he had seen a peak
looking exactly like the figure of a woman with a garment over
her head, the biggest statue in the world; from further down it
had become the shape of a bearded man, with his arm bent over
his eyes. Had she seen it? Had she noticed how all the moun-
tains in moonlight or very early morning took the form of
beasts? What he wanted most in life was to be able to make
images of beasts and creatures of all sorts, that were like—that
had—that gave out the spirit of—Nature; so that by just look-
ing at them one could have all those jolly feelings one had when
One was watching trees, and beasts, and rocks, and even some
sorts of men—but not “ English Grundys.”

So he was quite determined to study Art?

Oh yes, of course!

He would want to leave—Oxford, then!

No, oh no! Only some day he would have to.

She answered: “‘ Some never get away!”

And he said quickly: “‘ Of course, I shall never want to leave
Oxford while you are there.”

He heard her draw her breath in sharply.

“Oh yes, you will! Now help me up!” And she led the
way back to the hotel.

He stayed out on the terrace when she had gone in, restless and
unhappy the moment he was away from her. A voice close by
said:

“ Well, friend Lennan—brown study, or blue devils, which?”

There, in one of those high wicker chairs which insulate their
occupants from the world, he saw his tutor leaning back, head a
little to one side, and tips of fingers pressed together. He looked
like an idol sitting there inert, and yet—yesterday he had gone
up that mountain!

“Cheer up! You will break your neck yet! When I was your

32
''THE DARK FLOWER 33

age, I remember feeling it deeply that I was not allowed to risk
the lives of others.”

Lennan stammered out:

“JT didn’t think of that; but I thought where Mrs. Stormer
could go, I could.”

“Ah! For all our admiration we cannot quite admit—can
we, when it comes to the point?”

The boy’s loyalty broke into flame:

“Tt’s not that. I think Mrs. Stormer as good as any man—
only—only -

“Not quite so good as you, eh?”

“ A hundred times better, sir.”

Stormer smiled. Ironic beast!

“Tennan,” he said, “ distrust hyperbole.”

“ Of course, I know I’m no good at climbing,” the boy broke
out again; “ but—but—I thought where she was allowed to risk
her life, I ought to be!”

“Good! I like that.” It was said so entirely without irony
for once, that the boy was disconcerted.

“ You are young, Brother Lennan,” his tutor went on. “ Now,
at what age do you consider men develop discretion? Because,
there is just one thing always worth remembering—women have
none of that better part of valour.”

“T think women are the best things in the world,” the boy
blurted out.

“May you long have that opinion!” His tutor had risen,
and was ironically surveying his knees. “A bit stiff!” he said.
“ Tet me know when you change your views!”

“ T never shall, sir.”

“ Ah, ah! Never is a long word, Lennan. I am going to have
some tea”; and gingerly he walked away, quizzing, as it were,
with a smile, his own stiffness.

Lennan remained where he was, with burning cheeks. His
tutor’s words again had seemed directed against her. How could
a man say such things about women! If they were true, he did
not want to know; if they were not true, it was wicked to say
them. It must be awful never to have generous feelings; always
to have to be satirical. Dreadful to be like the “English
Grundys”; only different, of course, because, after all, old
Stormer was much more interesting and intelligent—ever so
much more; only, just as “superior.” “Some never get away!”

 
''34 NOVELS OF LOVE

Had she meant—from that superiority? Just down below were
a family of peasants scything and gathering in the grass. One
could imagine her doing that, and looking beautiful, with a
coloured handkerchief over her head; one could imagine her
doing anything simple—one could not imagine old Stormer
doing anything but what he did do. And suddenly the
boy felt miserable, oppressed by these dim glimmerings of lives
misplaced. And he resolved that he would not be like Stormer
when he was old! No, he would rather be a regular beast than
be like that! ...

When he went to his room to change for dinner he saw in a
glass of water a large clove carnation. Who had put it there?
Who could have put it there—but she? It had the same scent
as the mountain pinks she had dropped over him, but deeper,
richer—a scent moving, dark, and sweet. He put his lips to it
before he pinned it into his coat.

There was dancing again that night—more couples this time,
and a violin beside the piano; and she had on a black frock. He
had never seen her in black. Her face and neck were powdered
over their sunburn. The first sight of that powder gave him a
faint shock. He had not somehow thought that ladies ever put
on powder. But if she did—then it must be right! And his
eyes never left her. He saw the young German violinist hover-
ing round her, even dancing with her twice; watched her danc-
ing with others, but all without jealousy, without troubling; all
in a sort of dream. What was it? Had he been bewitched into
this queer state, bewitched by the gift of that flower in his coat?
When he danced with her, what kept him happy in her silence
and his own? There was no expectation in him of anything that
she would say, or do—no expectation, no desire. Even when
he wandered out with her on to the terrace, even when they
went down the bank and sat on a bench above the fields where
the peasants had been scything, he had still no feeling but that
quiet, dreamy adoration. The night was black and dreamy too,
for the moon was still well down behind the mountains. The
little band was playing the next waltz; but he did not move,
and did not think, as if all power of action and thought had
been stolen out of him. And the scent of the flower in his coat
rose, for there was no wind. Suddenly his heart stopped beat-
ing. She had leaned against him, he felt her shoulder press his
arm, her hair touch his cheek. He closed his eyes then, and
''THE DARK FLOWER 35

turned his face to her. He felt her lips press his mouth with a
swift, burning kiss. He sighed, stretched out his arms. There
was nothing there but air. The rustle of her dress against the
grass was all! The flower—it, too, was gone.
''X

Nor one minute all that night did Anna sleep. Was it remorse
keeping her awake, or the intoxication of memory? If she felt
that her kiss had been a crime, it was not against her husband or
herself, but against the boy—the murder of illusion, of something
sacred. But she could not help feeling a delirious happiness too,
and the thought of trying to annul what she had done did not
even occur to her.

He was ready, then, to give her a little love! Ever so little,
compared to hers, but still a little! There could be no other
meaning to that movement of his face with the closed eyes, as if
he would nestle it down on her breast.

Was she ashamed of her little manceuvres of these last few
days—ashamed of having smiled at the young violinist, of that.
late return from the mountain climb, of the flower she had given
him, of all the conscious siege she had laid since the evening her
husband came in and sat watching her, without knowing that:
she saw him? No; not really ashamed! Her remorse rose only
from the kiss. It hurt to think of that, because it was death,
the final extinction of the mother-feeling in her; the awakening
of—who knew what—in the boy! For if she was mysterious to
him, what was he not to her, with his eagerness, and his dreami-
ness, his youthful warmth, his innocence! What if it had killed
in him trust, brushed off the dew, tumbled a star down? Could
she forgive herself for that? Could she bear it if she were to
make him like so many other boys, like that young violinist ;
just a cynical youth, looking on women as what they called
“fair game”? But could she make him into such—would he
ever grow like that? Oh! surely not; or she would not have
loved him from the moment she first set eyes on him and spoke
of him as “ an angel.”

After that kiss—crime, if it were one—in the dark she had not
known what he had done, where gone—perhaps wandering, per-
haps straight up to his room. Why had she refrained, left him
there, vanished out of his arms? This she herself hardly under-
stood. Not shame, not fear; reverence perhaps—for what? For
love—for the illusion, the mystery, all that made love beautiful ;
for youth, and the poetry of it; just for the sake of the black

36
''THE DARK FLOWER 37

still night itself, and the scent of that flower—dark flower of
passion which had won him to her, and which she had stolen
back, and now wore all night long close to her neck, and in the
morning placed withered within her dress. She had been starved
so long, and so long waited for that moment—it was little won-
der if she did not clearly know why she had done just this, and
not that!

And now how should she meet him, how first look into his
eyes? Would they have changed? Would they no longer have
the straight look she so loved? It would be for her to lead, to
make the future. And she kept saying to herself: “I am not
going to be afraid. It is done. I will take what life offers!”
Of her husband she did not think at all.

But the first moment she saw the boy, she knew that something
from outside, and untoward had happened since that kiss. He
came up to her, indeed, but he said nothing, stood trembling all
over, and handed her a telegram that contained these words:
“Come back at once Wedding immediate Expect you day after
to-morrow. Cicely.” The words grew indistinct even as she
read them, and the boy’s face all blurred. Then, making an ef-
fort, she said quietly :

“Of course, you must go. You cannot miss your only sister’s
wedding.”

Without protest he looked at her; and she could hardly bear
that look—it seemed to know so little, and ask so much. She
said: “It is nothing—only a few days. You will come back,
or we will come to you.”

His face brightened at once.

“ Will you really come to us soon, at once—if they ask you?
Then I don’t mind—I—I ”’? And then he stopped, choking.

She said again:

“ Ask us. We will come.”

He seized her hand; pressed and pressed it in both his own,
then stroked it gently, and said:

“ Ob) im marine at) 7

She laughed, not wishing to cry.

In a few minutes he would have to start to catch the only
train that would get him home in time. She went and helped
him to pack. Her heart felt like lead, but, not able to bear that
look on his face again, she kept cheerfully talking of their return,
asking about his home, how to get to it, speaking of Oxford and
next term. When his things were ready she put her arms round

 
''38 NOVELS OF LOVE

his neck, and for a moment pressed him to her. Then she es-
caped. Looking back from his door, she saw him standing ex-
actly as when she had withdrawn her arms. Her cheeks were wet ;
she dried them as she went downstairs. When she felt herself
safe, she went out on the terrace. Her husband was there, and
she said to him: :

“Will you come with me into the town? I want to buy some
things.”

He raised his eyebrows, smiled dimly, and followed her. They
walked slowly down the hill into the long street of the little
town. All the time she talked of she knew not what, and all
the time she thought: ‘ His carriage will pass—his carriage will
pass !?

Several carriages went jingling by. At last he came. Sitting
there, and staring straight before him, he did not see them.
She heard her husband say:

* Hullo! Where is our young friend Lennan off to, with his
luggage—looking like a lion cub in trouble?”

She answered in a voice which she tried to make clear and
steady :

“There must be something wrong; or else it is his sister’s
wedding.”

She felt that her husband was gazing at her, and wondered
what her face was like; but at that moment the word “ Madre! ”
sounded close in her ear, and they were surrounded by a small
drove of “ English Grundys.”
''XI

Tat twenty mile drive was perhaps the worst part of the jour-
ney for the boy. It is always hard to sit still and suffer.

When Anna left him the night before, he had wandered about
in the dark, not knowing quite where he went. Then the moon
came up, and he found himself sitting under the eave of a barn
close to a chalet where all was dark and quiet; and down below
him the moon-whitened valley village—its roofs and spires and
little glamorous unreal lights.

In his evening suit, his dark ruffled hair uncovered, he would
have made a quaint spectacle for the owners of that chalet, if
they had chanced to see him seated on the hay-strewn boards
against their barn, staring before him with such wistful rapture.
But they were folk to whom sleep was precious. whi

And now it was all snatched away from him, relegated to some
immensely far-off future. Would it indeed be possible to get his
guardian to ask them down to Hayle? And would they really
come? His tutor would surely never care to visit a place right
away in the country—far from books and everything! He
frowned, thinking of his tutor, but it was with perplexity—no
other feeling. And yet, if he could not have them down there,
how could he wait the two whole months till next term began!
So went his thoughts, round and round, while the horses jogged,
dragging him further and further from her.

It was better in the train; the distraction of all the strange
crowd of foreigners, the interest of new faces and new country ;
and then sleep—a long night of it, snoozed up in his corner,
thoroughly fagged out. And next day more new country, more
new faces; and slowly, his mood changing from ache and be-
wilderment to a sense of something promised, delightful to look
forward to. Then Calais at last, and a night-crossing in a wet
little steamer, a summer gale blowing spray in his face, waves
leaping white in a black sea, and the wild sound of the wind.
On again to London, the early drive across the town, still sleepy
in August haze; an English breakfast—porridge, chops, marma-
lade. And, at last, the train for home. At all events he could
write to her, and tearing a page out of his little sketch-book, he
began :

39
''40 NOVELS OF LOVE

“JT am writing in the train, so please forgive this joggly
writing a

 

Then he did not know how to go on, for all that he wanted to
say was such as he had never even dreamed of writing—things
about his feelings which would look horrible in words; besides,
he must not put anything that might not be read by anyone, so
what was there to say?

“Tt has been such a long journey,” he wrote at last, “ away
from the Tyrol”; (he did not dare even to put “from you,”)
“TI though it would never end. But at last it has—very nearly.
I have thought a great deal about the Tyrol. It was a lovely
time—the loveliest time I have ever had. And now it’s over, I
try to console myself by thinking of the future, but not the
immediate future—that is not very enjoyable. I wonder how
the mountains are looking to-day. Please give my love to them,
especially the lion ones that come and lie out in the moonlight—
you will not recognise them from this ”—then followed a sketch.
“And this is the church we went to, with someone kneeling.
And this is meant for the ‘ English Grundys,’ looking at someone
who is coming in very late with an alpenstock—only, I am bet-
ter at the “ English Grundys’ than at the person with the alpen-
stock. I wish I were the ‘ English Grundys’ now, still in the
Tyrol. I hope I shall get a letter from you soon; and that it
will say you are getting ready to come back. My guardian will
be awfully keen for you to come and stay with us. He is not
half bad when you know him, and there will be his sister, Mrs.
Doone, and her daughter left there after the wedding. It will
be simply disgusting if you and Mr. Stormer don’t come. I wish
I could write all I feel about my lovely time in the Tyrol, but
you must please imagine it.”

And just as he had not known how to address her, so he could
not tell how to subscribe himself, and only put “ Mark Lennan.”

He posted the letter at Exeter, where he had some time to
wait; and his mind moved still more from past to future. Now
that he was nearing home he began to think of his sister. In two
days she would be gone to Italy; he would not see her again for
a long time, and a whole crowd of memories began to stretch out
hands to him. How she and he used to walk together in the
walled garden, and on the sunk croquet ground; she telling him
''THE DARK FLOWER 41

stories, her arm round his neck, because she was two years older,
and taller than he in those days. Their first talk each holiday,
when he came back to her; the first tea—with unlimited jam—
in the old mullion-windowed, flower-chintzed schoolroom, just
himself and her and old Tingle (Miss Tring, the ancient gover-
ness, whose chaperonage would now be gone), and sometimes
that kid Sylvia, when she chanced to be staying there with her
mother. Cicely had always understood him when he explained
to her how inferior school was, because nobody took any interest
in beasts or birds except to kill them; or in drawing, or making
things, or anything decent. They would go off together, ram-
bling along the river, or up the park, where everything looked
so jolly and wild—the ragged oak-trees, and huge boulders, of
whose presence old Godden, the coachman, had said: “I can’t
think but what these ha’ been washed here by the Flood, Mast’
Mark!” These and a thousand other memories beset his con-
science now. And as the train drew closer to their station, he
eagerly made ready to jump out and greet her. There was the
honeysuckle full out along the paling of the platform over the
waiting-room ; wonderful, this year—and there was she, standing
alone on the platform. No, it was not Cicely! He got out witha
blank sensation, as if those memories had played him false. It
was a girl, indeed, but she only looked about sixteen, and wore a
sunbonnet which hid her hair and half her face. She had on a
blue frock, and some honeysuckle in her waist-belt. She seemed
to be smiling at him, and expecting him to smile at her; and so
he did. She came up to him then, and said:

i'm. Sylvia?

He answered: “Oh! thanks awfully—it was awfully good of
you to come and meet me.”

“ Cicely’s so busy. It’s only the T-cart. Have you got much
luggage?”

She took up his hold-all, and he took it from her; she took
his bag, and he took it from her; then they went out to the
T-cart. A small groom stood there, holding a silver-roan cob
with a black mane and black swish tail.

She said: “ D’you mind if I drive, because I’m learning.”

And he answered: “ Oh, no! rather not.”

She got up; he noticed that her eyes looked quite excited.
Then his portmanteau came out and was deposited with the
other things behind; and he got up beside her.

She said: “ Let go, Billy.”
''42 NOVELS OF LOVE

The roan rushed past the little groom, whose top boots seemed
to twinkle as he jumped up behind. They whizzed round the
corner from the station yard, and observing that her mouth
was just a little open as though this had disconcerted her, he
said:

“ He pulls a bit.”

“ Yes—but isn’t he perfectly sweet?”

“ He is rather decent.”

Ah! when she came, he would drive her; they would go off
alone in the T-cart, and he would show her all the country round.

He was re-awakened by the words:

“ Oh! I know he’s going toshy!” At once there was a swerve.
The roan was cantering.

They had passed a pig.

“ Doesn’t he look lovely now? Ought I to have whipped him
when he shied? ”

“ Rather not.”

(79 Why ? 29

“‘ Because horses are horses, and pigs are pigs; it’s natural for
horses to shy at them.”

ce Oh ! 29

He looked up at her then, sidelong. The curve of her cheek
and chin looked very soft, and rather jolly.

“J didn’t know you, you know!” he said. “ You’ve grown up
so awfully.”

“T knew you at once. Your voice is still furry.”

There was another silence, till she said:

“ He does pull, rather—doesn’t he, going home? ”

“ Shall I drive?”

“Yes, please.”

He stood up and took the reins, and she slipped past under
them in front of him; her hair smelt exactly like hay, as she was
softly bumped against him.

She kept regarding him steadily with very blue eyes, now that
she was relieved of driving.

“ Cicely was afraid you weren’t coming,” she said suddenly.
“What sort of people are those old Stormers?”

He felt himself grow very red, choked something down, and
answered :

“It’s only he that’s old. She’s not more than about thirty-
five.”

* That. ts old?

22
''THE DARK FLOWER 43

He restrained the words: “ Of course it’s old to a kid like
you!” And, instead, he looked at her. Was she exactly a kid?
She seemed quite tall (for a girl) and not very thin, and there
was something frank and soft about her face, and as if she wanted
you to be nice to her.

“Ts she very pretty?”

This time he did not go red, such was the disturbance that
question made in him. If he said: “ Yes,” it was like letting
the world know his adoration; but to say anything less would
be horrible, disloyal. So he did say: “ Yes,” listening hard to the
tone of his own voice.

“T thought she was. Do you like her very much?”

Again he struggled with that thing in his throat, and again
suid: Yes.”

He wanted to hate this girl, yet somehow could not—she looked
so soft and confiding. She was staring before her now, her lips
still just parted, so evidently that had not been because of
Bolero’s pulling; they were pretty all the same, and so was her
short, straight little nose, and her chin, and she was awfully
fair. His thoughts flew back to that other face—so splendid, so
full of life. Suddenly he found himself unable to picture it—
for the first time since he had started on his journey it would not
come before him.

~ OT ook”

Her hand was pulling at his arm. There in the field over the
hedge a buzzard hawk was dropping like a stone.

“On Meug), Onl IVs .gop i

She was covering her face with both her hands, and the hawk,
with a young rabbit in its claws, was sailing up again. It
looked so beautiful that he did not somehow feel sorry for the
rabbit ; but he wanted to stroke and comfort her, and said:

“ Tt’s all right, Sylvia; it really is. The rabbit’s dead already,
you know. And it’s quite natural.”

She took her hands away from a face that looked just as if
she was going to cry.

“ Poor little rabbit! It was such a little one!”
''XII

On the afternoon of the day following he sat in the smoking-
room with a prayer-book in his hand, and a frown on his fore-
head, reading the Marriage Service. The book had been effec-
tively designed for not spoiling the figure when carried in a
pocket. But this did not matter, for even if he could have read
the words, he would not have known what they meant, seeing that
he was thinking how he could make a certain petition to a
certain person sitting just behind at a large bureau with a
sliding top, examining artificial flies.

He fixed at last upon this form:

“Gordy!” (Why Gordy no one quite knew now—whether
because his name was George, or by way of corruption from
Guardian.) “When Cis is gone it'll be rather awful, won’t
We

* Not, a bit.”

Mr. Heatherley was a man of perhaps sixty-four, if indeed
guardians have ages, and like a doctor rather than a squire;
his face square and puffy, his eyes always half-closed, and his
curly mouth using bluntly a voice of that refined coarseness pe-
culiar to people of old family.

“But it will, you know!”

“Well, supposin’ it is?”

“T only wondered if you’d mind asking Mr. and Mrs. Stormer
to come here for a little—they were awfully kind to me out
there.”

“Strange man and woman! My dear fellow!”

“ Mr. Stormer likes fishing.”

“Does he? And what does she like?”

Very grateful that his back was turned, the boy said:

“T don’t know—anything—she’s awfully nice.”

PAG) Pretty?”

e answered faintly.

‘I don’t know what you call pretty, Gordy.”

He felt, rather than saw, his guardian scrutinising him with
those half-closed eyes under their gouty lids.

“ All right; do as you like. Have ’em here and have done
with it, by all means.”

44
''THE DARK FLOWER 45

Did his heart jump? Not quite; but it felt warm and happy,
and he said:

“Thanks awfully, Gordy. It’s most frightfully decent of
you,” and turned again to the Marriage Service. He could
make out some of it. In places it seemed to him fine, and in
other places queer. About obeying, for instance. If you loved
anybody, it seemed rotten to expect them to obey you. If you
loved them and they loved you, there couldn’t ever be any
question of obeying, because you would both do the things
always of your own accord. And if they didn’t love you, or you
them, then—oh! then it would be simply too disgusting for
anything, to go on living with a person you didn’t love or who
didn’t love you. But of course she didn’t love his tutor. Had
she once? Those bright doubting eyes, that studiously satiric
mouth came very clearly up before him. You could not love
them ; and yet—he was really very decent. A feeling as of pity,
almost of affection, rose in him for his remote tutor. It was
queer to feel so, since the last time they had talked together out
there, on the terrace, he had not felt at all like that.

The noise of the bureau top sliding down aroused him; Mr.
Heatherley was closing in the remains of the artificial flies. That
meant he would be going out to fish. And the moment he heard
the door shut, Mark sprang up, slid back the bureau top, and
began to write his letter. It was hard work.

“Dear Mrs. StorMEr,

“ My guardian wishes me to beg you and Mr. Stormer to pay
us a visit as soon as you come back from the Tyrol. Please
tell Mr. Stormer that only the very best fishermen—like him
—can catch our trout; the rest catch our trees. This is me
catching our trees (here followed a sketch). My sister is going
to be married to-morrow, and it will be disgusting afterwards
unless you come. So do come, please. And with my very best
greetings,

« lama,
“Your humble servant,
“M. Lennan.”

When he had stamped this production and dropped it in the
letter-box, he had the oddest feeling, as if he had been let out
of school; a desire to rush about, to frolic. What should he do?
Cis, of course, would be busy—they were all busy about the
''46 NOVELS OF LOVE

wedding. He would go and saddle Bolero, and jump him in
the park; or should he go down along the river and watch the
jays? Both seemed lonely occupations. And he stood in the
window—dejected. At the age of five, walking with his nurse,
he had been overheard remarking: “ Nurse, I want to eat a
biscuit—all the way I want to eat a biscuit!” and it was still
rather so with him perhaps—all the way he wanted to eat a
biscuit. He bethought him then of his modelling, and went
out to the little empty greenhouse where he kept his master-
pieces. They seemed to him now quite horrible—and two of
them, the sheep and the turkey, he marked out for summary
destruction. The idea occurred to him that he might try and
model that hawk escaping with the little rabbit; but when he
tried, no nice feeling came, and flinging the things down he
went out. He ran along the unweeded path to the tennis ground
—lawn tennis was then just coming in. The grass looked very
rough. But then, everything about that little manor-house was
left rather wild and anyhow; why, nobody quite knew, and no-
body seemed to mind. He stood there scrutinising the condition
of the ground. A sound of humming came to his ears. He
got up on the wall. There was Sylvia sitting in the field,
making a wreath of honeysuckle. He stood very quiet and
listened. She looked pretty—lost in her tune. Then he slid
down off the wall, and said gently:

* Hallo!”

She looked round at him, her eyes very wide open.

“Your voice is jolly, Sylvia!”

* Oh, nel”?

“Tt is. Come and climb a tree!”

“* Where? ”

“Tn the park, of course.”

hey were some time selecting the tree, many being too easy
for him, and many too hard for her; but one was found at last,
an oak of great age, and frequented by rooks. Then, insisting
that she must be roped to him, he departed to the house for
some blind-cord. ‘The climb began at four o’clock—named by
him the ascent of the Cimone della Pala. He led the mo-
mentous expedition, taking a hitch of the blind-cord round a
branch before he permitted her to move. Two or three times
he was obliged to make the cord fast and return to help her,
for she was not an “expert”; her arms seemed soft, and she
was inclined to straddle instead of trusting to one foot. But
''THE DARK FLOWER 4%

at last they were settled, streaked indeed with moss, on the top
branch but two. They rested there, silent, listening to the rooks
soothing an outraged dignity. Save for this slowly subsiding
demonstration it was marvellously peaceful and remote up there,
half-way to a blue sky thinly veiled from them by the crinkled
brown-green leaves. The peculiar dry mossy smell of an oak-
tree was disturbed into the air by the least motion of their feet
or hands against the bark. They could hardly see the ground,
and all around, other gnarled trees barred off any view.

He said:

“Tf we stay up here till it’s dark we might see owls.”

“Oh, no! Owls are horrible!”

“What! They’re lovely—especially white owls.”

“JT can’t stand their eyes, and they squeak so when they’re
hunting.”

“Oh! but that’s so jolly, and their eyes are beautiful.”

“Theyre always catching mice and little chickens; all sorts
of little things.”

“ But they don’t mean to; they only want them to eat. Don’t
you think things are jolliest at night?”

She slipped her arm in his.

“No; I don’t like the dark.”

“Why not? It’s splendid—when things get mysterious.”
He dwelt lovingly on that word.

“JT don’t like mysterious things. They frighten you.”

“Oh, Sylvia!”

“No, I like early morning—especially in spring, when it’s
beginning to get leafy.”

“Well, of course.”

She was leaning against him, for safety, just a little; and
stretching out his arm, he took good hold of the branch to make
a back for her. There was a silence. Then he said:

“Tf you could only have one tree, which would you have?”

“ Not oaks. Limes—no—birches. Which would you?”

He pondered. So many trees were perfect. Birches and
limes, of course; but beeches and cypresses, and yews, and
cedars, and holm-oaks—almost, and plane-trees; then he said
suddenly :

“ Pines; I mean the big ones with reddish stems and branches
pretty high up.”

Ss Why ? 29

Again he pondered. It was very important to explain exactly
''48 NOVELS OF LOVE

why ; his feelings about everything were concerned in this. And
while he mused she gazed at him, as if surprised to see anyone
think so deeply. At last he said:

“ Because they’re independent and dignified and never quite
cold, and their branches seem to brood, but chiefly because those
I mean are generally out of the common where you find them.
You know—just one or two, strong and dark, standing out
against the sky.”

“'They’re too dark.”

It occurred to him suddenly that he had forgotten larches.
They, of course, could be heavenly, when you lay under them and
looked up at the sky, as he had that afternoon out there. Then
he heard her say:

“Tf I could only have one flower, I should have
lilies of the valley, the small ones that grow wild and smell
so jolly.”

He had a swift vision of another flower, dark—very different,
and was silent.

“What would you have, Mark?” Her voice sounded a little
hurt. “ You are thinking of one, aren’t you? ”

He said honestly:

Yes Tam.”

* Which ?”

“Tt’s dark, too; you wouldn’t care for it a bit.”

“How d’you know?”

* A clove carnation.”

“But I do like it—only—not very much.”

He nodded solemnly.

“T knew you wouldn’t.”

Then a silence fell between them. She had ceased to lean
against him, and he missed the cosy friendliness of it. Now
that their voices and the cawings of the rooks had ceased, there
was nothing heard but the dry rustle of the leaves, and the plain-
tive cry of a buzzard hawk hunting over the little tor across the
river. There were nearly always two up there, quartering the
sky. To the boy the silence was lovely—like Nature talking to
you—Nature always talked in silences. The beasts, the birds,
the insects, only really showed themselves when you were still;
you had to be awfully quiet, too, for flowers and plants, other-
wise you couldn’t see the real jolly separate life there was in
them. Even the boulders down there, that old Godden thought
had been washed up by the Flood, never showed you what queer
''THE DARK FLOWER 49

shapes they had, and let you feel close to them, unless you were
thinking of nothing else. Sylvia, after all, was better in that
way than he had expected. She could keep quiet (he had thought
girls hopeless) ; she was gentle, and it was rather jolly to watch
her. ‘Through the leaves came the faint far tinkle of the tea-
bell.

She said: “ We must get down.”

It was much too jolly to go in, really. But if she wanted her
tea~girls always wanted tea! And, twisting the cord carefully
round the branch, he began to superintend her descent. About
to follow, he heard her cry:

“Oh, Mark! Tm stuck—I’m stuck! I can’t reach it with
my foot! I’m swinging!” And he saw that she was swinging
by her hands and the cord.

“Let go; drop on to the branch below—the cord’ll hold you
straight till you grab the trunk.” .

Her voice mounted piteously :

“T can’t—I really can’t—I should slip!”

He tied the cord, and slithered hastily to the branch below
her; then, bracing himself against the trunk he clutched her
round the waist and knees; but the taut cord held her up, and
she would not come to anchor. He could not hold her and untie
the cord, which was fast round her waist. If he let her go with
one hand, and got out his knife, he would never be able to cut
and hold her at the same time. For a moment he thought he
had better climb up again and slack off the cord, but he could
see by her face that she was getting frightened; he could feel
it by the quivering of her body.

“Tf I heave you up,” he said, “can you get hold again
above?” And, without waiting for an answer, he heaved. She
caught hold frantically.

* Hold on just for a second.”

She did not answer, but he saw that her face had gone very
white. He snatched out his knife and cut the cord. She clung
just for that moment, then came loose into his arms, and he
hauled her to him against the trunk. Safe there, she buried
her face on his shoulder. He began to murmur to her and
smooth her softly, with quite a feeling of its being his business
to comfort her like this, to protect her. He knew she was cry-
ing, but she let no sound escape, and he was very careful not
to show that he knew, for fear she should feel ashamed. He
wondered if he ought to kiss her. At last he did, on the top
''50 NOVELS OF LOVE

of her head, very gently. Then she put up her face and said
she was a beast. And he kissed her again on an eyebrow.

After that she seemed all right, and very gingerly they de-
scended to the ground, where shadows were beginning to
lengthen over the fern and the sun to slant into their eyes.
''XII

THE night after Cicely’s wedding the boy stood at the window
of his pleasant attic bedroom, with one wall sloping, and its
faint smell of mice. He was tired and excited, and his brain
full of pictures. This was his first wedding, and he was haunted
by a vision of his sister’s little white form, and her face with
its starry eyes. She was gone—his no more! How fearful the
Wedding March had sounded on that organ—that awful old
wheezer; and the sermon! One didn’t want to hear that sort
of thing when one felt inclined to cry. Even Gordy had looked
rather boiled when he was giving her away. With perfect dis-
‘tinctness he could still see the group before the altar rails, just
as if he had not been a part of it himself. Cis in her white,
Sylvia in fluffy grey; his impassive brother-in-law’s tall figure ;
Gordy looking queer in a black coat, with a very yellow face,
and eyes still half-closed. The rotten part of it all had been
that you wanted to be just feeling, and you had to be thinking
of the ring, and your gloves, and whether the lowest button of
your white waistcoat was properly undone. Girls could do both,
it seemed—Cis seemed to be seeing something wonderful all the
time, and Sylvia had looked quite holy. He himself had been too
conscious of the rector’s voice, and the sort of professional man-
ner with which he did it all, as if he were making up a prescrip-
tion, with directions how to take it. And yet it was all rather
beautiful in a kind of fashion, every face turned one way, and
a tremendous hush—except for poor old Godden’s blowing of his
nose with his enormous red handkerchief; and the soft darkness
up in the roof, and down in the pews; and the sunlight bright-
ening the south windows. All the same, it would have been
much jollier just taking hands by themselves somewhere, and
saying out before God what they really felt—because, after all,
God was everything, everywhere, not only in stuffy churches.
That was hoW he would like to be married, out of doors on a
starry night like this, when everything felt wonderful all round
you. Surely God wasn’t half as small as people seemed always
making Him—a sort of superior man a little bigger than them-
selves! Hven the very most beautiful and wonderful and awful
things one could imagine or make, could only be just nothing
51
''52 NOVELS OF LOVE

to a God who had a temple like the night out there. But then
you couldn’t be married alone, and no girl would ever like to be
married without rings and flowers and dresses, and words that
made it all feel small and cosy! Cis might have, perhaps, only
she wouldn’t, because of not hurting other people’s feelings;
but Sylvia—never—she would be afraid. Only, of course, she
was young! And the thread of his thoughts broke—and scat-
tered like beads from a string.

Leaning out, and resting his chin on his hands, he drew the
night air into his lungs. Honeysuckle, or was it the scent of
lilies still? The stars all out, and lots of owls to-night—four
at least. What would night be like without owls and stars?
But that was it—you never could think what things would be
like if they weren’t just what and where they were. You never
knew what was coming, either; and yet, when it came, it seemed
as if nothing else ever could have come. That was queer—you
could do anything you liked until you’d done it, but when you
had done it, then you knew, of course, that you must always have
had to . . . What was that light, below and to the left? Whose
room? Old Tingle’s—no, the little spare room—Sylvia’s! She
must be awake, then! He leaned far out, and whispered in the
voice she had said was still furry:

Y pyivia! 7

The light flickered, he could just see her head appear, with
hair all loose, and her face turning up to him. He could only
half see, half imagine it, mysterious, blurry; and he whispered:

“JTsn’t this jolly?”

The whisper travelled back:

“ Awfully.”

* Aren’t you sleepy?”

} No; are your”

“Not a bit. D’you hear the owls? ”

“ Rather.”

“ Doesn’t it smell good?”

“ Perfect. Can you see me?”

“Only just, not too much. Can you?”

“JT can’t see your nose. Shall I get the candle”

“ No—that’d spoil it. What are you sitting on?”

“The window sill.”

“Tt doesn’t twist your neck, does it? ”

“ No—o—only a little bit.”

“ Are you hungry?”
''THE DARK FLOWER 53

“ Yes?

“Wait half a shake. I'll let down some chocolate in my big
bath towel; itll swing along to you—reach out.”

A dim white arm reached out.

“ Catch! I say, you won’t get cold?”

“ Rather not.”

“It’s too jolly to sleep, isn’t it?”

“ Mark!”

“ WWiege

“Which star is yours? Mine is the white one over the top
branch of the big sycamore, from here.”

“Mine is that twinkling red one over the summer house,
Sylvia!”

ce ‘Voss.

» Catch |”

* Oh! I couldn’t—what was it?”

“ Nothing.”

“No, but what was it?”

“Only my star. It’s caught in your hair.”

79 Oh! 1 99

“ Listen!”

Silence, then, until ne awed whisper:

14 Wha 1 5 9

And his floating down, dying away:

* Gavel)?

What had stirred—some window opened? Cautiously he
spied along the face of the dim house. There was no light
anywhere, nor any shifting blurr of white at her window below.
All was dark, remote—still sweet with the scent of something
jolly. And then he saw what that something was. All over
the wall below his window white jessamine was in flower—
stars, not only in the sky. Perhaps the sky was really a field
of white flowers; and God walked there, and plucked the
stares 65"

The next morning there was a letter on his plate when he
came down to breakfast. He couldn’t open it with Sylvia on
one side of him, and old Tingle on the other. Then with a sort
of anger he did open it. He need not have been afraid. It was
written so that anyone might have read; it told of a climb, of
bad weather, said they were coming home. Was he relieved,
disturbed, pleased at their coming back, or only uneasily
ashamed? She had not got his second letter yet. He could
''‘Ba. NOVELS OF LOVE

feel old Tingle looking round at him with those queer sharp
twinkling eyes of hers, and Sylvia regarding him quite frankly.
And conscious that he was growing red, he said to himself:
“T won't!” And did not. In three days they would be at
Oxford. Would they come on here at once? Old Tingle was
speaking. He heard Sylvia answer: “No, I don’t like ‘ bop-
sies.’ Theyre so hard!” It was their old name for high cheek-
bones. Sylvia certainly had none, her cheeks went softly up
to her eyes.

“Do you, Mark?”

He said slowly:

“On some people.”

“People who have them are strong-willed, aren’t they ? ”

Was she—Anna—strong-willed? It came to him that he did
not know at all what she was.

When breakfast was over and he had got away to his old
greenhouse, he had a strange, unhappy time. He was a beast,
he had not been thinking of her half enough! He took the letter
out and frowned at it horribly. Why could he not feel more?
What was the matter with him? Why was he such a brute—
not to be thinking of her day and night? For long he stood
disconsolate, in the little dark greenhouse among the images of
his beasts, the letter in his hand.

He stole out presently, and got down to the river unobserved.
Comforting—that crisp, gentle sound of water; ever so com-
forting to sit on a stone, very still, and wait for things to happen
round you. You lost yourself that way, just became branches,
and stones, and water, and birds, and sky. You did not feel
such a beast. Gordy would never understand why he did not
care for fishing—one thing trying to catch another—instead of
watching and understanding what things were. You never got
to the end of looking into water, or grass or fern; always some-
thing queer and new. It was like that, too, with yourself, if
you sat down and looked properly—most awfully interesting to
see things working in your mind.

A soft rain had begun to fall, hissing gently on the leaves, but
he had still a boy’s love of getting wet, and stayed where he was,
on the stone. Some people saw fairies in woods and down in
water, or said they did; that did not seem to him much fun.
What was really interesting was noticing that each thing was
different from every other thing, and what made it so; you must
see that before you could draw or model decently. It was
''THE DARK FLOWER 55

fascinating to see your creatures coming out with shapes of
their very own; without your understanding how. But this
vacation he was no good—couldn’t draw or model a bit!

A jay had settled about forty yards away, and remained in
full view, attending to his many-coloured feathers. Of all
things, birds were the most fascinating! He watched it a long
time, and when it flew on, followed it over thé high wall up
into the park. He heard the lunch-bell ring in the far distance,
but did not go in. So long as he was out there in the soft rain
with the birds and trees and other creatures, he was free from
that unhappy feeling of the morning. He did not go back till
nearly seven; properly wet through, and very hungry.

All through dinner he noticed that Sylvia seemed to be watch-
ing him, as if wanting to ask him something. She looked very
soft in her white frock, open at the neck; and her hair almost
the colour of special moonlight, so goldy-pale; and he wanted
* her to understand that it wasn’t a bit because of her that he
had been out alone all day. After dinner, when they were
getting the table ready to play “red nines,” he did murmur:

“Did you sleep last night—after? ”

She nodded fervently to that.

It was raining really hard now, swishing and dripping out
in the darkness, and he whispered:

“Our stars would be drowned to-night.”

“Do you really think we have stars?”

“We might. But mine’s safe, of course; your hair ts jolly,
Sylvia.”

She gazed at him, very sweet and surprised.
''XIV

Anna did not receive the boy’s letter in the Tyrol. It fol-
lowed her to Oxford. She was just going out when it came,
and she took it up with the mingled beatitude and almost sicken-
ing tremor that a lover feels touching the loved one’s letter.
She would not open it in the street, but carried it all the way
to the garden of a certain College, and sat down to read it under
the cedar-tree. That little letter, so short, boyish, and dry,
transported her halfway to heaven. She was to see him again
at once, not to wait weeks, with the fear that he would quite
forget her! Her husband had said at breakfast that Oxford
without “the dear young clowns ” assuredly was charming, but,
Oxford “full of tourists and other strange bodies” as certainly
was not. Where should they go? Thank heaven, the letter
- could be shown him! For all that, a little stab of pain went
through her that there was not one word which made it unsuit-
able to show. Still, she was happy. Never had her favourite
College garden seemed so beautiful, with each tree and flower
so cared for, and the very wind excluded; never had the birds
seemed so tame and friendly. The sun shone softly, even the
clouds were luminous and joyful. She sat a long time, musing,
and went back forgetting all she had come out to do. Having
both courage and decision, she did not leave the letter to burn a
hole in her corsets, but gave it to her husband at lunch, looking
him in the face, and saying carelessly :

“ Providence, you see, answers your question.”

He read it, raised his eyebrows, smiled, and, without looking
up, murmured :

“You wish to prosecute this romantic episode?”

Did he mean anything—or was it simply his way of putting
things ?

“T naturally want to be anywhere but here.”

“Perhaps you would like to go alone?”

He said that, of course, knowing she could not say: Yes. And
she answered simply: “ No.”

“Then let us both go—on Monday. I will catch the young
man’s trout; thou shalt catch—h’m !—he shall catch What
is it he catches—trees? Good! That’s settled.”

56

 
''THE DARK FLOWER BY

And three days later, without another word exchanged on the
subject, they started.

Was she grateful to him? No. Afraid of him? No. Scorn-
ful of him? Not quite. But she was afraid of herself, horribly.
How would she ever be able to keep herself in hand, how dis-
guise from these people that she loved their boy? It was her
desperate mood that she feared. But since she so much wanted
all the best for him that life could give, surely she would have
the strength to do nothing that might harm him. Yet she was
afraid.

He was there at the station to meet them, in riding things
and a nice rough Norfolk jacket that she did not recognise,
though she thought she knew his clothes by heart; and as the
train came slowly to a standstill the memory of her last moment
with him, up in his room amid the luggage she had helped to
pack, very nearly overcame her. It seemed so hard to have to
meet him coldly, formally, to have to wait—who knew how long
—for a minute with him alone! And he was so polite, so beau-
tifully considerate, with all the manners of a host; hoping she
wasn’t tired, hoping Mr. Stormer had brought his fishing-rod,
though they had lots, of course, they could lend him; hoping
the weather would be fine; hoping that they wouldn’t mind
having to drive three miles, and busying himself about their
luggage. All this when she just wanted to take him in her
arms and push his hair back from his forehead, and look at
him!

He did not drive with them—he had thought they would be
too crowded—but followed, keeping quite close in the dust to
point out the scenery, mounted on a “ palfrey,” as her husband
called the roan with the black swish tail.

This countryside, so rich and yet a little wild, the independ-
ent-looking cottages, the old dark cosy manor-house, all was
very new to one used to Oxford, and to London, and to little
else of England. And all was delightful. Even Mark’s guardian
seemed to her delightful. For Gordy, when absolutely forced
to face an unknown woman, could bring to the encounter a
certain bluff ingratiation. His sister, too, Mrs. Doone, with
her faded gentleness, seemed soothing.

When Anna was alone in her room, reached by an unexpected
little stairway, she stood looking at its carved four-poster bed
and the wide lattice window with chintz curtains, and the flowers
‘in a blue bowl. Yes, all was delightful. And yet! What was
''58 NOVELS OF LOVE

it? What had she missed? Ah, she was a fool to fret! It was
only his anxiety that they should be comfortable, his fear that
he might betray himself. Out there those last few days—his
eyes! And now! She brooded earnestly over what dress she
should put on. She, who tanned so quickly, had almost lost
her sunburn in the week of travelling and Oxford. ‘To-day her
eyes looked tired, and she was pale. She was not going to
disdain anything that might help. She had reached thirty-six
last month, and he would be nineteen to-morrow! She decided
on black. In black she knew that her neck looked whiter, and
the colour of her eyes and hair stranger. She put on no
jewellery, did not even pin a rose at her breast, took white
gloves. Since her husband did not come to her room, she went
up the little stairway to his. She surprised him ready dressed,
standing by the fireplace, smiling faintly. What was he thinking
of, standing there with that smile? Was there blood in him
at all?

He inclined his head slightly and said:

“Good! Chaste as the night! Black suits you. Shall we
find our way down to these savage halls?”

And they went down.

Everyone was already there, waiting. A single neighbouring
squire and magistrate, by name Trusham, had been bidden, to
make numbers equal.

Dinner was announced; they went in. At the round table
in a dining-room, all black oak, with many candles, and terrible
portraits of departed ancestors, Anna sat between the magistrate
and Gordy. Mark was opposite, between a quaint-looking old
lady and a young girl who had not been introduced, a girl in
white, with very fair hair and very white skin, blue eyes, and
lips a little parted; a daughter evidently of the faded Mrs.
Doone. A girl like a silvery moth, like a forget-me-not! Anna
found it hard to take her eyes away from this girl’s face; not
that she admired her exactly; pretty she was—yet; but weak,
with those parted lips and soft chin, and almost wistful look,
as if her deep-blue half-eager eyes were in spite of her. But
she was young—so young! That was why not to watch her
seemed impossible. “Sylvia Doone?” Indeed! Yes. A soft
name, a pretty name—and very like her! Every time her eyes
could travel away from her duty to Squire Trusham, and to
Gordy (on both of whom she was clearly making an impression) ,
she gazed at this girl, sitting there by the boy, and whenever °
''THE DARK FLOWER 59,

those two young things smiled and spoke together she felt her
heart contract and hurt her. Was this why that something had
gone out of his eyes? Ah, she was foolish! If every girl or |
woman the boy knew was to cause such a feeling in her, what
would life be like? And her will hardened against her fears.
She was looking brilliant herself; and she saw that the girl in
her turn could not help gazing at her eagerly, wistfully, a little
bewildered—hatefully young. And the boy? Slowly, surely,
as a magnet draws, Anna could feel that she was drawing him,
could see him stealing chances to look at her. Once she sur-
prised him full. What troubled eyes! It was not the old
adoring face; yet she knew from its expression that she could
make him want her—make him jealous—easily fire him with her
kisses, if she would.

And the dmner wore to an end. Then came the moment
when the girl and she must meet under the eyes of the mother,
and that sharp, quaint-looking old governess. It would be a
hard moment, that! And it came—a hard moment and a long
one, for Gordy sat full span over his wine. But Anna had not
served her time beneath the gaze of upper Oxford for nothing ;
she managed to be charming, full of interest and questions in
her still rather foreign accent. Miss Doone—soon she became
Sylvia—must show her all the treasure and antiquities. Was it
too dark to go out just to look at the old house by night? Oh,
no. Not a bit. There were goloshes in the hall. And they
went, the girl leading, and talking of Anna knew not what, so
absorbed was she in thinking how for a moment, just a moment,
she could contrive to be with the boy alone.

It was not remarkable, this old house, but it was his home—
might some day perhaps be his. And houses at night were
strangely alive with their window eyes.

“That is my room,” the girl said, “where the jessamine is—
you can just see it. Mark’s is above—look, under where the
eave hangs out, away to the left. The other night sf

“Yes; the other night?”

“ Oh, I don’t ! Listen. That’s an owl. We have heaps
of owls. Mark likes them. I don’t, much.”

Always Mark!

“He’s awfully keen, you see, about all beasts and birds—he
models them. Shall I show you his workshop ?—it’s an old
greenhouse. Here, you can see in.”

There through the glass Anna indeed could just see the boy’s

 

 

 
''60 NOVELS OF LOVE

quaint creations huddling in the dark on a bare floor, a grotesque
company of small monsters. She murmured:

“Yes, I see them, but I won’t really look unless he brings me
himself.”

“Oh, he’s sure to. They interest him more than anything
in the world.”

For all her cautious resolutions Anna could not for the life
of her help saying:

“What, more than you?”

The girl gave her a wistful stare before she answered:

“Oh! I don’t count much.”

Anna laughed, and took her arm. How soft and young it
felt! A pang went through her heart, half jealous, half re-
morseful.

“Do you know,” she said, “that you are very sweet?”

The girl did not answer.

** Are you his cousin? ”

“No. Gordy is only Mark’s uncle by marriage; my mother
is Gordy’s sister—so I’m nothing.”

Nothing!

“T see—just what you English call ‘a connection.’ ”

They were silent, seeming to examine the night; then the
girl said:

“T wanted to see you awfully. You’re not like what I
thought.”

“Oh! And what did you think?”

“T thought you would have dark eyes, and Venetian red
hair, and not be quite so tall. Of course, I haven’t any imagina-
tion.”

They were at the door again when the girl said that, and the
hall light was falling on her; her slip of a white figure showed
clear. Young—how young she looked! Everything she said—
so young!

And Anna murmured: “ And you are—more than I thought,
too.”

Just then the men came out from the dining-room; her hus-
band with the look on his face which denoted he had been well
listened to; Squire Trusham laughing as a man does who has no
sense of humour; Gordy having a curly, slightly asphyxiated air;
and the boy his pale, brooding look, as though he had lost touch
with his surroundings. He wavered towards her, seemed to lose
himself, went and sat down by the old governess. Was it because
''THE DARK FLOWER 61

he did not dare to come up to her, or only because he saw the
old lady sitting alone? It might well be that.

And the evening, so different from what she had dreamed of,
closed in. Squire Trusham was gone in his high dog-cart, with
his famous mare whose exploits had entertained her all through
dinner. Her candle had been given her; she had said good-
night to all but Mark. What should she do when she had his
hand in hers? She would be alone with him in that grasp,
whose strength no one could see. And she did not know whether
to clasp it passionately, or to let it go coolly back to its owner;
whether to claim him or to wait. But she was unable to help
pressing it feverishly. At once in his face she saw again that
troubled look; and her heart smote her. She let it go, and that
she might not see him say good-night to the girl, turned and
mounted to her room.

Fully dressed, she flung herself on the bed, and there lay, her
handkerchief across her mouth, gnawing at its edges.
''xv

Marx’s nineteenth birthday rose in grey mist, slowly dropped
its veil to the grass, and shone clear and glistening. He woke
early. From his window he could see nothing in the steep park
_ but the soft blue-grey, balloon-shaped oaks suspended one above
the other among the round-topped boulders. It was in early
morning that he always got his strongest feeling of wanting to
model things; then and after dark, when, for want of light, it
was no use. This morning he had the craving badly, and the
sense of not knowing how weighed down his spirit. His draw-
ings, his models—they were all so bad, so fumbly. If only this
had been his twenty-first birthday, and he had his money, and
could do what he liked. He would not stay in England. He
would be off to Athens, or Rome, or even to Paris, and work
till he could do something. And in his holidays he would study
animals and birds in wild countries where there were plenty
of them, and you could watch them in their haunts. It was
stupid having to stay in a place like Oxford; but at the thought
of what Oxford meant, his roaming fancy, like a bird hypnotised
by a hawk, fluttered, stayed suspended, and dived back to earth.
And that feeling of wanting to make things suddenly left him.
It was as though he had woken up, his real self ; then—lost that
self again. Very quietly he made his way downstairs. The
garden door was not shuttered, not even locked—it must have
been forgotten overnight. Last night! He had never thought
he would feel like this when she came—so bewildered, and con-
fused; drawn towards her, but by something held back. And
he felt impatient, angry with himself, almost with her. Why
could he not be just simply happy, as this morning was happy ?
He got his field-glasses and searched the meadow that led down
to the river. Yet, there were several rabbits out. With the
white marguerites and the dew cobwebs, it was all moon-flowery
and white; and the rabbits being there made it perfect. He
wanted one badly to model from, and for a moment was tempted
to get his rook rifle—but what was the good of a dead rabbit—
besides, they looked so happy! He put the glasses down and
went towards his greenhouse to get a drawing block, thinking
to sit on the wall and make a sort of Midsummer Night’s Dream
62
''THE DARK FLOWER 63

sketch of flowers and rabbits. Someone was there, bending down
and doing something to his creatures. Who had the cheek?
Why, it was Sylvia—in her dressing-gown! He grew hot, then
cold, with anger. He could not bear anyone in that holy place!
It was hateful to have his things even looked at; and she—
she seemed to be fingering them. He pulled the door open
with a jerk, and said: “ What are you doing?” He was indeed
so stirred by righteous wrath that he hardly noticed the gasp
she gave, and the collapse of her figure against the wall. She
ran past him, and vanished without a word. He went up to his
creatures and saw that she had placed on the head of each one
of them a little sprig of jessamine flower. Why! It was
idiotic! He could see nothing at first but the ludicrousness of
flowers on the heads of his beasts! Then the desperation of this
attempt to imagine something graceful, something that would
give him pleasure touched him; for he saw now that this was
a birthday decoration. From that it was only a second before
he was horrified with himself. Poor little Sylvia! What a
brute he was! She had plucked all that jessamine, hung out
of her window and risked falling to get hold of it; and she
had woken up early and come down in her dressing-gown just
to do something that she thought he would like! MHorrible—
what he had done! Now, when it was too late, he saw, only
too clearly, her startled white face and quivering lips, and the
way she had shrunk against the wall. How pretty she had
looked in her dressing-gown with her hair all about her, fright-
ened like that! He would do anything now to make up to her
for having been such a perfect beast! The feeling, always a
little with him, that he must look after her—dating, no doubt,
from days when he had protected her from the bulls that were
not there; and the feeling of her being so sweet and decent to
him always; and some other feeling too—all these suddenly
reached poignant climax. He simply must make it up to her!
He ran back into the house and stole upstairs. Outside her
room he listened with all his might, but could hear nothing;
then tapped softly with one nail, and, putting his mouth to
the keyhole, whispered: “ Sylvia!” Again and again he whis-
pered her name. He even tried the handle, meaning to open
the door an inch, but it was bolted. Once he thought he heard
a noise like sobbing, and this made him still more wretched.
At last he gave it up; she would not come, would not be con-
soled. He deserved it, he knew, but it was very hard. And
''64 NOVELS OF LOVE

dreadfully dispirited he went up to his room, took a bit of
paper, and tried to write:

“ DEAREST SYLVIA,

“It was most awfully sweet of you to put your stars on my
beasts. It was just about the most sweet thing you could have
done. I am an awful brute, but, of course, if I had only known
what you were doing, I should have loved it. Do forgive me;
I deserve it, I know—only it is my birthday.

“Your sorrowful
+ Mark”

He took this down, slipped it under her door, tapped so that
she might notice it, and stole away. It relieved his mind a little,
and he went downstairs again.

Back in the greenhouse, sitting on a stool, he ruefully con-
templated those chapletted beasts. They consisted of a crow,
a sheep, a turkey, two doves, a pony, and sundry fragments.
She had fastened the jessamine sprigs to the tops of their heads
by a tiny daub of wet clay, and had evidently been surprised
trying to put a sprig into the mouth of one of the doves, for it
hung by a little thread of clay from the beak. He detached it
and put it in his buttonhole. Poor little Sylvia! she took things
awiully to heart. He would be as nice as ever he could to her
all day. And, balancing on his stool, he stared fixedly at the
wall against which she had fallen back; the line of her soft
chin and throat seemed now to be his only memory. It was very
queer how he could see nothing but that, the way the throat
~ moved, swallowed—so white, so soft. And he had made it go
like that! It seemed an unconscionable time till breakfast.

As the hour approached he haunted the hall, hoping she might
be first down. At last he heard footsteps, and waited, hidden
behind the door of the empty dining-room, lest at sight of him
she should turn back. He had rehearsed what he was going
to do—bend down and kiss her hand and say: “ Dulcinea del
Toboso is the most beautiful lady in the world, and I the
most unfortunate knight upon the earth,” from his favourite
passage out of his favourite book, “Don Quixote.” She would
surely forgive him then, and his heart would no longer hurt him.
Certainly she could never go on making him so miserable if
she knew his feelings! She was too soft and gentle for that.
Alas! it was not Sylvia who came; but Anna, fresh from sleep,

&
''THE DARK FLOWER 65

with her ice-green eyes and bright hair; and in sudden strange
antipathy to her, that strong, vivid figure, he stood dumb. And
this first lonely moment, which he had so many times in fancy
spent locked in her arms, passed without even a kiss; for
quickly one by one the others came. But of Sylvia only news
through Mrs. Doone that she had a headache, and was staying
in bed. Her present was on the sideboard, a book called
“ Sartor Resartus.” “ Mark—from Sylvia, August ist, 1880,”
together with Gordy’s cheque, Mrs. Doone’s pearl pin, old
Tingle’s “Stones of Venice,” and one other little parcel
wrapped in tissue-paper—four ties of varying shades of green,
red, and blue, hand-knitted in silk—a present of how many
hours made short by the thought that he would wear the produce
of that clicking. He did not fail in outer gratitude, but
did he realise what had been knitted into those ties? Not
then.

Birthdays, like Christmas days, were made for disenchant-
ment. Always the false gaiety of gaiety arranged—always that
pistol to the head: “Confound you! enjoy yourself!” How
could he enjoy himself with the thought of Sylvia in her room,
made ill by his brutality! The vision of her throat working,
swallowing her grief, haunted him like a little white, soft spectre
all through the long drive out on to the moor, and the picnic
in the heather, and the long drive home—haunted him so that
when Anna touched or looked at him he had no spirit to answer,
no spirit even to try and be with her alone, but almost a dread
of it instead.

And when at last they were at home again, and she whispered :

“ What is it? What have I done?” he could only mutter:

“Nothing! Oh, nothing! It’s only that I’ve been a brute!”

At that enigmatic answer she might well search his face.

“Ts it my husband?”

He could answer that, at all events.

Ola: nol

“ What is it, then? Tell me.”

They were standing in the inner porch, pretending to
examine the ancestral chart—dotted and starred with dolphins
and little full-rigged galleons sailing into harbours—which
always hung just there.

“Tell me, Mark; I don’t like to suffer!”

What could he say, since he did not know himself? He
stammered, tried to speak, could not get anything out.
''66 NOVELS OF LOVE

ds it that girl?”

Startled, he looked away, and said:

“ Of course not.”

She shivered, and went into the house.

But he stayed, staring at the chart with a dreadful stirred-up
feeling—of shame and irritation, pity, impatience, fear, all
mixed. What had he done, said, lost? It was that horrid
feeling of when one has not been kind and not quite true, yet
might have been kinder if one had been still less true. Ah! but
it was all so mixed up. It felt all bleak, too, and wintry in him,
as if he had suddenly lost everybody’s love. Then he was
conscious of his tutor.

“Ah! friend Lennan—looking deeply into the past from the
less romantic present? Nice things, those old charts. The
dolphins’ are extremely jolly.”

It was difficult to remember not to be ill-mannered then.
Why did Stormer jeer like that? He just managed to answer:

“ Yes, sir; I wish we had some now.”

“There are so many moons we wish for, Lennan, and they
none of them come tumbling down.”

The voice was almost earnest, and the boy’s resentment fled.
He felt sorry, but why he did not know.

“In the meantime,” he heard his tutor say, “let us dress for
dinner.”

When he came down to the drawing-room, Anna in her moon-
light-coloured frock was sitting on the sofa talking to—Sylvia.
He kept away from them; they could neither of them want him.
But it did seem odd to him, who knew not too much concerning
women, that she could be talking so gaily, when only half an
hour ago she had said: “Is it that girl?”

He sat next her at dinner. Again it was puzzling that
she should be laughing so serenely at Gordy’s stories. Did the
whispering in the porch, then, mean nothing? And Sylvia
would not look at him; he felt sure that she turned her eyes
away simply because she knew he was going to look in her
direction. And this roused in him a sore feeling—everything
that night seemed to rouse that feeling—of injustice; he was
cast out, and he could not tell why. He had not meant to hurt
either of them! Why should they both want to hurt him so?
And presently there came to him a feeling that he did not care:
Let them treat him as they liked! There were other things
''i

THE DARK FLOWER 67

besides love! If they did not want him—he did not want them!
And he hugged this reckless, unhappy don’t-care feeling to him
with all the abandonment of youth.

But even birthdays come to an end. And moods and feelings
which seem so desperately real die in the unreality of sleep.

\
''XVI

Ir to the boy that birthday was all bewildered disillusionment,
to Anna it was verily slow torture; she found no relief in think-
ing that there were things in life other than love. But next
morning brought readjustment, a sense of yesterday’s extrava-
gance, a renewal of hope. Impossible surely that in one short
fortnight she had lost what she had made so sure of! She had
only to be resolute. Only to grasp firmly what was hers. After
all these empty years was she not to have her hour? To sit still
meekly and see it snatched from her by a slip of a soft girl?
A thousand times, no! And she watched her chance. She saw
him about noon sally forth towards the river, with his rod. She
had to wait a little, for Gordy and his baififf were down there
by the tennis lawn, but they soon moved‘on. She ran out
then to the park gate. Once through that she felt safe; her
husband, she knew, was working in his room; the girl some-
where invisible; the old governess still at her housekeeping;
Mrs. Doone writing letters. She felt full of hope and courage.
This old wild tangle of a park, not yet seen, was beautiful—
a true trysting-place for fauns and nymphs, with its mossy trees
and boulders and the high bracken. She kept along under the
wall in the direction of the river, but came to no gate, and
began to be afraid she was going wrong. She could hear the
river on the other side, and looked for some place where she
could climb and see exactly where she was. An old ash-tree
tempted her. Scrambling up into its fork, she could just see
over. There was the little river within twenty yards, its clear
dark water running between thick foliage. On its bank lay
a huge stone balanced on another stone still more huge. And
with his back to this stone stood the boy, his rod leaning beside
him. And there, on the ground, her arms resting on her knees,
her chin on her hands, the girl sat looking up. How eager
his eyes now—how different from the brooding eyes of yesterday !

“So, you see, that was all. You might forgive me, Sylvia!”

And to Anna it seemed verily as if those two young faces
formed suddenly but one—the face of youth.

If she had stayed there looking for all time, she could not
have had graven on her heart a vision more indelible. Vision

68
''THE DARK FLOWER 69

of Spring, of all that was gone from her for ever! She shrank
back out of the fork of the old ash-tree, and, like a stricken
beast, went hurrying, stumbling away, amongst the stones and
bracken. She ran thus perhaps a quarter of a mile, then threw
up her arms, fell down amongst the fern, and lay there on her
face. At first her heart hurt her so that she felt nothing but
physical pain. If she could have died! But she knew it was
nothing but breathlessness. It left her, and that which took
its place she tried to drive away by pressing her breast against
the ground, by clutching the stalks of the bracken—an ache,
an emptiness too dreadful! Youth to youth! He was gone
from her—and she was alone again! She did not cry. What
good in crying? But gusts of shame kept sweeping through
her; shame and rage. So this was all she was worth! The
sun struck hot on her back in that lair of tangled fern, where
she had fallen; she felt faint and sick. She had not known
till now quite what this passion for the boy had meant to her;
how much of her very belief in herself was bound up with it;
how much clinging to her own youth. What bitterness! One
soft slip of a white girl—one young thing—and she had become
as nothing! But was that true? Could she not even now
wrench him back to her with the passion this child knew
nothing of! Surely! Oh, surely! Let him but once taste
the rapture she could give him! And at this thought she
ceased clutching at the bracken stalks, lying still as the very
stones around her. Could she not? Might she not, even now?
And all feeling, except just a sort of quivering, deserted her—
as if she had fallen into a trance. Why spare this girl? Why
falter? She was first! He had been hers out there. And she
still had the power to draw him. At dinner the first evening
she had dragged his gaze to her, away from that girl—away
from youth, as a magnet draws steel. She could still bind
him with chains that for a little while at all events he would
not want to break! Bind him? MHateful word! Take him,
hankering after what she could not give him—youth, white
innocence, Spring? It would be infamous, infamous! She
sprang up from the fern, and ran along the hillside, not looking
where she went, stumbling among the tangled growth, in and
out of the boulders, till she once more sank breathless on to
a stone. It was bare of trees just here, and she could see, across
the river valley, the high larch-crowned tor on the far side.
The sky was clear—the sun bright. A hawk was wheeling over
''70 NOVELS OF LOVE

that hill; far up, very near the blue! Infamous! She could
not do that! Could not drug him, drag him to her by his
senses, by all that was least high in him, when she wished for
him all the finest things life could give, as if she had been his
mother. She could not. It would be wicked! In that moment
of intense spiritual agony, those two down there in the sun,
by the grey stone and the dark water, seemed guarded from her,
protected. The girl’s white flower-face trembling up, the boy’s
gaze leaping down! Strange that a heart so feeling could
hate at the same moment that flower-face, and burn to kill
with kisses the eagerness in the boy’s eyes. The storm in her
slowly passed. And she prayed just to feel nothing. It was
natural to lose her hour! Natural that her thirst should go
unslaked, and her passion never bloom; natural that youth
should go to youth, this boy to his own kind, by the law of—
love. The breeze blowing down the valley fanned her cheeks,
and brought her a faint sensation of relief. Nobility! Was it
just a word? Or did those who gave up happiness feel noble?

She wandered for a long time in the park. Not till late
afternoon did she again pass out by the gate, through which she
had entered, full of hope. She met no one before she reached
her room; and there, to be safe, took refuge in her bed. She
dreaded only lest the feeling of utter weariness should leave
her. She wanted no vigour of mind or body till she was away
from here. She meant neither to eat nor drink; only to sleep,
if she could. To-morrow, if there were any early train, she
could be gone before she need see anyone; her husband must
arrange. As to what he would think, and she could say—time
enough to decide. And what did it matter? The one vital
thing now was not to see the boy, for she could not again go
through such hours of struggle. She ran the bell, and sent
the startled maid with a message to her husband. And while
she waited for him to come, her pride began revolting. She
must not let him see. It would be horrible. And slipping out
of bed she got a handkerchief and the eau-de-Cologne flash,
and bandaged her forehead. He came almost instantly, entering
in his quick, noiseless way, and stood looking at her. He did
not ask what was the matter, but simply waited. And never
before had she realised so completely how he began, as it were,
where she left off; began on a plane from which instinct and
feeling were as carefully ruled out as though they had been
blasphemous. She summoned all her courage, and said: “I
''THE DARK FLOWER 71

went into the park; the sun must have been too hot. I should
like to go home to-morrow, if you don’t mind. I can’t bear not
feeling well in other people’s houses.”

She was conscious of a smile flickering over his face; then
it grew grave.

“Ah!” he said; “yes. The sun, a touch of that will last
some days. Will you be fit to travel, though?”

She had a sudden conviction that he knew all about it, but
—since to know all about it was to feel himself ridiculous—he
had the power of making himself believe that he knew nothing.
Was this fine of him, or was it hateful?

She closed her eyes and said:

“ My head is bad, but I shall be able. Only I don’t want a
fuss made. Could we go by train before they are down? ”

She heard him say:

“Yes. That will have its advantages.’

There was not the faintest sound now, but of course he was
still there. In that dumb, motionless presence was all her
future. Yes, that would be her future—a thing without feeling,
and without motion. A fearful curiosity came on her to look
at it. She opened her eyes. He was still standing just as he
had been, his gaze fixed on her. But one hand, on the edge of
his coat pocket—out of the picture, as it were—was nervously
closing and unclosing. And suddenly she felt pity. Not for
her future—which must be like that; but for him. How
dreadful to have grown so that all emotion was exiled—how
dreadful! And she said, gently:

“T am sorry, Harold.”

As if he had heard something strange and startling, his eyes
dilated in a curious way, he buried that nervous hand in his
pocket, turned, and went out.
''XVII

WHEN young Mark came on Sylvia by the logan-stone it was
less surprising to him than if he had not known she was there
—having watched her go. She was sitting, all humped together,
brooding over the water, her sunbonnet thrown back; and the
hair, in which his star had caught, shining faint-gold under
the sun. He came on her softly through the grass, and, when
he was a little way off, thought it best to halt. If he startled
her she might run away, and he would not have the heart to
follow. How still she was, lost in her brooding! He wished
he could see her face. He spoke at last, gently:

“Sylvia! ... Would you mind?”

And, seeing that she did not move, he went up to her. Surely
She could not still be angry with him!

“Thanks most awfully for that book you gave me—it looks
6plendid! ”

She made no answer. And leaning his rod against the stone,
he sighed. Her silence seemed to him unjust; what was it she
wanted him to say or do? Life was not worth living, if it was
to be all bottled up like this.

“T never meant to hurt you. I hate hurting people. It’s
only that my beasts are so bad—I can’t bear people to see them
—especially you—I want to please you—I do really. So, you
see, that was all. You might forgive me, Sylvia!”

Something over the wall, rustling, a scattering in the fern
—deer, no doubt! And again he said eagerly, softly :

. You might be nice to me, Sylvia; you really might.”

Very quickly, turning her head away, she said:

“Tt isn’t that any more. It’s—it’s something else.”

“What else?”

“ Nothing—only, that I don’t count—now

He knelt down beside her. What did she mean? But he
knew well enough.

“ Of course, you count! Most awfully! Oh, don’t be un-
happy! I hate people being unhappy. Don’t be unhappy,
Sylvia!” And he began gently to stroke her arm. It was all
strange and troubled within him; one thing only plain—he must

72

 
''THE DARK FLOWER 73

not admit anything! As if reading that thought, her blue eyes
seemed suddenly to search right into him. Then she pulled
some blades of grass, and began plaiting them.

“ She counts.”

Ah! He was not going to say: She doesn’t! It would be
caddish to say that. Even if she didn’t count Did she
still?—it would be mean and low. And in his eyes just then
was the look which had made his tutor compare him to a lion
cub in trouble.

Sylvia was touching his arm.

Mark),

ce MWes-7

ce Don’t ! 3?

He got up and took his rod. What was the use? He could
not stay there with her, since he could not—must not speak.

“ Are you going?”

“ Wes?

“Are you angry? Please don’t be angry with me.”

He felt a choke in his throat, bent down to her hand, and
kissed it; then shouldered his rod, and marched away. Looking
back once, he saw her still sitting there, gazing after him,
forlorn, by that great stone. It seemed to him, then, there was
nowhere he could go; nowhere except among the birds and beasts
and trees, who did not mind even if you were all mixed up and
horrible inside. He lay down in the grass on the bank. He
could see the tiny trout moving round and round the stones;
swallows came all about him, flying very low; a hornet, too,
bore him company for a little. But he could take interest in
nothing ; it was as if his spirit were in prison. It would have
been nice, indeed, to be that water, never staying, passing,
passing; or wind, touching everything, never caught. To be
able to do nothing without hurting someone—that was what
was so ghastly. If only one were like a flower, just springing
up, living its life all to itself, and dying. But whatever he did,
or said now, would be like telling lies, or else being cruel. The
only thing was to keep away from people. And yet how to keep
away from his own guests?

He went back to the house for lunch, but both those guests
were out, no one seemed quite to know where. Restless, un-
happy, puzzled, he wandered round and about all the afternoon.
Just before dinner he was told of Mrs. Stormer’s not being well,
and that they would be leaving to-morrow. Going—after three

 
''74. NOVELS OF LOVE

days! That plunged him deeper into his strange and sorrowful
confusion. He was reduced now to a complete brooding silence.
He knew he was attracting attention, but could not help it.
Several times during dinner he caught Gordy’s eyes fixed on
him, from under those puffy half-closed lids, with asphyxiated
speculation. But he simply could not talk—everything that
came into his mind to say seemed false. Ah! it was a sad
evening—with its glimmering vision into another’s sore heart,
its confused gnawing sense of things broken, faith betrayed;
and yet always the perplexed wonder— How could I have helped
it?’ And always Sylvia’s wistful face that he tried not to
look at.

He stole out, leaving Gordy and his tutor still over their wine,
and roamed about the garden a long time, listening sadly to
the owls. It was a blessing to get upstairs, though of course he
would not sleep.

But he did sleep, all through a night of many dreams, in
the last of which he was lying on a mountainside. Anna looking
down into his eyes, and bending her face to his. He woke just
_as her lips touched him. Still under the spell of that troubling
dream, he became conscious of the sound of wheels and horses’
hoofs on the gravel, and sprang out of bed. There was the
waggonette moving from the door, old Godden driving, Iug-
gage piled up beside him, and the Stormers sitting opposite
each other in the carriage. Going away like that—having
never even said good-bye! For a moment he felt as people
must when they have unwittingly killed someone—utterly
stunned and miserable. Then he dashed into his clothes. He
would not let her go thus! He would—he must—see her again!
What had he done that she should go like this? He rushed
downstairs. The hall was empty; nineteen minutes to eight!
The train left at eight o’clock. Had he time to saddle Bolero?
He rushed round to the stables; but the cob was out, being
shoed. He would—he must get there in time. It would show
her anyway that he was not quite a cad. He walked till the
drive curved, then began running hard. A quarter of a mile,
and already he felt better, not so miserable and guilty; it was
something to feel you had a tough job in hand, all your work
cut out—something to have to think of economising strength,
picking out the best going, keeping out of the sun, saving your
wind uphill, flymg down any slope. It was cool still, and the
dew had laid the dust; there was no traffic and scarcely anyone
''THE DARK FLOWER : « 80

to look back and gape as he ran by. What he would do, if he
got there in time—how explain this mad three-mile run—he did
not think. He passed a farm which he knew was just half-way.
He had left his watch. Indeed, he had put on only his trousers,
shirt, and Norfolk jacket; no tie, no hat, not even socks under
his tennis shoes, and he was as hot as fire, with his hair flying
back—a strange young creature indeed for anyone to meet. But
he had lost now all feeling, save the will to get there. A flock of
sheep came out of a field into the lane. He pushed through
them somehow, but they lost him several seconds. More than
a mile still; and he was blown and his legs beginning to give!
Downhill indeed they went of their own accord, but there was
the long run-in, quite level; and he could hear the train, now
slowly puffing its way along the valley. Then, in spite of
exhaustion, his spirit rose. He would not go in looking like a
scarecrow, utterly done, and make a scene. He must pull him-
self together at the end, and stroll in—as if he had come for fun.
But how—seeing that at any moment he felt he might fall flat
in the dust, and stay there for ever! And, as he ran, he made
little desperate efforts to mop his face, and brush his clothes.
There were the gates, at last—two hundred yards away. The
train he could hear no longer. It must be standing in the
station. And a sob came from his overdriven lungs. He heard
the guard’s whistle as he reached the gates. Instead of making
for the booking-office, he ran along the paling, where an en-
trance to the goods-shed was open, and dashing through he fell
back against the honeysuckle. The engine was just abreast of
him; he snatched at his sleeve and passed it over his face, to
wipe the sweat’ away. Everything was blurred. He must see—
surely he had not come in time just not to see! He pushed
his hands over his forehead and hair, and spied up dizzily at
the slowly passing train. She was there, at a window! Stand-
ing, looking out! He dared not step forward, for fear of
falling, but he put out his hand. She saw him. Yes, she saw
him! Wasn’t she going to make a sign? Not one? And sud-
denly he saw her tear at her dress, pluck something out, and
throw it. It fell close to his feet. He did not pick it up—he
wanted to see her face till she was gone. It looked wonderful—
very proud, and pale. She put her hands up to her lips. Then
everything went blurred again, and when he could see once more,
the train had vanished. But at his feet was what she had
thrown. He picked it up! All dry and dark, it was the flower
''76 NOVELS OF LOVE

she had given him in the Tyrol, and stolen back from his
buttonhole.

Creeping out, past the goods-shed, he made his way to a
field, and lay down with his face pressed to that withered thing
which still had its scent... .

The asphyxiated speculation in his guardian’s eyes had not
been without significance. Mark did not go back to Oxford.
He went instead to Rome—to live in his sister’s house, and
attend a school of sculpture. That was the beginning of a time
when nothing counted except his work.

To Anna he wrote twice, but received no answer. From his
tutor he had one little note:

“My Drar LENNAN,

“So! You abandon us for Art? Ah! well—it was your
moon, if I remember—one of them. A worthy moon—a little
dusty in these days—a little in her decline—but to you no
doubt a virgin goddess, whose hem, etc.

“We shall retain the friendliest memories of you in spite of
your defection.

“Once your tutor and still your friend,

“ HarotD STORMER.”

After that vacation it was long—very long before he saw
Sylvia again.
''PAD IT
SUMMER
I

GLEAM of a thousand lights; clack and mutter of innumerable
voices, laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains
taking gamblers back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from
the violins of four fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the
café; and above, around, beyond, the dark sky, and the dark
mountains, and the dark sea, like some great dark flower to
whose heart is.clinging a jewelled beetle. So was Monte Carlo
on that May night of 1887.

But Mark Lennan, at one of the little marble-topped tables,
was in too great maze and exaltation of spirit and of senses to
be conscious of its glare and babel, even of its beauty. He sat so
very still that his neighbours, with the instinctive aversion of the
human creature to what is too remote from its own mood, after
one good stare, turned their eyes away, as from something
ludicrous, almost offensive.

He was lost, indeed, in memory of the minutes just gone by.
For it had come at last, after all these weeks of ferment, after
all this strange time of perturbation.

Very stealthily it had been creeping on him, ever since that
chance introduction nearly a year ago, soon after he settled
down in London, following his six years in Rome and Paris.
First the merest friendliness, because she was so nice about his
work; then respectful admiration, because she was so beautiful ;
then pity, because she was so unhappy in her marriage. If
she had been happy, he would have fled. The knowledge that
she had been unhappy long before he knew her had kept his
conscience quiet. And at last one afternoon she said: “Ah!
if you come out there too!” Marvellously subtle, the way that
one little outslipped saying had worked in him, as though it
had a life of its own—like a strange bird flown into the garden
of his heart, and established with its new song and flutterings,
its new flight, its wistful and ever clearer call. That and one

77
''"48 NOVELS OF LOVE

moment, a few days later in her London drawing-room, when
he had told her that he was coming, and she did not, could not,
he felt, look at him. Queer! nothing momentous—and yet it
had altered all the future!

And so she had gone with her uncle and aunt, under whose
wing one might be sure she would meet with no wayward or
exotic happenings. And he had received from her this little
letter:

“Hore, Caur DOr,
“ Monte CARLO.
“My DEAR Mark,

“ We've arrived. It is so good to be in the sun. The flowers
are wonderful. I am keeping Gorbio and Roquebrune till you
come.

“ Your friend,
“ OLive CRAMIER.”

That letter was the single clear memory he had of the time
between her going and his following. He received it one after-
noon, sitting on an old low garden wall with the spring sun
shining on him through apple-trees in blossom, and a feeling
as if all the desire of the world lay before him, and he had but
to stretch out his arms to take it.

Then confused unrest, all things vague; till at the end of
his journey he stepped out of the train at Beaulieu with a furi-
ously beating heart. But why? Surely he had not expected her
to come out from Monte Carlo to meet him!

A week had gone by since then in one long effort to be with
her and appear to others as though he did not greatly wish to
be; two concerts, two walks with her alone, when all that he had
said seemed as nothing said, and all her sayings but ghosts of
what he wished to hear; a week of confusion, day and night,
until, a few minutes ago, her handkerchief had fallen from her
glove on to the dusty road, and he had picked it up and put it
to his lips. Nothing could take away the look she had given
him then. Nothing could ever again separate her from him
utterly. She had confessed in it to the same sweet, fearful
trouble that he himself was feeling. She had not spoken, but he
had seen her lips part, her breast rise and fall. And he had not
spoken. What was the use of words?

He felt in the pocket of his coat. There, against his fingers,
''THE DARK FLOWER 19

was that wisp of lawn and lace, soft, yet somehow alive; and
stealthily he took it out. The whole of her, with her fragrance,
seemed pressed to his face in the touch of that lawn border,
roughened by little white stars. More secretly than ever he put
it back; and for the first time looked round. These people!
They belonged to a world that he had left. They gave him the
same feeling that her uncle and aunt had given him just now,
when they said good-night, following her into their hotel. That
good Colonel, that good Mrs. Ercott! The very concretion of
the world he had been brought up in, of the English point of
view ; symbolic figures of health, reason, and the straight path,
on which at that moment, seemingly, he had turned his back.
The Colonel’s profile, ruddy through its tan, with grey mous-
tache guiltless of any wax, his cheery, high-pitched: “Good-
night, young Lennan!” His wife’s curly smile, her flat, cosy,
confidential voice—how strange and remote they had suddenly
become! And all these people here, chattering, drinking—how
queer and far away! Or was it just that he was queer and re-
mote to them?

And getting up from his table, he passed the fiddlers with the
dark-white skins, out into the Place,
''II

He went up the side streets to the back of her hotel, and
stood by the railings of the garden—one of those hotel gardens
which exist but to figure in advertisements, with its few arid
palms, its paths staring white between them, and a fringe of
dusty lilacs and mimosas.

And there came to him the oddest feeling—that he had been
there before, peering through blossoms at those staring paths
and shuttered windows. A scent of wood-smoke was abroad,
and some dry plant rustled ever so faintly in what little wind
was stirring. What was there of memory in this night, this
garden? Some dark sweet thing, invisible, to feel whose pres-
ence was at once ecstasy, and the irritation of a thirst that will
not be quenched.

And he walked on. Houses, houses! At last he was away
from them, alone on the high road, beyond the limits of Monaco.
And walking thus through the night he had thoughts that he
imagined no one had ever had before him. The knowledge that
she loved him had made everything seem very sacred and re-
sponsible. Whatever he did, he must not harm her. Women
were so helpless!

For in spite of six years of art in Rome and Paris, he still
had a fastidious reverence for women. If she had loved her
husband she would have been safe enough from him; but to
be bound to a companionship that she gave unwillingly—this
had seemed to him atrocious, even before he loved her. How
could any husband ask that? Have so little pride—so little pity?
The unpardonable thing! What was there to respect in such a
marriage? Only, he must not do her harm! But now that her
eyes had said, I love you!—What then? It was simply miracu-
lous to know that, under the stars of this warm Southern night,
burning its incense of trees and flowers!

Climbing up above the road, he lay down. If only she were
there beside him! The fragrance of the earth, not yet chilled,
crept to his face; and for just a moment it seemed to him that
she did come. If he could keep her there for ever in the em-
brace that was no embrace—in ghostly rapture, on this wild
fragrant bed no lovers before had ever pressed, save the creeping

80
''THE DARK FLOWER 81

things, and the flowers; save sunlight and moonlight with their
shadows; and the wind kissing the earth! .. .

Then she was gone; his hands touched nothing but the
crumbled pine dust, and the flowers of the wild thyme fallen
into sleep.

He stood on the edge of the little cliff, above the road between
the dark mountains and the sea black with depth. Too late for
any passer-by; as far from what men thought and said and did
as the very night itself with its whispering warmth. And he
conjured up her face, making certain of it—the eyes, clear and
brown, and wide apart; the close, sweet mouth; the dark hair;
the whole flying loveliness.

Then he leaped down into the road, and ran—one could not
walk, feeling this miracle, that no one had ever felt before,
the miracle of love.
''Il

In their most reputable hotel “Le Coeur d’Or,” long since re-
modelled and renamed, Mrs. Ercott lay in her brass-bound bed
looking by starlight at the Colonel in his brass-bound bed. Her
ears were carefully freed from the pressure of her pillow, for
she thought she heard a mosquito. Companion for thirty years
to one whose life had been feverishly punctuated by the atten-
tions of those little beasts, she had no love for them. It was the
one subject on which perhaps her imagination was stronger than
her common sense. For in fact there was not, and could not be,
a mosquito, since the first thing the Colonel did, on arriving
at any place farther South than Parallel 46 of latitude was to
open the windows very wide, and nail with many tiny tacks a
piece of mosquito netting across that refreshing space, while
she held him firmly by the coat-tails. The fact that other peo-
ple did not so secure their windows did not at all trouble the
Colonel, a true Englishman, who loved to act in his own way,
and to think in the ways of other people. After that they would
wait till night came, then burn a peculiar little lamp with a
peculiar little smell, and, in the full glare of the gaslight, stand
about on chairs, with slippers, and their eyes fixed on true or
imaginary beasts. Then would fall little slaps, making little
messes, and little joyous or doleful cries would arise: “I’ve
got that one!” “Oh, John, I missed him!” And in the middle
of the room, the Colonel in pyjamas, and spectacles (only worn
in very solemn moments, low down on his nose), would revolve
slowly, turning his eyes, with that look in them of outfacing
death which he had so long acquired, on every inch of wall and
ceiling, till at last he would say: “ Well, Dolly, that’s the lot!”
At which she would say: “Give me a kiss, dear!” and he
would kiss her, and get into his bed.

There was, then, no mosquito, save the general ghost of it
which lingered in the mind of one devoted to her husband.
Spying out his profile, for he was lying on his back, she re-
frained from saying: “John, are you awake?” A whiffling
sound was coming from a nose, to which—originally straight—
attention to military duties had given a slight crook, half an
inch below the level of grizzled eyebrows raised a little, as

82
''THE DARK FLOWER 83

though surprised at the sounds beneath. She could hardly see
him, but she thought: ‘How good he looks!’ And, in fact,
he did. It was the face of a man incapable of evil, having in
its sleep the candour of one at heart a child—the simple can-
dour of those who have never known how to seek adventures
of the mind, and have always sought adventures of the body.
Then somehow she did say:

“John! Are you asleep? ”

The Colonel, instantly alive, as at some old-time attack,
answered :

ce EWES ot

“That poor young man! ”

“ Which ? ”

“Mark Lennan. Haven’t you seen? ”

“ What?”

“My dear, it was under your nose. But you never do see
these things! ”

The Colonel slowly turned his head. His wife was an imagi-
native woman! She had always been so. Dimly he perceived
that something romantic was about to come from her. But with
the almost professional gentleness of a man who has cut the
heads and arms off people in his time, he answered:

“ What things? ”

“He picked up her handkerchief.”

“ Whose? ”

“ Olive’s. He put it in his pocket. I distinctly saw him.”

There was silence; then Mrs. Ercott’s voice rose again, imper-
sonal, far away.

“What always astonishes me about young people is the way
they think they’re not seen—poor dears! ”

Still there was silence.

“John! Are you thinking? ”

For a considerable sound of breathing, not mere whiffling
now, was coming from the Colonel—to his wife a sure sign.

And indeed he was thinking. Dolly was an imaginative
woman, but something told him that in this case she might not
be riding past the hounds.

Mrs. Ercott raised herself. He looked more good than ever;
a little perplexed frown had climbed up with his eyebrows and
got caught in the wrinkles across his forehead.

“Tm very fond of Olive,” he said.

Mrs. Ercott fell back on her pillows. In her heart there was
''84 NOVELS OF LOVE

just the little soreness natural to a woman over fifty, whose
husband has a niece.

“ No doubt,” she murmured.

Something vague moved deep down in the Colonel; he
stretched out his hand. In that strip of gloom between
the beds it encountered another hand, which squeezed it rather
hard.

He said: “ Look here, old girl!” and there was silence.

Mrs. Ercott in her turn was thinking. Her thoughts were
flat and rapid like her voice, but had a sort of sentiment such
as accompanies the mental exercise of women with good hearts.
Poor young man! And poor Olive! But was a woman ever
to be pitied, when she was so pretty! Besides, all said and done,
she had a fine-looking man for husband; in Parliament, with a
career, and fond of her—decidedly. And their little house in
London, so close to Westminster, was a distinct dear; nor could
anything be more charming than their cottage by the river.
Was Olive, then, to be pitied? And yet—she was not happy.
No good pretending that she was happy. All very well to say
that such things were within one’s control, but if you read novels
at all, you knew they weren’t. There was such a thing as in-
compatibility. Oh yes! And there was the matter of difference
in their ages! Olive was twenty-six, Robert Cramier forty-two.
And now this young Mark Lennan was in love with her. What
if she were in love with him! John would realise then, perhaps,
that the young flew to the young. For men—even the best, like
John, were funny! She would never dream of feeling for any
of her nephews as John clearly felt for Olive.

; The Colonel’s voice broke in on her thoughts.

“Nice young fellow—Lennan! Great pity! Better sheer
-off—if he’s gettin -

And, rather suddenly, she answered:

“Suppose he can’t!”

ce Can’t ? 29

“ Did you never hear of a ‘ grande passion’? ”

The Colonel rose on his elbow. This was another of those occa-
sions showing him how, during the later years of his service in
Madras and Upper Burmah, when Dolly’s health had not been
equal to the heat, she had picked up in London a queer way of
looking at things—as if they were not—not so right or wrong as
—as he felt them to be. And he repeated those two French
words in his own way, adding:

 
''THE DARK FLOWER 85

“Tsn’t that just what I’m saying? The sooner he stands
clear, the better.”

But Mrs. Ercott, too, sat up.

“ Be human,” she said.

The Colonel experienced the same sensation as when one sud-
denly knows that one is not digesting food. Because young
Lennan was in danger of getting into a dishonourable fix, he
was told to be human! Really, Dolly ! The white blur of
her new boudoir cap suddenly impinged on his consciousness.
Surely she was not getting—unEnglish! At her time of life!

“T’m thinking of Olive,” he said; “I don’t want her worried
with that sort of thing.”

“Perhaps Olive can manage for herself. In these days it
doesn’t do to interfere with love.”

“Love!” muttered the Colonel. ‘“ Phew!”

If one’s own wife called this—this sort of—thing, love—then,
why had he been faithful to her—in very hot climates—all these
years? A sense of waste, and of injustice, tried to rear its head
against all the side of him which attached certain meanings to
certain words, and acted up to them. And this revolt gave him a
feeling, strange and so unpleasant. Love! It was not a word
to use thus loosely! Love led to marriage; this could not lead to
marriage, except through—the Divorce Court. And suddenly
the Colonel had a vision of his dead brother, Lindsay, Olive’s
father, standing there in the dark, with his grave, clear-cut,
ivory-pale face, under the black hair supposed to be derived
from a French ancestress who had escaped from the massacre
of St. Bartholomew. Upright fellow always, Lindsay—even be-
fore he was made bishop! Queer somehow that Olive should be
his daughter. Not that she was not upright; not at all! But
she was soft! Lindsey was not! Imagine him seeing young
Lennan putting her handkerchief in his pocket. But had the
young man really done such a thing? Dolly was imaginative!
He had mistaken it probably for his own; if he had chanced to
blow his nose, he would have realised. For, coupled with the
almost child-like candour of his mind, the Colonel had real
administrative vigour, a true sense of practical values; an ounce
of illustration was always worth to him a pound of theory!
Dolly was given to riding off on theories. Thank God! she
never acted on ’em!

He said gently:

“My dear! Young Lennan may be an artist and all that,

 
''86 NOVELS OF LOVE

but he’s a gentleman! I know old Heatherley, his guardian.
Why I introduced him to Olive myself!”

“What has that to do with it? He’s in love with her.”

One of the countless legion who hold a creed taken at face
value, into the roots and reasons of which they have never
dreamed of going, the Colonel was staggered. Like some native
on an island surrounded by troubled seas, at which he has stared
with a certain contemptuous awe all his life, but never entered,
he was disconcerted when thus asked to leave the shore. And by
his own wife!

Indeed, Mrs. Ercott had not intended to go so far; but there
was in her, as in all women whose minds are more active than
their husband’s, a something worrying her always to go a little
farther than she meant. With real compunction she heard the
Colonel say:

“T must get up and drink some water.”

She was out of bed in a moment. “ Not without boiling!”

She had seriously troubled him, then! Now he would not
sleep—the blood went to his head so quickly. He would just
lie awake, trying not to disturb her. She could not bear him
not to disturb her. It seemed so selfish! She ought to have
known that the whole subject was too dangerous to discuss at
night.

She became conscious that he was standing just behind her;
his figure in its thin covering looked lean, his face worn.

“Tm sorry you put that idea into my head!” he said. “I’m
fond of Olive.”

Again Mrs. Ercott felt that jealous twinge, soon lost this time
in the motherliness of a childless woman for her husband. He
must not be troubled! He should not be troubled. And she
said:

“The water’s boiling! Now sip a good glass slowly, and get
into bed, or I’ll take your temperature! ”

Obediently the Colonel took from her the glass, and as he
sipped, she put her hand up and stroked his head.
''IV

In the room below them the subject of their discussion was
lying very wide awake. She knew she had betrayed herself,
made plain to Mark Lennan what she had never until now
admitted to herself. But the love-look, which for the life of her
she could not keep back, had been followed by a feeling of having
“lost caste.” For, hitherto, the world of women had been
strictly divided by her into those who did and those who did
not do such things; and to be no longer quite sure to which
half she belonged was frightening. But what was the good of
thinking, of being frightened ?—it could not lead to anything.
Yesterday she had not known this would come; and now she
could not guess at to-morrow! To-night was enough! To-
night with its swimming loveliness! Just to feel! To love, and
to be loved!

A new sensation for her—as different from those excited by
the courtships of her girlhood, or by her marriage, as light
from darkness. For she had never been in love, not even with
her husband. She knew it now. The sun was shining in a
world where she had thought there was none. Nothing could
come of it. But the sun was shining; and in that sunshine
she must warm herself a little.

Quite simply she began to plan what he and she would do.
There were six days left. They had not yet been to Gorbio,
nor to Castellar—none of those long walks or rides they had
designed for the beauty of them. Would he come early to-
morrow? What could they do together? No one should know
what these six days would be to her—not even he. To be with
him, watch his face, hear his voice, and now and then just
touch him! She could trust herself to show no one. And
then, it would be—over! ‘Though, of course, she would see
him again in London.

Lying there in the dark, she thought of their first meeting,
one Sunday morning, in Hyde Park. The Colonel religiously
observed Church Parade, and would even come all the way
down to Westminster, from his flat near Knightsbridge, in
order to fetch his niece up to it. She remembered how, dur-

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''88 NOVELS OF LOVE

ing their stroll, he had stopped suddenly in front of an old
gentleman with a puffy yellow face and eyes half open.

“Ah! Mr, Heatherley—up from Devonshire? How’s your
nephew—the—er—sculptor ? ”

And the old gentleman, glaring a little, as it seemed to her,
from under his eyelids and his grey top hat, had answered:
“ Colonel Ercott, I think? Here’s the fellow himself—Mark! ”
And a young man had taken off his hat. She had only noticed
at first that his dark hair grew—not long—but very thick;
and that his eyes were very deep-set. Then she saw him smile;
it made his face all eager, yet left it shy; and she decided that
he was nice. Soon after, she had gone with the Ercotts to see
his “things”; for it was, of course, and especially in those
days, quite an event to know a sculptor—rather like having a
zebra in your park. The Colonel had been delighted and a
little relieved to find that the “things” were nearly all of
beasts and birds. “ Very interestin’” to one full of curious
lore about such, having in his time killed many of them, and
finding himself at last with a curious aversion to killing any
more—which he never put into words.

Acquaintanceship had ripened fast after that first visit to
his studio, and now it was her turn to be relieved that Mark
Lennan devoted himself almost entirely to beasts and birds
instead of to the human form, so-called divine. Ah! yes—
she would have suffered; now that she loved him, she knew
it. At all events she could watch his work and help it with
sympathy. That could not be wrong... .

She fell asleep at last, and dreamed that she was in a boat
alone on the river near her country cottage, drifting along
among spiky flowers like asphodels, with birds singing and
flying round her. She could move neither face nor limbs, but
the feeling was not unpleasant, till she became conscious of
drawing nearer and nearer to what was neither water nor
land, light nor darkness, but simply some unutterable feeling.
And then she saw, gazing at her out of the rushes on the
banks, a great bull head. It moved as she moved—it was on
both sides of her, yet all the time only one head. She tried
to raise her hands and cover her eyes, but could not—and
woke with a sob. . . . It was light.

Nearly six o’clock already!. Her dream made her disin-
clined to trust again to sleep. Sleep was a robber now—of
each minute of these few days! She got up, and looked out.
''THE DARK FLOWER 89

The morning was fine, the air warm already, sweet from dew,
and the heliotrope nailed to the wall outside her window. She
had but to open her shutters and walk into the sun. She
dressed, took her sunshade, stealthily slipped the shutters back,
and stole forth. Shunning the hotel garden, where the eccen-
tricity of her early wandering might betray the condition of
her spirit, she passed through into the road toward the Casino.
Without perhaps knowing it, she was making for where she
had sat with him yesterday afternoon, listening to the band.
Hatless, but defended by her sunshade, she excited the ad-
miration of the few connoisseurs as yet abroad, strolling in
blue blouses to their labours; and this simple admiration gave
her pleasure. For once she was really conscious of the grace
in her own limbs, actually felt the gentle vividness of her own
face, with its nearly black hair and eyes, and creamy skin—
strange sensation, and very comforting!

In the Casino gardens she walked more slowly, savouring
the aromatic trees, and stopping to bend and look at almost
every flower; then, on the seat, where she had sat with him
yesterday, she rested. A few paces away were the steps down
to the railway-station, trodden upwards eagerly by so many,
day after day, night after night, and lightly or sorrowfully
descended. Above her, two pines, a pepper-tree, and a palm
mingled their shade—so fantastic the jumbling of trees and
souls in this strange place! She furled her sunshade and leaned
back. Her gaze, free and friendly, passed from bough to bough.
Against the bright sky, unbesieged as yet by heat or dust, they
had a spiritual look, lying sharp and flat along the air. She
plucked a cluster of pinkish berries from the pepper-tree, crush-
ing and rubbing them between her hands to get their fragrance.
All these beautiful and sweet things seemed to be a part of her
joy at being loved, part of this sudden summer in her heart.
The sky, the flowers, that jewel of green-blue sea, the bright
acacias, were nothing in the world but love.

And those few who passed, and saw her sitting there under
the pepper-tree, wondered no doubt at the stillness of this dame
bien mise, who had risen so early.
''Vv

In the small hours, which so many wish were smaller, the
Colonel had awakened, with the affair of the handkerchief swell-
ing visibly. His niece’s husband was not a man that he had
much liking for—a taciturn fellow, with possibly a bit of the
brute in him, a man who rather rode people down; but, since
Dolly and he were in charge of Olive, the notion that young
Lennan was falling in love with her under their very noses was
alarming to one naturally punctilious. It was not until he fell
asleep again, and woke in full morning light, that the remedy
occurred to him. She must be taken out of herself! Dolly and
he had been slack; too interested in this queer place, this queer
lot of people! They had neglected her, left her to . .. Boys
and girls !—One ought always to remember. But it was_not too
late. She was old Lindsay’s daughter; would not forget herself.
Poor old Lindsay—fine fellow; bit too much, perhaps, of the
—Huguenot in him! Queer, those throw-backs! Had noticed
it in horses, time and again—white hairs about the tail, carriage
of the head—skip generations and then pop out. And Olive had
something of his look—the same ivory skin, same colour of eyes
and hair! Only she was not severe, like her father, not exactly!
And once more there shot through the Colonel a vague dread,
as of a trusteeship neglected. It disappeared, however, in his
bath.

He was out before eight o’clock, a thin upright figure in hard
straw hat and grey flannel clothes, walking with the indescrib-
able loose poise of the soldier Englishman, with that air, dif-
ferent from the French, German, what not, because of shoulders
ever asserting, through their drill, the right to put on mufti;
with that perfectly quiet and modest air of knowing that, what-
ever might be said, there was only one way of wearing clothes
and moving legs. And, as he walked, he smoothed his drooping
grey moustache, considering how best to take his niece out of
herself. He passed along by the Terrace, and stood for a mo-
ment looking down at the sea beyond the pigeon-shooting ground.
Then he moved on round under the Casino into the gardens
at the back. A beautiful spot! Wonderful care they had taken
with the plants! It made him think a little of Tushawore,

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''THE DARK FLOWER 91

where his old friend the Rajah—precious old rascal !—had gar-
dens to his palace rather like these. He paced again to the
front. Nice and quiet in the early mornings, with the sea down
there, and nobody trying to get the better of anybody else.
There were fellows never happy unless they were doing someone
in the eye. He had known men, who would ride at the devil
himself, make it a point of honour to swindle a friend out of a
few pounds! Odd place this “ Monte ”—sort of a Garden of
Eden gone wrong. And all the real, but quite inarticulate love
of Nature, which had supported the Colonel through deserts
and jungles, on transports at sea, and in mountain camps, awoke
in the sweetness of these gardens. His dear mother! He had
never forgotten the words with which she had shown him the
sunset through the coppice down at old Withes Norton, when
he was nine years old: “ That is beauty, Jack! Do you feel it,
darling?” He had not felt it at the time—not he; a thick-
headed, scampering youngster. Even when he first went to
India he had had no eye for a sunset. The rising generation
were different. That young couple, for instance, under the
pepper-tree, sitting there without a word, just looking at the
trees. How long, he wondered, had they been sitting like that?
And suddenly something in the Colonel leaped; his steel-coloured
eyes took on their look of outfacing death. Choking down a
cough, he faced about, back to where he had stood above the
pigeon-shooting ground. . . . Olive and that young fellow! An
assignation! At this time in the morning! The earth reeled.
His brother’s child—his favourite niece! The woman whom
he most admired—the woman for whom his heart was softest.
Leaning over the stone parapet, no longer seeing either the
smooth green of the pigeon-shooting ground, or the smooth blue
of the sea beyond, he was moved, distressed, bewildered beyond
words. Before breakfast! That was the devil of it! Con-
fession, as it were, of everything. Moreover, he had seen their
hands touching on the seat. The blood rushed up to his face, he
had seen, spied out, what was not intended for his eyes. Nice
position—that! Dolly, too, last night, had seen. But that was
different. Women might see things—it was expected of them.
But for a man—a—a gentleman! The fullness of his em-
barrassment gradually disclosed itself. His hands were tied.
Could he even consult Dolly? He had a feeling of isolation,
of utter solitude. Nobody—not anybody in the world—could
understand his secret and intense discomfort. To take up a
''92 NOVELS OF LOVE

position—the position he was bound to take up, as Olive’s nearest
relative and protector, and—what was it—chaperon, by the aid
of knowledge come at in such a way, however unintentionally!
Never in all his days in the regiment—and many delicate mat-
ters affecting honour had come his way—had he had a thing
like this to deal with. Poor child! But he had no business
to think of her like that. No, indeed! She had not behaved—
as And there he paused, curiously unable to condemn her.
Suppose they got up and came that way!

He took his hands off the stone parapet, and made for his
hotel. His palms were white from the force of his grip. He
said to himself as he went along: “I must consider the whole
question calmly; I must think it out.” This gave him relief.
With young Lennan, at all events, he could be angry. But even
there he found, to his dismay, no finality of judgment. And
this absence of finality, so unwonted, distressed him horribly.
There was something in the way the young man had been sitting
there beside her—so quiet, so almost timid—that had touched
him. This was bad, by Jove—very bad! The two of them, they
made, somehow, a nice couple! Confound it! This would not
do! The chaplain of the little English church passing at this
moment, called out, “ Fine morning, Colonel Ercott.” The
Colonel saluted, and did not answer. The greeting at the mo-
ment seemed to him paltry. No morning could be fine that
contained such a discovery. He entered the hotel, passed into
the dining-room, and sat down. Nobody was there. They all
had their breakfast upstairs, even Dolly. Olive alone was in
the habit of supporting him while he ate an English breakfast.
And suddenly he perceived that he was face to face already with
this dreadful situation. To have breakfast without, as usual,
waiting for her, seemed too pointed. She might be coming in
at any minute now. To wait for her, and have it, without
showing anything—how could he do that?

He was conscious of a faint rustling behind him. There she
was, and nothing decided. In this moment of hopeless con-
fusion the Colonel acted by pure instinct, rose, patted her cheek,
and placed a chair.

“Well, my dear,” he said; “ hungry?”

She was looking very dainty, very soft. That creamy dress
showed off her dark hair and eyes, which seemed somehow to
be—flying off somewhere; yes—it was queer, but that was the
only way to put it. He got no reassurance, no comfort from,

 
''THE DARK FLOWER 93

the sight of her. And slowly he stripped the skin from the
banana with which he always commenced breakfast. One might
just as well be asked to shoot a tame dove or tear a pretty flower
to pieces as be expected to take her to task, even if he could, in
honour. And he sought refuge in the words:

“Been out?” Then could have bitten his tongue off. Sup-
pose she answered: “ No.”

But she did not so answer. The colour came into her cheeks,
indeed, but she nodded: “It?s so lovely!”

How pretty she looked saying that! He had put himself out
of court now—could never tell her what he had seen, after
setting, as it were, that trap for her; and presently he asked:

“Got any plans to-day?”

She answered, without flinching in the least:

“Mark Lennan and I were going to take mules from Men-
tone up to Gorbio.”

He was amazed at her steadiness—never, to his knowledge,
having encountered a woman armoured at every point to pre-
serve a love that flies against the world. How tell what was
under her smile! And in confusion of feeling amounting almost
to pain he heard her say:

“Will you and Aunt Dolly come?”

Between sense of trusteeship and hatred of spoiling sport;
between knowledge of the danger she was in and half-pitying
admiration at the sight of her; between real disapproval of an
illicit and underhand business (what else was it, after all?)
and some dim perception that here was something he did not
begin to be able to fathom—something with which perhaps no
one but those two themselves could deal—between these various
extremes he was lost indeed. And he stammered out:

“T must ask your aunt; she—she’s not very good on a mule.”

Then, in an impulse of sheer affection, he said with startling
suddenness: “ My dear, I’ve often meant to ask, are you happy
at home?”

“ At home?”

There was something sinister about the way she repeated
that, as if the word home were strange to her.

She drank her coffee and got up; and the Colonel felt afraid
of her, standing there—afraid of what she was going to tell him.
He grew very red. But, worse than all, she said absolutely
nothing; only shrugged her shoulders with a little smile that
went to his heart.
''VI

On the wild thyme, under the olives below the rock village
of Gorbio, with their mules cropping at a little distance, those
two sat after their lunch, listening to the cuckoos. Since their
uncanny chance meeting that morning in the gardens, when they
sat with their hands just touching, amazed and elated by their
own good fortune, there was not much need te say what they
felt, to break with words this rapture of belonging to each other
—so shyly, so wildly, so, as it were, without reality. They were
like epicures with old wine in their glasses, not yet tired of its
fragrance and the spell of anticipation.

And so their talk was not of love, but, in that pathetic way
of star-crossed lovers, of the things they loved; leaving out—
each other.

It ~vas the telling of her dream which brought the words
from him at last; but she drew away, and answered:

“Tt can’t—it mustn’t be!”

Then he just clung to her hand; and presently, seeing
that her eyes were wet, took courage enough to kiss her
cheek.

Trembling and fugitive indeed that first passage of their love.
Not much of the conquering male in him, nor in her of the
ordinary enchantress.

And then they went, outwardly sober enough, riding their
mules down the stony slopes back to Mentone.

But in the grey, dusty railway-carriage, when she had left
him, he was like a man drugged, staring at where she had sat
opposite.

Two hours later, at dinner in her hotel, between her and
Mrs. Ercott, with the Colonel opposite, he knew for the first
time what he was faced with. To watch every thought that passed
within him, lest it should by the slightest sign betray him; to
regulate and veil every look and every word he spoke to her;
never for a second to forget that these other persons were actual
and dangerous, not merely insignificant and grotesque shadows.
It would be perhaps for ever a part of his love for her to seem
not to love her. He did not dare dream of fulfilment. He was
to be her friend, and try to bring her happiness—burn and long

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''THE DARK FLOWER 95

for her, and not think about reward. This was his first real
overwhelming passion—so different to the loves of spring—and
he brought to it all that naiveté, that touching quality of young
Englishmen, whose secret instinct it is to back away from the
full nature of love, even from admitting that it has that nature.
They two were to love, and—not to love! For the first time he
understood a little of what that meant. A few stolen adoring
minutes now and then, and, for the rest, the presence of a world
which must be deceived. Already he had almost a hatred of
that orderly, brown-faced Colonel, with his eyes that looked so
steady and saw nothing; of that flat, kindly lady, who talked so
pleasantly throughout dinner, saying things that he had to
answer without knowing what they signified. He realised, with
a sense of shock, that he was deprived of all interests in life but
one; not even his work had any meaning apart from her. It lit
no fire within him to hear Mrs. Ercott praise certain execrable
pictures in the Royal Academy, which she had religiously visited
the day before leaving home. And as the interminable meal
wore on, he began even to feel grief and wonder that Olive could
be so smiling, so gay, and calm; so, as it seemed to him, in-
different to this intolerable impossibility of exchanging even
one look of love. Did she really love him—could she love him,
and show not one little sign of it? And suddenly he felt her foot
touch his own. It was the faintest sidelong, supplicating pres-
sure, withdrawn at once, but it said: ‘I know what you are
suffering ; I, too, am suffering!’ Characteristically, he felt that
it cost her dear to make use of that little primitive device of com-
mon loves; the touch awoke within him only chivalry. He would
burn for ever sooner than cause her the pain of thinking that
he was not happy.

After dinner, they sat out on a balcony. The stars glowed
above the palms; a frog was croaking. He managed to draw
his chair so that he could look at her unseen. How deep, and
softly dark her eyes, when for a second they rested on his! A
moth settled on her knee—a cunning little creature, with its
hooded, horned owl’s face, and tiny black slits of eyes! Would
it have come so confidingly to anyone but her? The Colonel
knew its name—he had collected it. Very common, he said. The
interest in it passed; but Lennan stayed bent forward, gazing at
that silk-covered knee.

The voice of Mrs. Ercott, sharper than its wont, said: “ What
day does Robert say he wants you back, my dear?”
''96 NOVELS OF LOVE

He managed to remain gazing at the moth, even to take it
gently from her knee, while he listened to her calm answer:

“Tuesday, I believe.”

Then he got up, and let the moth fly into the darkness; his
hands and lips were trembling, and he was afraid of their being ©
seen. He had never known, had not dreamed, of such a violent,
sick feeling. That this man could thus hale her home at will!
It was grotesque, fantastic, awful, but—it was true! Next
Tuesday she would journey back away from him to be again at
the mercy of her Fate! The pain of this thought made him grip
the railing, and grit his teeth, to keep himself from crying out.
And another thought came to him: I shall have to go about
with this feeling, day and night, and keep it secret.

They were saying good-night; and he had to smirk and smile,
and pretend—to her above all—that he was happy, and he could
see that she knew it was pretence.

Then he was alone, with the feeling that he had failed her at
the first shot; torn, too, between horror of what he suddenly saw
before him, and longing to be back in her presence at any
cost. . . . And all this on the day of that first kiss which had
seemed to him to make her so utterly his own.

He sat down on a bench facing the Casino. Neither the lights,
nor the people passing in and out, not even the gipsy bandsmen’s
music, distracted his thoughts for a second. Could it be less
than twenty-four hours since he had picked up her handkerchief,
not thirty yards away? In that twenty-four hours he seemed to
have known every emotion that man could feel. And in all the
world there was now not one soul to whom he could speak his
real thoughts—not even to her, because from her, beyond all, he
must keep at any cost all knowledge of his unhappiness. So this
was illicit love—as it was called! Loneliness, and torture! Not
jealousy—for her heart was his; but amazement, outrage, fear.
Endless lonely suffering! And nobody, if they knew, would
care, or pity him one jot!

Was there really, then, as the ancients thought, a Demon
who liked to play with men, as men liked to stir an earwig and
turn it over and put a foot on it in the end?

He got up and made his way towards the railway-station.
There was the bench where she had been sitting when he came
on her that very morning. The stars in their courses had
seemed to fight for them then; but whether for joy he no longer
knew. And there on the seat were still the nenner berries she
''THE DARK FLOWER oe

had crushed and strewn. He broke off another bunch and
bruised them. That scent was the ghost of sacred minutes when
her hand lay against his own. The stars in their courses—
for joy or sorrow!
''VII

THERE was no peace now for Colonel and Mrs. Ercott. They
felt themselves conspirators, and of conspiracy they had never
had the habit. Yet how could they openly deal with anxieties
which had arisen solely from what they had chanced secretly to
see? What was not intended for one’s eyes and ears did not
exist; no canon of conduct could be quite so sacred. As well
defend the opening of another person’s letters as admit the
possibility of making use of adventitious knowledge. So far
tradition, and indeed character, made them feel at one, and
conspire freely. But they diverged on a deeper plane. Mrs.
Ercott had said, indeed, that here was something which could
not be controlled ; the Colonel had fel¢ it—a very different thing!
Less tolerant in theory, he was touched at heart; Mrs. Ercott,
in theory almost approving—she read that dangerous authoress,
George Eliot—at heart felt cold towards her husband’s niece.
For these reasons they could not in fact conspire with-
out, in the end, saying suddenly: “Well, it’s no good
talking about it!” and almost at once beginning to talk about
it again.

In proposing to her that mule, the Colonel had not had time,
or, rather, not quite conviction enough as to his line of action,
to explain so immediately the new need for her to sit upon it.
It was only when, to his somewhat strange relief, she had refused
the expedition, and Olive had started without them, that he told
her of the meeting in the Gardens, of which he had been witness.
She then said at once that if she had known, she would, of
course, have put up with anything in order to go; not because
she approved of interfering, but because they must think of
Robert! And the Colonel had said: “D n the fellow!”
And there the matter had rested for the moment, for both of
them were wondering a little which fellow it was that he had
damned. That indeed was the trouble. If the Colonel had not
cared so much about his niece, and had liked, instead of rather
disliking Cramier; if Mrs. Ercott had not found Mark Lennan
a “nice boy,” and had not secretly felt her husband’s niece
rather dangerous to her peace of mind; if, in few words, those
three had been puppets made of wood and worked by law, it

98

 
''THE DARK FLOWER 99

would have been so much simpler for all concerned. It was
the discovery that there was a personal equation in such matters,
instead of just a simple rule of three, which disorganised the
Colonel and made him almost angry; which depressed Mrs.
Ercott and made her almost silent. . . . These two good souls
had stumbled on a problem which has divided the world from
birth. Shall cases be decided on their individual merits, or
according to formal codes?

Beneath an appearance and a vocabulary more orthodox than
ever, the Colonel’s allegiance to Authority and the laws of Form
was really shaken; he simply could not get out of his head the
sight of those two young people sitting side by side, nor the tone
of Olive’s voice, when she had repeated his regrettable words
about happiness at home.

If only the thing had not been so human! If only she had
been someone else’s niece, it would clearly have been her duty
to remain unhappy. As it was, the more he thought, the less
he knew what to think. A man who had never had any bal-
ance to speak of at his bank, and from the nomadic condition
of his life had no exaggerated feeling for a settled social status
—deeming Society in fact rather a bore—he did not unduly ex-
aggerate the worldly dangers of this affair; neither did he
honestly believe that she would burn in everlasting torment if
she did not succeed in remaining true to “ that great black chap,”
as he secretly called Cramier. His feeling was simply that it was
an awful pity; a sort of unhappy conviction that it was not like
the women of his family to fall upon such ways; that his dead
brother would turn in his grave; in two words that it was “ not
done.” Yet he was by no means of those who, giving latitude
to women in general, fall with whips on those of their own
family who take it. On the contrary, believing that Woman in
general should be stainless to the world’s eye, he was inclined
to make allowance for an individual woman whom he knew and
loved. A suspicion he had always entertained, that Cramier
was not by breeding “quite the clean potato” may insensibly
have influenced him just a little. He had heard indeed that he
was not even entitled to the name of Cramier, but had been
adopted by a childless man, who had brought him up and left
him a lot of money. Something in this went against the grain
of the childless Colonel. He had never adopted, nor been adopted
by, anyone himself. There was a certain lack about a man who
had been adopted, of reasonable guarantee—he was like a non-
''100 NOVELS OF LOVE

vintage wine, or a horse without a pedigree; you could not quite
rely on what he might do, having no tradition in his blood. His
appearance, too, and manner somehow lent colour to this dis-
trust. A touch of the tar-brush somewhere, and a stubborn,
silent, pushing fellow. Why on earth had Olive ever married
him! But then women were such kittle cattle, poor things!
and old Lindsay, with his vestments and his views on obedience,
must have been a Tartar as a father, poor old chap! Besides,
Cramier, no doubt, was what most women would call good-look-
ing; more taking to the eye than such a quiet fellow as young
Lennan, whose features were rather anyhow, though pleasant
enough, and with a nice smile—the sort of young man one could
not help liking, and who certainly would never hurt a fly! And
suddenly there came the thought: Why should he not go to
young Lennan and put it to him straight? That he was in
love with Olive? Not quite—but the way to do it would come
to him. He brooded long over this idea, and spoke of it to
Mrs. Ercott, while shaving, the next morning. Her answer:
“ My dear John, bosh! ” removed his last doubt.

Without saying where he was going, he strolled out the mo-
ment after breakfast—and took a train to Beaulieu. At the
young man’s hotel he sent in his card, and was told that this
Monsieur had already gone out for the day. His mood of
marching straight up to the guns thus checked, he was left
pensive and distraught. Not having seen Beaulieu (they spoke
of it then as a coming place), he made his way up an incline.
That whole hillside was covered with rose-trees. Thousands of
these flowers were starring the lower air, and the strewn petals
of blown and fallen roses covered the hight soil. The Colonel
put his nose to blossoms here and there, but they had little
seent, as if they knew that the season was already over. A
few blue-bloused peasants were still busy among them. And
suddenly he came on young Lennan himself, sitting on a stone
and dabbing away with his fingers at a lump of putty stuff. The
Colonel hesitated. A part from obvious reasons for discomfiture,
he had that feeling towards Art common to so many of his caste.
It was not work, of course, but it was very clever—a mystery
to him how anyone could do it! On seeing him, Lennan had
risen, dropping his handkerchief over what he was modelling
—but not before the Colonel had received a dim impression of
something familiar. The young man was very red—the Colonel,
too, was conscious suddenly of the heat. He held out his hand.
''THE DARK FLOWER , fs be 101

“ Nice quiet place this,” he stammered ; “ never seen it before.
I called at your hotel.” 2G eae.

Now that he had his chance, he was completely at’a loss. The
sight of the face emerging from that lump of “putty stuff a
had quite unnerved him. The notion of this young man work-
ing at it up here all by himself, just because he was away an
hour or two from the original, touched him. How on earth to
say what he had come.to say? It was altogether different from
what he had thought. And it suddenly flashed through him—
Dolly was right! She’s always right—hang it!

“Youre busy,” he said; “I mustn’t interrupt you.”

“Not at all, sir. It was awfully good of you to look me up.”

The Colonel stared. There was something about young Len-
nan that he had not noticed before; a “‘ Don’t take liberties with
me!” look which made things difficult. But still he lingered,
staring wistfully at the young man, who stood waiting with
such politeness. Then a safe question shot into his mind:

“Ah! And when do you go back to England? We’re off on
Tuesday.”

While he spoke, a puff of wind lifted the handkerchief from
the modelled face. Would the young fellow put it back? He
did not. And the Colonel thought:

“It would have been bad form. He knew I wouldn’t take
advantage. Yes! He’s a gentleman!’

Lifting his hand to the salute, he said: “ Well, I must be get-
ting back. See you at dinner perhaps?” And turning on his
heel he marched away.

The remembrance of that face in the “ putty stuff” up there
by the side of the road accompanied him home. It was bad—
it was serious! And the sense that he counted for nothing in
all of it grew and grew in him. He told no one of where he
had been... .

When the Colonel turned with ceremony and left him, Len-
nan sat down again on the flat stone, took up his “ putty stuff,”
and presently effaced that image. He sat still a long time, to
all appearance watching the little blue butterflies playing round
the red and tawny roses. Then his fingers began to work,
feverishly shaping a head; not of a man, not of a beast, but a
sort of horned, heavy mingling of the two. There was something
frenetic in the movement of those rather short, blunt-ended
fingers, as though they were strangling the thing they were
creating.
''In those days, such as had served their country travelled, as
befitted Spartans, in ordinary first-class carriages, and woke
in the morning at La Roche or some strange-sounding place,
for paler coffee and the pale brioche. So it was with Colonel
and Mrs. Ercott and their niece, accompanied by books they
did not read, viands they did not eat, and one somnolent Irish-
man returning from the Hast. In the disposition of legs there
was the usual difficulty, no one quite liking to put them up,
and all ultimately doing so, save Olive. More than once during
that night the Colonel, lying on the seat opposite, awoke and saw
her sitting, withdrawn into her corner, with eyes still open.
Staring at that little head which he admired so much, upright
and unmoving, in its dark straw toque against the cushion, he
would become suddenly alert. Kicking the Irishman slightly
in the effort, he would slip his legs down, bend across to her
in the darkness, and, conscious of a faint fragrance as of violets,
whisper huskily: “Anything I can do for you, my dear?”
When she had smiled and shaken her head, he would retreat,
and after holding his breath to see if Dolly were asleep, would
restore his feet, slightly kicking the Irishman. After one such
expedition, for full ten minutes he remained awake, wondering
at her tireless immobility. For indeed she was spending this
night entranced, with the feeling that Lennan was beside her,
holding her hand in his. She seemed actually to feel the touch
of his finger against the tiny patch of her bare palm where the
glove opened. It was wonderful, this uncanny communion in
the dark rushing night—she would not have slept for worlds!
Never before had she felt so close to him, not even when he
had kissed her that once under the olives; nor even when at
the concert yesterday his arm pressed hers; and his voice whis-
pered words she heard so thirstily. And that golden fortnight
passed and passed through her on an endless band of reminis-
cence. Its memories were like flowers, such scent and warmth
and colour in them; and of all, none perhaps quite so poignant
as the memory of the moment, at the door of their carriage,
when he said, so low that she just heard: “ Good-bye, my dar-
ling!” He had never before called her that. Not even his
102
''THE DARK FLOWER 103

touch on her cheek under the olives equalled the simple treasure
of that word. And above the roar and clatter of the train, and
the snoring of the Irishman, it kept sounding in her ears, hour
after dark hour. It was perhaps not wonderful, that through
all that night she never once looked the future in the face—
made no plans, took no stock of her position; just yielded to
memory, and to the half-dreamed sensation of his presence
close beside her. Whatever might come afterwards, she was
his this night. Such was the trance that gave to her the strange,
soft, tireless immobility which so moved her Uncle whenever he
woke up.

In Paris they drove from station to station in a vehicle unfit
for three—“ to stretch their legs ”—as the Colonel said. Since
he saw in his niece no signs of flagging, no regret, his spirits
were rising, and he confided to Mrs. Ercott in the buffet at
the Gare du Nord, when Olive had gone to wash, that he did
not think there was much in it, after all, looking at the way
she’d travelled.

But Mrs. Ercott answered:

“ Haven’t you ever noticed that Olive never shows what she
does not want to? She has not got those eyes for nothing.”

“What eyes? ”

“ Byes that see everything, and seem to see nothing.”

Conscious that something was hurting her, the Colonel tried
to take her hand.

But Mrs. Ercott rose quickly, and went where he could not
follow.

Thus suddenly deserted, the Colonel brooded, drumming on
the little table. What now! Dolly was unjust! Poor Dolly!
He was as fond of her as ever! Of course! How could he help
Olive’s being young—and pretty; how could he help looking
after her, and wanting to save her from this mess! Thus he
sat wondering, dismayed by the unreasonableness of women.
It did not enter his head that Mrs. Ercott had been almost
as sleepless as his niece, watching through closed eyes every
one of those little expeditions of his, and saying to herself:
“Ah! He doesn’t care how I travel! ”

She returned serene enough, concealing her “ grief,” and
soon they were once more whirling towards England.

But the future had begun to lay its hand on Olive; the spell
of the past was already losing power; the sense that it had all
been a dream grew stronger every minute. In a few hours she
''104 NOVELS OF LOVE

would re-enter the little house close under the shadow of that
old Wren church, which reminded her somehow of childhood,
and her austere father with his chiselled face. The meeting
with her husband! How go through that! And to-night!
But she did not care to contemplate to-night. And all those
to-morrows wherein there was nothing she had to do of which
it was reasonable to complain, yet nothing she could do without
feeling that all the friendliness and zest and colour was out of
life, and she a prisoner. Into those to-morrows she felt she
would slip back, out of her dream; lost, with hardly perhaps an
effort. To get away to the house on the river, where her hus-
band came only at week-ends, had hitherto been a refuge; only
she would not see Mark there—unless ! Then, with the
thought that she would, must still see him sometimes, all again
grew faintly glamorous. If only she did see him, what would
the rest matter? Never again as it had before!

The Colonel was reaching down her handbag; his cheery:
“Tooks as if it would be rough!” aroused her. Glad to be
alone, and tired enough now, she sought the ladies’ cabin, and
slept through the crossing, till the voice of the old stewardess
awakened her: “ You’ve had a nice sleep. We’re alongside,
miss.” Ah! if he were but that now! She had been dreaming
that she was sitting in a flowery field, and Lennan had drawn
her up by the hands, with the words: “ We’re here, my
darling!”

On deck, the Colonel laden with bags, was looking back for
her, and trying to keep a space between him and his wife. He
signalled with his chin. Threading her way towards him, she
happened to look up. By the rails of the pier above she saw
her husband. He was leaning there, looking intently down;
his tall broad figure made the people on each side of him seem
insignificant. The clean-shaved, square-cut face, with those
almost epileptic, forceful eyes, had a stillness and intensity
beside which the neighbouring faces seemed to disappear. She
saw him very clearly, even noting the touch of silver in his dark
hair, on each side under his straw hat; noting that he seemed
too massive for his neat blue suit. His face relaxed; he made
a neat little movement with one hand. Suddenly it shot through
her: Suppose Mark had travelled with them, as he had wished
to do? For ever and ever now, that dark massive creature,
smiling down at her, was her enemy; from whom she must
guard and keep herself if she could; keep, at all events, each

 
''THE DARK FLOWER 105

one of her real thoughts and hopes! She could have writhed,
and eried out; instead, she tightened her grip on the handle of
her bag, and smiled. Though so skilled in knowledge of his
moods, she felt, in his greeting, his fierce grip of her shoulders,
the smouldering of some feeling the nature of which she could
not quite fathom. His voice had a grim sincerity: “ Glad you’re
back—thought you were never coming!” Resigned to his
charge, a feeling of sheer physical faintness so beset her that
she could hardly reach the compartment he had reserved. It
seemed to her that, for all her foreboding, she had not till this
moment had the smallest inkling of what was now before her;
and at his muttered: “ Must we have the old fossils in?” she
looked back to assure herself that her Uncle and Aunt were
following. ‘To avoid having to talk, she feigned to have travelled
badly, leaning back with closed eyes, in her corner. If only she
could open them and see, not this square-jawed face with its
intent gaze of possession, but that other with its eager eyes
humbly adoring her. The interminable journey ended all too
soon. She clung quite desperately to the Colonel’s hand on the
platform at Charing Cross. When his kind face vanished she
would be lost indeed! Then, in the closed cab, she heard her
husband’s: “ Aren’t you going to kiss me?” and submitted to
his embrace.

She tried so hard to think: ‘ What does it matter? It’s not I,
not my soul, my spirit—only my miserable lips!’

She heard him say: “ You don’t seem too glad to see me!”
And then: “I hear you had young Lennan out there. What
was he doing?”

She felt the turmoil of sudden fear, wondered whether she
was showing it, lost it in unnatural alertness—all in the second
before she answered: “ Oh! just a holiday.”

Some seconds passed, and then he said:

“You didn’t mention him in your letters.”

She answered coolly: “ Didn’t 1? We saw a good deal of
him.” ‘

She knew that he was looking at her—an inquisitive, half-
menacing regard. Why—oh, why!—could she not then and
there cry out: “ And I love him—do you hear ?—TI love him!”
So awful did it seem to be denying her love with these half lies!
But it was all so much more grim and hopeless than even she
had thought. How inconceivable, now, that she had ever given
herself up to this man for life! If only she could get away from
''106 NOVELS OF LOVE

him to her room, and scheme and think! For his eyes never left
her, travelling over her with their pathetic greed, their menac-
ing inquiry, till he said : “ Well, it’s not done you any harm. You
look very fit.” But his touch was too much even for her self-
command, and she recoiled as if he had struck her.

“ What’s the matter? Did I hurt you?”

It seemed to her that he was jeering—then realised as vividly
that he was not. And the full danger to her, perhaps to Mark
himself, of shrinking from this man, striking her with all its
pitiable force, she made a painful effort, slipped her hand under
his arm, and said: “ I’m very tired. You startled me.”

But he put her hand away, and turning his face, stared out
of the window. And so they reached their home.

When he had left her alone, she remained where she was
standing, by her wardrobe, without sound or movement, think-
ing: ‘ What am I going to do? How am I going to live?’
''IX

Wuen Mark Lennan, travelling through from Beaulieu, reached
his rooms in Chelsea, he went at once to the little pile of
his letters, twice hunted through them, then stood very still,
with a stunned, sick feeling. Why had she not sent him that
promised note? And now he realised—though not yet to the
full—what it meant to be in love with a married woman. He
must wait in this suspense for eighteen hours at least, till he
could call, and find out what had happened to prevent her, till
he could hear from her lips that she still loved him. The
chilliest of legal lovers had access to his love, but he must possess
a soul on fire, in this deadly patience, for fear of doing some-
thing that might jeopardise her. Telegraph? He dared not.
Write? She would get it by the first post; but what could he
say that was not dangerous, if Cramier chanced to see? Call?
Still more impossible till three o’clock, at very earliest, to-
morrow. His gaze wandered round the studio. Were these
household gods, and all these works of his, indeed the same he
had left twenty days ago? They seemed to exist now only in
so far as she might come to see them—come and sit in such
a chair, and drink out of such a cup, and let him put this
cushion for her back, and that footstool for her feet. And so
vividly could he see her lying back in that chair looking across
at him, that he could hardly believe she had never yet sat
there. It was odd how—without any resolution taken, without
admission, that their love could not remain platonic, without
any change in their relations, save one humble kiss and a few
whispered words—everything was changed. A month or so ago,
if he had wanted, he would have gone at once calmly to her
house. It would have seemed harmless, and quite natural. Now
it was impossible to do openly the least thing that strict con-
vention did not find desirable. Sooner or later they would find
him stepping over convention, and take him for what he was
not—a real lover! A real lover! He knelt down before the
empty chair and stretched out his arms. No substance—no
warmth—no fragrance—nothing! Longing that passed through
air, as the wind through grass.

He went to the little round window, which overlooked the

107
''108 NOVELS OF LOVE

river. The last evening of May; gloaming above the water,
dusk nesting in the trees, and the air warm! Better to be out,
and moving in the night, out in the ebb and flow of things,
among others whose hearts were beating, than stay in this place
that without her was so cold and meaningless.

Lamps—the passion-fruit of towns—were turning from pallor
to full orange, and the stars were coming out. Half-past nine!
At ten o’clock, and not before, he would walk past her house.
To have this something to look forward to, however furtive and
barren, helped. But on a Saturday night there would be no
sitting at the House. Cramier would be at home; or they
would both be out; or perhaps have gone down to their river
cottage. Cramier! What cruel demon had presided over that
marring of her life! Why had he never met her till after she
had bound herself to this man! From a negative contempt for
one who was either not sensitive enough to recognise that his
marriage was a failure, or not chivalrous enough to make that
failure bear as little hardly as possible on his wife, he had
come already to jealous hatred as of a monster. To be face
to face with Cramier in a mortal conflict could alone have
satisfied his feeling. ... Yet he was a young man by nature
gentle!

His heart beat desperately as he approached that street—one
of those little old streets, so beautiful, that belong to a vanished
London. It was very narrow, there was no shelter, and he
thought confusedly of what he could say, if met in this remote
backwater which led nowhere. He would tell some lie, no doubt.
Lies would now be his daily business. Lies and hatred, those
violent things of life, would come to seem quite natural, in the
violence of his love.

He stood a moment, hesitating, by the rails of the old church.
Black, white-veined, with shadowy summits, in that half-dark-
ness, it was like some gigantic vision. Mystery itself seemed
modelled there. He turned and walked quickly down the
street close to the houses on the further side. The windows
of her house were lighted! So, she was not away! Dim light
in the dining-room, lights in the room above—her bedroom,
doubtless. Was there no way to bring her to the window, no
way his spirit could climb up there and beckon hers out to him?
Perhaps she was not there, perhaps it was but a servant taking
up hot water. He was at the end of the street by now, but to
leave without once more passing was impossible. And this time
''THE DARK FLOWER 109

he went slowly, his head down, feigning abstraction, grudging
every inch of pavement, and all the time furtively searching
that window with the light behind the curtains. Nothing!
Once more he was close to the railings of the church, and once
more could not bring himself to go away. In the little, close,
deserted street, not a soul was moving, not even a cat or dog;
nothing alive but many discreet, lighted windows. Like veiled
faces, showing no emotion, they seemed to watch his indecision.
And he thought: ‘Ah, well! I dare say there are lots like me.
Lots as near, and yet as far away! Lots who have to suffer!’
But what would he not have given for the throwing open of
those curtains. Then, suddenly, scared by an approaching
figure, he turned and walked away.
''Xx

At three o’clock next day he called.

In the middle of her white drawing-room, whose latticed win-
dow ran the whole length of one wall, stood a little table on
which was a silver jar full of early larkspurs, evidently from her
garden by the river. And Lennan waited, his eyes fixed on those
blossoms so like two little blue butterflies and strange-hued
crickets, tethered to the pale green stems. In this room she
passed her days, guarded from him. Once a week, at most, he
would be able to come there—once a week for an hour or two
out of the hundred and sixty-eight hours that he longed to be
with her.

And suddenly he was conscious of her. She had come in
without sound, and was standing by the piano, so pale, in her
cream-white dress, that her eyes looked jet black. He hardly
knew that face, like a flower closed against cold.

What had he done? What had happened in these five days
to make her like this to him? He took her hands and tried
to kiss them; but she said quickly:

ies int”

At that he stood silent, looking into that face, frozen to a
dreadful composure, on the breaking up of which his very life
seemed to depend. At last he said:

“ What is it? Am I nothing to you, after all?”

But as soon as he had spoken he saw that he need not have
asked, and flung his arms round her. She clung to him with
desperation; then freed herself, and said:

“No, no; let’s sit down quietly!”

He obeyed, half-divining, half-refusing to admit all that lay
behind that strange coldness, and this desperate embrace; all
the self-pity, and self-loathing, shame, rage, and longing of
a married woman for the first time face to face with her lover
in her husband’s house.

She seemed now to be trying to make him forget her strange
behaviour ; to be what she had been during that fortnight in the
sunshine. But, suddenly, just moving her lips, she said:

“ Quick! When can we see each other? I will come to you
to tea—to-morrow,” and, following her eyes, he saw the door

110
''THE DARK FLOWER it

opening, and Cramier coming in. Unsmiling, very big in the
low room, he crossed over to them, and offered his hand to
Lennan; then drawing a low chair forward between their two
chairs, sat down.

“So you’re back,” he said. “ Have a good time?”

“Thanks, yes; very.”

“Luck for Olive you were there; those places are dull holes.”

“Tt was luck for me.”

“No doubt.” And with those words he turned to his wife.
His elbows rested along the arms of his chair, so that his
clenched palms were upwards; it was as if he knew that he was
holding those two; gripped one in each hand.

“T wonder,” he said slowly, “that fellows like you, with
nothing in the world to tie them, ever sit down in a place like
London. I should have thought Rome or Paris were your
happy hunting-grounds.”

In his voice, in those eyes of his, a little bloodshot, with
their look of power, in his whole attitude, there was a sort of
muffled menace, and contempt, as though he were thinking:
‘Step into my path, and I will crush you!’

And Lennan thought:

‘How long must I sit here?’ Then, past that figure planted
solidly between them, he caught a look from her, swift, sure,
marvellously timed—again and again—as if she were being
urged by the very presence of this danger. One of those glances
would surely—surely be seen by Cramier. Is there need for
fear that a swallow should dash itself against the wall over
which it skims? But he got up, unable to bear it longer.

“Going?” That one suave word had an inimitable insolence.

He could hardly see his hand touching Cramier’s heavy fist.
Then he realised that she was standing so that their faces when
they must say good-bye could not be seen. Her eyes were
smiling, yet imploring; her lips shaped the word: “ To-mor-
row!” And squeezing her hand desperately, he got away.

He had never dreamed that to see her in the presence of the
man who owned her would be so terrible. For a moment he
thought that he must give her up, give up a love that would
drive him mad.

He climbed on to an omnibus travelling West. Another
twenty-four hours of starvation had begun. It did not matter
at all what he did with them. They were simply so much
aching that had to be got through somehow—so much aching;
''112 NOVELS OF LOVE

and what relief at the end? An hour or two with her, des-
perately holding himself in.

Like most artists, and few Englishmen, he lived on feelings
rather than on facts; so, found no refuge in decisive resolutions.
But he made many—the resolution to give her up; to be true
to the ideal of service for no reward; to beseech her to leave
Cramier and come to him—and he made each many times.

At Hyde Park Corner he got down, and went into the Park,
thinking that to walk would help him.

A great number of people were sitting there, taking mysteri-
ous anodyne, doing the right thing; to avoid them, he kept
along the rails, and ran almost into the arms of Colonel and
Mrs. Ercott, who were coming from the direction of Knights-
bridge, slightly flushed, having lunched and talked of “ Monte”
at the house of a certain General.

They greeted him with the surprise of those who had said
to each other many times: “'That young man will come rushing
back!” It was very nice—they said—to run across him. When
did he arrive? They had thought he was going on to Italy—
he was looking rather tired. They did not ask if he had seen
her—being too kind, and perhaps afraid that he would say
“Yes,” which would be embarrassing; or that he would say
“No,” which would be still more embarrassing when they found
that he ought to have said “ Yes.” Would he not come and sit
with them a little—they were going presently to see how Olive
was? Lennan perceived that they were warning him. And,
foreing himself to look at them very straight, he said: “I have
just been there.”

Mrs. Ercott phrased her impressions that same evening: “ He
looks quite hunted, poor young man! I’m afraid there’s going
to be fearful trouble there. Did you notice how quickly he
ran away from us? He’s thin, too; if it wasn’t for his tan, he’d
look really ill. The boy’s eyes are so pathetic; and he used to
have such a nice smile in them.”

The Colonel, who was fastening her hooks, paused in an
operation requiring concentration.

“ Tt’s a thousand pities,” he muttered, “that he hasn’t any
work to do. Puddling about with clay or whatever he does is
no good at all.” And slowly fastening one hook, he unhooked
several others.

Mrs. Ercott went on:

“And I saw Olive, when she thought I wasn’t looking; it
''THE DARK FLOWER 113

was just as if she’d taken off a mask. But Robert Cramier will
never put up with it. He’s in love with her still; 1 watched
him. It’s tragic, John.”

The Colonel let his hands fall from the hooks.

“Tf I thought that,” he said, “I’d do something.”

“Tf you could, it would not be tragic.”

The Colonel stared. There was always something to be done.

“ You read too many novels,” he said, but without spirit.

Mrs. Ercott smiled, and made no answer to an aspersion she
had heard before.
''XI

Wuewn Lennan reached his rooms again after that encounter
with the Ercotts, he found in his letter-box a visiting card:
“Mrs. Doone,” “ Miss Sylvia Doone,” and on it pencilled the
words: “Do come and see us before we go down to Hayle—
Sylvia.” He stared blankly at the round handwriting he knew
so well.

Sylvia! Nothing perhaps could have made so plain to him
how in this tornado of his passion the world was drowned.
Sylvia! He had almost forgotten her existence; and yet, only
last year, after he definitely settled down in London, he had
once more seen a good deal of her; and even had soft thoughts
of her again—with her pale-gold hair, her true look, her sweet-
ness. ‘Then they had gone for the winter to Algiers for her
mother’s health.

When they came back, he had already avoided seeing her,
though that was before Olive went to Monte Carlo, before he
had even admitted his own feelings. And since—he had not
once thought of her. Not once! The world had indeed van-
ished. “Do come and see us—Sylvia.” The very notion was
an irritation. No rest from aching and impatience to be had
that way.

And then the idea came to him: Why not kill these hours of
waiting for to-morrow’s meeting by going on the river and
passing by her cottage? There was still one train that he could
catch.

He reached the village after dark, and spent the night at
the inn; got up early next morning, took a boat, and pulled
down-stream. The bluffs of the opposite bank were wooded with
high trees. The sun shone softly on their leaves, and the
bright stream was ruffled by a breeze which bent all the reeds
and slowly swayed the water-flowers. One thin white line of
wind streaked the blue sky. He shipped his sculls and drifted,
listening to the wood-pigeons, watching the swallows chasing.
If only she were here! ‘To spend one long day thus, drifting
with the stream! To have but one such rest from longing! Her
cottage, he knew, lay on the same side as the village, and just
beyond an island. She had told him of a hedge of yew-trees,

114
''THE DARK FLOWER 115

and a white dove-cote almost at the water’s edge. He came to
the island, and let his boat slide into the backwater. It was all
overgrown with willow trees and alders, dark even in this early
morning radiance, and marvellously still. There was no room
to row; he took the boathook and tried to punt, but the green
water was too deep and entangled with great roots, so that he
had to make his way by clawing with the hook at branches.
Birds seemed to shun this gloom, but a single magpie crossed
the one little clear patch of sky, and flew low behind the willows.
The air here had a sweetish, earthy odour of too rank foliage;
all brightness seemed entombed. He was glad to pass out again
under a huge poplar-tree into the fluttering gold and silver of
the morning. And almost at once he saw the yew-hedge at the
border of some bright green turf, and a pigeon-house, high on
its pole, painted cream-white. About it a number of ring-doves
and snow-white pigeons were perched or flying; and beyond
the lawn he could see the dark veranda of a low house, covered
by wistaria just going out of flower. A drift of scent from late
lilacs, and new-mown grass, was borne out to him, together
with the sound of a mowing-machine, and the humming of many
bees. It was beautiful here, and seemed, for all its restfulness,
to have something of that flying quality he so loved about her
face, about the sweep of her hair, the quick, soft turn of her
eyes—or was that but the darkness of the yew-trees, the white-
ness of the dove-cote, and the doves themselves, flying ?

He lay there a long time quietly beneath the bank, careful
not to attract the attention of the old gardener, who was
methodically pushing his machine across and across the lawn.
How he wanted her with him then! Wonderful that there could
be in life such beauty and wild softness as made the heart ache
with the delight of it, and in that same life grey rules and rigid
barriers—coflins of happiness! That doors should be closed on
love and joy! There was not so much of it in the world! She,
who was the very spirit of this flying, nymph-like summer, was
untimely wintered-up in bleak sorrow. There was a hateful
unwisdom in that thought; it seemed so grim and violent, so
corpse-like, gruesome, narrow and extravagant! What possible
end could it serve that she should be unhappy! Even if he had
not loved her, he would have hated her fate just as much—all
pn stories of imprisoned lives had roused his anger even as
a boy.

Soft white clouds—those bright angels of the river, never
''116 NOVELS OF LOVE

very long away—had begun now to spread their wings over the
woods; and the wind had dropped so that the slumbrous warmth
and murmuring of summer gathered full over the water. The
old gardener had finished his job of mowing, and came with a
little basket of grain to feed the doves. Lennan watched them
going to him, the ring-doves, very dainty, and capricious, keep-
ing to themselves. In place of that old fellow, he was really
seeing her, feeding from her hands those birds of Cypris. What
a group he could have made of her with them perching and
flying round her! If she were his, what could he not achieve—
to make her immortal—like the old Italians, who, in their work,
had rescued their mistresses from Time! .. .

He was back in his rooms in London two hours before he
dared begin expecting her. Living alone there but for a care-
taker who came every morning for an hour or two, made dust,
and departed, he had no need for caution. And when he had
procured flowers, and the fruits and cakes which they certainly
would not eat—when he had arranged the tea-table, and made
the grand tour at least twenty times, he placed himself with a
book at the little round window, to watch for her approach.
There, very still, he sat, not reading a word, continually moisten-
ing his dry lips and sighing, to relieve the tension of his heart.
At last he saw her coming. She was walking close to the rail-
ings of the houses, looking neither to right nor left. She had
on a lawn frock, and a hat of the palest coffee-coloured straw,
with a narrow black velvet ribbon. She crossed the side street,
stopped for a second, gave a swift look round, then came reso-
lutely on. What was it made him love her so? What was the
secret of her fascination? Certainly no conscious enticements.
Never did anyone try less to fascinate. He could not recall one
single little thing that she had done to draw him to her. Was it,
perhaps, her very passivity, her native pride that never offered
or asked anything, a sort of soft stoicism in her fibre; that and
some mysterious charm, as close and intimate as scent was to
a flower?

He waited to open till he heard her footstep just outside.
She came in without a word, not even looking at him. And he,
too, said not a word till he had closed the door, and made sure
of her. Then they turned to each other. Her breast was
heaving a little, under her thin frock, but she was calmer than
he, with that wonderful composure of pretty women in all the
passages of love, as who should say: This is my native air!
''THE DARK FLOWER Lt?

They stood and looked at each other, as if they could never
have enough, till he said at last:

“JT thought I should die before this moment came. There
isn’t a minute that I don’t long for you so terribly that I can
hardly live.”

“And do you think that I don’t long for you? ”

“Then come to me!”

She looked at him mournfully and shook her head.

Well, he had known that she would not. He had not earned.
her. What right had he to ask her to fly against the world,
to brave everything, to have such faith in him—as yet? He
had no heart to press his words, beginning then to understand
the paralysing truth that there was no longer any resolving
this or that; with love like his he had ceased to be a separate
being with a separate will. He was entwined with her, could
act only if her will and his were one. He would never be able
to say to her: “ You must!” He loved her too much. And she
knew it. So there was nothing for it but to forget the ache,
and make the hour happy. But how about that other truth—
that in love there is no pause, no resting? . . . With any water-
ing, however scant, the flower will grow till its time comes to
be plucked. . . . This oasis in the desert—these few minutes
with her alone, were swept through and through with a feverish
wind. To be closer! How not try to be that? How not long
for her lips when he had but her hand to kiss? And how not
be poisoned with the thought that in a few minutes she would
leave him and go back to the presence of that other, who, even
though she loathed him, could see and touch her when he would ?
She was leaning back in the very chair where in fancy he had
seen her, and he only dared sit at her feet and look up. And
this, which a week ago would have been rapture, was now almost
torture, so far did it fall short of his longing. It was torture,
too, to keep his voice in tune with the sober sweetness of her
voice. And bitterly he thought: ‘ How can she sit there, and
not want me, as I want her?’ Then at a touch of her fingers
on his hair, he lost control, and kissed her lips. Her surrender
lasted only for a second.

“No, no—you must not!”

That mournful surprise sobered him at once.

He got up, stood away from her, begged to be forgiven.

And, when she was gone, he sat in the chair where she had
sat. That clasp of her, the kiss he had begged her to forget—
''118 NOVELS OF LOVE

to forget!—nothing could take that from him. He had done
wrong ; had startled her, had fallen short of chivalry! And yet
—a smile of utter happiness would cling about his lips. His
fastidiousness, his imagination almost made him think that this
was all he wanted. If he could close his eyes, now, and pass
out, before he lost that moment of half-fulfilment!

And, the smile still on his lips, he lay back watching the
flies wheeling and chasing round the hanging-lamp. Sixteen
of them there were, wheeling and chasing—never still!
''XII

WueEN, walking from Lennan’s studio, Olive re-entered her
dark little hall, she approached its alcove and glanced first at
the hat-stand. They were all there—the silk hat, the bowler,
the straw! So he was in! And within each hat, in turn, she
seemed to see her husband’s head—with the face turned away
from her—so distinctly as to note the leathery look of the skin
of his cheek and neck. And she thought: ‘I pray that he will
die! It is wicked, but I pray that he will die!’ Then, quietly,
that he might not hear, she mounted to her bedroom. The
door into his dressing-room was open, and she went to shut it.
He was standing there at the window.

“Ah! You’re in! Been anywhere? ”

“To the National Gallery.”

It was the first direct lie she had ever told him, and she
was surprised to feel neither shame nor fear, but rather a sense
of pleasure at defeating him. He was the enemy, all the more
the enemy because she was still fighting against herself, and, so
strangely, in his behalf.

“Alone? ”

ce NG

“ Rather boring, wasn’t it? I should have thought you’d have
got young Lennan to take you there.”

ce Why? 22

By instinct she had seized on the boldest answer; and there
was nothing to be told from her face. If he were her superior
in strength, he was her inferior in quickness.

He lowered his eyes, and said:

(Ps line, isn’t 17 77

With a shrug she turned away and shut the door. She sat
down on the edge of her bed, very still. In that little passage
of wits she had won, she could win in many such; but the full
hideousness of things had come to her. Lies, lies! That was to
be her life! That; or to say farewell to all she now cared for,
to cause despair not only in herself, but in her lover, and—for
what? In order that her body might remain at the disposal
of that man in the next room—her spirit having flown from him
for ever. Such were the alternatives, unless those words: “ Then

119
''120 NOVELS OF LOVE

come to me,” were to be more than words. Were they? Could
they be? They would mean such happiness if—if his love for
her were more than a summer love? And hers for him? Was it
—were they—more than summer loves? How know? And,
without knowing, how give such pain to everyone? How break
a vow she had thought herself quite above breaking? How
make such a desperate departure from .all the traditions and
beliefs in which she had been brought up! But in the very
nature of passion is that which resents the intrusion of hard
and fast decisions. ... And suddenly she thought: ‘If our
love cannot stay what it is, and if I cannot yet go to him for
always, is there not still another way?’

She got up and began to dress for dinner. Standing before
her glass she was surprised to see that her face showed no signs
of the fears and doubts which were now her comrades. Was it
because, whatever happened, she loved and was beloved! She
wondered how she had looked when he kissed her so passion-
ately; had she shown her joy before she checked him?

In her garden by the river were certain flowers that, for all
her care, would grow rank and of the wrong colour—wanting a
different soil. Was she, then, like those flowers of hers? Ah!
Let. her but have her true soil, and she*would grow straight and
true enough!

Then in the doorway she saw her husband. She had never,
till to-day, quite hated him; but now she did, with a real blind
horrible feeling. What did he want of her, standing there with
those eyes fixed on her—those forceful eyes, touched with blood,
seeming at once to threaten, covet, and beseech! She drew her
wrapper close round her shoulders. At that he came up and
said :

** Look at me, Olive!”

Against instinct and will she obeyed, and he went on:

“Be careful! I say, be careful!”

Then he took her by the shoulders, and raised her up to him.
And, quite unnerved, she stood without resisting.

“T want you,” he said; “I mean to keep you.”

Then, suddenly letting her go, he covered his eyes with his
hands. That frightened her most—it was so unlike him. Not
till now had she understood between what terrifying forces she
was balancing. She did not speak, but her face grew white.
From behind those hands he uttered a sound, not quite like a
human noise, turned sharply, and went out. She dropped back
''THE DARK FLOWER 121

into the chair before her mirror, overcome by the most singular
feeling she had ever known; as if she had lost everything, even
her love for Lennan, and her longing for his love. What was it
all worth, what was anything worth in a world like this? All
was loathsome, herself loathsome! All was a void! Hateful,
hateful, hateful! It was like having no heart at all! And that
same evening, when her husband had gone down to the House,
she wrote to Lennan:

“ Our love must never turn to earthiness as it might have this
afternoon. Everything is black and hopeless. He suspects.
For you to come here is impossible, and too dreadful for us both.
And I have no right to ask you to be furtive, I can’t bear to
think of you like that, and I can’t bear it myself. I don’t know
what to do or say. Don’t try to see me yet. I must have time,
I must think.”
''XIII

CoLoneL Ercorr was not a racing man, but he had in common
with others of his countrymen a religious feeling in the matter
of the Derby. His remembrances of it went back to early youth,
for he had been born and brought up almost within sound of the
coaching-road to Epsom. Every Derby and Oaks day he had
gone out on his pony to watch the passing of the tall hats and
feathers of the great, and the pot-hats and feathers of the
lowly; and afterwards, in the fields at home, had ridden races
with old Lindsay, finishing between a cow for a judge, and a
clump of bulrushes representing the Grand Stand.

But for one reason or another he had never seen the great
race, and the notion that it was his duty to see it had now come
to him. He proposed this to Mrs. Ercott with some diffidence.
She read so many books—he did not quite know whether she
would approve. Finding that she did, he added casually:

“ And we might take Olive.”

Mrs. Ercott answered dryly:

“You know the House of Commons has a holiday?”

The Colonel murmured:

“Oh! I don’t want that chap!”

“ Perhaps,” said Mrs. Ercott, “ you would like Mark Lennan.”

The Colonel looked at her most dubiously. Dolly could talk
of it as a tragedy, and a—a grand passion, and yet make a sug-
gestion like that! Then his wrinkles began slowly to come
alive, and he gave her waist a squeeze.

Mrs. Ercott did not resist that treatment.

“Take Olive alone,” she said. “I don’t really care to go.”

When the Colonel went to fetch his niece he found her ready,
and very half-heartedly he asked for Cramier. It appeared she
had not told him.

Relieved, yet somewhat disconcerted, he murmured:

“He won’t mind not going, I suppose? ”

“Tf he went, I should not.”

At this quiet answer the Colonel was beset again by all his
fears. He put his white “ topper ” down, and took her hana.

“My dear,” he said, “I don’t want to intrude upon your feel-
ings; but—but is there anything I can do? It’s dreadful to see

122
''THE DARK FLOWER 123

things going unhappily with you!” He felt his hand being
lifted, her face pressed against it; and, suffering acutely, with
his other hand, cased in a bright new glove, he smoothed her
arm. “ We'll have a jolly good day, sweetheart,” he said, “ and
forget all about it.”

She gave the hand a kiss and turned away. And the Colonel
vowed to himself that she should not be unhappy—lovely crea-
ture that she was, so delicate, and straight, and fine in her pearly
frock. And he pulled himself together, brushing his white “ top-
per” vigorously with his sleeve, forgetting that this kind of
hat has no nap.

And so he was tenderness itself on the journey down, satisfy-
ing all her wants before she had them, telling her stories of
Indian life, and consulting her carefully as to which horse they
should back. There was the Duke’s, of course, but there was
another animal that appealed to him greatly. His friend Tabor
had given him the tip—Tabor, who had the best Arabs in all
India—and at a nice price. A man who practically never
gambled, the Colonel liked to feel that his fancy would bring
him in something really substantial—if it won; the idea that
it could lose not really troubling him. However, they would see
it in the paddock, and judge for themselves. The paddock was
the place, away from all the dust and racket—Olive would enjoy
the paddock! Once on the course, they neglected the first race ;
it was more important, the Colonel thought, that they should
lunch. He wanted to see more colour in her cheeks, wanted to
see her laugh. He had an invitation to his old regiment’s drag,
where the champagne was sure to be good. And he was so proud
of her—would not have missed those young fellows’ admiration
of her for the world; though to take a lady amongst them was,
in fact, against the rules. It was not, then, till the second race
was due to start that they made their way into the paddock.
Here the Derby horses were being led solemnly, attended each
by a little posse of persons, looking up their legs and down their
ribs to see whether they were worthy of support, together with
a few who liked to see a whole horse at a time. Presently they
found the.animal which had been recommended to the Colonel.
It was a chestnut, with a starred forehead, parading in a far
corner. The Colonel, who really loved a horse, was deep in
admiration. He liked its head and he liked its hocks; above all,
he liked its eye. A fine creature, all sense and fire—perhaps just
a little straight in the shoulder for coming down the hill! And
''124 NOVELS OF LOVE

in the midst of his examination he found himself staring at his
niece. What breeding the child showed, with her delicate arched
brows, little ears, and fine, close nostrils; and the way she moved
—so sure and springy. She was too pretty to suffer! A shame!
Tf she hadn’t been so pretty that young fellow wouldn’t have
fallen in love with her. If she weren’t so pretty—that husband
of hers wouldn’t ! And the Colonel dropped his gaze,
startled by the discovery he had stumbled on. If she hadn’t been
so pretty! Was that the meaning of it all? The cynicism of his
own reflection struck him between wind and water. And yet
something in himself seemed to confirm it somehow. What then?
Was he to let them tear her in two between them, destroying her,
because she was so pretty? And somehow this discovery of his
—that passion springs from worship of beauty and warmth, of
form and colour—disturbed him horribly, for he had no habit of
philosophy. The thought seemed to him strangely crude, even
immoral. That she should be thus between two ravening de-
sires—a bird between two hawks, a fruit between two mouths!
It was a way of looking at things that had never before occurred
to him. The idea of a husband clutching at his wife, the idea
of that young man who looked so gentle, swooping down on her;
and the idea that if she faded, lost her looks, went off, their
greed, indeed, any man’s, would die away—all these horrible
ideas hurt him the more for the remarkable suddenness with
which they had come to him. A tragic business! Dolly had
said so. Queer and quick—were women! But his resolution
that the day was to be jolly soon recurred to him, and he hastily
resumed inspection of his fancy. Perhaps they ought to have a
ten-pound note on it, and they had better get back to the Stand!
And as they went the Colonel saw, standing beneath a tree at a
little distance, a young man that he could have sworn was
Lennan. Not likely for an artist chap to be down here! But it
was undoubtedly young Lennan, brushed up, in a_top-hat.
Fortunately, however, his face was not turned in their direction.
He said nothing to Olive, not wishing—especially after those un-
pleasant thoughts—to take responsibility, and he kept her mov-
ing towards the gate, congratulating himself that his eyes had
been so sharp. In the crush there he was separated from her a
little, but she was soon beside him again; and more than ever
he congratulated himself that nothing had occurred to upset her
and spoil the day. Her cheeks were warm enough now, her
dark eyes glowing. She was excited no doubt by thoughts of

 
''THE DARK FLOWER 125

the race, and of the “tenner” he was going to put on for
her.
He recounted the matter afterwards to Mrs. Ercott. “ That
chestnut Tabor put me on to finished nowhere—couldn’t get
down the hill—knew it wouldn’t the moment I set eyes on it.
But the child enjoyed herself. Wish you’d been there, my
dear!” Of his deeper thoughts and of that glimpse of young
Lennan he did not speak, for on the way home an ugly sus-
picion had attacked him. Had the young fellow, after all, seen
and managed to get close to her in the crush at the paddock

gateway ?
''XIV

Tuat letter of hers fanned the flame in Lennan as nothing
had yet fanned it. Earthiness! Was it earthiness to love as he
did? If so, then not for all the world would he be otherwise
than earthy. In the shock of reading it, he crossed his Rubicon,
and burned his boats behind him. No more did the pale ghost,
chivalrous devotion, haunt him. He knew now that he could
not stop short. Since she asked him, he must not, of course,
try to see her just yet. But when he did, then he would fight
for his life; the thought that she might be meaning to slip
away from him was too utterly unbearable. But she could not
be meaning that! She would never be so cruel! Ah! she would
—she must come to him in the end! The world, life itself,
would be well lost for love of her!

Thus resolved, he was even able to work again; and all that
Tuesday he modelled at a big version of the fantastic, bull-like
figure he had conceived after the Colonel left him up on the
hillside at Beaulieu. He worked at it with a sort of evil joy.
Into this creature he would put the spirit of possession that
held her from him. And while his fingers forced the clay, he
felt as if he had Cramier’s neck within his grip. Yet, now
that he had resolved to take her if he could, he had not quite
the same hatred. After all, this man loved her too, could not
help it that she loathed him; could not help it that he had the
disposition of her, body and soul!

June had come in with skies of a blue that not even London
glare and dust could pale. In every square and park and patch
of green the air simmered with life and with the music of birds
swaying on little boughs. Piano organs in the streets were no.
longer wistful for the South; lovers already sat in the shade
of trees.

To remain indoors, when he was not working, was sheer tor-
ture; for he could not read, and had lost all interest in the little
excitements, amusements, occupations that go to make up the
normal life of man. Every outer thing seemed to have dropped
off, shrivelled, leaving him just a condition of the spirit, a state
of mind.

Lying awake he would think of things in the past, and they

126
''THE DARK FLOWER 12”

would mean nothing—all dissolved and dispersed by the heat
of this feeling in him. Indeed, his sense of isolation was so
strong that he could not even believe he had lived through the
facts which his memory apprehended. He had become one burn-
ing mood—that, and nothing more.

To be out, especially amongst trees, was the only solace.

And he sat for a long time that evening under a large lime-
tree on a knoll above the Serpentine. There was very little
breeze, just enough to keep alive a kind of whispering. What
if men and women, when they had lived their gusty lives, became
trees! What if someone who had burned and ached were now
spreading over him this leafy peace—this blue-black shadow
against the stars? Or were the stars, perhaps, the souls of men
and women escaped for ever from love and longing? He broke
off a branch of the lime and drew it across his face. It was
not yet in flower, but it smelled lemony and fresh even here
in London. If only for a moment he could desert his own
heart, and rest with the trees and stars!

No further letter came from her next morning, and he soon
lost his power to work. It was Derby Day. He determined to
go down. Perhaps she would be there. Even if she were not,
he might find some little distraction in the crowd and the
horses. He had seen her in the paddock long before the
Colonel’s sharp eyes detected him; and, following in the crush
managed to touch her hand in the crowded gateway, and whis-
per: “ To-morrow, the National Gallery, at four o’clock—by the
Bacchus and Ariadne. For God’s sake!” Her gloved hand
pressed his hard; and she was gone. He stayed in the paddock,
too happy almost to breathe... .

Next day, while waiting before that picture, he looked at it
with wonder. For there seemed his own passion transfigured
in the darkening star-crowned sky, and the eyes of the leaping
god. In spirit, was he not always rushing to her like that?
Minutes passed, and she did not come. What should he do if she
failed him? Surely die of disappointment and despair... .
He had little enough experience as yet of the toughness
of the human heart; how life bruises and crushes, yet leaves
it beating. ... Then, from an unlikely quarter, he saw her
coming.

They walked in silence down to the quiet rooms where the
Turner watercolours hung. No one, save two Frenchmen and
an old official, watched them passing slowly before those little
''128 NOVELS OF LOVE

pictures, till they came to the end wall, and, unseen, unheard
by any but her, he could begin!

The arguments he had so carefully rehearsed were all for-
gotten; nothing left but an incoherent pleading. Life without
her was not life; and they had only one life for love—one sum-
mer. It was all dark where she was not—the very sun itself
was dark. Better to die than to live such false, broken lives,
apart from each other. Better to die at once than to live want-
ing each other, longing and longing, and watching each other’s
sorrow. And all for the sake of what? It maddened, killed
him, to think of that man touching her when he knew she did
but hate him. It shamed all manhood; it could not be good to
help such things to be. A vow when the spirit of it was gone
was only superstition; it was wicked to waste one’s life for the
sake of that. Society—she knew, she must know—only cared
for the forms, the outsides of things. And what did it matter
what Society thought? It had no soul, no feeling, nothing.
And if it were said they ought to sacrifice themselves for the
sake of others, to make things happier in the world, she must
know that was only true when love was light and selfish; but
not. when people loved as they did, with all their hearts and
souls, so that they would die for each other any minute, so that
without each other there was no meaning in anything. It would
not help a single soul, for them to murder their love and all the
happiness of their lives; to go on in a sort of living death. Even
if it were wrong, he would rather do that wrong, and take the
consequences! But it was not, it could not be wrong, when they
felt like that!

And all the time that he was pouring forth those supplica-
tions, his eyes searched and searched her face. But there only
came from her: “TI don’t know—TI can’t tell—if only I knew! ”
And then he was silent, stricken to the heart; till, at a look or
a touch from her, he would break out again: “ You do love me—
you do; then what does anything else matter?”

And so it went on and on that summer afternoon, in the de-
serted room meant for such other things, where the two French-
men were too sympathetic, and the old official too drowsy, to
come. Then it all narrowed to one fierce, insistent question:

“What is it—what is it you’re afraid of?”

But to that, too, he got only the one mournful answer, para-
lysing in its fateful monotony.

“T don’t know—I can’t tell! ”
''THE DARK FLOWER 129

It was awful to go on thus beating against this uncanny,
dark, shadowy resistance ; these unreal doubts and dreads, which
by their very dumbness were becoming real to him, too. If
only she could tell him what she feared! It could not be
poverty—that was not like her—besides, he had enough for
both. It could not be loss of a social position, which was but
irksome to her! Surely it was not fear that he would cease to
love her! What was it? In God’s name—what?

To-morrow—she had told him—she was to go down, alone,
to the river-house; would she not come now, this very minute,
to him instead? And they would start off—that night, back to
the South where their love had flowered. But again it was:
“T can’t! I don’t know—I must have time!” And yet her
eyes had that brooding love-light. How could she hold back
and waver? But, utterly exhausted, he did not plead again; did
not even resist when she said: “ You must go, now; and leave
me to get back! I will write. Perhaps—soon-—I shall know.”
He begged for, and took one kiss; then, passing the old official,
went quickly up and out.
''XV

He reached his rooms overcome by a lassitude that was not,
however, quite despair. He had made his effort, failed—but there
was still within him the unconquerable hope of the passionate
lover. . . . As well try to extinguish in full June the beating
of the heart of summer, deny to the flowers their deepening
hues, or to winged life its slumbrous buzzing, as stifle in such
a lover his conviction of fulfilment. .. .

He lay down on a couch, and there stayed a long time
quite still, his forehead pressed against the wall. His will was
already beginning to recover for a fresh attempt. It was merci-
ful that she was going away from Cramier, going to where he
had in fancy watched her feed her doves. No laws, no fears, not
even her commands could stop his fancy from conjuring her
up by day and night. He had but to close his eyes, and she
was there.

A ring at the bell, repeated several times, roused him at last
to go to the door. His caller was Robert Cramier. And at
sight of him, all Lennan’s lethargy gave place to a steely feel-
ing. What had brought him here? Had he been spying on his
wife? The old longing for physical combat came over him.
Cramier was perhaps fifteen years his senior, but taller, heavier,
thicker. Chances, then, were pretty equal !

“Won’t you come in?” he said.

* Chanke”

The voice had in it the same mockery as on Sunday; and
it shot through him that Cramier had thought to find his wife
here. If so, he did not betray it by any crude look round. He
came in with his deliberate step, light and well-poised for so big
a man.

“So this,” he said, “is where you produce your masterpieces !
Anything great since you came back?”

Lennan lifted the cloths from the half-modelled figure of his
bull-man. He felt malicious pleasure in doing that. Would
Cramier recognise himself in this creature with the horn-like
ears, and great bossed forehead? If this man who had her
happiness beneath his heel had come here to mock, he should
at all events get what he had come to give. And he waited.

130
''THE DARK FLOWER 131

“T see. You are giving the poor brute horns!”

If Cramier had seen, he had dared to add a touch of cynical
humour, which the sculptor himself had never thought of. And
this even evoked in the young man a kind of admiring com-
punction.

“Those are not horns,” he said gently; “ only ears.”

Cramier lifted a hand and touched the edge of his own ear.

“ Not quite like that, are they—human ears? But I suppose
you would call this symbolic. What, if I may ask, does it
represent ? ” '

All the softness in Lennan vanished.

“Tf you can’t gather that from looking, it must be a failure.”

“Not at all. If I am right, you want something for it to
tread on, don’t you, to get your full effect?”

Lennan touched the base of the clay.

“The broken curve here” then, with sudden disgust at
this fencing, was silent. What had the man come for? He must
want something. And, as if answering, Cramier said:

“To pass to another subject—you see a good deal of my wife.
I just wanted to tell you that I don’t very much care that you
should. It is as well to be quite frank, I think.”

Lennan bowed.

“Ts that not,” he said, “perhaps rather a matter for her
decision ?”’

That heavy figure—those threatening eyes! The whole thing
was like a dream come true!

“T do not feel it so. I am not one of those who let things
drift. Please understand me. You come between us at your
peril.”

Lennan kept silence for a moment, then he said quietly:

“Can one come between two people who have ceased to have
anything in common?”

The veins in Cramier’s forehead were swollen, his face and
neck had grown crimson. And Lennan thought with strange
elation: ‘ Now he’s going to hit me!’ He could hardly keep
his hands from shooting out and seizing in advance that great
strong neck. If he could strangle, and have done with him!

But, quite suddenly, Cramier turned on his heel. “I have
warned you,” he said, and went.

Lennan took a long breath. So! That was over, and he
knew where he was. If Cramier had struck out, he would surely
have seized his neck and held on till life was gone. Nothing

 
''132 NOVELS OF LOVE

should have shaken him off. In fancy he could see himself
swaying, writhing, reeling, battered about by those heavy fists,
but always with his hands on the thick neck, squeezing out its
life. He could feel, absolutely feel, the last reel and stagger
of that great bulk crashing down, dragging him with it, till it
lay upturned, still. He covered his eyes with his hands... .
Thank God! The fellow had not hit out!

He went to the door, opened it, and stood leaning against the
door-post. All was still and drowsy out there in that quiet back-
water of a street. Nota soul in sight! How still, for London!
Only the birds. In a neighbouring studio someone was playing
Chopin. Queer! He had almost forgotten there was such a
thing as Chopin. A mazurka! Spinning like some top thing,
round and round—weird little tune! . . . Well, and what now?
Only one thing certain. Sooner give up life than give her up!
Far sooner! Love her, achieve her—or give up everything, and
drown to that tune going on and on, that little dancing dirge of
summer !
''XVI

At her cottage Olive stood often by the river.

What lay beneath all that bright water—what strange, deep,
swaying life, so far below the ruffling of wind, and the shadows
of the willow trees? Was love down there, too? Love between
sentient things, where it was almost dark; or had all passion
climbed up to rustle with the reeds, and float with the water-
flowers in the sunlight? Was there colour? Or had colour
been drowned? No scent and no music; but movement there
would be, for all the dim groping things bending one way to
the current—movement, no less than in the aspen-leaves, never
quite still, and the winged droves of the clouds. And if it were
dark down there, it was dark, too, above the water; and hearts
ached, and eyes just as much searched for that which did not
come.

To watch it always flowing by to the sea; never looking back,
never swaying this way or that; drifting along, quiet as Fate—
dark, or glamorous with the gold and moonlight of these beauti-
ful days and nights, when every flower in her garden, in the
fields, and along the river banks, was full of sweet life; when
dog-roses starred the lanes, and in the wood the bracken was
high already.

She was not alone there, though she would much rather have
been; two days after she left London her Uncle and Aunt had
joined her. It was from Cramier they had received their invi-
tation. He himself had not yet been down.

Every night, having parted from Mrs. Ercott and gone up
the wide shallow stairs to her room, she would sit down at the
window to write to Lennan, one candle beside her—one pale
flame for comrade, as it might be his spirit. Every evening
she poured out to him her thoughts, and ended always: “ Have
patience!” She was still waiting for courage to pass that dark
hedge of impalpable doubts and fears and scruples, of a dread
that she could not make articulate even to herself. Having
finished, she would lean out into the night. The Colonel, his
black figure cloaked against the dew, would be pacing up and
down the lawn, with his good-night cigar, whose fiery spark
she could just discern; and, beyond, her ghoctly dove-house ;

133
''134 NOVELS OF LOVE

and, beyond, the river—flowing. Then she would clasp herself
close—afraid to stretch out her arms, lest she should be seen.

Each morning she rose early, dressed, and slipped away to
the village to post her letter. From the woods across the river
wild pigeons would be calling—as though Love itself pleaded
with her afresh each day. She was back well before break-
fast, to go up to her room and come down again as if for the
first time. The Colonel, meeting her on the stairs, or in the
hall, would say: “‘ Ah, my dear! just beaten you! Slept well?”
And, while her lips touched his cheek, slanted at the proper
angle for uncles, he never dreamed that she had been three miles
already through the dew.

Now that she was in the throes of an indecision, whose ending,
one way or the other, must be so tremendous, now that she was
in the very swirl, she let no sign at all escape her; the Colonel
and even his wife were deceived into thinking that after all
no great harm had been done. It was grateful to them to think
so, because of that stewardship at Monte Carlo, of which they
could not render too good account. The warm sleepy days, with
a little croquet and a little paddling on the river, and much
sitting out of doors, when the Colonel would read aloud from
Tennyson, were very pleasant. To him—if not to Mrs. Ercott—
it was especially jolly to be out of Town “this confounded
crowded time of year.” And so the days of early June went
by, each finer than the last.

And then Cramier came down, without warning on a Friday
evening. It was hot in London . . . the session dull. . . . The
Jubilee turning everything upside down. . . . They were lucky
to be out of Town!

A silent dinner—that!

Mrs. Ercott noticed that he drank wine like water, and for
minutes at a time fixed his eyes, which looked heavy as if he
had not been sleeping, not on his wife’s face but on her neck.
If Olive really disliked and feared him—as John would have
it—she disguised her feelings very well! For so pale a woman
she was looking brilliant that night. The sun had caught her
cheeks, perhaps. That black low-cut frock suited her, with old
Milanese-point lace matching her skin so well, and one carnation,
of darkest red, at her breast. Her eyes were really sometimes
like black velvet. It suited pale women to have those eyes,
that looked so black at night! She was talking, too, and laugh-
ing more than usual. One would have said: A wife delighted
''THE DARK FLOWER 135

to welcome her husband! And yet there was something—some-
thing in the air, in the feel of things—the lowering fixity of
that man’s eyes, or—thunder coming, after all this heat! Surely.
the night was unnaturally still and dark, hardly a breath of
air, and so many moths out there, passing the beam of light,
like little pale spirits crossing a river! Mrs. Ercott smiled,
pleased at that image. Moths! Men were like moths; there
were women from whom they could not keep away. Yes, there
was something about Olive that drew men to her. Not mere-
tricious—to do her justice, not that at all; but something soft,
and—fatal; like one of these candle-flames to the poor moths,
John’s eyes were never quite as she knew them when he was
looking at Olive; and Robert Cramier’s—what a queer, drugged
look they had! As for that other poor young fellow—she had
never forgotten his face when they came on him in the Park!

And when after dinner they sat on the veranda, they were all
more silent still, just watching, it seemed, the smoke of their
cigarettes, rising quite straight, as though wind had been with-
drawn from the world. The Colonel twice endeavoured to speak
about the moon: It ought to be up by now! It was going to be
full.

And then Cramier said: “ Put on that scarf thing, Olive, and
come round the garden with me.”

Mrs. Ercott admitted to herself now that what John said was
true. Just one gleam of eyes, turned quickly this way and
that, as a bird looks for escape; and then Olive had got up and
quietly gone with him down the path, till their silent figures
were lost to sight.

Disturbed to the heart, Mrs. Ercott rose and went over to
her husband’s chair. He was frowning, and staring at his eve-
ning shoe balanced on a single toe. He looked up at her and
put out his hand. Mrs. Ercott gave it a squeeze; she wanted
comfort.

The Colonel spoke:

“It’s heavy to-night, Dolly. I don’t like the feel of it.”
''XVII

Tuy had passed without a single word spoken, down through
the laurels and guelder roses to the river bank; then he had
turned to the right, and gone along it under the dove-house, to
the yew-trees. There he had stopped, in the pitch darkness of
that foliage. It seemed to her dreadfully still; if only there
had been the faintest breeze, the faintest lisping of reeds on the
water, one bird to make a sound; but nothing, nothing save his
breathing, deep, irregular, with a quiver in it. What had he
brought her here for? To show her how utterly she was
his? Was he never going to speak, never going to say what-
ever it was he had in mind to say? If only he would not touch
her!

Then he moved, and a stone dislodged fell with a splash into
the water. She could not help a little gasp. How black the
river looked! But slowly, beyond the dim shape of the giant
poplar, a shiver of light stole outwards across the blackness
from the far bank—the moon, whose rim she could now see ris-
ing, of a thick gold like a coin, above the woods. Her heart went
out to that warm light. At all events there was one friendly
inhabitant of this darkness.

Suddenly she felt his hands on her waist. She did not move,
her heart beat too furiously; but a sort of prayer fluttered up
from it against her lips. In the grip of those heavy hands was
such quivering force!

His voice sounded very husky and strange: “ Olive, this can’t
go on. I suffer. My God! I suffer!”

A pang went through her, a sort of surprise. Suffer! She
might wish him dead, but she did not want him to suffer—God
knew! And yet, gripped by those hands, she could not say:
I am sorry!

He made a sound that was almost a groan, and dropped on
his knees. Feeling herself held fast, she tried to push his fore-
head back from her waist. It was fiery hot; and she heard him
mutter: “ Have mercy! Love me a little!” But the clutch of
his hands, never still on the thin silk of her dress, turned her
faint. She tried to writhe away, but could not; stood still
again, and at last found her voice.

136
''THE DARK FLOWER 137

“Mercy? Can I make myself love? No one ever could since
the world began. Please, please get up! Let me go!”

But he was pulling her down to him so that she was forced
on to her knees on the grass, with her face close to his. A low
moaning was coming from him. It was horrible—so horrible!
And he went on pleading, the words all confused, not looking in
her face. It seemed to her that it would never end, that she
would never get free of that grip, away from that stammering,
whispering voice. She stayed by instinct utterly still, closing
her eyes. Then she felt his gaze for the first time that evening
on her face, and realised that he had not dared to look until her
eyes were closed, for fear of reading what was in them. She
said very gently:

“ Please let me go. I think I’m going to faint.”

He relaxed the grip of his arms; she sank down and stayed
unmoving on the grass. After such utter stillness that she
hardly knew whether he was there or not, she felt his hot hand
on her bare shoulder. Was it all to begin again? She shrank
down lower still, and a little moan escaped her. He let her
go suddenly, and, when at last she looked up, was gone.

She got to her feet trembling, and moved quickly from under
the yew-trees. She tried to think—tried to understand exactly
what this portended for her, for him, for her lover. But she
could not. There was around her thoughts the same breathless
darkness that brooded over this night. Ah! but to the night
had been given that pale-gold moon-ray, to herself nothing, no
faintest gleam; as well try to pierce below the dark surface of
that water !

She passed her hands over her face, and hair, and dress. How
long had it lasted? How long had they been out here? And
she began slowly moving back towards the house. Thank God!
She had not yielded to fear or pity, not uttered falsities, not
pretended she could love him, and betrayed her heart. That
would have been the one unbearable thing to have been left re-
membering! She stood long looking down, as if trying to see
the future in her dim flower-beds; then, bracing herself, hurried
to the house. No one was on the veranda, no one in the drawing-
room. She looked at the clock. Nearly eleven. Ringing for the
servant to shut the windows, she stole up to her room. Had
her husband gone away as he had come? Or would she presently
again be face to face with that dread, the nerve of which never
stopped aching now, dread of the night when he was near. She
''138 NOVELS OF LOVE

determined not to go to bed, and drawing a long chair to the
window, wrapped herself in a gown, and lay back.

The flower from her dress, miraculously uncrushed in those
dark minutes on the grass, she set in water beside her at the
window—Mark’s favourite flower, he had once told her; it was
a comfort, with its scent, and hue, and memory of him.

Strange that in her life, with all the faces seen, and people
known, she had not loved one till she had met Lennan! She
had even been sure that love would never come to her; had not
wanted it—very much; had thought to go on well enough, and
pass out at the end, never having known, or much cared to
know, full summer. Love had taken its revenge on her now
for all slighted love offered her in the past; for the one hated
love that had to-night been on its knees to her. They said it
must always come once to every man and woman—this witchery,
this dark sweet feeling, springing up, who knew how or why?
She had not believed, but now she knew. And whatever might
be coming, she would not have this different. Since all things
changed, she must change and get old and be no longer pretty
for him to look at, but this in her heart could not change. She
felt sure of that. It was as if something said: This is for
ever, beyond life, beyond death, this is for ever! He will be
dust, and you dust, but your love will live! Somewhere—in the
woods, among the flowers, or down in the dark water, it will
haunt! For it only you have lived! . . . Then she noticed that
a slender silvery-winged thing, unlike any moth she had ever
seen, had settled on her gown, close to her neck. It seemed to be
sleeping, so delicate and drowsy, having come in from the
breathless dark, thinking, perhaps, that her whiteness was a
light. What dim memory did it rouse; something of him,
something he had done—in darkness, on a night like this. Ah,
yes! that evening after Gorbio, the little owl-moth on her knee!
He had touched her when he took that cosy wan velvet-eyed thing
off her!

She leaned out for air. What a night!—whose stars were
hiding in the sheer heavy warmth; whose small, round, golden
moon had no transparency! A night like a black pansy with a
little gold heart. And silent! For, of the trees, that whispered
so much at night, not even the aspens had voice. The unstirring
air had a dream-solidity against her cheeks. But in all the
stillness, what sentiency, what passion—as in her heart! Could
she not draw him to her from those woods, from that dark
''THE DARK FLOWER 139

gleaming river, draw him from the flowers and trees and the
passion-mood of the sky—draw him up to her waiting here, so
that she was no more this craving creature, but one with him
and the night! And she let her head droop down on her hands.

All night long she stayed there at the window. Sometimes
dozing in the chair; once waking with a start, fancying that her
husband was bending over her. Had he been—and stolen away ?
And the dawn came; dew-grey, filmy and wistful, woven round
each black tree, and round the white dove-cot, and falling scarf-
like along the river. And the chirrupings of birds stirred among
leaves as yet invisible.

She slept then.
''XVIII

Wuen she awoke once more, in daylight, smiling, Cramier was
standing beside her chair. His face, all dark and bitter, had the
sodden look of a man very tired.

“ So!” he said: “ Sleeping this way doesn’t spoil your dreams.
Don’t let me disturb them. I am just going back to Town.”

Like a frightened bird, she stayed, not stirring, gazing at his
back as he leaned in the window, till, turning round on her
again, he said:

“But remember this: What I can’t have, no one else shall!
Do you understand? No one else!” And he bent down close,
repeating: “ Do you understand—you bad wife!”

Four years’ submission to a touch she shrank from; one long
effort not to shrink! Bad wife! Not if he killed her would she
answer now!

“Do you hear?” he said once more: “ Make up your mind to
that. I mean it.”

He had gripped the arms of her chair, till she could feel it
quiver beneath her. Would he drive his fist into her face that
she managed to keep still smiling? But there only passed
into his eyes an expression which she could not read.

“Well,” he said, “you know!” and walked heavily towards
the door.

The moment he had gone she sprang up: Yes, she was a bad
wife! A wife who had reached the end of her tether. A wife
who hated instead of loving. A wife in prison! Bad wife!
Martyrdom, then, for the sake of a faith in her that was lost
already, could be but folly. If she seemed bad and false to him,
there was no longer reason to pretend to be otherwise. No
longer would she, in the words of the old song :—“ sit and sigh—
pulling bracken, pulling bracken.” No more would she starve
for want of love, and watch the nights throb and ache, as last
night had throbbed and ached, with the passion that she might
not satisfy.

And while she was dressing she wondered why she did not
look tired. To get out quickly! To send her lover word at
once to hasten to her while it was safe—that she might tell him
she was coming to him out of prison! She would telegraph for

140
''THE DARK FLOWER 141

him to come that evening with a boat, opposite the tall poplar.
She and her Aunt and Uncle were to go to dinner at the Rectory,
but she would plead headache at the last minute. When the
Ercotts had gone she would slip out, and he and she would row
over to the wood, and be together for two hours of happiness.
And they must make a clear plan, too—for to-morrow they
would begin their life together. But it would not be safe to
send that message from the village; she must go down and over
the bridge to the postoffice on the other side, where they did not
know her. It was too late now before breakfast. Better after,
when she could slip away, knowing for certain that her husband
had gone. It would still not be too late for her telegram—
Lennan never left his rooms till the midday post which brought
her letters.

She finished dressing, and knowing that she must show no
trace of her excitement, sat quite still for several minutes, forc-
ing herself into languor. Then she went down. Her husband
had breakfasted and gone. At everything she did, and every
word she spoke, she was now smiling with a sort of wonder, as
if she were watching a self, that she had abandoned like an old
garment, perform for her amusement. It even gave her no
feeling of remorse to think she was going to do what would be
so painful to the good Colonel. He was dear to her—but it did
not matter. She was past all that. Nothing mattered—nothing
in the world! It amused her to believe that her Uncle and, Aunt
misread her last night’s walk in the dark garden, misread her
languor and serenity. And at the first moment possible she
flew out, and slipped away under cover of the yew-trees towards
the river. Passing the spot where her husband had dragged
her down to him on her knees in the grass, she felt a sort of
surprise that she could ever have been so terrified. What was
he? The past—nothing! And she flew on. She noted carefully
the river bank opposite the tall poplar. It would be quite easy
to get down from there into a boat. But they would not stay
in that dark backwater. They would go over to the far side into
those woods from which last night the moon had risen, those
woods from which the pigeons mocked her every morning, those
woods so full of summer. Coming back, no one would see her
landing; for it would be pitch dark in the backwater. And,
while she hurried, she looked back across her shoulder, marking
where the water, entering, ceased to be bright. A dragon-fly
brushed her cheek; she saw it vanish where the sunlight failed.
''142 NOVELS OF LOVE

How suddenly its happy flight was quenched in that dark shade,
-as a candle flame blown out. The tree growth there was too
thick—the queer stumps and snags had uncanny shapes, as of
monstrous creatures, whose eyes seemed to peer out at you. She
shivered. She had seen those monsters with their peering eyes
somewhere. Ah! In her dream at Monte Carlo of that bull-
face staring from the banks, while she drifted by, unable to ery
out. No! The backwater was not a happy place—they would
not stay there a single minute. And more swiftly than ever she
flew on along the path. Soon she had crossed the bridge, sent off
her message, and returned. But there were ten hours to get
through before eight o’clock, and she did not hurry now. She
wanted this day of summer to herself alone, a day of dreaming
till he came; this day for which all her life till now had been
shaping her—the day of love. Fate was very wonderful! If she
had ever loved before; if she had known joy in her marriage—
she could never have been feeling what she was feeling now, what
she well knew she would never feel again. She crossed a new-
mown hayfield, and finding a bank, threw herself down on her
back among its uncut grasses. Far away at the other end men
were scything. It was all very beautiful—the soft clouds float-
ing, the clover-stalks pushing themselves against her palms, and
stems of the tall couch grass cool to her cheeks; little blue butter-
flies; a lark, invisible; the scent of the ripe hay ; and the gold-
fairy arrows of the sun on her face and limbs. To grow and
reach the hour of summer; all must do that! That was the
meaning of Life! She had no more doubts and fears. She had
no more dread, no bitterness, and no remorse for what she was
going to do. She was doing it because she must. . . . As well
might grass stay its ripening because it shall be cut down! She
had, instead, a sense of something blessed and uplifting. What-
ever Power had made her heart, had placed within it this love.
Whatever it was, whoever it was, could not be angry with her!

A wild bee settled on her arm, and she held it up between her
and the sun, so that she might enjoy its dusky glamour. It
would not sting her—not to-day! The little blue butterflies,
too, kept alighting on her, who lay there so still. And the love-
songs of the wood-pigeons never ceased, nor the faint swish of
scything.

At last she rose to make her way home. A telegram had
come saying simply: “ Yes.” She read it with an unmoved face,
having resorted again to her mask of languor. Toward tea-
''THE DARK FLOWER 143

time she confessed to headache, and said she would lie down.
Up there in her room she spent those three hours writing—
writing as best she could all she had passed through in thought
and feeling, before making her decision. It seemed to her that
she owed it to herself to tell her lover how she had come to
what she had never thought to come to. She put what she
had written in an envelope and sealed it. She would give it
to him, that he might read and understand, when she had shown
him with all of her how she loved him. It would pass the
time for him, until to-morrow—until they set out on their new
life together. For to-night they would make their plans, and
to-morrow start.

At half-past seven she sent word that her headache was too bad
to allow her to go out. This brought a visit from Mrs. Ercott:
The Colonel and she were so distressed ; but perhaps Olive was
wise not to exert herself! And presently the Colonel himself
spoke, lugubriously through the door: Not well enough to come ?
No fun without her! But she mustn’t on any account strain
herself! No, no!

Her heart smote her at that. He was always so good to her.

At last, watching from the corridor, she saw them sally forth
down the drive—the Colonel a little in advance, carrying his
wife’s evening shoes. How nice he looked—with his brown face,
and his grey moustache; so upright, and concerned with what
he had in hand!

There was no languor in her now. She had dressed in white,
and now she took a blue silk cloak with a hood, and caught up
the flower that had so miraculously survived last night’s wearing
and pinned it at her breast. Then making sure no servant was
about, she slipped downstairs and out. It was just eight, and
the sun still glistened on the dove-cot. She kept away from that
lest the birds should come fluttering about her, and betray her
by cooing. When she had nearly reached the tow-path, she
stopped affrighted. Surely something had moved, something
heavy, with a sound of broken branches. Was it the memory
of last night come on her again; or, indeed, someone there?
She walked back a few steps. Foolish alarm! In the meadow
beyond a cow was brushing against the hedge. And, stealing
along the grass, out on to the tow-path, she went swiftly towards
the poplar.
''XIX

A HUNDRED times in these days of her absence Lennan had been
on the point of going down, against her orders, just to pass the
house, just to feel himself within reach, to catch a glimpse of
her, perhaps, from afar. If his body haunted London, his spirit
had passed down on to that river where he had drifted once
already, reconnoitring. A hundred times—by day in fancy, and
by night in dreams—pulling himself along by the boughs, he
stole down that dim backwater, till the dark yews and the white
dove-cot came into view.

For he thought now only of fulfilment. She was wasting
cruelly away! Why should he leave her where she was? Leave
her to profane herself and all womanhood in the arms of a man
she hated?

And on that day of mid-June, when he received her telegram,
it was as if he had been handed the key of Paradise.

Would she—could she mean to come away with him that very
night? He would prepare for that at all events. He had so
often in mind faced this crisis in his affairs, that now it only
meant translating into action what had been carefully thought
out. He packed, supplied himself liberally with money, and
wrote a long letter to his guardian. It would hurt the old man
—Gordy was over seventy now—but that could not be helped.
He would not post it till he knew for certain.

After telling how it had all come about, he went on thus:

“T know that to many people, and perhaps to you, Gordy, it
will seem very wrong, but it does not to me, and that is the
simple truth. Everybody has his own views on such things, I
suppose; and as I would not—on my honour, Gordy—ever have
held or wished to hold, or ever will hold in marriage or out of
marriage, any woman who does not love me, so I do not think it
is acting as I would resent others acting towards me, to take away
from such unhappiness this lady for whom I would die at any
minute. I do not mean to say that pity has anything to do with
it—I thought so at first, but I know now that it is all swallowed
up in the most mighty feeling I have ever had or ever shall have,
I am not a bit afraid of conscience. If God is Universal Truth,

144
''THE DARK FLOWER 145

He cannot look hardly upon us for being true to ourselves.
And as to people, we shall just hold up our heads; 1 think that
they generally take you at your own valuation. But, anyway,
Society does not much matter. We shan’t want those who don’t
want us—you may be sure. I hope he will divorce her quickly—
there is nobody much to be hurt by that except you and Cis;
but if he doesn’t—it can’t be helped. I don’t think she has
anything; but with my six hundred, and what I can make, even
if we have to live abroad, we shall be ali right for money. You
have been awfully good to me always, Gordy, and I am very
grieved to hurt you, and still more sorry if you think I am
being ungrateful; but when one feels as I do—body and soul and
spirit—there isn’t any question ; there wouldn’t be if death itself
stood in the way. If you receive this, we shall be gone together ;
I will write to you from wherever we pitch our tent, and, of
course, I shall write to Cicely. But will you please tell Mrs.
Doone and Sylvia, and give them my love if they still care to
have it. Good-bye, dear Gordy. I believe you would have done
the same, if you had been I. Always your affectionate—
“ Marx.”

In all those preparations he forgot nothing, employing every
minute of the few hours in a sort of methodic exaltation. The
last thing before setting out he took the damp cloths off his
“bull-man.” Into the face of the monster there had come of
late a hungry, yearning look. The artist in him had done his
work that unconscious justice; against his will had set down
the truth. And, wondering whether he would ever work at it
again, he re-damped the cloths and wrapped it carefully.

He did not go to her village, but to one five or six miles down
the river—it was safer, and the row would steady him. Hiring
a skiff, he pulled upstream. He travelled very slowly to kill
time, keeping under the far bank. And as he pulled, his very
heart seemed parched with nervousness. Was it real that he was
going to her, or only some fantastic trick of Fate, a dream from
which he would wake to find himself alone again? He passed
the dove-cot at last, and kept on till he could round into the
backwater and steal up under cover to the poplar. He arrived
a few minutes before eight o’clock, turned the boat round, and
waited close beneath the bank, holding to a branch, and standing
so that he could see the path. Jf a man could die from longing
and anxiety, surely Lennan must have died then!
''146 NOVELS OF LOVE

All wind had failed, and the day was fallen into a wonderful
still evening. Gnats were dancing in the sparse strips of sun-
light that slanted across the dark water, now that the sun was
low. From the fields, bereft of workers, came the scent of hay
and the heavy scent of meadow-sweet; the musky odour of the
backwater was confused with them into one brooding perfume.
No one passed. And sounds were few and far to that wistful
listener, for birds did not sing just there. How still and warm
was the air, yet seemed to vibrate against his cheeks as though
about to break into flame. That fancy came to him vividly while
he stood waiting—a vision of heat simmering in little pale red
flames. On the thick reeds some large, slow, dusky flies were
still feeding, and now and then a moorhen a few yards away
splashed a little, or uttered a sharp, shrill note. When she came
—if she did come !—they would not stay here, in this dark earthy
backwater; he would take her over to the other side, away to
the woods! But the minutes passed, and his heart sank. Then
it leaped up. Someone was coming—in white, with bare head,
and something blue or black flung across her arm. It was she!
No one else walked like that! She came very quickly. And he
noticed that her hair looked like little wings on either side of
her brow, as if her face were a white bird with dark wings, flying
to love! Now she was close, so close that he could see her lips
parted, and her eyes love-ighted—like nothing in the world but
darkness wild with dew and starlight. He reached up and lifted
her down into the boat, and the scent of some flower pressed
against his face seemed to pierce into him and reach his very
heart, awakening the memory of something past, forgotten.
Then, seizing the branches, snapping them in his haste, he
dragged the skiff along through the sluggish water, the gnats
dancing in his face. She seemed to know where he was taking
her, and neither of them spoke a single word, while he pulled out
into the open, and over to the far bank.

There was but one field between them and the wood—a field
of young wheat, with a hedge of thorn and alder. And close to
that hedge they set out, their hands clasped. They had nothing
to say yet—like children saving up. She had put on her cloak
to hide her dress, and its silk swished against the silvery blades
of the wheat. What had moved her to put on this blue cloak?
Blue of the sky, and flowers, of birds’ wings, and the black-
burning blue of the night! The hue of all holy things! And
how still it was in the late gleam of the sun! Not one little
''THE DARK FLOWER 147

sound of beast or bird or tree; not one bee humming! And not
much colour—only the starry white hemlocks and globe-campion
flowers, and the low-flying glamour of the last warm light on the

wheat.
''XX

. . . Now over wood and river the evening drew in fast. And
first the swallows, that had looked as if they would never stay
their hunting ceased; and the light, which had seemed fastened
above the world, for all its last brightenings, slowly fell wingless
and dusky.

The moon would not rise till ten! And all things waited. The
creatures of night were slow to come forth after that long bright
summer’s day, watching for the shades of the trees to sink
deeper and deeper into the now chalk-white water; watching for
the chalk-white face of the sky to be masked with velvet. The
very black-plumed trees themselves seemed to wait in suspense
for the grape-bloom of night. All things stared, wan in that
hour of passing day—all things had eyes wistful and unblessed.
In those moments glamour was so dead that it was as if meaning
had abandoned the earth. But not for long. Winged with
darkness it stole back; not the soul of meaning that had gone,
but a witch-like and brooding spirit harbouring in the black
trees, in the high dark spears of the rushes, and on the grim-
snouted snags which lurked along the river bank. Then the owls
came out, and night-flying things. And in the wood began a
cruel bird-tragedy—some dark pursuit in the twilight above the
bracken ; the piercing shrieks of a creature into whom talons have
again and again gone home; and mingled with them, hoarse rag-
ing cries of triumph. Many minutes they lasted, those noises of
the night, sound-emblems of all the cruelty in the heart of Na-
ture; till at last death appeased that savagery. And any soul
abroad, who pitied fugitives, might once more listen, and not
weep. ...

Then a nightingale began to give forth its long liquid gur-
gling; and a corn-crake churred in the young wheat. Again
the night brooded, in the silent tops of the trees, in the more
silent depths of the water. It sent out at long intervals a sigh
or murmur, a tiny scuttling splash, an owl’s hunting cry. And
its breath was still hot and charged with heavy odour, for no
dew was falling... .

148
''XXI

Ir was past ten when they came out. from the wood. She had
wanted to wait for the moon to rise; not a gold coin of a moon
as last night, but ivory pale, and with a gleaming radiance level
over the fern, and covering the lower boughs, as it were, with a
drift of white blossom..

Through the wicket gate they passed once more beside the
moon-coloured wheat, which seemed of a different world from
that world in which they had walked but an hour and a half
ago.

Orns in Lennan’s heart was a feeling such as a man’s heart
can only know once in all his life—such humble gratitude, and
praise, and adoration of her who had given him her all. There
should be nothing for her now but joy—like the joy of this last
hour. She should never know less happiness! And kneeling
down. before her at the water’s edge he kissed her dress, and
hands, and feet, which to-morrow would be his for ever.

Then they got into the boat.

The smile of the moonlight glided over each ripple, and reed,
and closing water-lily ; over her face, where the hood had fallen
back from her loosened hair; over one hand trailing the water,
and the other touching the flower at her breast; and, just above
her breath, she said:

“ Row, my dear love; it’s late!”

Dipping his sculls, he shot the skiff into the darkness of the
backwater. ...

What happened then he never knew, never clearly—in all those
after years. A vision of her white form risen to its feet, bending
forward like a creature caught, that cannot tell which way to
spring; a crashing shock, his head striking something hard!
Nothingness! And then—an awful, awful struggle with roots
and weeds and slime, a desperate agony of groping in that pitchy
blackness, among tree-stumps, in dead water that seemed to
have no bottom—he and that other, who had leaped at them in
the dark with his boat, like a murdering beast; a nightmare
search more horrible than words could tell, till in a patch of
moonlight on the bank they laid her, who for all their efforts
never stirred. ... There she lay all white, and they two

: 149
''150 NOVELS OF LOVE

crouched at her head and feet—like dark creatures of the woods
and waters over that which with their hunting they had slain.

How long they stayed there, not once looking at each other,
not once speaking, not once ceasing to touch with their hands
that dead thing—he never knew. How long in the summer
night, with its moonlight and its shadows quivering round them,
and the night wind talking in the reeds!

And then the most enduring of all sentient things had moved
in him again; so that he once more felt. . . . Never again to
see those eyes which had loved him with their light! Never again
to kiss her lips! Frozen—like moonlight to the earth, with the
flower still clinging at her breast. Thrown out on the bank
like a plucked water-lily!] Dead? No, no! Not dead! Alive
in the night—alive to him—somewhere! Not on this dim bank,
in this hideous backwater, with that dark dumb creature who
had destroyed her! Out there on the river—in the wood of their
happiness—somewhere alive! ... And, staggering up past
Cramier, who never moved, he got into his boat, and like one
demented pulled out into the stream.

But once there in the tide, he fell huddled forward, motionless
above his oars... .

And the moonlight flooded his dark skiff drifting down. And
the moonlight effaced the ripples on the water that had stolen
away her spirit. Her spirit mingled now with the white beauty
and the shadows, for ever part of the stillness and the passion
of a summer night; hovering, floating, listening to the rustle
of the reeds, and the whispering of the woods; one with the
endless dream—her spirit passing out, as all might wish to pass,
in the hour of happiness.
''PART III
AUTUMN
I

Wuen on that November night Lennan stole to the open door
of his dressing-room, and stood watching his wife asleep, Fate
still waited for an answer.

A low fire was burning—one of those fires that throw faint
shadows everywhere, and once and again glow so that some
object shines for a moment, some shape is clearly seen. The
curtains were not quite drawn, and a plane-tree branch with
leaves still hanging, which had kept them company all the fif-
teen years they had lived there, was moving darkly in the wind,
now touching the glass with a frail tap, as though asking of
him, who had been roaming in that wind so many hours, to let
it in. Unfailing comrades—London plane-trees !

He had not dared hope that Sylvia would be asleep. It was
merciful that she was, whichever way the issue went—that issue
so cruel! Her face was turned towards the fire, and one hand
rested beneath her cheek. So she often slept. Even when life
seemed all at sea, its landmarks lost, one still did what was
customary. Poor tender-hearted thing—she had not slept since
he told her, forty-eight hours, that seemed such years, ago!
With her flaxen hair, and her touching candour, even in sleep,
she looked like a girl lying there, not so greatly changed from
what she had been that summer of Cicely’s marriage down at
Hayle. Her face had not grown old in all those twenty-eight
years. There had been till now no special reason why it should.
Thought, strong feeling, suffering, those were what changed
faces; Sylvia had never thought very deeply, never suffered
much, till now. And was it for him, who had been careful of her
—very careful on the whole, despite man’s selfishness, despite her
never having understood the depths of him—was it for him of all
people to hurt her so, to stamp her face with sorrow, perhaps
destroy her utterly ?

151
''152 NOVELS OF LOVE

He crept a little farther in and sat down in the armchair
beyond the fire. What memories a fire gathered into it, with
its flaky ashes, its little leaf-like flames, and that quiet glow
and flicker! What tale of passions! How like to a fire was a
man’s heart! The first young fitful leapings, the sudden, fierce,
mastering heat, the long, steady sober burning, and then—that
last flaming-up, that clutch back at its own vanished youth, the
final eager flight of flame, before the ashes wintered it to noth-
ing! Visions and memories he saw down in the fire, as only
can be seen when a man’s heart, by the agony of long struggle,
has been stripped of skin, and quivers at every touch. Love!
A strange haphazard thing was love—so spun between ecstasy
and torture! A thing insidious, irresponsible, desperate. A
flying sweetness, more poignant than anything on earth, more
dark in origin and destiny. A thing without reason or coherence.
A man’s love-life—what say had he in the ebb and flow of it?
No more than in the flights of autumn birds, swooping down,
alighting here and there, passing on. The loves one left behind
—even in a life by no means vagabond in love, as men’s lives
went! The love that thought the Tyrol skies would fall if he
were not first with a certain lady. The love whose star had
caught in the hair of Sylvia, now lying there asleep. A so-called
love—that half-glamorous, yet sordid little meal of pleasure,
which youth, however sensitive, must eat, it seems, some time or
other with some young light of love—a glimpse of life that be-
forehand had seemed much and had meant little, save to leave
him disillusioned with himself and sorry for his partner. And
then the love that he could not, even after twenty years, bear to
remember; that all-devouring summer passion, which in one
night had gained all and lost all terribly, leaving on his soul a
scar which could never be quite healed, leaving his spirit always
a little lonely, haunted by the sense of what might have been.
Of his share in that night of tragedy—that “ terrible accident
on the river ’—no one had ever dreamed. And then the long
despair which had seemed the last death of love had _ slowly
passed, and yet another love had been born—or rather born
again, pale, sober, but quite real; the fresh springing-up of a
feeling long forgotten, of that protective devotion of his boy-
hood. He still remembered the expression on Sylvia’s face when
he passed her by chance in Oxford Street, soon after he came
back from his four years of exile in the East and Rome—that
look, eager, yet reproachful, then stoically ironic, as if saying:
''THE DARK FLOWER 153

“Oh, no! after forgetting me four years and more—you can’t
remember me now!” And when he spoke, the still more touch-
ing pleasure in her face. Then uncertain months, with a feeling
of what the end would be; and then their marriage. Happy
enough—gentle, not very vivid, nor spiritually very intimate—
his work always secretly as remote from her as when she had
thought to please him by putting jessamine stars on the heads of
his beasts. A quiet successful union, not meaning, he had
thought, so very much to him nor so very much to her—until
forty-eight hours ago he told her; and she had shrunk, and
wilted, and gone all to pieces. And what was it he had told her?

A long story—that!

Sitting there by the fire, with nothing yet decided, he could
see it all from the start, with its devilish, delicate intricacy, its
subtle slow enchantment spinning itself out of him, out of his
own state of mind and body, rather than out of the spell cast
over him, as though a sort of fatal force, long dormant, were
working up again to burst into dark flower. .. .
''II

Yes, it had begun within him over a year ago, with a queer un-
happy restlessness, a feeling that life was slipping, ebbing away
within reach of him, and his arms never stretched out to arrest it.
It had begun with a sort of long craving, stilled only when he
was working hard—a craving for he knew not what, an ache
which was worst whenever the wind was soft.

They said that about forty-five was a perilous age for a man—
especially for an artist. All the autumn of last year he had felt
this vague misery rather badly. It had left him alone most of
December and January, while he was working so hard at his
group of lions; but the moment that was finished it had gripped
him hard again. In those last days of January he well remem-
bered wandering about in the parks day after day, trying to
get away from it. Mild weather, with a scent in the wind! With
what avidity he had watched children playing, the premature
buds on the bushes, anything, everything young—with what an
ache, too, he had been conscious of innumerable lives being lived
round him, and loves loved, and he outside, unable to know, to
grasp, to gather them; and all the time the sands of his hour-
glass running out! A most absurd and unreasonable feeling for
a man with everything he wanted, with work that he loved, quite
enough money, and a wife so good as Sylvia—a feeling that no
Englishman of forty-six, in excellent health, ought for a moment
to have been troubled with. A feeling such as, indeed, no Eng-
lishman ever admitted having—so that there was not even, as
yet, a Society for its suppression. For what was this disquiet
feeling, but the sense that he had had his day, would never
again know the stir and fearful joy of falling in love, but only
just hanker after what was past and gone! Could anything be
more reprehensible in a married man?

It was—yes—the last day of January, when, returning from
one of those restless rambles in Hyde Park, he met Dromore.
Queer to recognise a man hardly seen since school-days. Yet
unmistakably, Johnny Dromore, sauntering along the rails of
Piccadilly on the Green Park side, with that slightly rolling
gait of his thin, horseman’s legs, his dandified hat a little to
one side, those strange, chaffing, goggling eyes, that look, as if

154
''THE DARK FLOWER 155

making a perpetual bet. Yes—the very same teasing, now
moody, now reckless, always astute Johnny Dromore, with a good
heart beneath an outside that seemed ashamed of it. Truly to
have shared a room at school—to have been at College together,
were links mysteriously indestructible.

“ Mark Lennan! By gum! haven’t seen you for ages. Not
since you turned out a full-blown—what d’you call it? Awfully
glad to meet you, old chap!”

Here was the past indeed, long vanished in feeling and
thought and all; and Lennan’s head buzzed, trying to find some
common interest with this hunting, racing man-about-town.

Johnny Dromore come to life again—he whom the Machine
had stamped with astute simplicity by the time he was twenty-
two, and for ever after left untouched in thought and feeling—
Johnny Dromore, who would never pass beyond the philosophy
that all was queer and freakish which had not to do with horses,
women, wine, cigars, jokes, good-heartedness, and that per-
petual bet; Johnny Dromore, who, somewhere in him, had a
pocket of depth, a streak of hunger, that was not just Johnny
Dromore.

How queer was the sound of that jerky talk!

“You ever see old Fookes now? Been racin’ at all? You
live in Town? Remember good old Blenker?” And then
silence and then another spurt: “ Ever go down to ‘ Bambury’s?’
Ever go racin’? ... Come on up to my ‘digs.’ You’ve got
nothin’ to do.” No persuading Johnny Dromore that a “ what
d’you call it” could have anything to do. “ Come on, old chap.
Tye got the hump. It’s this damned east wind.”

Well he remembered it, when they shared a room at “ Bam-
bury’s””—that hump of Johnny Dromore’s, after some reckless
spree or bout of teasing.

And down that narrow bye-street of Piccadilly he had gone,
and up into those “ digs ” on the first floor, with their little dark
hall, their Van Beers’ drawing and “ Vanity Fair” cartoons,
and prints of racehorses, and of the old Nightgown Steeple-
chase; with the big chairs, and all the paraphernalia of Race
Guides and race-glasses, fox-masks, and stags’-horns, and hunt-
ing-whips. And yet, something which from the first moment
struck him as not quite in keeping, foreign to the picture—a
little jumble of books, a vase of flowers, a grey kitten.

“Sit down old chap. What?ll you drink?”

Sunk into the recesses of a marvellous chair, with huge arms
''156 NOVELS OF LOVE

of tawny leather, he listened and spoke drowsily. “ Bambury’s,”
Oxford, Gordy’s clubs—dear old Gordy, gone now !—things long
passed by; they seemed all round him once again. And yet,
always that vague sense, threading this resurrection, threading
the smoke of their cigars, and Johnny Dromore’s clipped talk—
of something that did not quite belong. Might it be, perhaps,
that sepia drawing—above the “Tantalus” on the oak side-
board at the far end—of a woman’s face gazing out into the
room? Mysteriously unlike everything else, except the flowers,
and this kitten pushing its furry little head against his hand.
Odd how a single thing sometimes took possession of a room,
however remote in spirit! It seemed to reach like a shadow
over Dromore’s outstretched limbs, and weathered, long-nosed
face, behind his huge cigar; over the queer, solemn, chafing
eyes, with something brooding in the depths of them.

“ Ever get the hump? Bally awful, isn’t it? It’s getting old.
We're bally old, you know, Lenny!” Ah! No one had called
him “Lenny” for twenty years. And it was true; they were
unmentionably old.

“ When a fellow begins to feel old, you know, it’s time he went
broke—or something; doesn’t bear sittin’ down and lookin’ at.
Come out to ‘ Monte’ with me!”

“Monte!” That old wound, never quite healed, started
throbbing at the word, so that he could hardly speak his: “ No,
I don’t care for ‘ Monte.’ ”

And, at once, he saw Dromore’s eyes probing, questioning:

“You married?”

[19 Wes?

“Never thought of you as married!”

So Dromore did think of him. Queer! He never thought of
Johnny Dromore.

“ Winter’s bally awful, when you’re not huntin’. You’ve
changed a lot; should hardly have known you. Last time I saw
you, you’d just come back from Rome or somewhere. What’s it
like bein’? a—a sculptor? Saw something of yours once. Ever
do things of horses? ”

Yes; he had done a “ relief ” of ponies only last year.

“You do women, too, I s’pose? ”

“ Not often.”

The eyes goggled slightly. Quaint, that unholy interest!
Just like boys, the Johnny Dromores—would never grow up, no
matter how life treated them. If Dromore spoke out his soul,
''THE DARK FLOWER 157

as he used to speak it out at “ Bambury’s,” he would say: “ You
get a pull there; you have a bally good time, I expect.” That
was the way it took them; just a converse manifestation of the
very same feeling towards Art that the pious Philistines had, with
their deploring eyebrows and their “ peril to the soul.” Babes
all! Nota glimmering of what Art meant—of its effort, and its
yearnings!

“You make money at it?”

"Oh; yes’?

Again that appreciative goggle, as who should say: ‘ Ho!
there’s more in this than I thought!’

A long silence, then, in the dusk with the violet glimmer
from outside the windows, the fire flickering in front of them,
the grey kitten purring against his neck, the smoke of their
cigars going up, and such a strange, dozing sense of rest, as |
he had not known for many days. And then—something, some-
one at the door, over by the sideboard! And Dromore speaking
in a queer voice:

“Come in, Nell! D’you know my daughter?”

A hand took Lennan’s, a hand which seemed to waver between
the aplomb of a woman of the world, and a child’s impulsive
warmth. And a voice, young, clipped, clear, said:

“How d’you do? She’s rather sweet, isn’t she—my kitten? ”

Then Dromore turned the light up. A figure fairly tall, in a
grey riding-habit, stupendously well cut; a face not quite so
round as a child’s nor so shaped as a woman’s blushing slightly,
very calm; crinkly light-brown hair tied back with a black rib-
bon under a neat hat; and eyes like those eyes of Gainsborough’s
“ Perdita ”’—slow, grey, mesmeric, with lang lashes curling up,
eyes which draw things to them, still innocent.

And just on the point of saying: “I thought you’d stepped
out of that picture”—he saw Dromore’s face, and mumbled
instead :

“So, it’s your kitten? ”

“Yes; she goes to everybody. Do you like Persians? She’s
all fur really. Feel!”

Entering with his fingers the recesses of the kitten, he said:

“ Cats without fur are queer.”

“ Have you seen one without fur?”

“Oh, yes! In my profession we have to go below fur—I’m a
sculptor.”

“That must be awfully interesting.”
''158 NOVELS OF LOVE

What a woman of the world! But what a child, too! And
now he could see that the face in the sepia drawing was older
altogether—lips not so full, look not so innocent, cheeks not so
round, and something sad and desperate about it—a face rudely
touched by life. But the same eyes it had—and what charm,
for all its disillusionment, its air of a history! Then he noticed,
fastened to the frame, on a thin rod, a dust-coloured curtain,
drawn to one side. The self-possessed young voice was saying:

“ Would you mind if I showed you my drawings? It would
be awfully good of you. You could tell me about them.” And
with dismay he saw her open a portfolio. While he scrutinised
those schoolgirl’s drawings, he could feel her looking at him, as
animals do when they are making up their minds whether or no
to like you; then she came and stood so close that her arm
pressed his. He redoubled his efforts to find something good
about the drawings. But in truth there was nothing good. And
if, in other matters, he could lie well enough to save people’s
feelings, where Art was concerned he never could; so he merely
said :

“You haven’t been taught, you see.”

Will you teach me?”

But before he could answer, she was already effacing that
naive question in her most grown-up manner.

“ Of course I oughtn’t to ask. It would bore you awfully.”

After that he vaguely remembered Dromore’s asking if he
ever rode in the Row; and those eyes of hers following him
about; and her hand giving his another childish squeeze. Then
he was on his way again down the dimly-lighted stairs, past an
interminable array of “‘ Vanity Fair” cartoons, out into the east
wind.
''III

Crossiné the Green Park on his way home, was he more, or
less, restless? Difficult to say. A little flattered, certainly, a little
warmed ; yet irritated, as always when he came into contact with
people to whom the world of Art was such an amusing unreality.
The notion of trying to show that child how to draw—that
feather-pate, with her riding and her kitten; and her “ Perdita ”
eyes! Quaint, how she had at once made friends with him! He
was a little different, perhaps, from what she was accustomed to.
And how daintily she spoke! A strange, attractive, almost lovely
child! Certainly not more than seventeen—and—Johnny Dro-
more’s daughter !

The wind was bitter, the lamps bright among the naked trees.
Beautiful always—London at night, even in January, even in an
east wind, with a beauty he never tired of. Its great dark,
chiselled shapes, its gleaming lights, like droves of flying stars
come to earth; and all warmed by the beat and stir of innumer-
able lives—those lives that he often ached to know and to be
part of.

He told Sylvia of his encounter. Dromore! The name struck
her. She had an old Irish song, “The Castle of Dromore,”
with a queer, haunting refrain.

It froze hard all the week, and he began a life-size group of
their two sheep-dogs. Then a thaw set in with that first south-
west wind, which brings each February a feeling of Spring such
as is never again recaptured, and men’s senses, like sleepy bees
in the sun, go roving. It awakened in him more violently than
ever the thirst to be living, knowing, loving—the craving for
something new. Not this, of course, took him back to Dro-
more’s rooms; oh, no! just friendliness, since he had not even
told his old room-mate where he lived, or said that his wife
would be glad to make his acquaintance, if he cared to come
round. For Johnny Dromore had assuredly not seemed too
happy, under all his hard-bitten air. Yes! it was but friendly to
go again.

_Dromore was seated in his long armchair, a cigar between
his lips, a pencil in his hand, a Ruff’s “ Guide” on his knee;
beside him was a large green book. There was a festive air

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''160 NOVELS OF LOVE

about him, very different from his spasmodic gloom of the other
day; and he murmured without rising:

“ Hallo, old man!—glad to see you. Take a pew! Look here!
Agapemone—which d’you think I ought to put her to—San
Diavolo or Ponte Canet?—not more than four crosses of St.
Paul. Goin’ to get a real good one from her this time! ”

He, who had never heard these sainted names, answered.

“Oh! Ponte Canet, without doubt. But if you’re working
T’ll come in another time.”

“QLord! no! Have asmoke. Ill just finish lookin’ out their
blood—and take a pull.”

And so. Lennan sat down to watch those researches, wreathed
in cigar smoke and punctuated by muttered expletives. They
were as sacred and absorbing, no doubt, as his own efforts to
create in clay; for before Dromore’s inner vision was the perfect
racehorse—he, too, was creating. Here was no mere dodge for
making money, but a process hallowed by the peculiar sensation
felt when one rubbed the palms of the hands together, the sensa-
tion which accompanied all creative achievement. Once only
Dromore paused to turn his head and say:

“ Bally hard, gettin’ taproots right!”

Real Art! How well an artist knew that desperate search
after the point of balance, the central rivet to be found before a
form would come to life. . . . And he noted that to-day there
was no kitten, no flowers, no sense at all of an extraneous
presence—even the picture was curtained. Had the girl been
just a dream—a fancy conjured up by his craving after youth?

Then he saw that Dromore had dropped the large green book,
and was standing before the fire.

“Nell took to you the other day. But you always were a
lady’s man. Remember the girl at Coaster’s? ”

Coaster’s tea-shop, where he would go every afternoon that he
had money, just for the pleasure of looking shyly at a face.
Something beautiful to look at—nothing more! Johnny Dro-
more would no better understand that now than when they were
at “ Bambury’s.” Not the smallest good even trying to explain!
He looked up at the goggling eyes; he heard the bantering
voice :

“T say—you are goin’ grey. We're bally old, Lenny! A
fellow gets old when he marries.”

And he answered :

“ By the way, I never knew that you had been.”
''THE DARK FLOWER 161

From Dromore’s face the chaffing look went, like a candle-
_ flame blown out; and a coppery flush spread over it. For some
seconds he did not speak, then, jerking his head towards the
picture, he muttered gruffly :

“ Never had the chance of marrying, there; Nell’s ‘ outside.’ ”

A sort of anger leaped in Lennan; why should Dromore speak
that word as if he were ashamed of his own daughter? Just like
his sort—none so hidebound as men-about-town! Flotsam on
the tide of other men’s opinions; poor devils adrift, without the
one true anchorage of their own real feelings! And doubtful
whether Dromore would be pleased, or think him gushing, or
even distrustful of his morality, he said:

“As for that, it would only make any decent man or woman
nicer to her. When is she going to let me teach her drawing? ”

Dromore crossed the room, drew back the curtain of the pic-
ture, and in a muffled voice, said:

“My God, Lenny! Life’s unfair. Nell’s coming killed her
mother. I’d rather it had been me—bar chaff! Women have
no luck.”

Lennan got up from his comfortable chair. For, startled out
of the past, the memory of that summer night, when yet another
woman had no luck, was flooding his heart with its black, inex-
tinguishable grief. He said quietly:

“The past is past, old man.”

Dromore drew the curtain again across the picture, and came
back to the fire. And for a full minute he stared into it.

“What am I to do with Nell? She’s growing up.”

“ What have you done with her so far?”

“She’s been at school. In the summer she goes to Ireland—
[I’ve got a bit of an old place there. She’ll be eighteen in July.
I shall have to introduce her to women, and all that. It’s the
devil! How? Who?”

Lennan could only murmur: “ My wife, for one.”

He took his leave soon after. Johnny Dromore! Bizarre
guardian for that child! Queer life she must have of it, in that
bachelor’s den, surrounded by Ruff’s “ Guides”! What would
become of her? Caught up by some young spark about town;
married to him, no doubt—her father would see to the thorough-
ness of that, his standard of respectability was evidently high!
And after—go the way, maybe, of her mother—that poor thing
in the picture with the alluring, desperate face. Well! It was
no business of his!
''ug

No business of his! The merest sense of comradeship, then,
took him once more to Dromore’s after that disclosure, to prove
that the word “ outside ” had no significance save in his friend’s
own fancy; to assure him again that Sylvia would be very glad
to welcome the child at any time she liked to come.

When he had told her of that little matter of Nell’s birth,
she had been silent a long minute, looking in his face, and then
had said: “ Poor child! I wonder if she knows! People are so
unkind, even nowadays!” He could not himself think of any-
one who would pay attention to such a thing, except to be
kinder to the girl; but in such matters Sylvia was the better
judge, in closer touch with general thought. She met people
that he did not—and of a more normal species.

It was rather late when he got to Dromore’s diggings on that
third visit.

“Mr. Dromore, sir,’ the man said—he had one of those
strictly confidential faces bestowed by an all-wise Providence on
servants in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly—“ Mr. Dromore,
sir, is notin. But he will be almost sure to be in to dress. Miss
Nell is in, sir.”

And there she was, sitting at the table, pasting photographs
into an album—lonely young creature in that abode of male
middle-age! Lennan stood, unheard, gazing at the back of her
head, with its thick crinkly-brown hair tied back on her dark red
frock. And, to the confidential man’s soft:

“Mr. Lennan, miss,” he added a softer: “ May I come in?”

She put her hand into his with intense composure.

“Oh, yes, do! if you don’t mind the mess I’m making ;” and,
with a little squeeze of the tips of his fingers, added: “ Would
it bore you to see my photographs? ”

And down they sat together before the photographs—snap-
shots of people with guns or fishing-rods, little groups of school-
girls, kittens, Dromore and herself on horseback, and several of
a young man with a broad, daring, rather good-looking face.
“'That?s Oliver—Oliver Dromore—Dad’s first cousin once re-
moved. Rather nice, isn’t he? Do you like his expression? ”

Lennan did not know. Not her second cousin; her father’s

162
''THE DARK FLOWER 163

first cousin once removed! And again there leaped in him that
unreasoning flame of indignant pity.

“ And how about drawing? You haven’t come to be taught
yet.”

She went almost as red as her frock.

“T thought you were only being polite. I oughtn’t to have
asked. Of course, I want to awfully—only I know it’ll bore
you.”

“ih, wont at, all”

She looked up at that. What peculiar languorous eyes they
were!

“ Shall I come to-morrow, then? ”

“ Any day you like, between half-past twelve and one.”

“ Where? ”

He took out a card.

“Mark Lennan—yes—I like your name. I liked it the other
day. It’s awfully nice!”

What was in a name that she should like him because of it?
His fame as a sculptor—such as it was—could have nothing to
do with that, for she would certainly not know of it. Ah! but
there was a lot in a name—for children. In his childhood what
fascination there had been in the words macaroon, and Spaniard,
and Carniola, and Aldebaran, and Mr. McCrae. For quite a
week the whole world had been Mr. McCrae—a most ordinary
friend of Gordy’s.

By whatever fascination moved, she talked freely enough now
—of her school; of riding and motoring—she seemed to love
going very fast; about Newmarket—which was “ perfect ” ; and
theatres—plays of the type that Johnny Dromore might be ex-
pected to approve; these together with “Hamlet” and “ King
Lear ” were all she had seen. Never was a girl so untouched by
thought, or Art—yet not stupid, having, seemingly, a certain
natural good taste; only, nothing, evidently, had come her way.
How could it—* Johnny Dromore duce, et auspice Johnny Dro-
more!” She had been taken, indeed, to the National Gallery
while at school. And Tennan had a. vision of eight to ten
young maidens trailing round at the skirts of one old maiden,
admiring Landseer’s dogs, giggling faintly at Botticelli’s angels,
ganing, rustling, chattering like young birds in a shrubbery.

But with all her surroundings, this child of Johnny Dro-
moredom was as yet more innocent than cultured girls of the
same age. If those grey, mesmeric eyes of hers followed him
''oo NOVELS OF LOVE

about, they did so frankly, unconsciously. There was no minx
in her, so far.

An hour went by, and Dromore did not come. And the loneli-
ness of this young creature in her incongruous abode began tell-
ing on Lennan’s equanimity.

What did she do in the evenings?

“ Sometimes I go to the theatre with Dad, generally I stay at
home.”

“And then?”

“Oh! I just read, or talk French.”

“What? To yourself?”

“Yes, or to Oliver sometimes, when he comes in.”

So Oliver came in!

“How long have you known Oliver? ”

“Oh! ever since I was a child.”

He wanted to say: And how long is that? But managed to
refrain, and got up to go instead. She caught his sleeve and
said:

“You're not to go!” Saying that, she looked as a dog will,
going to bite in fun, her upper lip shortened above her small
white teeth set fast on her lower lip, and her chin thrust a little
forward. Glimpse of a wilful spirit! But as soon as he had
smiled, and murmured:

“Ah! but I must, you see!” she at once regained her manners,
only saying rather mournfully: “ You don’t call me by my name.
Don’t you like it?”

y Nelly”

“Yes. It’s really Eleanor, of course. Don’t you like it?”

If he had detested the name, he could only have answered:
“Very much.”

“T’m awfully glad! Good-bye.”

When he got out into the street, he felt terribly like a man
who, instead of having had his sleeve touched, has had his heart
plucked at. And that warm, bewildered feeling lasted him all
the way home.

Changing for dinner, he looked at himself with unwonted
attention. Yes, his dark hair was still thick, but going dis-
tinctly grey; there were very many lines about his eyes, too,
and those eyes, still eager when they smiled, were particularly
deepset, as if life had forced them back. His cheekbones were
almost “bopsies ” now, and his cheeks very thin and dark, and
his jaw looked too set and bony below the almost black mous-
''THE DARK FLOWER 165

tache. Altogether a face a good deal worn by life, with nothing
for a child to take a fancy to and make friends with, that he
could see.

Sylvia came in while he was thus taking stock of himself,
bringing a freshly-opened flask of eau-de-Cologne. She was
always bringing him something—never was anyone so sweet in
those ways. In that grey, low-cut frock, her white, still pretti-
ness and pale-gold hair, so little touched by Time, only just fell
short of real beauty for lack of a spice of depth and of incisive-
ness, just as her spirit lacked he knew not what of poignancy.
He would not for the world have let her know that he ever felt
that lack. If a man could not hide little rifts in the lute from
one so good and humble and affectionate, he was not fit to
live.

She sang “ The Castle of Dromore ” again that night with its
queer haunting lilt. And when she had gone up, and he was
smoking over the fire, the girl in her dark-red frock seemed to
come, and sit opposite with her eyes fixed on his, just as she had
been sitting while they talked. Dark red had suited her! Suited
the look on her face when she said: “ You’re not to go!” Odd,
indeed, if she had not some devil in her, with that parentage!
''Vv

Next day they had summoned him from the studio to see 2%
peculiar phenomenon—Johnny Dromore, very well groomed,
talking to Sylvia with unnatural suavity, and carefully masking
the goggle in his eyes! Mrs. Lennan ride? Ah! Too busy, of
course. Helped Mark with his—er No! Really! Read a
lot, no doubt? Never had any time for readin’ himself—awful
bore not havin’ time to read! And Sylvia listening and smiling,
very still and soft.

What had Dromore come for? To spy out the land, discover
why Lennan and his wife thought nothing of the word “ out-
side ”—whether, in fact, their household was respectable. .. .
A man must always look twice at “ what-d’you-call-ems,” even
if they have shared his room at school! . . . To his credit, of
course, to be so careful of his daughter, at the expense of time
owed to the creation of the perfect racehorse! On the whole
he seemed to be coming to the conclusion that they might be
useful to Nell in the uncomfortable time at hand when she
would have to go about; seemed even to be falling under the
spell of Sylvia’s transparent goodness—abandoning his habitual
vigilance against being scored off in life’s perpetual bet; part-
ing with his armour of chaff. Almost a relief, indeed, once
out of Sylvia’s presence, to see that familiar, unholy curiosity
creeping back into his eyes, as though they were hoping against
parental hope to find something—er—amusing somewhere about
that mysterious Mecca of good times—a “ what-d’you-call-it’s ”
studio. Delicious to watch the conflict between relief and dis-
appointment. Alas! no model—not even a statue without
clothes ; nothing but portrait heads, casts of animals, and such-
like sobrieties—absolutely nothing that could bring a blush to
the cheek of the young person, or a glow to the eyes of a
Johnny Dromore.

With what curious silence he walked round and round the
group of sheep-dogs, inquiring into them with that long
crinkled nose of his! With what curious suddenness, he said:
“Damned good! You wouldn’t do me one of Nell on horse-
back?” With what dubious watchfulness he listened to the
answer :

 

166
''THE DARK FLOWER 167

“T might, perhaps, do a statuette of her; if I did, you should
have a cast.”

Did he think that in some way he was being outmanceuvred ?
For he remained some seconds in a sort of trance before mutter-
ing, as though clinching a bet:

“Done! And if you want to ride with her to get the hang of
it, I can always mount you.”

When he had gone, Lennan remained staring at his unfin-
ished sheep-dogs in the gathering dusk. Again that sense of
irritation at contact with something strange, hostile, uncompre-
hending! Why let these Dromores into his life like this? He
shut the studio, and went back to the drawing;room. Sylvia
was sitting on the fender, gazing at the fire, and she edged along
so as to rest against his knees. The light from a candle on her
writing-table was shining on her hair, her cheek, and chin, which
years had so little altered. A pretty picture she made, with
just that candle flame, swaying there, burning slowly, surely
down the pale wax—candle flame, of all lifeless things most liv-
ing, most like a spirit, so bland and vague, one would hardly
have known it was fire at all. A drift of wind blew it this way
and that: he got up to shut the window, and as he came back,
Sylvia said:

“T like Mr. Dromore. I think he’s nicer than he looks.”

: 4 He's asked me to make a statuette of his daughter on horse-
ack.

“ And will you?”

“JT don’t know.”

“Tf she’s really so pretty, you’d better.”

“ Pretty’s hardly the word—but she’s not ordinary.”

She turned round, and looked up at him, and instinctively
he felt that something difficult to answer was coming next.

“ Mark.”

[14 Wied an

“T wanted to ask you: Are you really happy nowadays?”

“Of course. Why not?”

What else to be said? To speak of those feelings of the last
few months—those feelings so ridiculous to anyone who had
them not—would only disturb her horribly.

And having received her answer, Sylvia turned back to the
fire, resting silently against bis knees... .

Three days later the sheep-dogs suddenly abandoned the pose
''168 NOVELS OF LOVE

into which he had lured them with such difficulty, and made
for the studio door. There in the street was Nell Dromore,
mounted on a narrow little black horse with a white star, a
white hoof, and devilish little goat’s ears, pricked, and very
close together at the tips.

“Dad said I had better ride round and show you Magpie.
He’s not very good at standing still. Are those your dogs?
What darlings!”

She had slipped her knee already from the pummel, and slid
down; the sheep-dogs were instantly on their hind-feet, prop-
ping themselves against her waist. Lennan held the black horse
—a bizarre little beast, all fire and whipcord, with a skin like
satin, liquid eyes, very straight hocks, and a thin bang-tail
reaching down to them. The little creature had none of those
commonplace good looks so discouraging to artists.

He had forgotten its rider till she looked up from the dogs,
and said: “ Do you like him? It is nice of you to be going to
do us.”

When she had ridden away, looking back until she turned
the corner, he tried to lure the two dogs once more to their
pose. But they would sit no more, going continually to the
door, listening and sniffing; and everything felt disturbed and
out of gear.

That same afternoon at Sylvia’s suggestion he went with her
to call on the Dromores.

While they were being ushered in he heard a man’s voice
rather high-pitched speaking in some language not his own;
then the girl:

“No, no, Oliver. ‘Dans amour il y a toujours un qui aime,
et l'autre qui se laisse avmer. ”

She was sitting in her father’s chair, and on the window-sill
they saw a young man lolling, who rose and stood stock-still,
with an almost insolent expression on his broad, good-looking
face. Lennan scrutinised him with interest—about twenty-
four he might be, rather dandified, clean-shaved, with crisp dark
hair and wide-set hazel eyes, and, as in his photograph, a curi-
ous look of daring. His voice, when he vouchsafed a greeting,
was rather high and not unpleasant, with a touch of lazy
drawl.

They stayed but a few minutes, and going down those dimly
lighted stairs again, Sylvia remarked:

“ How prettily she said good-bye—as if she were putting up
''THE DARK FLOWER 169

her face to be kissed! I think she’s lovely. So does that young
man. They go well together.”

Rather abruptly Lennan answered :

“ Ah! I suppose they do.”
''VI

Sur came to them often after that, sometimes alone, twice with
Johnny Dromore, sometimes with young Oliver, who, under
Sylvia’s spell, soon lost his stand-off air. And the statuette was
begun. ‘Then came Spring in earnest, and that real business
of life—the racing of horses “on the flat,” when Johnny Dro-
more’s genius was no longer hampered by the illegitimate risks
of ‘jumpin’.” He came to dine with them the day before the
first Newmarket meeting. He had a soft spot for Sylvia, al-
ways saying to Lennan as he went away: “ Charmin’ woman—
your wife!” She, too, had a soft spot for him, having fath-
omed the utter helplessness of this worldling’s wisdom, and
thinking him pathetic.

After he was gone that evening, she said:

“Ought we to have Nell to stay with us while you're fin-
ishing her? She must be very lonely now her father’s so much
away.”

It was like Sylvia to think of that; but would it be pleasure
or vexation to have in the house this child with her quaint
grown-upness, her confiding ways, and those “ Perdita” eyes?
In truth he did not know.

She came to them with touching alacrity—very like a dog,
who, left at home when the family goes for a holiday, takes at
once to those who make much of it.

And she was no trouble, too well-accustomed to amuse her-
self; and always quaint to watch, with her continual changes
from child to woman of the world. A new sensation, this—of a
young creature in the house. Both he and Sylvia had wanted
children, without luck. Twice illness had stood in the way.
Was it, perhaps, just that little lack in her—that lack of poig-
nancy, which had prevented her from becoming a mother? An
only child herself, she had no nieces or nephews; Cicely’s boys
had always been at school, and now were out in the world.
Yes, a new sensation, and one in which Lennan’s restless feel-
ings seemed to merge and vanish.

Outside the hours when Nell sat to him, he purposely saw
but little of her, leaving her to nestle under Sylvia’s wing; and
this she did, as if she never wanted to come out. Thus he pre-

170
''THE DARK FLOWER 171

served his amusement at her quaint warmths, and quainter
calmness, his esthetic pleasure in watching her, whose strange,
half-hypnotised, half-hypnotic gaze, had a sort of dreamy and
pathetic lovingness, as if she were brimful of affections which
had no outlet.

Every morning after “ sitting” she would stay an hour bent
over her own drawing, which made practically no progress; and
he would often catch her following his movements with those
great eyes of hers, while the sheep-dogs would lie perfectly still
at her feet, blinking horribly—such was her attraction. His
birds also, a jackdaw and an owl, who had the run of the
studio, tolerated her as they tolerated no other female, save the
housekeeper. The jackdaw would perch on her and peck her
dress; but the owl merely engaged her in combats of mesmeric
gazing, which never ended in victory for either.

Now that she was with them, Oliver Dromore began to haunt
the house, coming at all hours, on very transparent excuses.
She behaved to him with extreme capriciousness, sometimes
hardly speaking, sometimes treating him like a brother; and in
spite of all his nonchalance, the poor youth would just sit
glowering, or gazing out his adoration, according to her mood.

One of these July evenings Lennan remembered beyond all
others. He had come, after a hard day’s work, out from his
studio into the courtyard garden to smoke a cigarette and feel
the sun on his cheek before it sank behind the wall. A piano-
organ far away was grinding out a waltz; and on an hydrangea
tub, under the drawing-room window, he sat down to listen.
Nothing was visible from there, save just the square patch of
a quite blue sky, and one soft plume of smoke from his own
kitchen chimney ; nothing audible save that tune, and the never-
ending street murmur. Twice birds flew across—starlings. It
was very peaceful, and his thoughts went floating like the smoke
of his cigarette, to meet who-knew-what other thoughts—for
thoughts, no doubt, had little swift lives of their own; desired,
found their mates, and, lightly blending, sent forth offspring.
Why not? All things were possible in this wonder-house of a
world. Even that waltz tune, floating away, would find some
melody to wed, and twine with, and produce a fresh chord
which might float in turn to catch the hum of a gnat or fly,
and breed again. Queer—how everything sought to entwine
with something ¢lse! On one of the pinkish blooms of the
hydrangea he noted a bee—of all things, in this hidden-away
''172 NOVELS OF LOVE

garden of tiles and gravel and plants in tubs! The little furry,
lonely thing was drowsily clinging there, as if it had forgotten
what it had come for—seduced, maybe, like himself, from
labour by these last rays of the sun. Its wings, close-furled
were glistening; its eyes seemed closed. And the piano-organ
played on, a tune of yearning, waiting, yearning... .

Then, through the window above his head, he heard Oliver
Dromore—a voice one could always tell, pitched high, with its
slight drawl—pleading, very softly at first, then insistent, im-
perious; and suddenly Nell’s answering voice:

“1 wont Oliver!) I won't! I won't!”

He rose to go out of earshot. Then a door slammed, and
he saw her at the window above him, her waist on a level with
his head; flushed, with her grey eyes ominously bright, her full
lips parted. And he said:

“ What is it, Nell?”

She leaned down and caught his hand; her touch was fiery
hot.

“ He kissed me! I won’t let him—I won’t kiss him!”

Through his head went a medley of sayings to soothe children
who are hurt; but he felt unsteady, unlike himself. And sud-
denly she knelt, and put her hot forehead against his lips.

It was as if she had really been a little child, wanting the
place kissed to make it well.
''VII

Arter that strange outburst, Lennan considered long whether
he should speak to Oliver. But what could he say, from what
standpoint say it, and—with what feeling? Or should he
speak to Dromore? Not very easy to speak on such a subject
to one off whose turf all spiritual matters were so permanently
warned. Nor somehow could he bring himself to tell Sylvia;
it would be like violating a confidence to speak of the child’s
outburst and that quivering moment, when she had kneeled and
put her hot forehead to his lips for comfort. Such a disclosure
was for Nell herself to make, if she so wished.

And then young Oliver solved the difficulty by coming to the
studio himself next day. He entered with “ Dromore” com-
posure, very well groomed, in a silk hat, a cut-away black coat
and charming lemon-coloured gloves; what, indeed, the youth
did, besides belonging to the yeomanry and hunting all the win-
ter, seemed known only to himself. He made no excuse for
interrupting Lennan, and for some time sat silently smoking
his cigarette, and pulling the ears of the dogs. And Lennan
worked on, waiting. There was always something attractive to
him in this young man’s broad, good-looking face, with its
crisp dark hair, and half-insolent good humour, now so clouded.

At last Oliver got up, and went over to the unfinished “ Girl
on the Magpie Horse.” ‘Turning to it so that his face could
not be seen, he said:

“You and Mrs. Lennan have been awfully kind to me; I be-
haved rather like a cad yesterday. I thought I’d better tell
you. I want to marry Nell, you know.”

Lennan was glad that the young man’s face was so religiously
averted. He let his hands come to anchor on what he was
working at before he answered: “ She’s only a child, Oliver; ”
and then, watching his fingers making an inept movement with
the clay, was astonished at himself.

“ She'll be eighteen this month,” he heard Oliver say. “If
she once gets out—amongst people—I don’t know what I shall
do. Old Johnny’s no good to look after her.”

The young man’s face was very red; he was forgetting to
hide it now. Then it went white, and he said through clenched

173
''174 NOVELS OF LOVE

teeth: “She sends me mad! I don’t know how not to——
If I don’t get her, I shall-shoot myself. I shall, you know—
I’m that sort. It’s her eyes. They draw you right out of
yourself—and leave you——” And from his gloved hand the
smoked-out cigarette-end fell to the floor. “They say her
mother was like that. Poor old Johnny! D’you think I’ve got
a chance, Mr. Lennan? I don’t mean now, this minute; I
know she’s too young!”

Lennan forced himself to answer.

““T dare say, my dear fellow, I dare say. Have you talked
with my wife?”

Oliver shook his head.

“ She’s so good—I don’t think she’d quite understand my
sort of feeling.”

A queer little smile came up on Lennan’s lips.

“ Ah, well!” he said, “ you must give the child time. Per-
haps when she comes back from Ireland, after the summer.”

The young man answered moodily:

“Yes. I’ve got the run of that, you know. And I shan’t
be able to keep away.” He took up his hat. “I suppose I
oughtn’t to have come and bored you about this, but Nell
thinks such a lot of you; and, you being different to most
people—I thought you wouldn’t mind.” He turned again at
the door. “It wasn’t gas what I said just now—about not
getting her. Fellows say that sort of thing, but I mean it.”

He put on that shining hat and went.

And Lennan stood, staring at the statuette. So! Passion
broke down even the defences of Dromoredom. Passion!
Strange hearts it chose to bloom in!

“Being different to most people—I thought you wouldn’t
mind!” How had this youth known that Sylvia would not
understand passion so out of hand as this? And what had
made it clear that he (Lennan) would? Was there, then,
something in his face? There must be! Even Johnny
Dromore—most reticent of creatures—had confided to him the
story of that hour when the wind had swept him out to sea!

Yes! And this statuette would never be any good, try as
he might. Oliver was right—it was her eyes! How they
had smoked—in their childish anger—if eyes could be said
to smoke, and how they had drawn and pleaded when she put
her face to his in her still more childish entreaty! If they
were like this now, what would they be when the woman in
''THE DARK FLOWER 175

her woke? Just as well not to think of her too much! Just
as well to work, and take heed that he would soon be forty-
seven! Just as well that next week she would be gone to
Ireland !

And the last evening before she went they took her to see
“Carmen” at the Opera. He remembered that she wore a
nearly high .white frock, and a dark carnation in the ribbon
tying her crinkly hair, still hanging loose. How wonderfully
entranced she sat, drunk on an opera which he himself had
seen a score of times; touching his arm, and Sylvia’s, whis-
pering questions: “Who's that?” “ What’s coming now?”
The Carmen roused her to adoration, but Don José was “ too
fat in his funny little coat,” till, in the maddened jealousy
of the last act, he rose superior. Then, quite lost in excite-
ment, she clutched Lennan’s hand; and her gasp, when Carmen
at last fell dead, made all their neighbours jump. Her emo-
tion was far more moving than that on the stage; he wanted
badly to stroke, and comfort her and say: “There, there,
my dear, it’s only make-believe!” And, when it was over,
and the excellent murdered lady and her poor fat little lover
appeared before the curtain, finally forgetting that she was
a woman of the world, she started forward in her seat and
clapped, and clapped. Fortunate that Johnny Dromore was
not there to see! But all things coming to an end, they had
to get up and go. And, as they made their way out to the
hall, Lennan felt a hot little finger crooked into his own,
as if she simply must have something to squeeze. He really
did not know what to do with it. She seemed to feel this
half-heartedness, soon letting it go. All the way home in the
cab she was silent. With that same abstraction she ate her
sandwiches and drank her lemonade; took Sylvia’s kiss, and,
quite a woman of the world once more, begged that they would
not get up to see her off—for she was to go at seven in the
morning, to catch the Irish mail. Then, holding out her
hand to Lennan, she very gravely said:

“Thanks most awfully for taking me to-night. Good-bye!”

He stayed full half an hour at the window, smoking. No
street lamp shone just there, and the night was velvety black
above the plane-trees. At last, with a sigh, he shut up, and
went tiptoeing upstairs in darkness. Suddenly in the cor-
ridor the white wall seemed to move at him. A warmth, a
fragrance, a sound like a tiny sigh, and something soft was
''176 NOVELS OF LOVE

squeezed into his hand. Then the wall moved back, and he
stood listening—no sound, no anything! But in his dressing-
room he looked at the soft thing in his hand. It was the car-
nation from her hair. What had possessed the child to give
him that? Carmen! Ah! Carmen! And gazing at the
flower, he held it away from him with a sort of terror; but
its scent arose. And suddenly he thrust it, all fresh as it
was, into a candle-flame, and held it, burning, writhing, till
it blackened to velvet. Then his heart smote him for so cruel
a deed. It was still beautiful, but its scent was gone. And
turning to the window he flung it far out into the darkness.
''VItI

Now that she was gone, it was curious how little they spoke
of her, considering how long she had been with them. And
they had from her but one letter written to Sylvia, very soon
after she left, ending: “Dad sends his best respects, please ;
and with my love to you and Mr. Lennan, and all the beasts.
—NELL.

“Oliver is coming here next week. We are going to some
races.”

It was difficult, of course, to speak of her, with that epi-
sode of the flower, too bizarre to be told—the sort of thing
Sylvia would see out of all proportion—as, indeed, any woman
might. Yet—what had it really been, but the uncontrolled
impulse of an emotional child longing to express feelings kindled
by the excitement of that opera? What but a child’s feathery
warmth, one of those flying peeps at the mystery of passion
which young things take? He could not give away that pretty
foolishness. And because he would not give it away, he was
more than usually affectionate to Sylvia.

They had made no holiday plans, and he eagerly fell in with
her suggestion that they should go down to Hayle. There, if
anywhere, this curious restlessness would leave him. They
had not been down to the old place for many years; indeed,
since Gordy’s death it was generally let.

They left London late in August. The day was closing in
when they arrived. Honeysuckle had long been improved away
away from that station paling, against which he had stood
twenty-eight years ago, watching the train carrying Anna
Stormer away. In the hired fly Sylvia pressed close to him,
and held his hand beneath the ancient dust-rug. Both felt
the same excitement at seeing again this old home. Not a
single soul of the past days would be there now—only the
house and the trees, the owls and the stars; the river, park,
and logan stone! It was dark when they arrived; just their
bedroom and two sitting-rooms had been made ready, with fires
burning, though it was still high summer. The same old
execrable Heatherleys looked down from the black oak panel-
lings. The same scent of apples and old mice clung here and

177
''178 NOVELS OF LOVE

there about the dark corridors with their unexpected stairways.
It was all curiously unchanged, as old houses are when they
are let furnished.

Once in the night he woke. Through the wide-open, un-
curtained windows the night was simply alive with stars, such
swarms of them swinging and trembling up there; and, far
away, rose the melancholy, velvet-soft hooting of an owl.

Sylvia’s voice, close to him, said:

“ Mark, that night when your star caught in my hair? Do
you remember ? ”

Yes, he remembered. And in his drowsy mind just roused
from dreams, there turned and turned the queer nonsensical
refrain: “JI never—never—will desert Mr. Micawber. .. .”

A pleasant month that—of reading, and walking with the
dogs the country round, of lying out long hours amongst the
boulders or along the river banks, watching beasts and
birds.

The little old green-house temple of his early masterpieces
was still extant, used now to protect watering pots. But no
vestige of impulse towards work came to him down there. He
was marking time; not restless, not bored, just waiting—but
for what, he had no notion. And Sylvia, at any rate, was
happy, blooming in these old haunts, losing her fairness in the
sun; even taking again to a sunbonnet, which made her look
extraordinarily young. The trout that poor old Gordy had so
harried were left undisturbed. No gun was fired; rabbits, pig-
eons, even the few partridges enjoyed those first days of autumn
unmolested. The bracken and leaves turned very early, so that
the park in the hazy September sunlight had an almost golden
hue. A gentle mellowness reigned over all that holiday. And
from Ireland came no further news, save one picture postcard
with the words: “This is our house—NELL.”

In the last week of September they went back to London.
And at once there began in him again that restless, unreason-
able aching—that sense of being drawn away out of himself;
so that he once more took to walking the Park for hours, over
grass already strewn with leaves, always looking—craving—
and for what?

At Dromore’s the confidential man did not know when his
master would be back; he had gone to Scotland with Miss Nell
after the St. Leger. Was Lennan disappointed? Not so—
relieved, rather. But his ache was there all the time, feeding
''THE DARK FLOWER 179

on its secrecy and loneliness, unmentionable feeling that it was.
Why had he not realised long ago that youth was over, passion.
done with, autumn upon him? How never grasped the fact
that “Time steals away”? And, as before, the only refuge
was in work. The sheep-dogs and “The Girl on the Magpie
Horse” were finished. He began a fantastic “ relief”’—a
nymph peering from behind a rock, and a wild-eyed man creep-
ing, through reeds, towards her. If he could put into the
nymph’s face something of this lure of Youth and Life and
Love that was dragging at him, into the man’s face the state of
his own heart, it might lay that feeling to rest. Anything to
get it out of himself! And he worked furiously, laboriously,
all October, making no great progress. . . . What could he ex-
pect when Life was all the time knocking with a muffled tapping
at his door?

It was on the Tuesday, after the close of the last Newmarket
meeting, and just getting dusk, when Life opened the door and
walked in. She wore a dark-red dress, a new one, and. surely
her face—her figure—were very different from what he had
remembered! They had quickened and become poignant. She
was no longer a child—that was at once plain. Cheeks, mouth,
neck, waist—all seemed fined, shaped; the crinkly, light-brown
hair was coiled up now under a velvet cap; only the great grey
eyes seemed quite the same. And at sight of her his heart
gave a sort of dive and flight, as if all its vague and wistful
sensations had found their goal.

Then, in sudden agitation, he realised that his last moment
with this girl—now a child no longer—had been a secret mo-
ment of warmth and of emotion; a moment which to her might
have meant, in her might have bred, feelings that he had no
inkling of. He tried to ignore that flighting and diving of
his heart, held out his hand, and murmured:

“ Ah, Nell! Back at last! You've grown.”

Then, with a sensation of every limb gone weak, he felt
her arms round his neck, and herself pressed against him.
There was time for the thought to flash through him: ‘ This
is terrible!’ He gave her a little convulsive squeeze—could a
man do less?—then just managed to push her gently away,
trying with all his might to think: ‘She’s a child! It’s noth-
ing more than after Carmen! She doesn’t know what I am
feeling!’ But he was conscious of a mad desire to clutch her
to him. The touch of her had demolished all his vagueness,
''180 NOVELS OF LOVE

made things only too plain, set him on fire. He said uncer-
tainly:

“Come to the fire, my child, and tell me all about it.”

If he did not keep to the notion that she was just a child,
his head would go. Perdita—“ the lost one”! A good name
for her, indeed, as she stood there, her eyes shining in the fire-
light—more mesmeric than ever they had been! And, to get
away from the lure of those eyes, he bent down and raked the
grate, saying:

“ Have you seen Sylvia?” But he knew that she had not,
even before she gave that impatient shrug. Then he pulled
himself together, and said:

“What has happened to you, child?”

itm note ichild’’

“No, we’ve both grown older. I was forty-seven the other
day.”

She caught his hand—Heavens! how supple she was!—and
murmured :

“ You’re not old a bit; you’re quite young.”

At his wits’ end, with his heart thumping, but still keeping
his eyes away from her, he said:

“ Where is Oliver?”

She dropped his hand at that.

“ Oliver? I hate him!”

Afraid to trust himself near her, he had begun walking up
and down. And she stood, following him with her gaze—the
firelight playing on her red frock. What extraordinary still-
ness! What power she had developed in these few months!
Had he let her see that he felt that power? And had all this
come of one little moment in a dark corridor, of one flower
pressed into his hand? Why had he not spoken to her roughly
then—told her she was a romantic little fool? God knew what
thoughts she had been feeding on! But who could have sup-
posed—who dreamed ? And again he fixed his mind reso-
lutely on that thought: ‘She’s a child—only a child!’

“ Come! ” he said: “ tell me all about your time in Ireland?”

“Oh! it was just dull—it’s all been dull away from you.”

It came out without hesitancy or shame, and he could only
murmur:

“ Ah! you’ve missed your drawing!”

“Yes. Can I come to-morrow?”

That was the moment to have said: No! You are a foolish

 
''THE DARK FLOWER 181

child, and I am an elderly idiot! But he had neither courage
nor clearness of mind enough; nor—the desire. And, without
answering, he went towards the door to turn up the light.

“Oh, no! please don’t! It’s so nice like this! ”

The shadowy room, the bluish dusk painted on all the win-
dows, the fitful shining of the fire, the pallor and darkness
of the dim casts and bronzes, and that one glowing figure there
before the hearth! And her voice, a little piteous, went on:

“Aren't you glad ’m back? I can’t see you properly out
there.”

He went back into the glow, and she gave a little sigh of
satisfaction. Then her calm young voice said, ever so distinctly:

“ Oliver wants me to marry him, and I won’t, of course.”

He dared not say: Why not? He dared not say anything.
It was too dangerous. And then followed those amazing words:
“You know why, don’t you? Of course you do.”

It was ridiculous, almost shameful to understand their mean-
ing. And he stood, staring in front of him, without a word;
humility, dismay, pride, and a sort of mad exultation, all mixed
and seething within him in the queerest pudding of emotion.
But all he said was:

“Come, my child; we’re neither of us quite ourselves to-night.
Let’s go to the drawing-room.”
''IX

Back in the darkness and solitude of the studio, when she
was gone, he sat down before the fire, his senses in a whirl.
Why was he not just an ordinary animal of a man who could
enjoy what the gods had sent? It was as if on a November
day someone had pulled aside the sober curtains of the sky
and there in a chink had been April standing—thick white
blossom, a purple cloud, a rainbow, grass vivid green, lhght
flaring from one knew not where, and such a tingling passion
of life on it all as made the heart stand still! This, then, was
the marvellous, enchanting, maddening end of all that year of
restlessness and wanting! This bit of Spring suddenly given
to him in the midst of Autumn. Her lips, her eyes, her hair;
her touching confidence ; above all—quite unbelievable—her love.
Not really love perhaps, just childish fancy. But on the wings
of fancy this child would fly far, too far—all wistfulness and
warmth beneath that light veneer of absurd composure.

To live again—to plunge back into youth and beauty—to feel
Spring once more—to lose the sense of all being over, save
just the sober jog-trot of domestic bliss; to know, actually to
know, ecstasy again, in the love of a girl; to rediscover all that
youth yearns for, and feels, and hopes, and dreads, and loves.
It was a prospect to turn the head even of a decent man... .

By just closing his eyes he could see her standing there with
the firelight glow on her red frock; could feel again the mar-
vellous thrill when she pressed herself against him in the half-
innocent, seducing moment when she first came in; could
feel again her eyes drawing—drawing him! She was a witch, a
grey-eyed, brown-haired witch—even unto her love of red. She
had the witch’s power of lighting fever in the veins. And he
simply wondered at himself, that he had not, as she stood there
in the firelight, knelt, and put his arms round her and pressed
his face against her waist. Why had he not? But he did not
want to think; the moment thought began he knew he must be
torn this way and that, tossed here and there between reason and
desire, pity and passion. Every sense struggled to keep him
wrapped in the warmth and intoxication of this discovery that
he, in the full of autumn, had awakened love in spring. It was

182
''THE DARK FLOWER 183

amazing that she could have this feeling; yet there was no
mistake. Her manner to Sylvia just now had been almost
dangerously changed; there had been a queer cold impatience
in her look, frightening from one who but three months ago
had been so affectionate. And, going away, she had whispered,
with that old-trembling-up at him, as if offering to be kissed:
“JT may come, mayn’t 1? And don’t be angry with me, please;
I can’t help it.” A monstrous thing at his age to let a young
girl love him—compromise her future! A monstrous thing by
all the canons of virtue and gentility! And yet—her future ?—
with that nature—those eyes—that origin—with that father,
and that home? But he would not—simply must not think!

Nevertheless, he showed the signs of thought, and badly; for
after dinner Sylvia, putting her hand on his forehead, said:

“You’re working too hard, Mark. You don’t go out enough.”

He held those fingers fast. Sylvia! No, indeed, he must
not think! But he took advantage of her words, and said that
he would go out and get some air.

He walked at a great pace—to keep thought away—till he
reached the river close to Westminster, and, moved by sudden
impulse, seeking perhaps an antidote, turned down into that
little street under the big Wren church, where he had never
been since the summer night when he lost what was then more
to him than life. There she had lived; there was the house—
those windows which he had stolen past and gazed at with such
distress and longing. Who lived there now? Once more he
seemed to see that face out of the past, the dark hair, and dark
soft eyes, and sweet gravity; and it did not reproach him. For
this new feeling was not a love like that had been. Only once
could a man feel the love passing all things, the love before
which the world was but a spark in a draught of wind; the love
that, whatever dishonour, grief, and unrest it might come
through alone had in it the heart of peace and joy and honour.
Fate had torn that love from him, nipped it off as a sharp wind
nips off a perfect flower. This new feeling was but a fever, a
passionate fancy, a grasping once more at Youth and Warmth.
Ah, well! but it was real enough! And, in one of those mo-
ments when a man stands outside himself, seems to be lifted
away and see his own life twirling, Lennan had a vision of a
shadow driven here and there; a straw going round and round;
a midge in the grip of a mad wind. Where was the home of this
mighty secret feeling which sprang so suddenly out of the
''184 NOVELS OF LOVE

dark, and caught you by the throat? Why did it come now
and not then, for this one and not that other? What did man
know of it, save that it made him spin and hover—like a moth
intoxicated by a light, or a bee by some dark sweet flower; save
that it made of him a distraught, humble, eager puppet of its
fancy? Had it not once already driven him even to the edge
of death; and must it now come on him again with its sweet
madness, its drugging scent? What was it? Why wasit? Why
these passionate obsessions which could not decently be satis-
fied? Had civilisation so outstripped man that his nature was
cramped into shoes too small—like the feet of a Chinese woman?
What was it? Why was it?

And faster than ever he walked away.

Pall Mall brought him back to that counterfeit presentment
of the real—reality. There, in St. James’s Street, was Johnny
Dromore’s Club; and, again moved by impulse, he pushed open
its swing door. No need to ask; for there was Dromore in the
hall, on his way from dinner to the card-room. The glossy tan
of hard exercise and good living lay on his cheeks as thick as
clouted cream. His eyes had the peculiar shine of superabun-
dant vigour; a certain sub-festive air in face and voice and
movements suggested that he was going to make a night of it.
And the sardonic thought flashed through Lennan: Shall I
tell him?

* Hallo, old chap! Awfully glad to see you! What you doin’
with yourself? Workin’ hard? How’s your wife? You been
away? Been doin’ anything great?” And then the question
that would have given him his chance, if he had liked to be so
cruel :

“Seen Nell?”

“Yes, she came round this afternoon.”

“ What d’you think of her? Comin’ on nicely, isn’t she? ”

That old query, half furtive and half proud, as much as to
say: “I know she’s not in the studbook, but, d——n it, I
sired her!” And then the old sudden gloom, which lasted but
a second, and gave way again to chaff.

Lennan stayed very few minutes. Never had he felt farther
from his old school-chum.

No. Whatever happened, Johnny Dromore must be left out.
It was a position he had earned with his goggling eyes, and his
astute philosophy; from it he should not be disturbed.

He passed along the railings of the Green Park. On the
''THE DARK FLOWER 185

‘cold air of this last October night a thin haze hung, and the
cacrid fragrance from little bonfires of fallen leaves. What was
‘there about that scent of burned-leaf smoke which had always
moved him so? Symbol of parting !—most mournful thing in
call the world. For what would even death be, but for parting?
Sweet, long sleep, or new adventure. But, if a man loved others
-—to leave them, or be left! Ah! and it was not death only
that brought partings!

He came to the opening of the street where Dromore lived.
‘She would be there, sitting by the fire in the big chair, playing
with her kitten, thinking, dreaming, and—alone! He passed
‘on at such a pace that people stared; till, turning the last cor-
ner for home, he ran almost into the arms of Oliver Dromore.

The young man was walking with unaccustomed indecision,
his fur coat open, his opera-hat pushed up on his crisp hair.
Dark under the eyes, he had not the proper gloss of a Dromore
cat this season of the year.

“Mr. Lennan! I’ve just been round to you.”

And Lennan answered dazedly :

“ Will you come in, or shall I walk your way a bit?”

“Td rather—out here, if you don’t mind.”

So in silence they went back into the Square. And Oliver
ssaid :

“ Let’s get over by the rails.”

They crossed to the railings of the Square’s dark garden,
‘where nobody was passing. And with every step Lennan’s
humiliation grew. There was something false and undignified
in walking with this young man who had once treated him as a
father confessor to his love for Nell. And suddenly he per-
‘ceived that they had made a complete circuit of the Square
garden without speaking a single word.

“Yes?” he said.

Oliver turned his face away.

“You remember what I told you in the summer? Well, it’s
‘worse now. I’ve been going a mucker lately in all sorts of ways
to try and get rid of it. But it’s all no good. She’s got me!”

And Lennan thought: ‘ You’re not alone in that!’ But he
kept silence. His chief dread was of saying something that he
‘would remember afterwards as the words of Judas.

Then Oliver suddenly burst out:

“Why can’t she care? I suppose I’m nothing much, but
‘she’s known me all her life, and she used to like me. There’s
''186 NOVELS OF LOVE

something—I can’t make out. Could you do anything for me
with her?”

Lennan pointed across the street.

“In every other one of those houses, Oliver,” he said, “ there’s.
probably some creature who can’t make out why another creature
doesn’t care. Passion comes when it will, goes when it will;
and we poor devils have no say in it.”

“What do you advise me, then?”

Lennan had an almost overwhelming impulse to turn on his
heel and leave the young man standing there. But he forced
himself to look at his face, which even then had its attraction
—perhaps more so than ever, so pallid and desperate it was.
And he said slowly, staring mentally at every word:

“Tm not up to giving you advice. The only thing I might
say is: One does not press oneself where one isn’t wanted;
all the same—who knows? So long as she feels you’re there,
waiting, she might turn to you at any moment. The more
chivalrous you are, Oliver, the more patiently you wait, the
better chance you have.”

Oliver took those words of little comfort without flinching.
“7 see, he said.) ‘i Phanke! ; But, my! God!it’s ‘hard. I
never could wait.’ And with that epigram on himself, holding
out his hand, he turned away.

Lennan went slowly home, trying to gauge exactly how any-
one who knew all would judge him. It was a little difficult
in this affair to keep a shred of dignity.

Sylvia had not gone up, and he saw her looking at him
anxiously. The one strange comfort in all this was that his
feeling for her, at any rate, had not changed. It seemed even
to have deepened—to be more real to him.

How could he help staying awake that night? How could
he help thinking, then? And long time he lay, staring at the
dark.

As if thinking were any good for fever in the veins!
''X

Passion never plays the game. It, at all events, is free from
self-consciousness, and pride; from dignity, nerves, scruples,
cant, moralities ; “from hypocrisies, and wisdom, and fears for
pocket, and position in this world and the next. Well did the
old painters limn it as an arrow or a wind! If it had not been
as swift and darting, earth must long ago have drifted through
space untenanted—to let.

After that fevered night ‘Lennan went to his studio at the
usual hour and naturally did not do a stroke of work. He was
even obliged to send away his model. The fellow had been his
hair-dresser, but, getting ill, and falling on dark days, one
morning had come to the studio, to ask with manifest shame if
his head were any good. After having tested his capacity for
standing still, and giving him some introductions, Lennan had
noted him down: “ Five feet nine, good hair, lean face, some-
thing tortured and pathetic. Give him a turn, if possible.”
The turn had come, and the poor man was posing in a painful
attitude, talking, whenever permitted, of the way things had
treated him, and the delights of cutting hair. This morning
he took his departure with the simple pleasure of one fully
paid for services not rendered.

And so, walking up and down, up and down, the sculptor
waited for Nell’s knock. What would happen now? Thinking
had made nothing clear. Here was offered what every warm-
blooded man whose Spring is past desires—youth and beauty,
and in that youth a renewal of his own; what all men save
hypocrites and Englishmen would even admit that they desired.
And it was offered to one who had neither religious nor moral
scruples, as they are commonly understood. In theory he could
accept. In practice he did not as yet know what he could do.
One thing only he had discovered during the night’s reflections:
That those who scouted belief in the principle of Liberty made
no greater mistake than to suppose that Liberty was dangerous
because it made a man a libertine. To those with any decency,
the creed of Freedom was—of all—the most enchaining. Easy
enough to break chains imposed by others, fling his cap over the
windmill, and cry for the moment at least: I am unfettered,

187
''188 NOVELS OF LOVE

free! Hard, indeed, to say the same to his own unfettered!
Self! Yes, his own Self was in the judgment-seat; by his own.
verdict and decision he must abide. And though he ached for
the sight of her, and his will seemed paralysed—many times al--
ready he had thought: ‘It won’t do! God help me!’

Then twelve o’clock had come, and she had not. Would
“The Girl on the Magpie Horse” be all he would see of her
to-day—that unsatisfying work, so cold, and devoid of witchery ?’
Better have tried to paint her—with a red flower in her hair,.
a pout on her lips, and her eyes fey, or languorous.

And then, just as he had given her up, she came.

After taking one look at his face, she slipped in ever so:
quietly, like a very good child. . .. Marvellous the instinct
and finesse of the young when they are women. ... Not a
vestige in her of yesterday’s seductive power; not a sign that
there had been a yesterday at all—just confiding, like a
daughter. Sitting there, telling him about Ireland, showing”
him the little batch of drawings she had done while she was.
away. Had she brought them because she knew they would
make him feel sorry for her? What could have been less dan-:
gerous, more appealing to the protective and paternal side of
him than she was that morning; as if she only wanted what
her father and her home could not give her—only wanted to be:
a sort of daughter to him!

She went away demurely, as she had come, refusing to stay
to lunch, manifestly avoiding Sylvia. Only then he realised
that she must have taken alarm from the look of strain on his:
face, been afraid that he would send her away; only then per--
ceived that, with her appeal to his protection, she had been
binding him closer, making it harder for him to break away
and hurt her. And the fevered aching began again—worse than
ever—the moment he lost sight of her. And more than ever
he felt in the grip of something beyond his power to fight.
against; something that, however he swerved, and backed, and
broke away, would close in on him, find means to bind him
again hand and foot.

In the afternoon Dromore’s confidential man brought him a.
note. The fellow, with his cast down eyes, and his well-parted
hair, seemed to Lennan to be saying: ‘ Yes, sir—it is quite:
natural that you should take the note out of eyeshot, sir—but:
I know; fortunately, there is no necessity for alarm—I am.
strictly confidential.’
''THE DARK FLOWER 189

And this was what the note contained:

“You promised to ride with me once—you did promise, and
you never have. Do please ride with me to-morrow; then you
will get what you want for the statuette instead of being so
cross with it. You can have Dad’s horse—he has gone to New-
market again, and I’m so lonely. Please—to-morrow, at half-
past two—starting from here-—NELL.”

To hesitate in view of those confidential eyes was not pos-
sible; it must be “Yes” or “No”; and if “No,” it would
only mean that she would come in the morning instead. So he
said:

“ Just say ‘ All right!’ ”

“Very good, sir.’ Then from the door: “Mr. Dromore
will be away,.till Saturday, sir.”

Now, why had the fellow said that? Curious how this des-
perate secret feeling of his own made him see sinister meaning
in this servant, in Oliver’s visit of last night—in everything.
It was vile—this suspiciousness! He could feel, almost see,
himself deteriorating already, with this furtive feeling in his
soul. It would soon be written on his face! But what was the
use of troubling? What would come, would—one way or the
other.

And suddenly he remembered with a shock that it was the
first of November—Sylvia’s birthday! He had never before for-
gotten it. In the disturbance of that discovery he was very
near to going and pouring out to her the whole story of his
feelings. A charming birthday present, that would make!
‘Taking his hat, instead, he dashed round to the nearest flower
shop. A French woman kept it.

What had she?

What did Monsieur desire? “Des eillets rouges? J’en at
de bien beaux ce soir.”

No—not those. White flowers!

“Une belle azalée?”

Yes, that would do—to be sent at once—at once!

Next door was a jeweller’s. He had never really known if
Sylvia cared for jewels, since one day he happened to remark
that they were vulgar. And feeling that he had fallen low
‘indeed, to be trying to atone with some miserable gewgaws for
never having thought of her all day, because he had been think-
''190 NOVELS OF LOVE

ing of another, he went in and bought the only ornament whose
ingredients did not make his gorge rise, two small pear-shaped
black pearls, one at each end of a fine platinum chain. Com-
ing out with it, he noticed over the street, in a clear sky fast
deepening to indigo, the thinnest slip of a new moon, like a
bright swallow, with wings bent back, flying towards the
ground. That meant—fine weather! If it could only be fine
weather in his heart! And in order that the azalea might arrive
first, he walked up and down the Square which he and Oliver
had patrolled the night before.

When he went in, Sylvia was just placing the white azalea
in the window of the drawing-room; and stealing up behind
her he clasped the little necklet round her throat. She turned
round and clung to him. He could feel that she was greatly
moved. And remorse stirred and stirred in him that he was
betraying her with his kiss.

But, even while he kissed her, he was hardening his heart.
''XI

Next day, still following the lead of her words about fresh air
and his tired look, he told her that he was going to ride, and
did not say with whom. After applauding his resolution, she was
silent for a little—then asked:

“Why don’t you ride with Nell?”

He had already so lost his dignity, that he hardly felt dis-
graced in answering:

“Tt might bore her!”

“Oh, no; it wouldn’t bore her.”

Had she meant anything by that? And feeling as if he were
fencing with his own soul, he said:

“Very well, I will.”

He had perceived suddenly that he did not know his wife,
having always till now believed that it was she who did not
quite know him.

If she had not been out at lunch-time, he would have lunched
out himself—afraid of his own face. For feverishness in sick
persons mounts steadily with the approach of a certain hour.
And surely his face, to anyone who could have seen him being ~
conveyed to Piccadilly, would have suggested a fevered invalid
rather than a healthy, middle-aged sculptor in a cab.

The horses were before the door—the little magpie horse, and
a thoroughbred bay mare, weeded from Dromore’s racing stable.
Nell, too, was standing ready, her cheeks very pink, and her
eyes very bright. She did not wait for him to mount her, but
took the aid of the confidential man. What was it made her look
so perfect on that little horse—shape of limb, or something soft
and fiery in her spirit that the little creature knew of ?

They started in silence, but as soon as the sound of hoofs
died on the tan of Rotten Row, she turned to him.

“Tt was lovely of you to come! I thought you’d be afraid—
you are afraid of me.”

And Lennan thought: ‘ You’re right!’

“ But please don’t look like yesterday. To-day’s too heavenly.
Oh! I love beautiful days, and I love riding, and. ? » She
broke off and looked at him. ‘Why can’t you just be nice to
me ’—she seemed to be saying—‘ and love me as you ought!’

191

 
''192 NOVELS OF LOVE

That was her power—the conviction that he did, and ought to
love her; that she ought to and did love him. How simple!

But riding, too, is a simple passion; and simple passions dis-
tract each other. It was a treat to be on that bay mare. Who
so to be trusted to ride the best as Johnny Dromore?

At the far end of the Row she cried out: “Let’s go on to
Richmond now,” and trotted off into the road, as if she knew
she could do with him what she wished. And, following meekly,
he asked himself: Why? What was there in her to make up
to him for all that he was losing—his power of work, his
dignity, his self-respect? What was there? Just those eyes,
and lips, and hair?

And as if she knew what he was thinking, she looked round
and smiled.

So they jogged on over the Bridge and across Barnes Com-
mon into Richmond Park.

But the moment they touched turf, with one look back at
him, she was off. Had she all the time meant to give him this
breakneck chase—or had the loveliness of that autumn day
gone to her head—blue sky and coppery flames of bracken in
the sun, and the beech leaves and the oak leaves; pure High-
land colouring come South for once?

When in the first burst he had tested the mare’s wind, this
chase of her, indeed, was sheer delight. Through glades, over
fallen tree-trunks, in bracken up to the hocks, out across the
open, past a herd of amazed and solemn deer, over rotten
ground all rabbit-burrows, till just as he thought he was up
to her, she slipped away by a quick turn round trees. Mischief
incarnate, but something deeper than mischief, too! He came
up with her at last, and leaned over to seize her rein. With
a cut of her whip that missed his hand by a bare inch, and a
wrench, she made him shoot past, wheeled in her tracks, and was
off again like an arrow, back amongst the trees—lying right
forward under the boughs, along the neck of her little horse.
Then out from amongst the trees she shot downhill. Right
down she went, full tilt, and after her went Lennan, lying back,
and expecting the bay mare to come down at every stride.
This was her idea of fun! She switched round at the bottom
and went galloping along the foot of the hill; and he thought:
‘Now I’ve got her!’ She could not break back up that hill,
and there was no other cover for fully half a mile.

Then he saw, not thirty yards in front, an old sandpit; and
''THE DARK FLOWER 193

Great God she was going straight at it! Shouting frantically,
he reined his mare outwards. But she only raised her whip,
cut the magpie horse over the flank, and rode right on. He
saw that little demon gather its feet and spring—down, down,
saw him pitch, struggle, sink—and she, flung forward, roll over
and lie on her back. He felt nothing at the moment, only
had that fixed vision of a yellow patch of sand, the blue sky, a
rook flying, and her face upturned. But when he came on
her she was on her feet, holding the bridle of her dazed horse.
No sooner did he touch her, than she sank down. Her eyes
were closed, but he could feel that she had not fainted; and he
just held her, and kept pressing his lips to her eyes and fore-
head. Suddenly she let her head fall back, and her lips met his.
Then opening her eyes, she said: “I’m not hurt, only—funny.
Has Magpie cut his knees? ”

Not quite knowing what he did, he got up to look. The
little horse was cropping at some grass, unharmed—the sand
and fern had saved his knees. And the languid voice behind
him said: “It’s all right—you can leave the horses. They’ll
come when I call.”

Now that he knew she was unhurt, he felt angry. Why had
she behaved in this mad way—given him this fearful shock?
But in that same languid voice she went on: “ Don’t be cross
with me. I thought at first ’d pull up, but then I thought:
‘If I jump, he can’t help being nice’—so I did Don’t
leave off loving me because I’m not hurt, please.”

Terribly moved, he sat down beside her, took her hands in his,
and said:

“Nell! Nell! it’s all wrong—it’s madness! ”

“ Why? Don’t think about it! I don’t want you to think—
only to love me.’

“My child, you don’t know what love is!”

For answer she only flung her arms round his neck; then,
since he held back from kissing her, let them fall again, and
jumped up.

“Very well. But I love you. You can think of that—you
can’t prevent me!” And without waiting for help, she mounted
the magpie horse from the sand-heap where they had fallen.

Very sober that ride home! The horses, as if ashamed of
their mad chase, were edging close to each “other, so that now
and then his arm would touch her shoulder. He asked her once
what she had felt while she was jumping.

 
''194 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Only to be sure my foot was free. It was rather horrid
coming down, thinking of Magpie’s knees”; and touching the
little horse’s goat-like ears, she added softly: “ Poor dear!
He'll be stiff to-morrow.”

She was again only the confiding, rather drowsy, child. Or
was it that the fierceness of those past moments had killed his
power of feeling? An almost dreamy hour—with the sun going
down, the lamps being lighted one by one—and a sort of sweet
oblivion over everything !

At the door, where the groom was waiting, Lennan would
have said good-bye, but she whispered :

“Oh, no please! I am tired now—you might help me up a
little.”

And so, half carrying her, he mounted past the “ Vanity
Fair” cartoons, and through the corridor with the red paper
and the Van Beers’ drawings, into the room where he had first
seen her.

Once settled back in Dromore’s great chair, with the purring
kitten curled up on her neck, she murmured:

“Tsn’t it nice? You can make tea; and we'll have hot but-
tered toast.”

And so Lennan stayed, while the confidential man brought
tea and toast; and, never once looking at them, seemed to know
all that had passed, all that might be to come.

Then they were alone again, and, gazing down at her stretched
out in that great chair, Lennan thought:

‘Thank God that I’m tired too—body and soul!’

But suddenly she looked up at him, and pointing to the
picture that to-day had no curtain drawn, said:

“Do you think I’m like her? I made Oliver tell me about—
myself this summer. That’s why you needn’t bother. It doesn’t
matter what happens to me, you see. And I don’t care—because
you can love me, without feeling bad about it. And you will,
won't you?”

Then, with her eyes still on his face, she went on quickly:

- “Only we won’t talk about that now, will we? It’s too cosy.
I am nice and tired. Do smoke!”

But Lennan’s fingers trembled so that he could hardly light
that cigarette. And, watching them, she said: “ Please give
me one. Dad doesn’t like my smoking.”

The virtue of Johnny Dromore! Yes! It would always be
by proxy! And he muttered:
''THE DARK FLOWER 195

“ How do you think he would like to know about this after-
noon, Nell?”

“TJ don’t care.” Then peering up through the kitten’s fur
she murmured: “ Oliver wants me to go to a dance on Saturday
— it’s for a charity. Shall 1?”

“ Of course; why not?”

“Will you come?”

“ I ? 3)

“Oh, do! You must! It’s my very first, you know. I’ve
got an extra ticket.”

And against his will, his judgment—everything, Lennan an-
swered: “ Yes.”

She clapped her hands, and the kitten crawled down to her
knees,

When he got up to go, she did not move, but just looked
up at him; and how he got away he did not know.

Stopping his cab a little short of home, he ran, for he felt
cold and stiff, and letting himself in with his latch-key, went
straight to the drawing-room. The door was ajar, and Sylvia
standing at the window. He heard her sigh; and his heart
smote him. Very still, and slender, and lonely she looked out
there, with the light shining on her fair hair so that it seemed
almost white. Then she turned and saw him. He noticed her
throat working with the effort she made not to show him any-
thing, and he said:

“ Surely you haven’t been anxious! Nell had a bit of a fall—
jumping into a sandpit. She’s quite mad sometimes. I stayed
to tea with her—just to make sure she wasn’t really hurt.”
But as he spoke he loathed himself; his voice sounded so false.

She only answered: “It’s all right, dear,” but he saw that
she kept her eyes—those blue, too true eyes—averted, even when
she kissed him.

And so began another evening and night and morning of
fever, subterfuge, weariness, aching. A round of half-ecstatic
torment, out of which he seemed no more able to break than a
man can break through the walls of a cell... .

Though it live but a day in the sun, though it drown in
tenebrous night, the dark flower of passion will have its hour... .
''XII

To deceive undoubtedly requires a course of training. And,
unversed in this art, Lennan was fast finding it intolerable to
scheme and watch himself, and mislead one who had looked up
to him ever since they were children. Yet, all the time, he
had a feeling that, since he alone knew all the circumstances
of his case, he alone was entitled to blame or to excuse himself.
The glib judgments moralists would pass upon his conduct
could be nothing but the imbecilities of smug and pharisaic
fools—of those not under this drugging spell—of such as had
not blood enough, perhaps, ever to fall beneath it!

The day after the ride Nell had not come, and he had no
word from her. Was she, then, hurt, after all? She had lain
back very inertly in that chair! And Sylvia never asked if he
knew how the girl was after her fall, nor offered to send round
to inquire. Did she not wish to speak of her, or had she simply
—not believed? When there was so much he could not talk
of it seemed hard that just what happened to be true should
be distrusted. She had not yet, indeed, by a single word sug-
gested that she felt he was deceiving her, but at heart he knew
that she was not deceived. . . . Those feelers of a woman who
joves—can anything check their delicate apprehension? .. .

Towards evening, the longing to see the girl—a sensation as
if she were calling him to come to her—became almost insup-
portable; yet, whatever excuse he gave, he felt that Sylvia
would know where he was going. He sat on one side of the fire,
she on the other, and they both read books; the only strange
thing about their reading was, that neither of them ever turned
a leaf. It was “ Don Quixote” he read, the page which had
these words: “Let Altisidora weep or sing, still I am Dul-
cinea’s and hers alone, dead or alive, dutiful and unchanged, in
spite of all the necromantic powers in the world.” And so the
evening passed. When she went up to bed, he was very near
to stealing out, driving up to the Dromores’ door, and inquiring
of the confidential man; but the thought of the confounded
fellow’s eyes was too much for him, and he held out. He took
up Sylvia’s book, De Maupassant’s “ Fort comme la mort ”—
open at the page where the poor woman finds that her lover has

196
''THE DARK FLOWER 197

passed away from her to her own daughter. And as he read,
the tears rolled down his cheek. Sylvia! Sylvia! Were not
his old favourite words from that old favourite book still true?
“Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful woman in the
world, and I the most unfortunate knight. It were unjust that
such perfection should suffer through my weakness. No, pierce
my body with your lance, knight, and let my life expire with
my honour. .. .” Why could he not wrench this feeling from
his heart, banish this girl from his eyes? Why could he not be
wholly true to her who was and always had been wholly true to
him? Horrible—this will-less, nerveless feeling, this paralysis,
as if he were a puppet moved by a cruel hand. And, as once
before, it seemed to him that the girl was sitting there in Sylvia’s
chair in her dark red frock, with her eyes fixed on him. Uncan-
nily vivid—that impression! ... A man could not go on
long with his head in Chancery like this, without becoming
crazed! ...

It was growing dusk on Saturday afternoon when he gave up
that intolerable waiting and opened the studio door to go to
Nell. It was now just two days since he had seen or heard of
her. She had spoken of a dance for that very night—of his
going to it. She must be ill!

But he had not taken six steps when he saw her coming. She
had on a grey furry scarf, hiding her mouth, making her look
much older. The moment the door was shut she threw it off,
went to the hearth, drew up a little stool, and, holding her
hands out to the fire, said:

“Have you thought about me? Have you thought enough
now?”

And he answered: “ Yes, I’ve thought, but I’m no nearer.”

“Why? Nobody need ever know you love me. And if they
did, I wouldn’t care.”

Simple! How simple! Glorious, egoistic youth!

He could not speak of Sylvia to this child—speak of his
married life, hitherto so dignified, so almost sacred. It was
impossible. Then he heard her say:

“Tt can’t be wrong to love you! I don’t care if it is wrong,”
and saw her lips quivering, and her eyes suddenly piteous and
scared, as if for the first time she doubted the issue. Here was
fresh torment! To watch an unhappy child. And what was
the use of even trying to make clear to her—on the very thresh-
old of life—the hopeless maze that he was wandering in! What
''198 NOVELS OF LOVE

chance of making her understand the marsh of mud and tangled
weeds he must drag through to reach her. “ Nobody need
know.” So simple! What of his heart and his wife’s heart?
And, pointing to his new work—the first man bewitched by the
first nymph—he said:

“Look at this, Nell! That nymph is you; and this man is
me.” She got up, and came to look. And while she was gazing
he greedily drank her in. What a-strange mixture of innocence
and sorcery! What a wonderful young creature to bring to
full knowledge of love within his arms! And he said: “ You
had better understand what you are to me—all that I shall
never know again; there it is in that nymph’s face. Oh, no!
not your face. And there am I struggling through slime to
reach you—not my face, of course.”

She said: “ Poor face!” then covered her own. Was she
going to cry, and torture him still more? But, instead, she
only murmured: “ But you have reached me!” swayed towards
him, and put her lips to his.

He gave way then. From that too stormy kiss of his she drew
back for a second, then, as if afraid of her own recoil, snuggled
close again. But the instinctive shrinking of innocence had been
enough for Lennan—he dropped his arms and said:

“You must go, child!”

Without a word she picked up her fur, put it on, and stood
waiting for him to speak. Then, as he did not, she held out
something white. It was the card for the dance.

“You said you would come!”

And he nodded. Her eyes and lips smiled at him; she opened
the door, and, still with that slow, happy smile, went out... .

Yes, he would be coming; wherever she was, whenever she
wanted him!...

His blood on fire, heedless of everything but to rush after
happiness, Lennan spent those hours before the dance. He
had told Sylvia that he would be dining at his Club—a set of
rooms owned by a small coterie of artists in Chelsea. He had
taken this precaution, feeling that he could not sit through
dinner opposite her and then go out to that dance—and Nell!
He had spoken of a guest at the Club, to account for evening
dress—another lie, but what did it matter? He was lying all
the time, if not in words, in action—must lie, indeed, to save
her suffering !

He stopped at the Frenchwoman’s flower shop.
''THE DARK FLOWER 199

“ Que désirez-vous, monsicur? Des qillets rouges—j en at de
bien beaux, ce soir.”

Des willets rouges? Yes, those to-night! To this address.
No green with them; no card!

How strange the feeling—with the die once cast for love—
of rushing, of watching his own self being left behind!

In the Brompton Road, outside a little restaurant, a thin
musician was playing on a violin. Ah! and he knew this place 3.
he would go in there, not to the Club—and the fiddler should.
have all he had to spare, for playing those tunes of love. He
turned in. He had not been there since the day before that.
night on the river, twenty years ago. Never since; and yet it
was not changed. The same tarnished gilt, and smell of cook-
ing; the same macaroni in the same tomato sauce; the same
Chianti flasks; the same staring, light-blue walls wreathed with
pink flowers. Only the waiter different—hollow-cheeked, patient,
dark of eye. He, too, should be well tipped ! And that poor,
overhatted lady, eating her frugal meals—to her, at all events,
a look of kindness. For all desperate creatures he must feel,
this desperate night! And suddenly he thought of Oliver.
Another desperate one! What should he say to Oliver at this
dance—he, aged forty-seven, coming there without his wife!
Some imbecility, such as: “ Watching the human form divine
in motion,” “Catching sidelights on Nell for the statuette 77
some cant; it did not matter! The wine was drawn, and he
must drink!

It was still early when he left the restaurant—a dry night,
very calm, not cold. When had he danced last? With Olive
Cramier, before he knew he loved her. Well, that memory could
not be broken, for he would not dance to-night! Just watch,
sit with the girl a few minutes, feel her hand cling to his, see
her eyes turned back to him; and—come away! And then—
the future! For the wine was drawn! The leaf of a plane-tree,
fluttering down, caught on his sleeve. Autumn would soon be
gone, and after Autumn—only Winter! She would have done
with him long before he came to Winter. Nature would see to
it that Youth called for her, and carried her away. Nature
in her courses! But just to cheat Nature for a little while!
To cheat Nature—what greater happiness!

Here was the place, with red-striped awning, carriages driving
away, loiterers watching. He turned in, with a beating heart.
Was he before her? How would she come to this first dance?
''200 NOVELS OF LOVE

With Oliver alone? Or had some chaperon been found? To
have come because she—this child so lovely, born “ outside ”—
might have need of chaperonage, would have been some comfort
to dignity, so wistful, so lost as his. But, alas! he knew he
was only there because he could not keep away !

Already they were dancing in the hall up-stairs; but not she,
yet; and he stood leaning against the wall where she must pass.
Lonely and out of place he felt; as if everyone must know why
he was there. People stared, and he heard a girl ask: ‘“ Who’s
that against the wall with the hair and dark moustache? ”—
and her partner murmuring his answer, and her voice again:
“Yes, he looks as if he were seeing sand and lions.” For whom,
then, did they take him? Thank heaven! They were all the
‘usual sort. There would be no one that he knew. Suppose
Johnny Dromore himself came with Nell! He was to be back
on Saturday! What could he say, then? How meet those
doubting, knowing eyes, goggling with the fixed philosophy,
that a man has but one use for woman? God! and it would
be true! For a moment he was on the point of getting his
coat and hat, and sneaking away. That would mean not seeing
her till Monday; and he stood his ground. But after to-night
there must be no more such risks—their meetings must be
wisely planned, must sink underground. And then he saw her
at the foot of the stairs in a dress of a shell-pink colour, with
one of his flowers in her light-brown hair and the others tied
to the handle of a tiny fan. How self-possessed she looked, as
if this were indeed her native element—her neck and arms
bare, her cheeks a deep soft pink, her eyes quickly turning here
and there. She began mounting the stairs, and saw him.
Was ever anything so lovely as she looked just then? Behind
her he marked Oliver, and a tall girl with red hair, and another
young man. He moved deliberately to the top of the stairs
on the wall side, so that from behind they should not see
her face when she greeted him. She put the little fan with
the flowers to her lips; and, holding out her hand, said, quick
and low:

“The fourth, it’s a polka; we'll sit out, won’t we?”

Then swaying a little, so that her hair and the flower in it
almost touched his face, she passed, and there in her stead
stood Oliver.

Lennan had expected one of his old insolent looks, but the
young man’s face was eager and quite friendly.
''THE DARK FLOWER 201.

“Tt was awfully good of you to come, Mr. Lennan. Is Mrs.
Lennan——”

And Lennan murmured:

*“‘ She wasn’t able; she’s not quite ” and could have sunk
into the shining floor. Youth with its touching confidence, its
eager trust! This was the way he was fulfilling his duty towards
Youth !

When they had passed into the ballroom he went back to his
position against the wall. They were dancing Number Three;
his time of waiting, then, was drawing to a close. From where
he stood he could not see the dancers—no use to watch her go
round in someone else’s arms.

Not a true waltz—some French or Spanish pavement song
played in waltz time; bizarre, pathetic, whirling after its own
happiness. That chase for happiness! Well, life, with all its
prizes and its possibilities, had nothing that quite satisfied—
save just the fleeting moments of passion! Nothing else quite
poignant enough to be called pure joy! Orso it seemed to him.

The waltz was over. He could see her now, on a rout seat.
against the wall with the other young man, turning her eyes
constantly as if to make sure that he was still standing there.
What subtle fuel was always being added to the fire by that
flattery of her inexplicable adoration—of those eyes which
dragged him to her, yet humbly followed him, too! Five times
while she sat there he saw the red-haired girl or Oliver bring
men up; saw youths cast longing glances; saw girls watching
her with cold appraisement, or with a touching, frank delight.
From the moment that she came in, there had been, in her
father’s phrase, “only one in it.” And she could pass all this
by, and still want him. Incredible!

At the first notes of the polka he went to her. It was she who
found their place of refuge—a little alcove behind two palm-
plants. But sitting there, he realised, as never before, that there
was no spiritual communion between him and this child. She
could tell him her troubles or her joys; he could soothe or
sympathize; but never would the gap between their natures and
their ages be crossed. His happiness was only in the sight and
touch of her. But that, God knew, was happiness enough—a
feverish, craving joy, like an overtired man’s thirst, growing
with the drink on which it tries to slake itself. Sitting there,
in the scent of those flowers and of some sweet essence in her
hair, with her fingers touching his, and her eyes seeking his,

 
''202 NOVELS OF LOVE

he tried loyally not to think of himself, to grasp her sensations
at this her first dance, and just help her to enjoyment. But
he could not—paralysed, made drunk by that insensate longing
to take her in his arms and crush her to him as he had those
few hours back. He could see her expanding like a flower, in
all this light, and motion, and intoxicating admiration round
her. What business had he in her life, with his dark hunger
‘after secret hours; he—a coin worn thin already—a destroyer
of the freshness and the glamour of her youth and beauty!

Then, holding up the flowers, she said:

“Did you give me these because of the one I gave you?”

ce Meces

“ What did you do with that?”

“ Burned it.”

“Oh! but why?”

“ Because you are a witch—and witches must be burned with
all their flowers.”

“ Are you going to burn me?”

He put his hand on her cool arm.

“Feel! The flames are lighted.”

“You may! I don’t care!”

She took his hand and laid her cheek against it; yet, to the
music, which had begun again, the tip of her shoe was already
beating time. And he said:

“You ought to be dancing, child.”

“Oh, no! Only it’s a pity you don’t want to.”

“Yes! Do you understand that it must all be secret—
underground ? ”

She covered his lips with the fan, and said: “ You’re not to
think; you’re not to think—never! When can I come?”

“T must find the best way. Not to-morrow. Nobody must
know, Nell—for your sake—for hers—nobody!”

She nodded, and repeated with a soft, mysterious wisdom:
“Nobody.” And then, aloud: “ Here’s Oliver! It was awfully
good of you to come. Good-night!”

And as, on Oliver’s arm, she left their little refuge, she
looked back.

He lingered—to watch her through this one dance. How they
made all the other couples sink into insignificance, with that
something in them both that was better than mere good looks—
that something not owtré or eccentric, but poignant, wayward.
They went well together, those two Dromores—his dark head
''THE DARK FLOWER 203

and her fair head; his clear, brown, daring eyes, and her grey,
languorous, mesmeric eyes. Ah! Master Oliver was happy now,
with her so close to him! It was not jealousy that Lennan felt.
Not quite—one did not feel jealous of the young; something
very deep—pride, sense of proportion, who knew what ?—pre-
vented that. She, too, looked happy, as if her soul were dancing,
vibrating with this music and the scent of the flowers. He
waited for her to come round once more, to get for a last time
that flying glance turned back; then found his coat and hat

and went.
''XIII

OutsipE, he walked a few steps, then stood looking back at
the windows of the hall through some trees, the shadows of
whose trunks, in the light of a street lamp, were spilled out
along the ground like the splines of a fan. A church clock
struck eleven. For hours yet she would be there, going round
and round in the arms of Youth! Try as he might he could
never recapture for himself the look that Oliver’s face had worn
—a look which was the symbol of so much more than he himself
could give her. Why had she come into his life—to her undo-
ing and his own? And the bizarre thought came to him: ‘If
she were dead should I really care? Should I not be almost
glad? If she were dead her witchery would be dead, and I
could stand up straight again and look people in the face!’
What was this power that played with men, darted into them,
twisted their hearts to rags; this power that had looked through
her eyes when she put her fan, with his flowers, to her lips?

The thrumming of the music ceased; he walked away.

It must have been nearly twelve when he reached home. Now,
once more, would begin the gruesome process of deception—
flinching of soul, and brazening of visage. It would be better
when the whole thievish business was irretrievably begun and
ordered in its secret courses !

There was no light in the drawing-room, save just the glow
of the fire. If only Sylvia might have gone to bed! Then he
saw her, sitting motionless out there by the uncurtained window.

He went over to her, and began his hateful formula:

“T’m afraid you’ve been lonely. I had to stay rather late.
A dull evening.” And, since she did not move or answer, but
just sat there very still and white, he forced himself to go close,
bend down to her, touch her cheek; even to kneel beside her.
She looked round then; her face was quiet enough, but her
eyes were strangely eager. With a pitiful little smile she broke
out :

“Oh, Mark! What is it—what is it? Anything is better
than this!”

Perhaps it was the smile, perhaps her voice or eyes—but
something gave way in Lennan. Secrecy, precaution went by

204
''THE DARK FLOWER 205

the board. Bowing his head against her breast, he poured it
all out, while they clung, clutched together in the half dark
like two frightened children. Only when he had finished did
he realise that if she had pushed him away, refused to let him
touch her, it would have been far less piteous, far easier to
bear, than her wan face and her hands clutching him, and
her words: “ I never thought—you and I—oh! Mark—you and
I——” The trust in their life together, in himself, that those
words revealed! Yet, not greater than he had had—still had!
She could not understand—he had known that she could never
understand ; it was why he had fought so for secrecy, all through.
She was taking it as if she had lost everything; and in his mind
she had lost nothing. This passion, this craving for Youth
and Life, this madness—call it what one would—was something
quite apart, not touching his love and need of her. If she would
only believe that! Over and over he repeated it; over and over
again perceived that she could not take it in. The only thing
she saw was that his love had gone from her to another—though
that was not true! Suddenly she broke out of his arms, pushing
him from her, and cried: “ That girl—hateful, horrible, false! ”
Never had he seen her look like this, with flaming spots in her
white cheeks, soft lips and chin distorted, blue eyes flaming,
breast heaving, as if each breath were drawn from lungs which
received no air. And then, as quickly, the fire went out of her;
she sank down on the sofa, covering her face with her arms,
rocking to and fro. She did not ery, but a little moan came
from her now and then. And each one of those sounds was to
Lennan like the cry of something he was murdering. At last
he went and sat down on the sofa by her and said:

“Sylvia! Sylvia! Don’t! oh! don’t!” And she was silent,
ceasing to rock herself ; letting him smooth and stroke her. But
her face she kept hidden, and only once she spoke, so low that
he could hardly hear: “I can’t—I won’t keep you from her.”
And with the awful feeling that no words could reach or soothe
the wound in that tender heart, he could only go on stroking
and kissing her hands,

It was atrocious—horrible—this that he had done! God knew
that he had not sought it—the thing had come on him. Surely
even in her misery she could see that! Deep down beneath his
grief and self-hatred, he knew, what neither she nor anyone else
could know—that he could not have prevented this feeling,
which went back to days before he ever saw the girl—that no
''206 NOVELS OF LOVE

man could have stopped that feeling in himself. This craving
and roving was as much part of him as his eyes and hands, as
overwhelming and natural a longing as his hunger for work,
or his need of the peace that Sylvia gave, and alone could give
him. That was the tragedy—it was all sunk and rooted in the
very nature of a man. Since the girl had come into their lives
he was no more unfaithful to his wife in thought than he had
been before. If only she could look into him, see him exactly
as he was, as, without part or lot in the process, he had been
made—then she would understand, and even might not suffer;
but she could not, and he could never make it plain. And
solemnly, desperately, with a weary feeling of the futility of
words, he went on trying: Could she not see? It was all a thing
outside. him—a craving, a chase after beauty and life, after his
own youth! At that word she looked at him:

“ And do you think J don’t want my youth back?”

He stopped.

For a woman to feel that her beauty—the brightness of her
hair and eyes, the grace and suppleness of her limbs—were
slipping from her and from the man she loved! Was anything
more bitter ?—or any more sacred duty than not to add to that
bitterness, not to push her with suffering into old age, but to
help keep the star of her faith in her charm intact!

Man and woman—they both wanted youth again; she, that
she might give it all to him; he, because it would help him
towards something—new! Just that world of difference!

He got up, and said:

“Come, dear, let’s try and sleep.”

He had not once said that he could give it up. The words
would not pass his lips, though he knew she must be conscious
that he had not said them, must be longing to hear them. All
he had been able to say was:

“ So long as you want me, you shall never lose me” . . . and,
“JT will never keep anything from you again.”

Up in their room she lay hour after hour in his arms, quite
unresentful, but without life in her, and with eyes, when his lips
touched them, always wet.

What a maze was a man’s heart, wherein he must lose himself
every minute! What involved and intricate turnings and turn-
ings on itself; what fugitive replacement of emotion by emotion !
What strife between pities and passions; what longing for
peace! ...
''THE DARK FLOWER 207

And in his feverish exhaustion, which was almost sleep,
Lennan hardly knew whether it was the thrum of music or
Sylvia’s moaning that he heard; her body or Nell’s within his
arma. 04

But life had to be lived, a face preserved against the world,
engagements kept. And the nightmare went on for both of
them, under the calm surface of an ordinary Sunday. They
were like people walking at the edge of a high cliff, not knowing
from step to step whether they would fall; or like swimmers
struggling for issue out of a dark whirlpool.

In the afternoon they went together to a concert. It was just
something to do—something that saved them for an hour or
two from the possibility of speaking on the one subject left to
them. The ship had gone down, and they were clutching at
anything which for a moment would help to keep them above
water.

In the evening some people came to supper; a writer and two
painters, with their wives. A grim evening—never more so than
when the conversation turned on that perennial theme—the
freedom, spiritual, mental, physical, requisite for those who
practise Art. All the stale arguments were brought forth, and
had to be joined in with unmoved faces. And for all their talk
of freedom, Lennan could see the volte-face his friends would
be making, if they only knew. It was not “the thing ” to seduce
young girls—as if, forsooth, there were freedom in doing only
what people thought “the thing”! Their cant about the free
artist spirit experiencing everything, would wither the moment
it came up against a canon of “good form,” so that in truth
it was no freer than the bourgeois spirit, with its conventions ;
or the priest spirit, with its ery of “Sin!” No, no! To resist
—if resistance were possible to this dragging power—maxims
of “ good form,” dogmas of religion and morality, were no help—
nothing was any help, but some feeling stronger than passion
itself. Sylvia’s face, forced to smile !—that indeed, was a reason
why they should condemn him! None of their doctrines about
freedom could explain that away—the harm, the death that
came to a man’s soul when he made a loving, faithful creature
suffer.

But they were gone at last—with their “Thanks so much!”
and their “ Delightful evening!”

And those two were face to face for another night.

He knew that it must begin all over again—inevitable, after
''208 NOVELS OF LOVE

the stab of that wretched argument plunged into their hearts
and turned and turned all the evening.

“JT won’t, I mustn’t keep you starved, and spoil your work.
Don’t think of me, Mark! I can bear it!”

And then a breakdown worse than the night before. What
genius, what sheer genius Nature had for torturing her crea-
tures! If anyone had told him, even so little as a week ago,
that he could have caused such suffering to Sylvia—Sylvia,
whom as a child with wide blue eyes and a blue bow on her
flaxen head he had guarded across fields full of imaginary bulls;
Sylvia, in whose hair his star had caught; Sylvia, who day and
night for fifteen years, had been his devoted wife; whom he
loved and still admired—he would have given him the lie direct.
It would have seemed incredible, monstrous, silly. Had all
married men and women such things to go through—was this
but a very usual crossing of the desert? Or was it, once for all,
shipwreck? death—unholy, violent death—in a storm of sand?

Another night of misery, and no answer to that question yet.

He had told her that he would not see Nell again without
first letting her know. So, when morning came, he simply
wrote the words: “Don’t come to-day!”—showed them to
Sylvia, and sent them by a servant to Dromore’s.

Hard to describe the bitterness with which he entered his
studio that morning. In all this chaos, what of his work?
Could he ever have peace of mind for it again? Those people
last night had talked of “inspiration of passion, of experience.”
In pleading with her he had used the words himself. She—
poor soul!—had but repeated them, trying to endure them, to
believe them true. And were they true? Again no answer, or
certainly none that he could give. To have had the waters
broken up; to be plunged into emotion; to feel desperately,
instead of stagnating—some day he might be grateful—who
knew? Some day there might be fair country again beyond this
desert, where he could work even better than before. But just
now, as well expect creative work from a condemned man. It
seemed to him that he was equally destroyed whether he gave
Nell up, and with her, once for all, that roving, seeking instinct,
which ought, forsooth, to have been satisfied, and was not;
or whether he took Nell, knowing that in doing so he was tor-
turing a woman dear to him! That was as far as he could see
to-day. What he would come to see in time God only knew!
But: “Freedom of the Spirit!” A phrase of bitter irony
''THE DARK FLOWER 209

indeed! And, there, like a man tied hand and foot, with his
work all round him, he was swept by such a feeling of exaspera-
ted rage as he had never known. Women! These women!
Only let him be free of both, of all women, and the passions and
pities they aroused, so that his brain and his hands might live
and work again! They should not strangle, they should not
destroy him!

Unfortunately, even in his rage, he knew that flight from
them both could never help him. One way or the other the
thing would have to be fought through. If it had been a
straight fight even; a clear issue between passion and pity! But
both he loved, and both he pitied! There was nothing straight
and clear about it anywhere; it was all too deeply rooted in
full human nature. And the appalling sense of rushing cease-
lessly from barrier to barrier began really to affect his brain.

True, he had now and then a lucid interval of a few minutes,
when the ingenious nature of his own torments struck him as
supremely interesting and queer; but this was not precisely a
relief, for it only meant, as in prolonged toothache, that his
power of feeling had for a moment ceased. A very pretty little
hell indeed !

All day he had the premonition, amounting to certainty, that
Nell would take alarm at those three words he had sent her,
and come in spite of them. And yet, what else could he have
written? Nothing save what must have alarmed her more,
or plunged him deeper. He had the feeling that she could
follow his moods, that her eyes could see him everywhere, as a
cat’s eyes can see in darkness. The feeling had been with him,
more or less, ever since the last evening of October, the evening
she came back from her summer—grown-up. How long ago?
Only six days—was it possible? Ah, yes! She knew when her
spell was weakening, when the current wanted, as it were, re-
newing. And about six o’clock—dusk already—without the
least surprise, with only a sort of empty quivering, he heard her
knock. And just behind the closed door, as near as he could
get to her, he stood, holding his breath. He had given his word
to Sylvia—of his own accord had given it. Through the thin
wood of the old door he could hear the faint shuffle of her feet
on the pavement, moved a few inches this way and that, as
though supplicating the inexorable silence. He seemed to see
her head, bent a little forward, listening. Three times she
knocked, and each time Lennan writhed. It was so cruel!
''210 NOVELS OF LOVE

With that seeing-sense of hers she must know he was there;
his very silence would be telling her—for his silence had its
voice, its pitiful breathless sound. Then, quite distinctly, he
heard her sigh, and her footsteps move away; and covering his
face with his hands he rushed to and fro in the studio, like a
madman. !

No sound of her any more! Gone! It was unbearable; and,
seizing his hat, he ran out. Which way? At random he ran
towards the Square. There she was, over by the railing; lan-
guidly, irresolutely moving towards home.
''XIV

Bur now that she was within reach, he wavered; he had given
his word—was he going to break it? Then she turned, and saw
him; he could not go back. In the biting easterly wind her
face looked small, and pinched, and cold, but her eyes only
the larger, the more full of witchery, as if beseeching him not to
be angry, not to send her away.

“T had to come; I got frightened. Why did you write such
a tiny little note?”

He tried to make his voice sound quiet and ordinary.

“You must be brave, Nell. I have had to tell her.”

She clutched at his arm; then drew herself up, and said in
her clear, clipped voice:

“Oh! I suppose she hates me, then! ”

“ She is terribly unhappy.”

They walked a minute, that might have been an hour, without
a word; not round the Square, as he had walked with Oliver,
but away from the house. At last she said in a half-choked
voice: “T only want a little bit of you.”

And he answered dully: “In love, there are no little bits—no
standing still.”

Then, suddenly, he felt her hand in his, the fingers lacing,
twining restlessly amongst his own; and again the half-choked
voice said:

“But you will let me see you sometimes! You must!”

Hardest of all to resist was this pathetic, clinging, frightened
child. And, not knowing very clearly what he said, he mur-
mured :

“Yes—yes; it'll be all right. Be brave—you must be brave,
Nell. It’ll all come right.”

But she only answered :

“No, no! I’m not brave. I shall do something.”

Her face looked just as when she had ridden at that gravel
pit. Loving, wild, undisciplined, without resource of any kind
—what might she not do? Why could he not stir without
bringing disaster upon one or other? And between these two,
suffering so because of him, he felt as if he had lost his own
existence. In quest of happiness, he had come to that!

211
''212 NOVELS OF LOVE

Suddenly she said:

“ Oliver asked me again at the dance on Saturday. He said
you had told him to be patient. Did you?”

ce Wes”

“ Why? 29

“ T was sorry for him.”

She let his hand go.

“Perhaps you would like me to marry him.”

Very clearly he saw those two going round and round over
the shining floor.

“Tt would be better, Nell.”

She made a little sound—of anger or dismay.

“You don’t really want me, then?”

That was his chance. But with her arm touching his, her face
so pale and desperate, and those maddening eyes turned to him,
he could not tell that lie, and answered:

“ Yes—I want you, God knows!”

At that a sigh of content escaped her, as if she were saying
to herself: ‘If he wants me he will not let me go.’ Strange
little tribute of her faith in love and her own youth!

They had come somehow to Pall Mall by now. And scared
to find himself so deep in the hunting-ground of the Dromores,
Lennan turned hastily towards St. James’s Park, that they might
cross it in the dark, round to Piccadilly. To be thus slinking
out of the world’s sight with the daughter of his old room-
mate—of all men in the world the last perhaps that he should
do this to! A nice treacherous business! But the thing men
called honour—what was it, when her eyes were looking at him
and her shoulder touching his?

Since he had spoken those words, “Yes, I want you,”
she had been silent—fearful perhaps to let other words de-
stroy their comfort. But near the gate by Hyde Park Corner
she put her hand again into his, and again her voice, so clear,
said:

“T don’t want to hurt anybody, but you will let me come
sometimes—you will let me see you—you won’t leave me all
alone, thinking that I’ll never see you again?”

And once more, without knowing what he answered, Lennan
murmured :

“No, no! It'll be all right, dear—it’ll all come right. It
must—and shall.”

Again her fingers twined amongst his, like a child’s. She
''THE DARK FLOWER 213

seemed to have a wonderful knowledge of the exact thing to say
and do to keep him helpless. And she went on:

“T didn’t try to love you—it isn’t wrong to love—it wouldn’t
hurt her. I only want a little of your love.”

A little—always a little! But he was solely bent on comfort-
ing her now. To think of her going home, and sitting lonely,
frightened, and unhappy, all the evening, was dreadful. And
holding her fingers tight, he kept on murmuring words of would-
be comfort.

Then he saw that they were out in Piccadilly. How far dared
he go with her along the railings before he said good-bye? A
man was coming towards them, just where he had met Dromore
that first fatal afternoon nine months ago; a man with a slight
lurch in his walk and a tall, shining hat a little on one side.
But thank Heaven !—it was not Dromore—only one somewhat
like him, who in passing stared sphinx-like at Nell. And Len-
nan said:

“You must go home now, child; we mustn’t be seen to-
gether.”

For a moment he thought she was going to break down, re-
fuse to leave him. Then she threw up her head, and for a sec-
ond stood like that, quite motionless, looking in his face. Sud-
denly stripping off her glove, she thrust her warm, clinging
hand into his. Her lips smiled faintly, tears stood in her eyes 5
then she drew her hand away and plunged into the traffic. He
saw her turn the corner of her street and disappear. And with
the warmth of that passionate little hand still stinging his
palm, he almost ran towards Hyde Park.

Taking no heed of direction, he launched himself into its dark
space, deserted in this cold, homeless wind, of little sound and
no scent, travelling its remorseless road under the grey-black
sky.

The dark firmament and keen cold air suited one who had no
need of aids to emotion—one who had, indeed, but the single wish
to get rid, if he only could, of the terrible sensation in his head,
that bruised, battered, imprisoned feeling of a man who paces
his cell—never, never to get out at either end. Without thought
or intention he drove his legs along; not running, because he
knew that he would have to stop the sooner. Alas! what more
comic spectacle for the eyes of a good citizen than this married
man of middle age, striding for hours over those dry, dark,
empty pastures—hunted by passion and by pity, so that he
''214 NOVELS OF LOVE

knew not even whether he had dined! But no good citizen was
abroad of an autumn night in a bitter easterly wind. The trees
were the sole witnesses of this grim exercise—the trees, resigning
to the cold blast their crinkled leaves fluttering past him, just
a little lighter than the darkness. Here and there his feet
rustled in the drifts, waiting their turn to serve the little bon-
fires, whose scent still clung in the air. A desperate walk, in
this heart of London—round and round, up and down, hour
after hour, keeping always in the dark; not a star in the sky,
not a human being spoken to or even clearly seen, not a bird or
beast; just the gleam of the lights far away, and the hoarse
muttering of the traffic! A walk as lonely as the voyage of the
human soul is lonely from birth to death with nothing to guide
it but the flickering glow from its own frail spirit lighted it
knows not where. ...

And, so tired that he could hardly move his legs, but free at
last of that awful feeling in his head—free for the first time
for days and days—Lennan came out of the Park at the gate
where he had gone in, and walked towards his home, certain that
to-night, one way or the other, it would be decided. ...
''EV

Tus then—this long trouble of body and of spirit—was what
he remembered, sitting in the armchair beyond his bedroom fire,
watching the glow, and Sylvia sleeping there exhausted, while
the dark plane-tree leaves tap-tapped at the window in the
autumn wind; watching, with the uncanny certainty that he
would not pass the limits of this night without having made
at last a decision which should bind him. For even conflict
wears itself out; even indecision has this measure set to its
miserable powers of torture, that any issue in the end is better
than the hell of indecision itself. Once or twice in those last
days even death had seemed to him quite tolerable; but now
that his head was clear and he had come to grips, death passed
out of his mind like the shadow that it was. Nothing so simple,
extravagant, and vain could serve him. Other issues had reality ;
death—none. T'o leave Sylvia, and take this young love away;
there was reality in that, but it had always faded as soon as it
shaped itself ; and now once more it faded. To put such a public
and terrible affront on a tender wife whom he loved, do her to
death, as it were, before the world’s eyes—and then, ever re-
morseful, grow old while the girl was still young? He could
not. If Sylvia had not loved him, yes; or, even if he had not
loved her; or if, again, though loving him she had stood upon
her rights—in any of those events he might have done it. But
to leave her whom he did love, and who had said to him so gen-
erously: “I will not hamper you—go to her ”—would be a black
atrocity. Every memory, from their boy-and-girl lovering to
the desperate clinging of her arms these last two nights—memory
with its innumerable tentacles, the invincible strength of its
countless threads, bound him to her too fast. What then?
Must it come, after all, to giving up the girl? And sitting
there, by that warm fire, he shivered. How desolate, sacrilegious,
wasteful to throw love away; to turn from the most precious
of all gifts; to drop and break that vase! There was not too
much love in the world, nor too much warmth and beauty—
not, anyway, for those whose sands were running out, whose —
blood would soon be cold.

Could Sylvia not let him keep both her love and the girl’s?

215
''216 NOVELS OF LOVE

Could she not bear that? She had said she could; but her face,
her eyes, her voice gave her the lie, so that every time he heard
her his heart turned sick with pity. This, then, was the real
issue. Could he accept from her such a sacrifice, exact a daily
misery, see her droop and fade beneath it? Could he bear his
own happiness at such a cost? Would it be happiness at all?
He got up from the chair and crept towards her. She looked
very fragile sleeping there! The darkness below her closed
eyelids showed cruelly on that too fair skin; and in her flax-
coloured hair he saw what he had never noticed—a few strands
of white. Her softly opened lips, almost colourless, quivered
with her uneven breathing; and now and again a little feverish
shiver passed up as from her heart. All soft and fragile! Not
much life, not much strength; youth and beauty slipping! To
know that he who should be her champion against age and time
would day by day be placing one more mark upon her face, one
more sorrow in her heart! That he should do this—they both
going down the years together!

As he stood there holding his breath, bending to look at her,
that slurring swish of the plane-tree branch, flung against and
against the window by the autumn wind, seemed filling the
whole world. Then her lips moved in one of those little, soft
hurrying whispers of unhappy dreamers, the words all blurred
with their wistful rushing.

And he thought: ‘I, who believe in bravery and kindness; I,
who hate cruelty—if I do this cruel thing, what shall I have to
live for; how shall I work; how bear myself? If I do it, I am
lost—an outcast from my own faith—a renegade from all that
I believe in.’

And, kneeling there close to that face so sad and lonely, that
heart so beaten even in its sleep, he knew that he could not do
it—knew it with sudden certainty, and a curious sense of
peace. Over!—the long struggle—over at last! Youth with
youth, summer to summer, falling leaf with falling leaf! And
behind him the fire flickered, and the plane-tree leaves tap-
tapped.

He rose, and crept away stealthily downstairs into the draw-
ing-room, and through the window at the far end out into the
courtyard, where he had sat that day by the hydrangea, listening
to the piano-organ. Very dark and cold and eerie it was there,
and he hurried across to his studio. There, too, it was cold,
and dark, and eerie, with its ghostly plaster presences, stale
''THE DARK FLOWER 217

scent of cigarettes, and just one glowing ember of the fire he
had left when he rushed out after Nell—those seven hours ago.

He went first to the bureau, turned up its lamp, and taking
out some sheets of paper, marked on them directions for his
various works; for the statuette of Nell, he noted that it should
be taken with his compliments to Mr. Dromore. He wrote a
letter to his banker directing money to be sent to Rome, and
to his solicitor telling him to let the house. He wrote quickly.
If Sylvia woke, and found him still away, what might she not
think? He took a last sheet. Did it matter what he wrote, what
deliberate lie, if it helped Nell over the first shock?

“ Dear NELL,

“T write this hastily in the early hours, to say that we are
called out to Italy to my only sister, who is very ill. We leave
by the first morning boat, and may be away some time. I will
write again. Don’t fret, and God bless you.

“ONE Tay?

He could not see very well as he wrote. Poor, loving, des-
perate child! Well, she had youth and strength, and would soon
have—Oliver! And he took yet another sheet.

“ DEAR OLIVER,

“My wife and I are obliged to go post-haste to Italy. I
watched you both at the dance the other night. Be very gentle
with Nell; and—good luck to you! But don’t tell her again
that I told you to be patient; it is hardly the way to make her
love you.

“M. Lennan.”

That, then, was all—yes, all! He turned out the little lamp,
and groped towards the hearth. But one thing left. To say
good-bye! To her, and Youth, and Passion !—to the only salve
for the aching that Spring and Beauty bring—the aching for
the wild, the passionate, the new, which never quite dies in a
man’s heart. Ah! well, sooner or later, all men had to say
zood-bye to that. All men—all men!

He crouched down before the hearth. There was no warmth
in that fast-blackening ember, but it still glowed like a dark-
red flower. And while it lived he crouched there, as though it
were that to which he was saying good-bye. And on the door
''218 NOVELS OF LOVE

he heard the girl’s ghostly knocking. And beside him—a ghost
among the ghostly presences—she stood. Slowly the glow black-
ened, till the last spark had faded out.

Then by the glimmer of the night he found his way back,
softly as he had come, to his bedroom.

Sylvia was still sleeping; and, to watch for her to wake, he
sat down again by the fire, in silence only stirred by the frail
tap-tapping of those autumn leaves, and the little catch in her
breathing now and then. It was, less troubled than when he
had bent over her before, as though in her sleep she knew. He
must not miss the moment of her waking, must be beside her
before she came to full consciousness, to say: “ There, there!
It’s all over; we are going away at once—at once.” To be
ready to offer that quick solace, before she had time to plunge
back into her sorrow, was an island in this black sea of night,
a single little refuge point for his bereaved and naked being.
Something to do—something fixed, real, certain. And yet an-
other long hour before her waking, he sat forward in the chair,
with that wistful eagerness, his eyes fixed on her face, staring
through it at some vision, some faint, glimmering light—far out
there beyond—as a traveller watches a star... .

1912-13.
»
''BOOK II

BEYOND

“Che faro senza... $9
''TO
THOMAS HARDY
''PART I
I

At the door of St. George’s registry office Charles Clare Win-
ton strolled forward in the wake of the taxi-cab that was bear-
ing his daughter away with “the fiddler fellow” she had mar-
ried. His sense of decorum forbade his walking with Nurse
Betty—the only other witness of the wedding. A stout woman
in a highly emotional condition would have companioned in-
congruously his slim, upright figure, moving with just that
unexaggerated swing and balance becoming to a lancer of the
old school, even if he has been on the retired list for sixteen
years.

Poor Betty! He thought of her with irritated sympathy—
she need not have given way to tears on the door-step. She
might well feel lost now Gyp was gone, but not so lost as him-
self! His pale-gloved hand—the one real hand he had, for his
right hand had been amputated at the wrist—twisted vexedly
at the small, grizzling moustache lifting itself from the corners
of his firm lips. On this grey February day he wore no over-
coat; faithful to the absolute, almost shamefaced quietness of
that wedding, he had not even donned black coat and silk hat,
but wore a blue suit and a hard black felt. The instinct of a
soldier and hunting man to exhibit no sign whatever of emotion
did not desert him this dark day of his life; but his grey-hazel
eyes kept contracting, staring fiercely, contracting again; and,
at moments, as if overpowered by some deep feeling, they dark-
ened and seemed to draw back in his head. His face was narrow
and weathered and thin-cheeked, with a clean-cut jaw, small
ears, hair darker than the moustache, but touched at the side
wings with grey—the face of a man of action, self-reliant,
resourceful. And his bearing was that of one who has always
been a bit of a dandy, and paid attention to “form,” yet been
conscious sometimes that there were things beyond. A man,
who, preserving all the precision of a type, yet had in him a
streak of something not typical. Such often have tragedy in
their pasts,

221
''222 NOVELS OF LOVE

Making his way towards the park, he turned into Mount
Street. There was the house still, though the street had been
very different then—the house he had passed, up and down in
the fog, like a ghost, that November afternoon, like a cast-out
dog, in agony of mind, twenty-three years ago, when Gyp was
born. And then to be told at the door—he, with no right to
enter, he, loving as he believed man never loved woman—to
be told at the door that she was dead—dead in bearing what
he and she alone knew was their child! Up and down in the
fog, hour after hour, knowing her time was upon her; and
at last to be told that! Of all fates that befell men, surely the
most awful was to love too much.

Queer that his route should take him past the very house
to-day, after this new bereavement! Accursed luck—that gout
which had sent him to Wiesbaden, last September! Accursed
luck that Gyp had ever set eyes on this fellow Fiorsen, with his
fatal fiddle! Certainly not since Gyp had come to live with
him, fifteen years ago, had he felt so forlorn and fit for nothing.
To-morrow he would get back to Mildenham and see what hard
riding would do. Without Gyp—to be without Gyp! A fiddler!
A chap who had never been on a horse in his life! And with
his crutch-handled cane he switched viciously at the air, as
though carving a man in two.

His club, near Hyde Park Corner, had never seemed to him
so desolate. From sheer force of habit he went into the card-
room. The afternoon had so darkened that electric light al-
ready burned, and the usual dozen of players were seated among
the shaded gleams falling decorously on dark-wood tables, on
the backs of chairs, on cards and tumblers, the little gilded
coffee-cups, the polished nails of fingers holding cigars. A
crony challenged him to piquet. He sat down listless. That
three-legged whist—bridge—had always offended his fastidious-
ness—a mangled short cut of a game! Poker had something
blatant in it. Piquet, though out of fashion, remained for him
the only game worth playing—the only game which still had
style. He held good cards, and rose the winner of five pounds
that he would willingly have paid to escape the boredom of the
bout. Where would they be by now? Past Newbury; Gyp sit-
ting opposite that Swedish fellow with his greenish wildcat’s
eyes. Something furtive, and so foreign, about him! A mess
—if he were any judge of horse or man! Thank God he had
tied Gyp’s money up—every farthing! And an emotion that
''BEYOND 223

was almost jealousy swept him. at the thought of the fellow’s
arms round his soft-haired, dark-eyed daughter—that pretty,
willowy creature, so like in face and limb to her whom he had
loved so desperately.

Eyes followed him when he left the card-room, for he was
one who inspired in other men a kind of admiration—none could
say exactly why. Many quite as noted for general good sports-
manship attracted no such attention. Was it the streak of some-
thing not quite typical—the brand left on him by the past?

Abandoning the club, he walked slowly along the railings of
Piccadilly towards home, that house in Bury Street, St. James’s,
which had been his London abode since he was quite young—
one of the few houses in the street left untouched by the passion
for pulling down and building up, which had spoiled half Lon-
don in his opinion.

A silent man, with the soft, quick, dark eyes of a woodcock,
and a long, greenish, knitted waistcoat, black cutaway, and tight
trousers strapped over his boots, opened the door.

“T shan’t go out again, Markey. Mrs. Markey must give me
some dinner. Anything will do.”

Markey signalled that he had heard, and those eyes under
eyebrows meeting and forming one long, dark line, took his
master in from head to heel. He had already nodded last night,
when his wife had said the guv’nor would take it hard. Retiring
to the back premises, he jerked his head towards the street and
made a motion upward with his hand, by which Mrs. Markey,
an astute woman, understood that she had to go out and shop
because the guv’nor was dining in. When she had gone, Markey
sat down opposite Betty, Gyp’s old nurse. The stout woman was
still crying in a quiet way. It gave him the fair hump, for he
felt inclined to howl like a dog himself. After watching her
broad, rosy, tearful face in silence for some minutes, he shook
his head, and, with a gulp and a tremor of her comfortable body,
Betty desisted. One paid attention to Markey.

Winton went first into his daughter’s bedroom, and gazed at
its emptied silken order, its deserted silver mirror, twisting
viciously at his little moustache. Then, in his sanctum, he sat
down before the fire, without turning up the light. Anyone
looking in would have thought he was asleep; but the drowsy
influence of that deep chair and cosy fire had drawn him back
into the long-ago. What unhappy chance had made him pass
her house to-day !
''224 NOVELS OF LOVE

In theory there is no such thing as an affinity, no case—of a
man, at least—made bankrupt of passion by a single love. In
fact, there are such men—neck-or-nothing men, quiet and self-
contained, the last to expect that nature will play them such a
trick, the last to desire such surrender of themselves, or know
when their fate is on them. Who could have seemed less likely
than Charles Clare Winton to fall over head and ears in love
when he stepped into the Belvoir Hunt ballroom at Grantham
one December evening, twenty-four years ago? A keen soldier,
a dandy, a first-rate man to hounds, already almost a proverb
in his regiment for coolness and for a sort of courteous dis-
regard of women as among the minor things of life—he had
stood there by the door, in no hurry to dance, taking a survey
with an air that just did not give an impression of “side”
because it was not at all put on. And—behold!—she had walked
past him, and his world was changed for ever. Was it an illu-
sion of light which made her whole spirit seem to shine through
a half-startled glance? Or a little trick of gait, a swaying,
seductive balance of body; was it the way her hair waved back,
or a subtle scent, as of a flower? What was it? The wife of a
squire of those parts, with a house in London. There was no
excuse—not an ill-treated woman; an ordinary, humdrum mar-
riage, of three years’ standing; no children. An amiable, good
fellow of a husband, fifteen years older than herself, inclined
already to be an invalid. No excuse! Yet, in one month from
that night, Winton and she were lovers, not only in thought
but in deed. A thing so beyond “ good form” and his sense of
what was honourable and becoming in an officer and gentleman,
that it was never a question of weighing pro and con, the cons
had it so completely. And yet from that first evening, he was
hers, she his. For each of them the one thought was how to
be with the other. If so—why did they not at least go off to-
gether? Not for want of his beseeching. And no doubt, if she
had survived Gyp’s birth, they would have gone. But to face
the prospect of ruining two men, as it looked to her, had till
then been too much for that soft-hearted creature. Death stilled
her struggle before it was decided. She was of those women
in whom utter devotion can still go hand in hand with a doubt-
ing soul. Such are generally the most fascinating; for the
power of hard and prompt decision robs women of mystery, of
the subtle atmosphere of change and chance. Though she had
but one part in four of foreign blood, she was not at all English.
''BEYOND 225

- But Winton was English to his backbone, English in his sense

of form, and in that curious streak of desperation which will
break form to smithereens in one department and leave it un-
touched in every other of its owner’s life. To have called Winton
a “crank” would never have occurred to anyone—his hair was
always perfectly parted; his boots glowed; he was hard and
reticent, accepting and observing every canon of well-bred exist-
ence. Yet, in his one infatuation, he was lost to the world
and its opinion. At any moment during that one year of their
love he would have risked his life and sacrificed his career
for a whole day in her company, yet he never, by word or look,
compromised her. He had carried his punctilious observance of
her “honour” to a point more bitter than death, consenting,
even, to her covering up the tracks of their child’s coming. Pay-
ing that gambler’s debt was by far the bravest deed of his life,
and even now its memory festered.

To this very room he had come back after hearing she was
dead; this room re-furnished to her taste, so that even now,
with its satinwood chairs, little dainty Jacobean bureau, shaded
old brass candelabra, divan, it still had an air exotic to bachelor-
dom. ‘There, on the table, had been a letter recalling him to
his regiment, ordered on active service. If he had realised what
he would go through before he had the chance of trying to lose
his life out there, he must have taken that life, sitting in this
very chair before the fire. He had not the luck he wished for
in that little war—he secured nothing but distinction. When
it was over, he went on, with a few more lines in his face and
heart, soldiering, shooting tigers, pig-sticking, playing polo,
riding to hounds harder than ever; giving nothing away to the
world; winning steadily the curious, uneasy, admiration felt for
those who combine reckless daring with an ice-cool manner.
Less of a talker even than most of his kind, and never a talker
about women, he did not gain the reputation of a woman-hater,
though he so manifestly avoided them. After six years’ service
in India and Egypt, he lost his right hand in a charge against
dervishes, and had to retire, with the rank of major, at the age
of thirty-four. For a long time he had hated the very thought
of the child—his child, in giving birth to whom the woman he
loved had died. Then came a curious change of feeling; and
for three years before his return to England, he had been in
the habit of sending home odds and ends picked up in the
bazaars, to serve as toys. In return, he had received, twice an-
''226 NOVELS OF LOVE

nually at least, a letter from the man who thought himself Gyp’s
father. These letters he answered. The squire had been fond
of her; and though never once had it seemed possible to Winton
to have acted otherwise than he did, he had all the time preserved
a just and formal sense of the wrong he had done this man.
He did not experience remorse, but he had always an irksome
feeling as of a debt unpaid, mitigated by knowledge that no one
had ever suspected, and discounted by memory of the torture
he had endured to make sure against suspicion.

When he was at last back in England, the squire had come
to see him. The poor man was failing fast from Bright’s dis-
ease. Winton entered again that house in Mount Street with
an emotion, to stifle which required more courage than a cavalry
charge. But one whose heart, as he would have put it, is “in
the right place,” does not indulge the quaverings of his nerves,
and he faced those rooms where he had last seen her, faced a
lonely little dinner with her husband, without sign of feeling.
He did not see little Ghita, or Gyp, as she had nicknamed her-
self, for she was already in bed; and it was a whole month
before he brought himself to go there at an hour when he could
see the child if he would. He was afraid. What would the sight
of this little creature stir in him? When Betty, the nurse,
brought her in to see the soldier gentleman with “the leather
hand,” who had sent her those funny toys, she stood calmly
staring with her large, deep-brown eyes. Being seven, her little
brown-velvet frock barely reached the knees of her thin, brown-
stockinged legs planted one just in front of the other, as might
be the legs of a small brown bird; the oval of her gravely won-
dering face was a warm cream colour without red in it, except
that of the lips, which were neither full nor thin, and had a little
tuck, the tiniest possible dimple at one corner. Her hair of
warm dark brown had been specially brushed and tied with a
narrow red ribbon back from her forehead, which was broad
and rather low, and this added to her gravity. Her eyebrows
were thin and dark and perfectly arched; her little nose per-
fectly straight, her little chin in perfect balance between round
and point. She stood and stared till Winton smiled. Then
the gravity of her face broke, her lips parted, her eyes seemed
to fly a little. And Winton’s heart turned over within him—
she was the very child of her that he had lost! And he said, in
a voice which seemed to him to tremble:

“Well, Gyp?”
''BEYOND 227

“Thank you for my toys; I like them.”

He held out his hand, and she put her small hand into it. A
sense of solace, as if someone had slipped a finger in and
smoothed his heart, came over Winton. Gently, so as not to
startle her, he raised her hand a little, bent, and kissed it. Hither
because of his instant recognition that here was one as sensitive
as child could be, or of some deeper instinctive sense of owner-
ship between them from that moment, Gyp conceived for him a
rushing admiration, one of those headlong affections children
will sometimes take for the most unlikely persons.

He used to go there at an hour when he knew the squire would
be asleep, between two and five. After he had been with Gyp,
walking in the park, riding with her in the Row, or on wet days
sitting in her lonely nursery telling stories, while stout Betty
looked on half hypnotised, a rather queer and doubting look on
her comfortable face—after such hours, he found it difficult to
go to the squire’s study and sit opposite him, smoking. ‘Those
interviews reminded him too much of past days, when he had
kept such a desperate check on himself. The squire welcomed
him eagerly, saw nothing, felt nothing, was grateful for his
goodness to the child. He had died in the following spring.
And Winton found that he had been made Gyp’s guardian and
trustee. Since his wife’s death, the squire had muddled his
affairs, his estate was heavily mortgaged; but Winton accepted
the position with an almost savage satisfaction, and, from that
moment, schemed deeply to get Gyp all to himself. The Mount
Street house was sold; the Lincolnshire place let. She and
Nurse Betty were installed at his own hunting-box, Mildenham.
In this effort to get her away from all the squire’s relations, he
employed to the utmost his power of making people feel him un-
approachable. Never impolite, he simple froze them out. Well-
off himself, his motives could not be called in question. In one
year he had isolated her from all except stout Betty. He had
no qualms, for Gyp was no more happy away from him than he
from her. He had at last decided that she should be called by
his name, round Mildenham. It was to Markey he gave the
order that Gyp was to be little Miss Winton for the future.
When he came in from hunting that day, Betty was waiting in
his study. She stood in the emptiest part of that rather dingy
room. Her round, rosy face was confused between awe and
resolution, and she had made a sad mess of her white apron.
Her blue eyes met Winton’s with a sort of desperation.
''228 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ About what Markey told me, sir. My old master wouldn’t.
have liked it, sir.”

Touched on the raw, Winton said icily:

“Indeed! You will be good enough to comply with my wish,
all the same.”

The stout woman’s face grew very red.

“ Yes, sir; but I’ve seen what I’ve seen. I never said any-
thing, but ve got eyes. If Miss Gyp’s to take your name, sir,
then tongues’ll wag, and my dear, dead mistress——”

At the look on his face she stopped.

“You will be kind enough to keep your thoughts to yourself.
If any word or deed of yours gives the slightest excuse for talk
—you go, and you never see Gyp again! In the meantime you
will do what I ask. Gyp is my adopted daughter.”

She had always been a little afraid of him, but she had never
seen that look in his eyes or heard him speak in that voice.
And, bending her full moon of a face, she went, with her apron
crumpled and tears in her eyes. Winton, at the window, watch-
ing the darkness gather, the leaves flying by on a sou’-westerly
wind, drank his cup of bitter triumph. He had never had the
right to that dead, forever-loved mother of his child. He meant
to have the child. If tongues must wag, let them! This was
a defeat of all his previous precaution, a deep victory of natural
instinct. And his eyes narrowed and stared into the darkness.
''II

In spite of victory over all human rivals in the heart of Gyp,
Winton had a rival whose strength he fully realised perhaps for
the first time now that she was gone, and he, before the fire, was
brooding over her departure and the past. Not likely that one
of his decisive type, whose life had so long been bound up with
swords and horses, would grasp what music might mean to a
little girl. She required, he knew, to be taught scales, and “ In
a Cottage near a Wood” with other melodies. He took care
not to go within sound of them, and had no conception of the
avidity with which Gyp had mopped up all, and more than all,
her governess could teach her. He was blind to the rapture
with which she listened to any stray music—to carols in the
Christmas dark, to certain hymns, and one special “ Nunc
Dimittis” in the village church; to the horn of the hunter far
out in the quivering, dripping coverts; even to Markey’s whis-
tling, which was strangely sweet.

He could share her love of dogs and horses, take an anxious
interest in her way of catching bumble-bees in the hollow of her
hand and putting them to her small, delicate ear to hear them
buzz, sympathise with her continual ravages among the flower-
beds, in the old-fashioned garden, full of lilacs and laburnums
in spring, pinks, roses, cornflowers in summer, dahlias and sun-
flowers in autumn, and always a little neglected and overgrown,
a little squeezed in, and elbowed by the more important sur-
rounding paddocks. He could sympathise with her attempts
to draw his attention to the song of birds; but it was simply
not in him to understand how she loved and craved for music.
She was a cloudy little creature, up and down in mood—rather
like a brown lady spaniel that she had, now gay as a butterfly,
now brooding as night. Any touch of harshness she took to
heart fearfully. Pride and self-disparagement seemed mixed in
her so deeply that none knew of which her cloudy fits were the
result. Sensitive, she “fancied” things terribly. What others
did to her, and thought nothing of, often seemed to her conclu-
sive evidence that she was not loved by anybody, though she
wanted to love everyone—nearly. Then she would feel: “If
they don’t love me, I don’t care. I don’t want anything of

229
''230 NOVELS OF LOVE

anybody!” And, presently, all would blow away just like a
cloud, and she would love and be gay, until something fresh,
perhaps not at all meant to hurt her, would again hurt her
horribly. In reality, the whole household loved and admired
her. But she was one of those delicate-treading beings, born
with a skin too few, who—and especially in childhood—suffer
from themselves in a world born with a skin too many.

To Winton’s delight, she knew no fear on horseback. She had
the best governess he could get her, the daughter of an admiral,
in distressed circumstances; and later on, a tutor for her music,
who came twice a week all the way from London—a sardonic
man who cherished for her even more secret admiration than
she for him. Unlike most girls, she never had an epoch of
awkward plainness, but grew like a flower, evenly, steadily.
Winton often gazed at her with a sort of intoxication; the turn
of her head, the way those perfectly shaped, wonderfully clear
brown eyes would “ fly,” the set of her straight, round neck,
the very shaping of her limbs, were all such poignant reminders
of what he had so loved. And yet, for all that likeness to her
mother, there was a difference, both in form and character.
Gyp had, as it were, an extra touch of chiselling in body, more
fastidiousness in soul, a little more poise, a little more sheer
grace; in mood more variance, in mind more clarity, and, mixed
with her sweetness, a distinct spice of scepticism which her
mother had lacked.

Though delicate in build, she was not frail, and out hunting
would “ go” all day, and come in so tired that she would drop
on to the tiger skin before the fire, rather than face the stairs.
Life at Mildenham was lonely, save for Winton’s hunting cronies,
and they but few, for his spiritual dandyism did not gladly suffer
the average country gentleman, and his frigid courtesy fright-
ened women.

As Betty had foreseen, tongues did wag—those tongues of
the countryside, avid of spice in the tedium of dull lives and
brains, And, though no breath of gossip came to Winton’s ears,
no women visited at Mildenham. Save for the friendly casual
acquaintanceships of church-yard, hunting-field, and local race-
meetings, Gyp grew up knowing hardly any of her own sex.
This dearth developed her reserve, kept her backward in sex
perception, gave her a faint, unconscious contempt for men—
always at the beck and call of her smile, and easily disquieted
by a little frown—gave her also a secret yearning for com-
''BEYOND 231

panions of her own gender, who always took a fancy to her,
which made the transitory nature of these friendships tantalis-
ing.

Fie moral and spiritual growth was not the sort of subject
to which Winton could pay much attention. It was pre-
eminently a matter one did not talk about. Outward forms,
such as going to church, should be preserved; manners should
be taught her by his own example as much as possible; beyond
this, nature must look after things. His view had much real
wisdom. She was a quick and voracious reader, bad at remem-
bering what she read; and though she had soon devoured all
the books in Winton’s meagre library, including Byron, Whyte-
Melville, and Humboldt’s “ Cosmos,” they had not left much
on her mind. The attempts of her little governess to impart
religion were somewhat arid of result, and the interest of the
vicar, Gyp, with her instinctive spice of scepticism, soon put into
the same category as the interest of all the other males she knew.
She felt that he enjoyed calling her “my dear” and patting
her shoulder, and that this enjoyment was enough reward for
his exertions.

Tucked away in that little old dark manor house, whose stables
alone were up to date—three hours from London, and some
thirty miles from The Wash, her upbringing lacked modernity.
About twice a year Winton took her to town to stay with his
unmarried sister Rosamund in Curzon Street. Those weeks
increased her natural taste for charming clothes, fortified her
teeth, and fostered her passion for music and the theatre. But
the two main nourishments of the modern girl—discussion and
games—she lacked utterly. Those years of her life from fifteen
to nineteen were before the social resurrection of 1906, and the
world still crawled like a winter fly on a window-pane. Winton
was a Tory, Aunt Rosamund a Tory, everybody round her a
Tory. The only spiritual influence on her girlhood was her
headlong love for her father. The sense of form both had in
high degree prevented much demonstration ; but to be with him,
do things for him, to admire, and credit him with perfection ;
and, since she could not exactly wear the same clothes or speak
in the same clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes
and voices of other men—all this was precious to her beyond
everything. If she inherited his fastidious sense of form, she
also inherited his capacity for putting all her eggs in one basket.
And since her company alone gave him real happiness, the
''232 NOVELS OF LOVE

current of love flowed over her heart all the time. Abundant
love for somebody was as necessary to her as water running
up the stems of flowers, abundant love from somebody as need-
ful as sunshine on their petals. And Winton’s somewhat fre-
quent little runs to town, to Newmarket, or where not, were
always marked in her by a fall of the barometer, which re-
covered as his return grew near.

One part of her education, at all events, was not neglected
—cultivation of an habitual sympathy with her poorer neigh-
bours. Without concerning himself in the least with problems
of sociology, Winton had by nature an open hand and heart for
cottagers, and abominated interference with their lives. And
so Gyp, who by nature also never set foot anywhere without invi-
tation, was always hearing the words: “Step in, Miss Gyp”;
“Step in and sit down, lovey”; and a good many words besides
from even the boldest and baddest characters, who liked her
pretty face and sympathetic listening.

So passed the eleven years till she was nineteen and Winton
forty-six. Then, under the wing of her little governess, she went
to the hunt-ball. Her dress, perfect in fit, was not white, but
pale maize-colour, as if she had already been to dances. She
had all Winton’s dandyism, and just so much more as was
appropriate to her sex. With her dark hair, fluffed and coiled,
waving across her forehead, her neck bare for the first time, her
eyes really “ flying,” and a demeanour perfectly cool—as though
she knew that light and movement, covetous looks, soft speeches,
and admiration were her birthright—she was more beautiful
than even Winton had thought her. At her breast she wore a
bunch of cyclamen procured by him from town—a flower of
whose scent she was very fond. Swaying and delicate, warmed
by excitement, she reminded him, in every movement and by
every glance of her eyes, of her whom he had first met at just
such a ball as this. And by the carriage of his head he con-
veyed to the world the pride he was feeling.

That evening held many sensations for Gyp—some delightful,
one confused, one unpleasant. Admiration was dear to her.
She passionately enjoyed dancing, loved feeling that she was
dancing well and giving pleasure. But, twice over, she sent
away her partners, smitten with compassion for her little gov-
erness sitting against the wall with no one to take notice of her,
because she was elderly, and roundabout! And, to that loyal
person’s horror, she insisted on sitting beside her all through
''na
BEYOND 233 —

two dances. Nor would she go in to supper with anyone but
Winton. Returning to the ballroom on his arm, she overheard
an elderly woman say: “Oh, don’t you know? Of course, he
really is her father!” and an elderly man answer: “ Ah, that
accounts for it—quite so!” She could see their inquisitive,
cold, slightly malicious glances, and knew they were speaking
of her. And just then her partner came for her,

“Really is her father!” The words meant too much to be
grasped this evening of full sensations. They left a little bruise
somewhere, but softened and anointed, just a sense of confusion
at the back of her mind. And very soon came that other sensa-
tion, ugly and disillusioning. It was after a dance with a good-
looking man quite twice her age. They were sitting behind
some palms, when suddenly he bent his flushed face and kissed
her bare arm above the elbow. If he had hit her he could not
have astonished or hurt her more. It seemed to her innocence
that he would never have done such a thing if she had not said
something dreadful to encourage him. She got up, gazed at
him a moment with eyes dark from pain, shivered, and slipped
away. She went straight to Winton. From her face, all closed
up, her tightened lips, and the familiar little droop at their
corners, he knew something dire had happened; but she would
say nothing except that she was tired and wanted to go home.
And so, with the faithful governess, who, having been silent
perforce nearly all the evening, was now full of conversation,
they drove out into the frosty night. Winton sat beside the
chauffeur, smoking viciously, his fur collar turned up over his
ears, his eyes stabbing the darkness, under his round, low-drawn
fur cap. Who had dared upset his darling? And, within the
car, the little governess chattered softly, and Gyp in her dark
corner sat silent, seeing nothing but that insult.

She lay awake long hours in the darkness, while coherence
was forming in her mind. Those words: “ Really is her
father!” and that man’s kissing of her bare arm, were a sort
of revelation of sex-mystery, hardening the consciousness that
there was something at the back of her life. A child so sensitive
had not, of course, quite failed to feel the spiritual draughts
around her; but instinctively she had recoiled from more defi-
nite perceptions. The time before Winton came was all so faint
—Betty, toys, short glimpses of a kind, invalidish man called
“Papa.” In that word there was no depth compared with the
word “Dad” bestowed on Winton. None, except Betty, had
''© 2384 NOVELS OF LOVE

ever talked of her mother. There was nothing sacred in Gyp’s
associations, no faiths to be broken by any knowledge that might
come to her; isolated from other girls, she had little realisation
even of the conventions. But she suffered horribly, lying there
in the dark—from bewilderment, from thorns dragged over her
skin, rather than from a stab in the heart. The knowledge of
something about her conspicuous, doubtful, provocative of in-
sult, as she thought, hurt grievously. Those few wakeful hours
made a heavy mark. She fell asleep at last, still all in con-
fusion, and woke up with a passionate desire to know. All
that morning she sat at her piano, playing, refusing to go out,
frigid to Betty and her governess, till the former was reduced
to tears and the latter to Wordsworth. After tea she went to
Winton’s study, that dingy little room where he never studied
anything, with leather chairs and books which—except “ Mr.
Jorrocks,’ Byron, those on the care of horses, and the
novels of Whyte-Melville—he never read; with prints of super-
equine celebrities, his sword, and photographs of Gyp and
of brother officers on the walls; with only two bright spots
—the fire, and the little bowl that Gyp always kept filled with
flowers.

When she came gliding in, slender and rounded, her creamy,
dark-eyed, oval face all cloudy, she seemed to Winton to have
grown up of a sudden. He had been cudgelling his brains all
day. From the fervour of his love he felt an anxiety that was
almost fear. What could have happened last night—the first
night of her entrance into meddlesome, gossiping society! She
slid down to the floor against his knee. He could not see her
face, could not even touch her; for she had settled down on his
right side. He mastered his tremors and said:

“Well, Gyp—tired?”

19 Nig?

fe A: littlesbit???

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“ Was it up to what you thought, last night?”

ce iegir.

The logs hissed and crackled; the long flames ruffled in the
chimney-draught; the wind roared outside—then, so suddenly
that it took his breath away:

“ Dad, are you really and truly my father?”

In the few seconds before an answer that could in no way
be evaded, Winton had time for a tumult of reflection. A less
''BEYOND 235

resolute character would have been caught by mental blankness,
then flung itself in panic on “Yes” or “No.” But Winton
would not answer without having faced the consequences of his
reply. To be her father was the most warming thing in his life ;
but if he avowed it, how far would he injure her love for him?
What did a girl know? How make her tinderstand? What
would her feeling be about her dead mother? How would that
dead loved one feel? What would she have wished ?

It was a cruel moment. And the girl, pressed against his
knee, with face hidden, gave him no help. Impossible to keep
it from her, now that her instinct was roused! And, clenching
his hand on the arm of his chair, he said:

“ Yes, Gyp; your mother and I loved each other.”

He felt a quiver go through her, would have given much to
see her face. What, even now, did she understand ? Well, it
must be gone through with, and he said:

“What made you ask?”

She shook her head and murmured:

* I?m glad.”

Grief, shock, even surprise, would have roused all his loyalty
to the dead, all the old stubborn bitterness, and he would have
frozen up against her. But this acquiescent murmur made him
long to smooth it down.

“Nobody has ever known. She died when you were born.
It was a fearful grief to me. If you’ve heard anything, it’s
just gossip, because you go by my name. Your mother was
never talked about. But it’s best you should know, now you’re
grown up. People don’t often love as she and I loved. You
needn’t be ashamed.”

Her face was still turned from him. She said quietly :

“T’m not ashamed. Am I very like her?”

“Yes; more than I could ever have hoped.”

“Then you don’t love me for myself?”

Winton was but dimly conscious of how that question revealed
her nature, its power of piercing instinctively to the heart of
things, its sensitive pride, and demand for utter and exclusive
love. And he simply said:

“What do you think?”

Then, to his dismay, he perceived that she was erying—
struggling against it so that her shoulder actually shook his
knee. He had hardly ever known her ery, not in all the dis-
asters of unstable youth, and she had received her full meed of
''236 NOVELS OF LOVE

knocks and tumbles. He could only stroke that shoulder, and
say:
“ Don’t cry, Gyp; don’t cry!”

She ceased as suddenly as she had begun, got up, and, before
he too could rise, was gone.

That evening, at dinner, she was just as usual. He could
not detect the slightest difference in her voice or manner, or
in her good-night kiss. A moment that he had dreaded for
years was over, leaving only the faint shame which follows a
breach of reticence on the spirits of those who worship it. While
the old secret had been quite undisclosed, it had not troubled
him. Disclosed, it hurt him. But Gyp, in those twenty-four
hours, had left childhood behind for good; her feeling towards
men had hardened. If she did not hurt them a little, they would
hurt her! The sex-instinct had come to life.

os neh a
''III

THE next two years were much less solitary, passed in more or
less constant gaiety. His confession had spurred Winton on to
the fortification of his daughter’s position. He would not have
her looked on askance. Whether at Mildenham, or in London
under the wing of his sister, there was no difficulty. Gyp was
too pretty, Winton too cool, his quietness too formidable. She
had every advantage.

The day that she came of age they were up in town, and he
summoned her to the room, in which he now sat by the fire
recalling all these things, to receive an account of his steward-
ship. He had nursed her greatly embarrassed inheritance very
carefully till it amounted to some twenty thousand pounds. He
had never told her of it—the subject was dangerous, and, since
his own means were ample, she had not wanted for anything.
When he had explained exactly what she owned, shown her how
it was invested, and told her that she must now open her own
banking account, she stood gazing at the sheets of paper, whose
items she had been supposed to understand, and her face gathered
the look which meant that she was troubled. Without lifting
her eyes she asked:

“Does it all come from—him? ”

He had not expected that.

“No; eight thousand of it was your mother’s.”

Gyp looked at him, and said:

“Then I won’t take the rest—please, Dad.”

Winton felt a sort of crabbed pleasure. What should be done
with that money if she did not take it, he did not know. But
not to take it was like her, made her more than ever his daugh-
ter—a kind of final victory. He turned away to the window
from which he had so often watched for her mother. There
was the corner she used to turn! In one minute, surely she
would be standing there, colour glowing in her cheeks, her eyes
soft behind her veil, her breast heaving a little with her haste,
waiting for his embrace. There she would stand, drawing up
her veil. He turned round. Difficult to believe it was not she!
And he said:

“Very well, my love. But you will take the equivalent from

237
''238 NOVELS OF LOVE

-me instead. The other can be put by; someone will benefit some
day!”

At those unaccustomed words, “ My love,’ from his un-
demonstrative lips, the colour mounted in her cheeks and her
eyes shone. She threw her arms round his neck.

She had her fill of music in those days, taking piano lessons
from a Monsieur Harmost, a grey-haired native of Liége, with
mahogany cheeks and the touch of an angel, who kept her hard
at work and called her his “little friend.’ There was scarcely
a concert of merit that she did not attend or a musician of mark
whose playing she did not know, and, though fastidiousness saved
her from squirming in adoration round the feet of those pro-
digious performers, she perched them all on pedestals, men and
women alike, and now and then met them at her aunt’s house
in Curzon Street.

Aunt Rosamund, also musical, so far as breeding would allow,
stood for a good deal to Gyp, who had built up about her a
romantic story of love wrecked by pride. She was a tall, hand-
some woman, a year older than Winton, with a long, aristocratic
face, deep-blue, rather shining eyes, a gentlemanly manner,
warm heart, and a not unmelodious drawl. Very fond of Gyp,
what passed within her mind as to their real relationship, re-
mained ever discreetly hidden. She was, too, something of a
humanitarian, and the girl had just that softness which fasci-
nates women who perhaps might have been happier if they had
been born men. A cheery soul, given to long coats and waist-
coats, stocks, and a crutch-handled stick, she—like her brother
—had “ style,”’ but more sense of humour—valuable in musical
circles! And at her house, the girl was practically compelled to
see fun as well as merit in all those prodigies, haloed with hair
and filled to overflowing with music and themselves.

Winton had his first really bad attack of gout when Gyp was
twenty-two, and, terrified lest he might not be able to sit a
horse in time for the opening meets, he went off with her and
Markey to Wiesbaden. They had rooms in the Wilhelmstrasse,
overlooking the gardens, where leaves were already turning. The
cure was long and obstinate. Attended by the silent Markey,
Gyp rode daily on the Neroberg, chafing at regulations which
reduced her to specified tracks in that majestic wood; and once
or even twice a day she would go to the concerts in the Kurhaus,
either with her father or alone.

The first time she heard Fiorsen play she was alone. Unlike

eli aes cn
''BEYOND 239

most violinists, he was tall and thin, with great pliancy of body
and movement. His face was pale, and went strangely with hair
and moustache of a dirt-gold colour, and his thin cheeks with
very broad high cheekbones, had little narrow scraps of whisker.
He seemed rather awful to Gyp—but his playing stirred and
swept her in an uncanny way. He had remarkable technique;
and the intense wayward feeling of his playing was chiselled by
it, as if a flame were being frozen in its swaying. She did not
join in the tornado of applause, but sat motionless, looking up
at him. He passed the back of his hand across his hot brow,
shoving up a wave or two of that queer-coloured hair; then, with
a rather disagreeable smile, made a short supple bow. What
strange eyes he had—like a great cat’s! Surely they were green;
fierce, yet almost furtive—mesmeric! The strangest man she
had ever seen, and the most frightening. He seemed looking
straight at her; and, dropping her gaze, she clapped. When
she looked again, his face had a kind of wistfulness. He made
another of those little supple bows straight at her, and jerked
his violin up to his shoulder. ‘ He’s going to play to me,’ she
thought absurdly. He played without accompaniment a little
tune which seemed to tweak the heart. This time she did not
look up, but was conscious that he gave one impatient bow and
walked off.

That evening at dinner she said to Winton:

“TI heard a violinist to-day, Dad, the most wonderful playing
—Gustav Fiorsen. Is that Swedish—or what?”

Winton answered:

“Very likely. What sort to look at? I used to know a Swede
in the Turkish army—nice fellow.”

“Tall and thin and white-faced, with bumpy cheekbones, and
hollows under them, and queer green eyes. Oh, and little goldy
side-whiskers.”

“By Jove! It sounds the limit.”

Gyp murmured, with a smile:

“Yes; I think perhaps he is.”

She saw him next day in the gardens. They were sitting
close to the Schiller statue, Winton reading The Times, to whose
advent he looked forward more than he admitted, for he was
loth by confessions of boredom to disturb Gyp’s enjoyment of
her stay. Perusing the account of a Newmarket meeting, he
kept stealing sidelong glances at his daughter.

She had never looked prettier, daintier, shown more breeding
''240 NOVELS OF LOVE

than she did out here among all the cosmopolitan hairy-heeled
crowd in this God-forsaken place! The girl, unconscious of his
stealthy regalement, was letting her clear eyes rest, in turn, on
each figure that passed, on the movements of birds and dogs,
watching the sunlight glisten on the grass, burnish the copper
beeches, the lime-trees, and those tall poplars down there by
the water. The doctor at Mildenham, once consulted on a bout
of headache, had called her eyes “ perfect organs,” and certainly
no eyes could take things in more swiftly or completely. She
was attractive to dogs, and every now and then one would stop,
in two minds whether or no to put his nose into this foreign
girl’s hand. From a flirtation of eyes with a great Dane, she _
looked up and saw Fiorsen passing, in company with a shorter,

square man, having very fashionable trousers and a corseted
waist. The violinist’s tall, thin, loping figure was tightly but-
toned into a brownish-grey frock-coat suit; he wore a rather
broad-brimmed, grey, velvety hat: in his buttonhole was a white
flower; his cloth-topped boots were of patent leather; his tie
bunched out at the ends over a soft white linen shirt—altogether
quite a dandy! His most strange eyes suddenly swept down on
hers, and he made a movement as if to put his hand to his hat.

‘Why, he remembers me,’ she thought. That thin-waisted
figure with head set just a little forward between rather high
shoulders, and its long stride, curiously suggested a leopard or
some lithe creature. He touched his short companion’s arm,
and muttered something, turned round, and came back. She
could see him staring her way, and knew he was coming simply
to look at her. She knew, too, that her father was watching.
And she felt that those greenish eyes would waver before his
stare—that stare of the Englishman of a certain class, which
never condescends to be inquisitive. They passed; Gyp saw
Fiorsen turn to his companion, slightly tossing back his head
in their direction, and heard the companion laugh. A little
flame shot up in her.

Winton said:

“ Rum-looking Johnnies one sees here!”

“That was the violinist I told you of—Fiorsen.”

“Oh! Ah!” But he had evidently forgotten.

That Fiorsen should have remembered her out of all that
audience subtly flattered her vanity. She lost her ruffled feel-
ing. Though her father thought his dress awful, it was really
rather becoming. e would not have looked as well in proper
''BEYOND 241

English clothes. Once, at least, during the next two days, she
noticed the short, square young man who had been walking
with him, and was conscious that he followed her with his eyes.

And then a certain Baroness von Maisen, a cosmopolitan
friend of Aunt Rosamund’s, German by marriage, half-Dutch,
half-French, by birth, asked her if she had heard the Swedish
violinist, Fiorsen. He would be the best violinist of the day,
if—and she shook her head. Finding that expressive shake un-
questioned, the baroness pursued her thoughts:

“Ah, these musicians! He wants saving from himself. If
he does not halt soon, he will be lost. Pity! A great talent!”

Gyp looked at her steadily and asked:

“ Does he drink, then?”

“Pas mal! But there are things besides drink, ma chére.”

Instinct and so much life with Winton made the girl regard
it as beneath her to be shocked. She did not seek knowledge of
life, but refused to shy away from it; and the baroness, to
whom innocence was piquant, went on:

“Women, always women! A great pity! It will spoil his
spirit. His sole chance is to find one woman, but I pity her;
sapristi, what a life for her!”

Gyp said calmly:

“ Would a man like that ever love?”

The baroness goggled her eyes.

“T have known such a man become a slave. I have known
him running after a woman like a lamb while she was deceiving
him here and there. On ne peut jamais dire. Ma belle, il y a
des choses que vous ne savez pas encore.” She took Gyp’s hand.
“And yet, one thing is certain. With those eyes, you have a
time before you!”

Gyp withdrew her hand and shook her head; she did not
believe in love.

“Ah, but you will turn some heads! No fear! as you
English say. There is a fatality in those pretty brown eyes! ”

A girl may be pardoned who takes as a compliment the saying
that her eyes are fatal. The words warmed Gyp, uncontrollably
light-hearted in these days, just as she was warmed when people
turned to stare at her. The soft air, the mellowness of this gay
place, much music, a sense of being rare among people who, by
their heavier type, enhanced her own, had produced in her a
kind of intoxication, making her what the baroness called
“un peu folle.’ She was always breaking into laughter. Every-
''242 NOVELS OF LOVE

thing to her just then was either “funny” or “lovely.” And
the baronness, conscious of the girl’s chic, genuinely attracted
by one so pretty, took care that she saw all the people, perhaps
more than all, who were desirable.

Curiosity is a vivid emotion. The more a man has conquered,
the more precious field he is for a woman’s conquest. To
attract one who has attracted many, what was it but a proof that
one’s charm was superior to that of all those others? The words
of the baroness deepened in Gyp the impression that Fiorsen
was “ impossible,” but secretly fortified the faint excitement she
felt that he should have remembered her out of all that audience.
Later on, they bore more fruit than that. But first came that
queer incident of the flowers.

Coming in from a ride, a week after she had sat with Winton
under the Schiller statue, she found on her dressing-table a
bunch of Gloire de Dijon and La France roses. There was no
card. All that the German maid could say was that a boy had
brought them from a flower shop “ for Fraulein Vinton”; Gyp
surmised that they came from the baroness. In her bodice at
dinner, and to the concert after, she wore one La France and
one Gloire de Dijon—a daring mixture of pink and orange
against her oyster-coloured frock. They had bought no pro-
gramme, all music being the same to Winton, and Gyp not
needing any.

When Fiorsen came forward, her cheeks began to colour from
sheer anticipation. He played first a minuet by Mozart; then
the César Franck sonata; and, coming back to make his bow,
held in his hand a Gloire de Dijon and a La France rose. Invol-
untarily Gyp raised her hand to her own roses. His eyes met
hers; he bowed just a little lower. He put the roses to his lips
in walking off the platform, and Gyp dropped her hand, as if it
had been stung. Should she take out those roses and let them
fall? Her father might see, might notice Fiorsen’s—put two
and two together! He would consider she had been insulted.
Had she? She could not bring herself to think so. It was a
compliment, as if he wished to tell her that he was playing
to her alone. The baroness’s words flashed through her mind:
“He wants saving from himself. Pity! A great talent!”
It was a great talent. There must be something worth saving
in one who could play like that! They left after his last solo.
Gyp put the two roses carefully back among the others.

Three days later, she went to an afternoon “at-home” at the
''BEYOND 243

Baroness von Maisen’s. She saw him at once, over by the piano,
with his short, square companion, listening to a voluble lady,
and looking bored and restless. All that overcast afternoon,
still and with queer lights in the sky, as if rain were coming,
she had been feeling out of mood, a little homesick. Now she
felt excited. She saw the short companion go up to the
baroness; a minute later, he was brought to her and introduced
—Count Rosek. Gyp did not like his face; there were dark
rings under the eyes, and he was too perfectly self-possessed,
with a kind of cold sweetness; but he was agreeable and polite,
and spoke English well. He was—it seemed—a Pole, who lived
in London, and knew all that was to be known about music.
Miss Winton—he believed—had heard his friend Fiorsen play ;
but not in London? No? ‘That was odd; he had been there
some months last season. Faintly annoyed at her ignorance,
Gyp answered:

“Yes; but I was in the country nearly all last summer.”

“He had a great success. I shall take him back; it is best
for his future. What do you think of his playing?”

In spite of herself, for she did not like expanding to this
sphinxlike little man, Gyp murmured:

“Oh, simply wonderful, of course!”

He nodded, and then rather suddenly said, with a peculiar
little smile:

“May I introduce him? Gustavy—Miss Winton! ”

Gyp turned. He was just behind her, bowing; and his eyes
had a look of humble adoration which he made no attempt what-
ever to conceal. Gyp saw another smile slide over the Pole’:
lips; and she was alone in the bay window with Fiorsen. Close
to, he had not so much that look of an animal behind bars,
and he certainly was in his way a dandy, beautifully groomed,
and having some pleasant essence on his handkerchief or hair,
of which she would have disapproved if he had been English.
He wore a diamond ring also, which did not somehow seem
bad form on that particular little finger. His height, broad
cheekbones, thick but not long hair, the hungry vitality of his
face, figure, movements, annulled those evidences of femininity.
He was male enough, rather too male. Speaking with a queer,
crisp accent, he said: “ Miss Winton, you are my audience here,
I play to you—only to you.”

Gyp laughed.

“You laugh at me; but you need not. I play for you because
''244 NOVELS OF LOVE

I admire you. I admire you terribly. If I sent you those
flowers, it was not to be rude. It was my gratitude for the
pleasure of your face.” His voice actually trembled. And,
looking down, Gyp answered:

“ Tt was very kind of you. I want to thank you, too, for your
playing. It is beautiful—really beautiful!”

He made her another little bow.

“ When I go back to London, will you come and hear me?”

“T should think anyone would go to hear you, if they had
the chance.”

He gave a short laugh.

“Tam here for money; I hate this place. It bores me! Was
that your father sitting with you under the statue?”

Gyp nodded. She had not forgotten the slighting turn of
his head.

He passed his hand over his face, as if to wipe off its
expression.

“ He is very English. But you—of no country—and of all!”

Gyp made him an ironical little bow.

“No; I should not know your country—you are neither of
the North nor of the South. I came here hoping to meet you; I
am extremely happy. Miss Winton, I am your very devoted
servant.”

He was speaking very fast, very low, with an agitated ear-
nestness surely not put on. Then suddenly muttering: “ These
people!” he made her another of his little bows and abruptly
slipped away. ‘The baroness was bringing up another man.
The thought left by that meeting was: ‘Is that how he begins
to everyone?’ She could not quite believe it. The stammering
earnestness of his voice, those humbly adoring looks!

Too sensitive to confide in anyone, she had no chance to
ventilate the curious sensations of attraction and repulsion fer-
menting in her, feelings defying analysis, mingling and quar-
relling deep down in her heart. It was certainly not love, not
even the beginning of that; but it was the kind of dangerous
interest children feel in things mysterious, out of reach, yet
within reach, if only they dared! And the tug of music was
there, and the tug of those words of the baroness about salva-
tion—the thought of achieving the impossible, reserved only
for ! But all these thoughts and feelings were as yet in
embryo. She might never see him again! She did not even
know whether she wanted to.

 
''IV

Gyp was in the habit of walking with her father to the Koch-
brunnen, where, with other patient folk, he was required to
drink slowly for twenty minutes every morning. While he
was thus imbibing she would sit in a remote corner of the
garden, and read a novel in the Reclam edition, by way of a
German lesson.

She was sitting there, the morning after the “at-home” at
the Baroness von Maisen’s, reading Turgenev’s “ Torrents of
Spring,” when she saw Count Rosek sauntering down the path
with a glass of the waters in his hand. Memory of the smile
with which he had introduced Fiorsen sent her to cover beneath
her sunshade. She could see his patent-leathered feet, and
well-turned, peg-top-trousered legs go by with the gait of a
man whose waist is corseted. The conviction that he wore those
prerogatives of womanhood increased her dislike. How dare
men be so effeminate? Yet someone had told her that he was
a good rider, a good fencer, and very strong. When he was
past, for fear he might turn and come back, she closed her
little book and slipped away. But her figure and her springing
step were more unmistakable than she knew.

Next morning, on the same bench, she was reading breath-
lessly the scene between Gemma and Sanin at the window,
when she heard Fiorsen’s voice, behind her, say:

“ Miss Winton! ”

He, too, held a glass of the waters in one*hand, and his hat
in the other.

“TI have just made your father’s acquaintance. May I sit
down a minute?”

Gyp drew to one side of the bench, and he sat down.

“What are you reading? ”

“A story called ‘ Torrents of Spring,’ ”

“Ah, the finest ever written! Where are you?”

“Gemma and Sanin in the thunderstorm.”

“Wait! You have Madame Polozoy to come! What a cre-
ation! How old are you, Miss Winton?”

“ Twenty-two.”

“You would be too young to appreciate that story if you were

245
''246 NOVELS OF LOVE

not you. But you know much—by instinct. What is your
Christian name—forgive me!”

Ghita.”

“ Ghita? Not soft enough.”

“T am always called Gyp.”

“ Gyp—ah, Gyp! Yes; Gyp

He repeated her name so impersonally that she could not be
angry.

“T told your father I have had the pleasure of meeting you.
He was very polite.”

Gyp said coldly:

“ My father is always polite.”

“Tuike the ice in which they put champagne. I suppose they
have told you that I am a mawvais sujet.” Gyp inclined her
head. He looked at her steadily, and said: “It is true. But I
could be better—much.”

She wanted to look at him, but could not, seized by a queer
sort of exultation. This man had power; yet she had power
over him. If she wished she could make him her slave, her dog,
chain him to her. She had but to hold out her hand, and he
would go on his knees to kiss it. She had but to say, “ Come,”
and he would come from wherever he might be. She had but
to say “Be good,” and he would be good. It was her first
experience of power; and it was intoxicating. But Gyp could
never be self-confident for long; over her most victorious mo-
ments brooded the shadow of distrust; and as if he read her
thought, Fiorsen said:

“Tell me to do something—anything; I will do it, Miss
Winton.”

“ Then—go back to London at once. You are wasting your-
self here, you know.”

“You have asked me the one thing I can’t do, Miss—Miss
Gyp ! 2?

“ Please—not that; it’s like a servant!”

“T am your servant!”

“ Ts that why you won’t do what I ask you?”

“You are cruel.”

Gyp laughed.

He said, with sudden fierceness:

“JT am not going away from you; do not think it.” Bending
with the utmost swiftness, he took her hand, put his lips to it,
and turned on his heel.

127
''BEYOND 247

Gyp, uneasy and astonished, stared at her hand, still tingling
from the pressure of his bristly moustache. Then she laughed
again—it was just “foreign” to have your hand kissed—and
went back to her book, but without taking in too many of its
words,

Was ever courtship more strange than that which followed?
Gyp never lost the sense of having the whip-hand, always felt
like one giving alms, or extending favour, yet had a feeling
of being unable to get away. The very strength of the spell
she seemed to lay on him reacted on herself. Thoroughly
sceptical at first, she could not remain so. He was too morose
and unhappy if she did not smile on him, too alive and excited
and grateful if she did. The change in his eyes from their
ordinary restless, fierce, and furtive expression to humble adora-
tion or wistful hunger when they looked at her, could never
have been simulated. And she had no lack of chance to see
that metamorphosis. Wherever she went, there he was. If to
a concert, he would be a few paces from the door, waiting for
her entrance. If to a confectioner’s for tea, as likely as not
he would come in. Every afternoon he walked where she must
pass, riding to the Neroberg.

Except in the gardens of the Kochbrunnen, when he would
come up humbly and ask to sit with her for five minutes, he
never forced his company, or tried in any way to compromise
her. He must have had an instinct that it was dangerous with
one so sensitive. There were other moths, too, round the candle,
and they served to keep his attentions from being too conspicu-
ous. Did she comprehend what was going on, understand how
her defences were being sapped, grasp the danger to retreat that
lay in permitting him to hover? Not really. It all served to
swell the triumphant intoxication of days when she was ever
more and more in love with living, more and more conscious
of being appreciated and admired, and of having power to do
what others could not.

He excited her. Whatever else one might be in his moody,
vivid company, one would not be dull. One morning, he told
her something of his life. His father had been a small Swedish
landowner, a very strong man and a very hard drinker; his
mother, the daughter of a painter. She had taught him the
violin, but died while he was still a boy. When he was seventeen
he had quarrelled with his father, and had to play his violin
''248 NOVELS OF LOVE

for a living in the streets of Stockholm. A well-known violinist,
hearing him one day, had taken him in hand. Then his father
had drunk himself to death, and he had inherited the little
estate. He had sold it at once—“for follies,” as he put it
crudely. “Ah! Miss Winton; I have committed many follies,
but they are nothing to those I shall commit the day I do not
see you any more!” And, with that disturbing remark, he got
up and left her. She had smiled at his words, from scepticism,
compassion and some feeling she did not understand at all.
In those days, she understood herself but little.

How far did Winton understand, how far see what was going
on? In truth he had taken alarm. But he was afraid of
showing disquiet by any dramatic change, or he would have
carried her off a fortnight at least before his cure was over.
He knew too well the signs of passion. That long, loping,
wolfish fiddling fellow with the broad cheekbones and little side-
whiskers (Good God!) and greenish eyes whose looks at Gyp
he secretly marked, roused his complete distrust. Perhaps his
inbred English contempt for foreigners and artists kept him
from direct action. He could not take it quite seriously. Gyp,
his fastidious perfect Gyp, succumbing, even a little, to a fellow
like that! Never! Besides, she would surely consult him in
any doubt or difficulty. He forgot the sensitive secrecy of girls,
forgot that his love for her had ever shunned words, her love
for him never indulged in confidences. Besides he only
saw a little of what there was to see, and that little was doctored
by Fiorsen for his eyes, shrewd though they were. Nor was
there in all so very much, except one episode the day before they
left, of which he knew nothing.

That last afternoon was very still. a little mournful. It had
rained the night before, and the soaked tree-trunks, the soaked
fallen leaves, gave off a, faint liquorice-like perfume. Gyp felt
as if her spirit had been suddenly emptied of excitement and
delight. And after lunch, when Winton was settling his ac-
counts, she wandered out through the long park stretching up
the valley. The sky was brooding-grey, the trees still and
melancholy. All was a little melancholy, and she went on and
on, across the stream, round into a muddy lane through the
outskirts of a village, on to higher ground whence she could
return by the main road. Why must things come to an end?
For the first time in her life she thought of Mildenham and
hunting without enthusiasm. She would rather stay in London.
''BEYOND 249

There she would not be cut off from music, from dancing, from
people, and all the exhilaration of being appreciated. On the
air came the shrilly, hollow droning of a thresher, and the sound
seemed exactly to express her feelings. A pigeon flew over,
white against the leaden sky; some birch-trees, already golden,
shivered and let fall a shower of drops. It was lonely! And,
suddenly, two little boys bolted out of the hedge, nearly up-
setting her, and scurried down the road. Gyp, putting up her
face to see, felt on it soft pin-points of rain. Her frock would
be spoiled, one she was fond of—dove-coloured, velvety, not
meant for weather. She turned for refuge to the birch-trees.
It would be over directly, perhaps. Muffled in distance, the
whining drone of that thresher still came travelling, deepening
her discomfort. Then in the hedge, whence the boys had bolted
down, a man reared himself above the lane, and came striding
along toward her. He jumped down the bank, among the birch-
trees—Fiorsen—panting, dishevelled, pale with heat. He must
have followed her, and climbed straight up from the path she
had come along in the bottom, before crossing the stream. His
artistic dandyism had been harshly treated by that scramble.
He said, breathlessly :

“So you are going to-morrow, and never told me! You
thought you would slip away—not a word for me! Are you
always so cruel? Well, I will not spare you, either!”

Crouching suddenly, he took hold of her broad ribbon sash,
and buried his face in it. Gyp stood trembling. He circled her
knees with his arms.

“Oh, Gyp, I love you—I love you—don’t send me away—
let me be with you! I am your dog—your slave. Oh, Gyp,
I love you!”

His voice moved and terrified her. Men had said “I love
you ” several times during those last two years, but never with
that lost-soul ring of passion, never with that look in the eyes,
hungry and supplicating, never with that restless, eager, timid
touch of hands. She could only murmur:

“ Please get up!”

But he went on:

“ Love me a little, only a little—love me! Oh, Gyp!”

The thought flashed through Gyp: ‘To how many has he
knelt, I wonder?’ His face had a kind of beauty in its aban-
donment—the beauty which comes from yearning—and she lost
her frightened feeling. He went on, with his stammering |
''250 NOVELS OF LOVE

murmur: “J am a prodigal, I know; but if you love me, I will
no longer be. I will do great things for you. Oh, Gyp, if
you will some day marry me! Not now. When I have proved.
Gyp—so sweet—so wonderful! ”

His arms crept up till he had buried his face against her
waist. Without quite knowing what she did, Gyp touched
his hair, and said again:

“Now, please get up.”

He got up and whispered :

“Have mercy! Speak to me! ”

But she could only look into his face with her troubled, dark
eyes. And suddenly she was seized and crushed to him. She
shrank away, pushing him back with all her strength. He hung
his head, abashed, with eyes shut, lips trembling. Her heart
felt again that quiver of compassion, and she murmured :

“T don’t know. I will tell you later—later—in England.”

He bowed, folding his arms, as if to make her feel safe from
him. And when, regardless of the rain, she began to move on,
he walked beside her, a yard or so away, humbly, as though he
had never hurt her lips with the violence of his kiss.

Back in her room, taking off her wet dress, Gyp tried to
remember what he had said and what she had answered. She
had not promised anything. But she had given him her ad-
dress, both in London and the country. Unless she resolutely
thought of other things, she still felt the restless touch of his
hands, the grip of his arms, and saw his eyes as they were when
he was kissing her; and once more she felt frightened and
excited.

He was playing at the concert that evening—her last concert.
And surely he had never played like that—with a despairing
beauty, a sort of frenzied rapture. Listening, there came to her
a feeling—a feeling of fatality—that, whether she would or no,
she could not free herself from him.
''Vv

Back in England, Gyp lost that feeling, or very nearly. Fiorsen
would soon see someone else who seemed all he had said she was!
Ridiculous to suppose that he would stop his follies for her,
that she had any real power over him! But, deep down, she did
not quite believe this.

Winton, who breathed again, hurried her off to Mildenham.
He had bought her a new horse. They were in time for the last
of the cubbing. And, for a week at least, the passion for riding
and the sight of hounds carried all before it. Then, just as
the real business of the season was beginning, she began to feel
dull and restless. Mildenham was dark; the autumn winds
made dreary noises. Her little brown spaniel, very old, died.
She accused herself for having left it so long when it was failing.
Thinking of all the days Lass had been watching for her to come
home—as Betty, with that love of woeful recital dear to simple
hearts, took good care to make quite plain—she felt as if she
had been cruel. For events such as these, Gyp was both too
tender-hearted, and too hard on herself. She was quite ill for
several days, and the moment she was better, Winton, in dismay,
whisked her back to Aunt Rosamund, in town. He would lose
her company, but if it did her good, took her out of herself,
he would be content. Running up for the week-end, three days
later, he was relieved to find her decidedly perked-up, and left
her again with the easier heart.

On the day after her father went back to Mildenham, Gyp
received a letter from Fiorsen, forwarded from Bury Street.
He was—it said—just returning to London; he had not for-
getten any look she had ever given him, or any word she had
spoken. He should not rest till he could see her again. “ For
a long time,” the letter ended, “before I first saw you, I was like
‘ the dead—lost. I kiss your hands, and am your faithful slave—
Gustav Fiorsen.” These words, which from any other man
would have excited her derision, renewed in Gyp that fluttered
feeling, the pleasurable, frightened sense of not being able to
get away from his pursuit.

She wrote, in answer, that her aunt would be glad to see,him
if he cared to come in any afternoon between five and six, and

251
''252 NOVELS OF LOVE

signed herself “ Ghita Winton.” She was long over that little
note, whose curt formality gave her satisfaction. Was she
really mistress of herself—and him; able to dispose as she
wished? Surely the note showed it.

It was never easy to tell Gyp’s feelings from her face; even
Winton was often baffled. Her preparation of Aunt Rosamund
for the reception of Fiorsen was cleverly casual. And when he
came, he seemed alive to the need for caution, only gazing at
Gyp when he could not be seen doing so. But, going out, he
whispered: “ Not like this—not like this; I must see you alone
—I must!” She smiled and shook her head. But bubbles had
come back to the wine in her glass.

That evening she said quietly to Aunt Rosamund:

“Dad doesn’t like Mr. Fiorsen—can’t appreciate his playing,
of course.”

This discreet remark caused Aunt Rosamund, avid—in a well-
bred way—of music, to omit mention of the intruder when
writing to her brother. The next two weeks he came almost
every day, bringing his violin. Gyp played his accompani-
ments, and though his hungry stare made her feel hot, she
would have missed it.

But when Winton next came up to Bury Street, she was in
a quandary. To confess that Fiorsen was here, having omitted
to speak of him in her letters? Not to confess, and leave him
to find it out from Aunt “Rosamund? Seized with panic, she
did neither, but told her father she was dying for a gallop.
Hailing that as the best of signs, he took her forthwith back
to Mildenham. Her feelings were curious—light-hearted, yet
compunctious, as of one who escapes yet knows she will soon be
seeking to return. The meet was rather far next day, but she
insisted on riding to it, while old Pettance, the superannuated
jockey, employed as extra stable help at ‘Mildenham, was to
bring on her second horse. There was a good scenting-wind,
with rain in the offing, and outside the covert Winton and she
had a corner to themselves. They had slipped there, luckily |
unseen, for the astute were given to following the one-handed
horseman in faded pink, who, on his bang-tailed black mare,
had a knack of getting so well away. One of the whips, a little
dark fellow with smouldery eyes and sucked-in weathered cheeks,
dashed out of covert, rode past, saluting, and dashed in again.
A jay came out with a screech, dived, and doubled back; a hare
made off across the fallow—its light-brown loping body barely
''BEYOND 253

visible against the brownish soil. Pigeons, very high up, flew
over and away to the next wood. The shrilling voices of the
whips rose from the covert-depths, and just a whimper now
and then from the hounds, swiftly wheeling their noses among
the fern and briers.

Gyp, crisping her fingers on the reins, drew in deep breaths.
It smelled sweet and soft and fresh under that sky of blue and
light-grey swift-moving clouds—not half the wind down here
that there was up there, just enough to be carrying off the
beech and oak leaves, loosened by frost two days before. If
only a fox would break this side, and they could have the first
fields to themselves, alone with hounds! One of these came
trotting out, a pretty young creature, busy and unconcerned,
raising its tan-and-white head, its mild reproachful deep-brown
eyes, at Winton’s “ Loo-in, Trix!” A burst of music from the
covert, and the hound doubled back among the briers.

Gyp’s new brown horse was pricking its ears. A young man
in a grey cutaway, buff cords, and jack-boots, on a low chestnut
mare, came slipping round the covert. Did that mean they
were all coming? Impatiently she glanced at this intruder,
who raised his hat a little and smiled. The smile, faintly
impudent, was infectious, and Gyp was melted to a slight re-
sponse. Who was he? He looked serene and happy. She did
not remember his face at all, yet there was something familiar
about it—a broad face, very well cut, and clean-shaved, with
dark curly hair, extraordinarily clear eyes, a bold, cool, merry
look. Where had she seen somebody like him?

A tiny sound from Winton made her turn her head. A fox
was stealing out beyond those further bushes! She fixed her
eyes on her father’s face. It was hard as steel. Not a sound,
not a quiver, as if horse and man had turned to metal. Was
he never going to give the view-halloo? Then his lips writhed,
and out it came. Gyp cast a swift smile of gratitude at the
young man for having had the taste and sense to leave that
to her father, and again he smiled at her. There came the
first hounds streaming out—one after the other—music and
feather! Why didn’t Dad go?

Then the black mare slid past her, and, with a bound, her
horse followed. The young man on the chestnut was away on
the left. Only the huntsman and one whip—besides their three
selves! The brown horse went too fast at the first fence and
Winton called back: “Steady, Gyp! Steady him!” But she
''254 NOVELS OF LOVE

couldn’t; and it didn’t matter. Grass, three fields of grass!
A lovely fox—going so straight! And each time the brown
horse rose, she thought: ‘ Perfect! Oh, I am happy!’ There
was no feeling in the world like this, with a leader like Dad,
hounds moving free, good going, and the field distanced. Better
than dancing; better—yes, better than listening to music. If
one could spend one’s life galloping, sailing over fences! The
new horse was a darling, though he did pull.

She crossed the next fence level with the young man, whose
low chestnut had a very stealthy action. His hat was crammed
down now, and his face close set, but his lips still had some-
thing of that smile. Gyp thought: ‘ He’s got a good seat—very
strong, only he looks like “thrusting.” Nobody rides like Dad
—so beautifully quiet! Indeéd, Winton’s seat was perfec-
tion. The hounds swung round in a curve. Now she was with
them, really with them! What a pace! No fox could stand
this long!

And suddenly she caught sight of him, barely a field ahead,
scurrying desperately, brush down; and the thought flashed
through her: ‘Oh! don’t let’s catch you. Go on, fox; go on!
Get away!’ Were they really all after that little hunted red
thing—a hundred great creatures, horses and men and women
and dogs, after one little fox! But then came another fence,
and quickly another, and she lost all feeling of shame and pity
in the exultation of flying over them. A minute later the fox
went to earth within a hundred yards of the leading hound, and
she was glad. She had been in at deaths before—horrid! But
it had been a lovely gallop. And, breathless, smiling raptur-
ously, she wondered whether she could mop her face before the
field came up, without that young man noticing.

She could see him talking to her father, and when she rode
up, he raised his hat, and looking full at her said: “How you
went!” His voice was rather high-pitched and pleasant and
lazy. Gyp made him a little bow: “ My new horse, you mean.”
And she kept thinking: ‘ Where have I seen someone like him?’

They had two more runs, but nothing like that first gallop.
Nor did she again see the young man, whose name—it seemed—
was Summerhay, son of a certain Lady Summerhay at Widring-
ton, ten miles from Mildenham.

Silently jogging home with Winton in fading daylight, she
felt very happy—saturated with air and elation. The trees and
fields, the haystacks, gates, and ponds beside the lanes, grew
''BEYOND 255

dim; lights came up in the cottage windows; the air smelled
sweet of wood smoke. And, for the first time all day, she
thought of Fiorsen, thought of him almost longingly. If he
could be there in the cosy old drawing-room, to play to her
while she lay back—drowsing, dreaming by the fire in the
scent of burning cedar logs—the Mozart minuet, or that little
heart-catching tune of Poise, played the first time she heard
him, or a dozen other of the things he played unaccompanied!
That would be the most lovely ending to this lovely day. Just
the glow and warmth wanting, to make all perfect—the glow
and warmth of music and adoration!

And touching the mare with her heel, she sighed. To indulge
fancies about music and Fiorsen was safe here, far away from
him; she even thought she would not mind if he were to behave
again as he had under the birch-trees in the rain at Wiesbaden.
It was so good to be adored. Her old mare, ridden now six
years, began the series of contented snuffles that signified home.
Here was the last turn, and the loom of the short beech-tree
avenue to the house—the old manor-house, comfortable, roomy,
rather dark, with wide shallow stairs. She was tired; and it
was drizzling now. She would be stiff to-morrow. In the light
coming from the open door she saw Markey standing; and, while
fishing from her pocket some lumps of sugar, heard him
say: “Mr, Fiorsen, sir—gentleman from Wiesbaden—to see
you.”

Her heart thumped. What did this mean? Why had he
come? How had he dared? How could he have been so treach-
erous to her? Ah, but he was ignorant, of course, that she had
not told her father. Judgment was on her! She ran straight
in and up the stairs. The voice of Betty, “ Your bath’s ready,
Miss Gyp,” roused her. And crying, “ Oh, Betty, darling, bring
me up my tea!” she ran into the bathroom. She was safe there;
and in the delicious heat of her bath could face the situation
better.

There could be only one meaning. He had come to ask for
her. And, suddenly, she took comfort. Better so; there would
be no more secrecy from Dad! And he would stand between
her and Fiorsen if—if she decided not to marry him. ‘The
thought staggered her. Had she, without knowing it, got so
far as this? Yes, and further. Fiorsen would never accept
refusal, even if she gave it! But, did she want to refuse?

She loved hot baths, but had never stayed in one so long.
''256 NOVELS OF LOVE

Life was so easy there, and so difficult outside. Betty’s knock
forced her to get out at last, and let her in with tea and the
message: Would Miss Gyp please to go down when she was
ready?
''VI

Wirn a glance at Gyp’s vanishing figure, Winton had said
curtly to Markey, “ Where have you put this gentleman?” The
use of the word “this” was the only trace he showed of his
emotions. But on the little journey across the hall he enter-
tained many extravagant thoughts. Tn the study, he inclined
his head courteously enough, waiting for Fiorsen to speak. The
“fiddler,” still in his fur-lined coat, was twisting a squash hat
in his hands. Why couldn’t he look you in the face; or, if he
did, why did he seem about to eat you?

“You knew I was returned to London, Major Win-
Toye”

So Gyp had been seeing the fellow without letting him know!
The thought was chill and bitter to Winton. He must not
give her away, however, and he simply bowed. He felt that his
visitor was afraid of his frigid courtesy; and he did not mean
to help him over that fear.

Fiorsen, who had begun to pace the room, stopped, and said
with agitation :

“Major Winton, your daughter is the most beautiful thing
on earth. I love her desperately. I am a man with a future.
I have what future I like in my art if only I can marry her.
I have a little money, too; but in my violin there is all the
fortune she can want.”

Winton’s face expressed nothing but cold contempt. That
this fellow should take him for one who would consider money
in connection with his daughter, simply affronted him.

Fiorsen went on:

“You do not like me. I saw it the first moment. You are
an English gentleman ”—he pronounced the words with irony—
“T am nothing to you. Yet, in my world, I am something.
I am not an adventurer. Will you permit me to beg your
daughter to be my wife?” He raised his hands which held the
hat till they assumed the attitude of prayer.

For a second, Winton realised that the man was suffering.
But he said frigidly:

“TJ am obliged to you, sir, for coming to me first. I don’t
want to be discourteous in my own house, but I should be glad

257
''258 NOVELS OF LOVE

if you would be good enough to withdraw and take it that I
shall certainly oppose your wish as best I can.”

The almost childish disappointment and trouble in Fiorsen’s
face changed quickly to an expression fierce, furtive, mocking;
and then shifted to despair.

“Major Winton, you have loved; you must have loved her
mother. I suffer!”

Winton, who had turned to the fire, faced round again.

“T don’t control my daughter’s affections, sir; she will do
as she’ wishes. I merely say it will be against my hopes and
judgment if she marries you. I imagine you’ve not altogether
waited for my leave. I was not blind to the way you hung about
her at Wiesbaden, Mr. Fiorsen.”

Fiorsen answered with a miserable smile:

“Poor wretches do what they can. May I see her? Let me
just see her.”

She had been seeing the fellow already without his knowledge,
keeping from him—him—all her feelings, whatever they were.
And he said:

“Tl send for her. In the meantime, perhaps you'll have
‘some tea or whiskey?”

Fiorsen shook her head, and there followed half an hour of
the most acute discomfort. Winton, in his mud-stained clothes
before the fire, supported it better than his visitor. That child
of nature, after endeavouring to emulate his host’s quietude,
renounced such efforts with an expressive gesture, tramped the
room, went to the window, drew aside the curtains and stared
out into the dark; came back as if resqlved again to confront
Winton ; then, baffled by that figure so motionless before the fire,
flung himself down in an armchair, and turned his face to the
wall. Winton was not cruel by nature, but he enjoyed the
writhings of this fellow who was endangering Gyp’s happiness.
Endangering? Surely she would not accept him! Yet, if not,
why had she not told him? And he, too, suffered.

Then she came. Her smiling face had in it a kind of warning
closeness. She went up to Fiorsen, and holding out her hand,
said calmly:

“ How nice of you to come! ”

Winton had the bitter feeling that he—he—was the outsider.
Well, he would speak plainly; there had been too much under-
hand doing.

“Mr. Fiorsen has done us the honour to wish to marry you.

ie as
''BEYOND 259

I’ve told him that you decide such things for yourself. If you
accept him, it will be against my wish, naturally.”

While he was speaking the glow deepened in her cheeks; she
looked neither at him nor at Fiorsen. Winton noted the rise
and fall of the lace on her breast. She gave the tiniest shrug
of her shoulders. And, suddenly smitten to the heart, he walked
stiffly to the door. It was evident that she had no use for his
guidance. If her love for him was not worth to her more than
this fellow! But he knew he could not afford wounded feelings ;
could not get on without her. Married to the greatest
rascal on earth, he would still be standing by her, wanting her
companionship and love. She represented too much in the
present and—the past. With sore heart, indeed, he went to his
room.

Fiorsen was gone when he came down to dinner. What the
fellow had said, or she had answered, he would not for the world
have asked. Gulfs between the proud are not lightly bridged.
And, when she came up to say good-night, both their faces
were as though coated with wax.

In the days that followed she gave no sign, uttered no word
in any way suggesting that she meant to go against his wishes.
Fiorsen might not have existed, for any mention made of
him. But Winton knew well that she was moping, and cherish-
ing some feeling against himself. One evening, after dinner,
he said quietly:

“Tell me frankly, Gyp; do you care for that chap?”

She answered as quietly:

“In a way—yes.”

“Ts that enough?”

“T don’t know, Dad.”

Her lips had quivered; and Winton’s heart softened, as it
always did when he saw her moved. He put his hand out,
covered one of hers, and said:

“T shall never stand in the way of your happiness, Gyp. But
it must be happiness. Can it possibly be that? I don’t think so.
You know what they said of him out there?”

“ Yes.”

He had not thought she knew. And his heart sank.

“That’s pretty bad, you know. And he’s not of our world
at all?”

Gyp looked up.

“Do you think I belong to ‘ our world, Dad?”
''260 NOVELS OF LOVE

Winton turned away. She followed, slipping her hand under
his arm.

“I didn’t mean to hurt. But-its true, isn’t it? I don’t
belong among society people. Ever since you told me I’ve felt
I don’t belong to them. I’m nearer him. Music means more
to me than anything! ”

Winton gave her hand a convulsive grip.

“Tf your happiness went wrong, Gyp, I should be most
awiully cut up.”

* But why shouldn’t I be happy, Dad?”

“If you were, I could put up with anyone. But I can’t
believe you would be. I beg you, my dear—for God’s sake,
make sure. I’ll put a bullet into the man who treats you
badly.”

At bedtime he said:

“ We'll go up to town to-morrow.”

Whether from a feeling of the inevitable, or from the forlorn
hope that seeing more of the fellow might be the only chance
of curing her—he put no more obstacles in the way.

And the queer courtship began again. By Christmas she had
consented, still under the impression that she was the mistress,
not the slave—the cat, not the bird. Once or twice, when
Fiorsen let passion out of hand and his overbold caresses
affronted her, she recoiled almost with dread from what she
was going towards. But, in general, she lived elated, intoxicated
by music and his adoration, yet remorseful that she was making
her father sad. She was but little at Mildenham, and he, in his
unhappiness, was there nearly all the time, riding extra hard,
and leaving Gyp with his sister. Aunt Rosamund, though under
the spell of Fiorsen’s music, had agreed with her brother that
Fiorsen was “impossible.” But nothing she said made any
effect on Gyp. It was new and startling to discover in this soft,
sensitive girl such a vein of stubbornness. Opposition seemed
to harden her resolution. And the good lady’s natural optimism
began to persuade her that Gyp would make a silk purse out of
that sow’s ear yet. After all, the man was a celebrity in his
way !

It was settled for February. A house with a garden was taken
in St. John’s Wood. The last month went, as all such last
months go, in those intoxicating pastimes, the buying of fur-
niture and clothes. If it were not for that, who knows how
many engagement knots would slip!
''BEYOND 261

And to-day they had been married. To the last Winton had
hardly believed it would come to that. He had shaken the
hand of her husband and kept pain and disappointment out
of his face, knowing well that he deceived no one. Thank
heaven, there had been no church, no wedding-cake, invitations,
congratulations, fal-lals of any kind—he could never have stood
them. Not even Rosamund—who had influenza—to put up
with!

Lying back in the recesses of that old chair, he stared into
the fire.

They would be just about at Torquay by now—just about.
Music! Who would have thought noises made out of string
and wood could have stolen her away from him? Yes, they
would be at Torquay by now, at their hotel. And the first
prayer Winton had uttered for years escaped his lips:

“Let her be happy! Let her be happy!”

Then, hearing Markey open the door, he closed his eyes and
feigned sleep.
'' 
''PART. 11
I

Gyp thought of her frock, a mushroom-coloured velvet cord.
Not many girls in her class are married without “ fal-lals,” as
Winton had called them. Not many girls sit in the corner of
their reserved first-class compartments without the excitement
of having been supreme centre of the world for some flattering
hours to buoy them up on that train journey, with no memories
of friends’ behaviour, speech, appearance, to chat of with her
husband, so as to keep thought away. For Gyp, her dress, first
worn that day, Betty’s breakdown, the faces, blank as hats, of
the registrar and clerk, were all she had to distract her. She
stole a look at him, clothed in blue serge, just opposite. Her
husband! Mrs. Gustav Fiorsen! People might call her that;
but to herself, she was Ghita Winton. The other would never
seem right. And, not confessing that she was afraid to meet
his eyes, yet afraid, she looked out of the window. A bleak,
dismal day; no warmth, no sun, no music—the Thames grey
as lead, the willows,on its banks forlorn.

Suddenly she felt his hand on hers. She had not seen his
face like that before—save once or twice when he was playing—
a spirit shining through. She felt suddenly secure. If it stayed
like that, then !—His hand rested on her knee; his face changed
just a little; the spirit seemed to waver, to be fading; his lips
grew fuller. He crossed over and sat beside her. She was
tremulously glad of the corridor outside, and instantly began
to talk about their house. In the hours they had spent together,
up to now, he had been like a starved man snatching hasty
meals; now that he had her to himself for good, he was another
creature—a boy out of school.

He got down his practice violin, and putting on the mute,
played, And when his face was turned away, she looked at him.
He was much better-looking now than when he had his little
whiskers. One day she had touched one and said: “If only
these wings could fly!” Next morning they had flown. But
she was not used to his face even yet, any more than to his touch.

263
''264 NOVELS OF LOVE

At Torquay the sky was clear and starry; the wind brought
whiffs of sea-scent into their cab; lights winked far out on a
headland ; and in the little harbour, all bluish dark, many little
boats floated like tame birds. When the cab stopped and they
entered the hall of the hotel, she whispered:

“ Don’t let’s let them see!”

He let her go in demurely in front of him, saying:

“They shan’t see—my Gyp. Oh, they shan’t see! We are
old married people, tired of each other—very! ”

At dinner it amused him at first—her too, a little—to keep
up this farce of indifference. But every now and then he turned
and stared at some inoffensive visitor who was taking interest in
them, with such fierce and genuine contempt, that Gyp took
alarm. When she had drunk a little wine and he had drunk
a good deal, the farce of indifference came to its end. He
talked at a great rate, nicknaming the waiters, mimicking the
people around—thrusts which made her smile but shiver, lest
they should be heard or seen. Their heads were close together
across the little table. They went out into the lounge. He
wanted her to smoke with him. She had never smoked in a
public room. But it seemed stiff and “missish” to refuse—
she must do now as his world did. She drew back a window-
curtain, and they stood there side by side. The sea was deep
blue beneath bright stars, and the moon shone through a ragged
pine-tree on a little headland. Though she stood five feet six
in her shoes, she was only up to his mouth. He sighed and said:
“ Beautiful night, my Gyp!” And suddenly it struck her that
she knew nothing of what was in him, and yet he was her
husband! “ Husband ”—funny word, not pretty! She felt as
a child opening the door of a dark room, and, clutching his
arm, said:

“Took! There’s a sailing-boat. What’s it doing out there
at night?”

Up in their sitting-room was a piano, but—not possible; to-
morrow they would have to get another. To-morrow! The fire
was hot, and he took off his coat to play. In one of his shirt-
sleeves was a rent. She thought, with a sort of triumph: ‘I
shall mend that!’ It was something definite, actual. There
were lilies in the room which gave a strong, sweet scent. For a
whole hour he played, and Gyp, in her cream-coloured frock,
lay back, listening. She was tired, not sleepy. It would have
been nice to have been sleepy. Her mouth had its little sad
''BEYOND 265)

tuck or dimple at the corner; her eyes were deep and dark—
a cloudy child; and his gaze never left her face. At last he
put away the violin.

“Go to bed, Gyp; you’re tired.”

Obediently she got up and went into the bedroom. With a
sick feeling in her heart, and as near the fire as she could get,
she undressed with desperate haste, and got to bed. She lay
there shivering in her flimsy lawn against the cold sheets, her
eyes not quite closed, watching the flicker of the firelight.
She did not think—just lay still. The door creaked. She
shut her eyes. Had she a heart at all? It did not seem to beat.
She lay with eyes shut, till she could bear it nu longer. By the
firelight she saw him crouching at the foot of the bed; could just
see his face—like a face—a face—where seen? Ah yes!—a
picture—of a wild man crouching at the feet of Iphigenia—so
humble, so hungry—so lost in gazing. She gave a little smoth-
ered sob and held out her hand.
''II

Gyp was too proud to give by halves. And in those early days
she gave Fiorsen everything except—her heart. She earnestly
desired to give that too; but hearts only give themselves. Per-
haps if the wild man in him, maddened by beauty in its power,
had not so ousted the spirit man, her heart might have gone
with her lips. He knew he was not getting her heart, and it
made him, in the wildness of his nature and the perversity of
a man, go just the wrong way to work, trying to conquer her by
the senses, not the soul.

Yet she was not unhappy, except for a sort of lost feeling
sometimes, as if she were trying to grasp something that kept
slipping away. When he was playing, with the spirit-look on
his face, she would feel: ‘ Now, now, surely I shall get close to
him!’ But the look would go; how to keep it there she did not
know, and when it went, her feeling went too.

Their little suite of rooms was at the very end of the hotel,
so that he might play as much as he wished. When he practised
in the mornings she would go into the garden, which sloped in
rock-terraces down to the sea. Wrapped in fur, she would sit
there with a book. She soon knew each evergreen, or flower—
aubretia, and laurustinus, a little white flower whose name
was uncertain, and one star-periwinkle. The air was often
soit; the birds sang already and were busy with their weddings,
and twice, at least, spring came in her heart—that feeling when
first the being scents new life preparing in the earth and the
wind—the feeling which only comes when spring is not yet.
Seagulls often came over her, craning down their greedy bills
and uttering cries like a kitten’s mewing.

She did not realise how she had grown up in these few days,
how the ground bass had already come into the light music of
her life. Living with Fiorsen was opening her eyes to much
besides knowledge of “man’s nature”; her, perhaps fatal,
receptivity was already soaking up the atmosphere of his philos-
ophy. He was always in revolt against accepting things because
he was expected to; but, like most executant artists, he was no
reasoner, just a mere instinctive kicker against the pricks. He
would lose himself in a sunset, a scent, a tune, a new caress, in

266
''BEYOND 267

a rush of pity for a beggar or a blind man, a rush of aversion
from a man with large feet or a long nose, of hatred for a woman
with a flat chest or an expression of sanctimony. He would
swing along when he was walking, or dawdle, dawdle; he would
sing and laugh, and make her laugh too till she ached, and half
an hour later would sit staring into some pit of darkness in a
sort of powerful brooding of his whole being. Insensibly she
shared in this deep drinking of sensation, but always gracefully,
fastidiously, never losing sense of other people’s feelings.

In his love-raptures he just avoided setting her nerves on edge,
because he never failed to make her feel his adoration of her
beauty; that perpetual consciousness, too, of not belonging to
the proper and respectable, which she had tried to explain to her
father, set her against feeling shocked. But in other ways he did
shock her. She could not get used to his oblivion of people’s
feelings, to the ferocious contempt with which he would look at
those who got on his nerves, and make half-audible comments,
just as he had commented on her own father when he and Count
Rosek passed them, by the Schiller statue. She would visibly
shrink at those remarks, though they were sometimes so funny
that she had to laugh. She saw that he resented her shrinking;
but it seemed to excite him to run amuck the more. Once she
got up and walked away. He followed, sat on the floor beside her
knees, and, like a great cat, thrust his head under her hand.

“ Forgive me, my Gyp; but they are such brutes. Who could
help it? Now tell me—who could, except my Gyp?” And she
had to forgive him. But, one evening, when he had been really
outrageous during dinner, she answered:

“No; I can’t. It’s you that are the brute.”

He leaped up with a face of furious gloom and went out of
the room. It was the first time he had given way to anger
with her. Gyp sat by the fire, very disturbed; chiefly because
she was not really upset at having hurt him. Surely she ought
to be feeling miserable at that!

But when, at ten o’clock, he had not come back, she began
to flutter. She had said a dreadful thing! Though, in her
heart, she did not take back her judgment. This was the first
time she had given free rein to her feeling against what Winton
would have called his “ bounderism.” If he had been English,
she would never have been attracted by one who could trample
so on other people’s feelings. What, then, had attracted her?
His strangeness, wildness, the mesmeric pull of his passion for
''268 NOVELS OF LOVE

her, his music! Nothing could spoil that in him. The sweep,
the surge, and sigh in his playing was like the sea out there,
dark, and surf-edged, beating on the rocks; or the sea deep-
coloured in daylight, with white gulls over it; or the sea with
those sinuous paths made by the wandering currents, the subtle,
smiling, silent sea, holding in suspense an unfathomable rest-
lessness, waiting to surge and spring again. That was what
she wanted from him—not his embraces, not even his adoration,
his wit, or his queer, lithe comeliness touched with felinity; no,
only that in his soul which escaped through his fingers into
the air and dragged at her soul. If, when he came in, she were
to run to him, throw her arms round his neck, make herself feel
close, lose herself in him! Why not? It was her duty; why not
her delight, too? But she shivered. Some instinct too deep for
analysis, something in the very heart of her nerves, made her
recoil, as if she were afraid, literally scared of letting herself
go, of loving—the subtlest instinct of self-preservation against
something fatal; against being led on beyond—a curious, in-
stinctive sinking, such as some feel at the sight of a precipice,
a dread of going near, lest they be drawn on and over by resistless
attraction.

She passed into their bedroom. To go to bed without know-
ing where he was, what doing, thinking, seemed already a little
odd; and she sat brushing her hair slowly with the silver-backed
brushes, staring at her own pale face, whose eyes looked so very
large and dark. At last there came to her the feeling: ‘I can’t
help it! I don’t care!’ And, getting into bed, she turned out
the light. It seemed queer and lonely; there was no fire. And
then, without more ado, she slept.

She had a dream of being between Fiorsen and her father in
a railway-carriage out at sea, with the water rising higher
and higher, swishing and sighing. Awakening always, like a
dog, to perfect presence of mind, she knew that he was playing in
the sitting-room, playing—at what time of night? She lay
listening to the quivering, gibbering tune. ‘Twice she half
slipped out of bed, but both times, as if fate meant her not
to move, he chose that moment to swell out the sound, and each
time she thought: ‘No, I can’t. It’s just the same now; he
doesn’t care how many people he wakes up. He does just what
he likes, and cares nothing for anyone.’ And covering her ears
with her hands, she continued to lie motionless.

When she withdrew her hands at last, he had stopped. Then
''BEYOND 269

she heard him coming, and feigned sleep. Next morning he
seemed to have forgotten it all. But Gyp had not. She wanted.
badly to know what he had felt, where he had gone, but was too
proud to ask.

She wrote twice to her father in the first week, but not after-
wards, except for a postcard now and then. Why tell him what
she was doing, in the company of one whom he could not bear to
think of? Had he been right? To confess that would hurt her
pride too much. But she began to long for London. Her new
house was a green spot to dwell on. When they were settled in,
and could do what they liked without anxiety about people’s
feelings, it would be all right perhaps. He would start again
really working, she helping him, and all would be different. Her
new house, her new garden, the fruit-trees coming into blossom!
She would have dogs and cats, would ride when Dad was in
Town. Aunt Rosamund would come, friends, evenings of music,
dances still, perhaps—he danced beautifully. And his concerts—
the elation of being identified with his success! Above all, the
excitement of making her home as dainty as she could, with
daring experiments in form and colour. And yet, at heart she
knew that to be already looking forward was a bad sign.

One thing, at all events, she enjoyed—sailing. They had blue
days when even the March sun was warm, and there was just
breeze enough. He got on excellently well with the “old salt
whose boat they used, for he was at his best with simple folk.

In those hours Gyp had some real sensations of romance. The
sea was blue, the rocks and wooded spurs of that Southern coast
dreamy in the bright land-haze. Oblivious of the “old salt,”
he would put his arm round her; and she would be grateful
for feeling nearer to him in spirit. She made loyal efforts to
understand him in these weeks that were bringing a certain dis-
illusionment. The elemental part of marriage was not the trou-
ble; if she did not herself feel passion, she did not resent his.
The trouble lay deeper—the sense of an insuperable barrier ; and
always that instinctive recoil from letting herself go. She could
not let herself be known, and she could not get to know him.
Why did his eyes often fix her with a stare that did not seem to
see her? What made him, in the midst of serious playing, break
into some furious or desolate little tune, or drop his violin?
What gave him. those long hours of dejection, following the
maddest gaiety? Above all, what dreams had he in those rare
moments when music transformed his strange pale face? Or
''270 NOVELS OF LOVE

was it a mere physical illusion—had he any dreams? “The
heart of another is a dark forest ”—to all but the one who loves.

One morning he held up a letter.

“Ah, ha! Paul Rosek went to see our house. ‘A pretty
dove’s nest!’ he calls it.”

The memory of his friend’s sphinxlike, sweetish face, and eyes
which seemed to know so many secrets, always affected Gyp
unpleasantly. She said quietly:

“ Why do you like him, Gustav?”

“Oh, he is useful. A good judge of music, and—many
things.”

“T think he is hateful.”

Fiorsen laughed.

“ Why hateful, my Gyp? He is a good friend. And he ad-
mires you—oh, he admires you very much! J] dit qu’tl a une
technique merveilleuse with women.”

Gyp laughed.

“ He’s like a toad, I think.”

“ Ah, I shall tell him that! He will be flattered.”

“ Tf you do, I 4

He jumped up and caught her in his arms; his face was so
comically compunctious that she calmed down at once. She
thought over her words afterwards and regretted them. All the
same, Rosek was a sneak and a cold sensualist, she was sure.
And the thought that he had been spying at their little house
tarnished her thoughts of it.

They went to Town three days later. While the taxi was
skirting Lord’s Cricket-ground, Gyp slipped her hand into Fior-
sen’s. She was brimful of excitement. The trees were budding
in the garden, the almond-blossom coming! Now they were in
the road. Five, seven, nine—thirteen! Two more! There it
was, nineteen, in white figures on the leaf-green railings, under
the small green lilac buds; and their almond-blossom was out,
too! She could just see, over those tall railings, the low white
house with its green outside shutters. She jumped out almost
into the arms of Betty, who stood smiling all over her broad,
flushed face, while, from under each arm peered forth a little
black head, with pricked ears and eyes as bright as diamonds.

“ Betty! What darlings! ”

“Major Winton’s present, my dear—ma’am

Giving the stout shoulders a hug, Gyp seized the Scotch
terriers and ran up the path under the trellis, while the pups,

 

2?
!
''BEYOND 271

squeezed against her breast, made confused small noises and
licked her nose and ears. Through the square hall she ran into
the drawing-room, which opened out on to the lawn; and there,
in the French window, stood, spying back at the spick-and-
span room, where everything was placed just wrong. The colour-
ing, white, ebony, and satinwood, looked nicer even that she
had hoped. Out in the garden—her own garden—the pear-
trees were thickening, but not in blossom yet; a few daffodils
were in bloom along the walls, and a magnolia had one bud
opened. And all the time she kept squeezing the puppies to her,
enjoying their young, warm, fluffy savour. She ran out of the
drawing-room, up the stairs. Oh, it was nice to be in your own
place, to be Suddenly she felt herself lifted off the ground
from behind, and in that undignified position, her eyes flying,
she turned her face till he could reach her lips.

 
''III

Tuar first morning in her new house, Gyp woke with the
sparrow, or whatever the bird which utters the first cheeps and
twitters, soon eclipsed by so much that was more important in
bird-song. All the feathered creatures in London seemed as-
sembled in her garden; and the old verse came into her head:

“ All dear Nature’s children sweet
Lie at bride and bridegroom’s feet,
Blessing their sense.

Not a creature of the air,
Bird melodious or bird fair,
Be absent hence! ”

She turned and looked at Fiorsen. He lay with his head
snoozled down into the pillow, so that she could only see his
thick, rumpled hair. And a shiver went through her, exactly
as if a strange man were lying there. Did he really belong to
her, she to him—for good? Was this their house—together ?
It all seemed different, more serious and troubling, in this
strange permanent bed, of this strange permanent room. Care-
ful not to wake him, she slipped out and stood between the cur-
tains and the window. Light was in confusion yet; away low
down behind the trees, the rose of dawn still clung. One might
almost have been in the country, but for the faint, rumorous
noises of the town beginning to wake, and that film of ground-
mist which veils the feet of London mornings. She was mistress
in this house, had to direct it all—see to everything! And
her pups! What did they eat?

That was the first of many hours of conscientious anxiety.
Her fastidiousness desired perfection, but her sensitiveness re-
fused to demand it of others—especially servants. Why should
she harry them?

Fiorsen had not the faintest notion of regularity. He could
not even begin to appreciate her struggles in housekeeping. And
she was too proud to ask his help, or perhaps too wise, since he
was obviously unfit to give it. To live like the birds of the air
was his motto. Gyp would have liked nothing better; but it
was difficult in a house with three servants, several meals, two

272
''BEYOND 273

puppy-dogs, and no great experience of how to deal with any
of them.

She spoke of her difficulties to no one. With Betty—who,
bone-conservative, admitted Fiorsen as hardly as she had once
admitted Winton—she had to be very careful. But her great
trouble was with her father. She longed to see him, and literally
dreaded the meeting. He first came—as he had been wont to
come when she was a tiny girl—at the hour when he thought
the fellow to whom she now belonged would most probably be
out. She opened the door herself, and hung about him so that
his shrewd eyes should not see her face. And she began at once
to talk of the puppies, whom she had named Don and Doff.
They were perfect darlings; nothing was safe from them; her
slippers were completely done for; they had already got into
her china-cabinet and gone to sleep there! He must come and
see all over.

Talking all the time, she took him upstairs and down, out
into the garden, to the studio, or music-room, at the end, which
had an entrance to itself on to a back lane. This room had
been the great attraction. Fiorsen could practise there in peace.
Winton went with her very quietly, making a shrewd comment
now and then. At the far end of the garden, looking over the
wall, down into that narrow passage which lay between it and
the back of another garden, he squeezed her arm suddenly.

“Well, Gyp, what sort of a time?”

“Oh, rather lovely—in some ways.” But she did not look
at him, nor he at her. “See, Dad! The cats have made quite
a path there!”

Winton bit his lips and turned from the wall. The thought
of that fellow was bitter within him. She meant to tell him
nothing, meant to keep up that light-hearted look—which didn’t
deceive him!

“Look at my crocuses! It’s really spring to-day!”

Even a bee or two had come. The tiny leaves had a trans-
parent look, too thin as yet to keep the sunlight from passing
through them. The purple, delicate-veined crocuses, with little
flames of orange blowing from their centres, seemed to hold the
light as in cups. A wind, without harshness, swung the boughs;
a dry leaf or two still rustled round here and there. And on
the grass, and in the blue sky, and on the almond-blossom was
the first spring brilliance. Gyp clasped her hands.

“ Lovely—to feel the spring! ”
''a74 NOVELS OF LOVE

And Winton thought: ‘She’s changed!’ She had softened,
quickened—more depth of colour in her, more gravity, more
sway in her body, more sweetness in her smile. But—was she
happy ?

A voice said:

“ Ah, what a pleasure!”

The fellow had slunk up like the great cat he was. And it
seemed to Winton that Gyp had winced.

“Dad thinks we ought to have dark curtains in the music-
room, Gustav.”

Fiorsen made a bow.

“ Yes—yes—like a London club.”

Winton, watching, was sure of supplication in her face. And,
forcing a smile, he said:

“You seem very snug here. Glad to see you again. Gyp
looks splendid.”

Another of those bows he so detested! Mountebank! Never,
never would he be able to stand the fellow! But he must not,
would not, show it. And, as soon as he decently could, he went,
picking his way back through this region, of which his knowledge
was almost limited to Lord’s Cricket-ground, in doubt and deso-
lation, with the resolve to be always at hand if the child wanted
him.

He had not been gone ten minutes before Aunt Rosamund
appeared, with a crutch-handled stick and a gentlemanly limp,
for she, too, suffered from gout. The good lady had not known
how fond she was of her niece till the girl had slipped off into
this marriage. She wanted her back, to go about with and
make much of, as before. And her drawl did not quite disguise
this feeling.

Gyp could detect Fiorsen subtly mimicking that drawl; and
her ears began to burn. The puppies, their points, noses, bold-
ness, and food, held the danger in abeyance for some minutes.
Then the mimicry began again. When Aunt Rosamund had
taken a somewhat sudden leave, Gyp stood at the window of
her drawing-room with the mask off her face. Fiorsen came
up, put his arm round her, and said with a fierce sigh:

“ Are they coming often—these excellent people?”

Gyp drew back.

“Tf you love me, why do you try to hurt the people who
love me too?”

“Because I am jealous. I am jealous even of those puppies.”
''BEYOND 275

“ And shall you try to hurt them?”

“Tf I see them too much near you.”

“Do you think I can be happy if you hurt things because they
love me?”

The first time—the very first friend to come into her new
home! It was too much!

Fiorsen said hoarsely :

“You do not love me. If you loved me, I should feel it
through your lips. I should see it in your eyes. Oh, love me,
Gyp! You shall!”

But to say to Love: “Stand and deliver!” seemed to her
mere ill-bred stupidity. She froze against him in soul. When a
woman refuses nofhing to one whom she does not really love,
shadows are already falling on the bride-house. And Fiorsen
knew it; but his self-control scarcely equalled that of the two
puppies.

Yet, on the whole, these first weeks in her new home were too
busy to allow much room for doubting or regret. Several im-
portant concerts were fixed for May. She looked forward to
these with intense eagerness, and pushed everything that inter-
fered with preparation into the background. As though to make
up for that instinctive recoil from giving him her heart, of which
she was always subconscious, she gave him all her activities,
without calculation or reserve. She was ready to play for him
all day and every day. But she had some free hours in the
morning, for he lay in bed till eleven, and was never ready for
practice before twelve. In those early hours she got through
her orders and her shopping—to so many women the only real
“sport ”—a chase of the ideal; a pitting of taste and knowledge
against that of the world at large; a secret passion for making
themselves more beautiful. Gyp never went shopping without a
faint thrill running up and down her nerves. She hated to be
touched by strange fingers, but not even that stopped her pleas-
ure in turning and turning before long mirrors, while the sales-
woman ran the tips of fingers over her, smoothing and pinning,
and uttering the word “ moddam.”

On other mornings, she rode with her father. One day, after
riding in Richmond Park, they had late breakfast on the veran-
dah of an hotel. Some fruit-trees were still in blossom just
below them, and the sunlight brightened to silver the windings
of the river, and to gold the budding leaves of the oak-trees.
Winton, smoking his after-breakfast cigar, stared down across
''276 NOVELS OF LOVE

the tops of those trees towards the river; and stealing a glance at
him, Gyp said softly:

“ Did you ever ride with my mother, Dad?”

““Once—the very ride we’ve been to-day. She was on a black
mare; I had a chestnut ” In that grove on the little hill
chrough which they had ridden that morning, he had dismounted
and stood beside her!

Gyp stretched her hand across the table.

“Tell me about her. Was she beautiful?”

ce Wag

“Dara Palle?

“Very like you, Gyp. A little—a little ”’—he did not know
how to describe that difference—“ a little more foreign-looking,
perhaps. One of her grandmothers was Italian, you know.”

“How did you come to love her? Suddenly?”

“As suddenly as”—he drew his hand away and laid it on
the verandah rail—“ that sun came on my hand.”

Gyp said, as if to herself:

“Yes; I don’t think I understand that—yet. Did she love
you at first sight, too?”

“One easily believes what one wants to—but she used to say
29

* And how long?”

“ Only a year.”

“Oh, Dad! I can’t bear to think I killed her—I can’t bear
at!”

Winton got up, and a startled blackbird ceased his song. Gyp
went on in a hard voice:

“TI don’t want to have any children. And I don’t—I don’t
want to love like that. I should be afraid.”

Winton looked at her, frowning over his past.

“Love,” he said, “it catches you, and you’re gone. When
it comes, you welcome it, whether it’s to kill you or not.”

When she got home it was not quite noon. She hurried over
her bath and dressing, and ran out to the music-room. Its walls
had been hung with Willesden scrim and gilded; the curtains
were silver-grey ; there was a divan covered with silver-and-gold
stuff, and a beaten brass fireplace. It was a study in silver and
gold, save for two touches of fantasy—a screen round the piano-
head, covered with brilliantly painted peacocks’ tails, and a
blue Persian vase, in which were flowers of various hues of
red.

 

sO
''BEYOND QU?

Fiorsen was standing at the window, smoking. He did not
turn. Gyp put her hand within his arm.

“So sorry. But it’s only just half-past twelve.”

His face was as if the whole world had injured him.

“Pity you came back! Very nice, riding, ’m sure!”

Could she not go riding with her own father? What insensate
jealousy and egomania! And, without a word, she sat down
at the piano. She was not good at standing injustice—and he
smelled of brandy! Drink in the morning was ugly—horrid!
She sat at the piano, waiting. He would be like this till he had
played away the fumes of his ill mood, and then he would come
and paw her shoulders and put his lips to her neck. It was not
the way to behave, not the way to make her love him. And she
said suddenly:

“ Gustav; what exactly have I done that you dislike?”

“You have had a father.”

Gyp began to laugh. He looked so like a sulky child, standing
there. He turned swiftly on her and clapped his hand over her
mouth. She looked up over that hand. Her heart was doing the
grand écart within her, this way in compunction, that way in
resentment. His eyes fell before hers; he removed his hand.

“ Well, shall we begin?” she said.

He answered roughly: “No,” and went out into the garden.

Was it possible that she could have taken part in such a
horrid little scene? She remained sitting at the piano, playing
over and over a single passage, without heeding what it was.
''IV

So far, they had seen nothing of Rosek. She wondered if Fior-
sen had passed on to him her remark, but did not ask; having
learned that her husband spoke the truth when convenient, not
when it caused him pain. About music, or art, however, he
could be implicitly relied on; and his frankness was appalling
when his nerves were ruffled.

At the first concert she saw Rosek’s unwelcome figure on the
other side of the gangway, two rows back. He was talking to
a young girl, whose face, short and beautifully formed, had the
opaque transparency of alabaster. With her round blue eyes
fixed on him, and her lips just parted, she had a slightly vacant
look. Her laugh, too, was just a little vacant. And yet her
features were so beautiful, her hair so smooth and fair, her
colouring so pale and fine, her neck so white and round, the
poise of her body so perfect, that Gyp found it difficult to take
her glance away. She was sitting alone, wanting so much to
feel again the sensations of Wiesbaden. There would be a kind
of solemn pleasure in knowing that she had helped to fashion
sounds which moved so many listeners. She had looked forward
to this concert eagerly. And she sat, abstracted from conscious-
ness of those about her, soft and still.

Fiorsen looked his worst, as ever, when first coming before
an audience—cold, furtive, defensive, defiant, half turned away,
with those long fingers tightening the screws, touching the
strings. Wiesbaden! No; this was not like Wiesbaden! And
when he played, she had not the same emotions. She had heard
him now too often, knew too exactly how he produced those
sounds; knew that their fire and sweetness and nobility sprang
from fingers, ear, brain—not from his soul. Nor was it possible
any longer to drift off on those currents of sound into new worlds,
to hear bells at dawn, and the dews of evening as they fell, to
feel the freshness of wind and the fire of sunlight. Romance
and ecstasy came no more. She was watching for the weak spots,
the passages with which he had struggled and she had struggled ;
she was distracted by memories of petulance, black moods, and
sudden caresses. And then she caught his eye. The look was
like, yet now unlike, those looks at Wiesbaden. It had lost the

278
''BEYOND 279

adoration. And she thought: ‘Is it my fault, or is it only
because he has me now to do what he likes with?’ It was all
another disillusionment, perhaps the greatest yet. But she
kindled at the applause, and lost herself in the pleasure of his
success. At the interval, she went round to the artists’ room.
He was coming down from his last recall; his look of bored
contempt vanished, and, lifting her hand, he kissed it. She
whispered :

“ Beautiful! ”

And he whispered back:

“Do you love me, Gyp?”

She nodded. And at that moment she thought she did.

Then people began to come; amongst them her old music-
master, Monsieur Harmost, who, after a “ Mervetlleux, trés
fort” to Fiorsen, turned his back on him to talk to Gyp.

So she had married Fiorsen. That was extraordinary, but
extraordinary! And what was it like—a little funny—not so?
Her music would be spoiled now—what a pity! No? She must
come to him, then; yes, come again. All the time he patted her
arm, as if playing the piano, and his fingers felt the firmness
of her flesh, as though debating whether she were letting it
deteriorate. He seemed really to have missed his old pupil, to
be glad at seeing her again; and Gyp never could withstand
appreciation. More people came. She saw Rosek talking to her
husband, and the alabaster girl standing silent, her lips still
parted, gazing at Fiorsen. A perfect figure, rather short; a
dovelike face, whose exquisitely shaped, just opened lips seemed
to be demanding sugar-plums. Not more than nineteen—who
was she?

A voice said:

“How do you do, Mrs. Fiorsen? I am fortunate to see you
again at last.”

If Gustav had given her away, one would never know it from
this masked creature, Rosek, with his suave watchful composure,
- who talked so smoothly. What did she so dislike in him? Gyp
had acute instincts, the natural intelligence of a nature not
over-intellectual, whose “feelers” were too delicate to be de-
ceived.

Following his glance, she saw her husband talking to the girl,
whose lips seemed more than ever asking for sugar-plums.

“Do you admire her, Madame—that young dancer, Daphne
Wing—she will make a name. A dove flying! ”
''280 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ She’s very pretty—I can imagine her dancing beautifully.”

“Come one day and see her? She has still to make her
début.”

Gyp answered:

“ Thank you.”

But she thought: ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with
you! Why didn’t I say I hate dancing?’

A bell sounded; people began hurrying away. The girl came
up.

Me Miss Daphne Wing—Mrs. Fiorsen.”

Gyp put out her hand with a smile. Miss Daphne Wing
smiled, too, and said, with the intonation of those whose ac-
cents have been carefully corrected:

“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, how beautifully your husband plays—
doesn’t he?”

Not merely at the careful speech, but at something lacking
when the mouth moved, Gyp felt sorry, as at blight on a perfect
flower. With a nod, she turned to Fiorsen, now waiting to go
on to the platform. Was it at her or at the girl he had been
looking? In the corridor, Rosek said:

“Come with Gustav to my rooms to-day. She shall dance for
us. She admires you, Madame.”

Gyp longed for the simple brutality to say: “I don’t want to
come.” But all she could manage was:

“Thank you. I’ll ask Gustav.”

Once back in her seat, she rubbed the cheek his breath had
touched. A girl was singing now—one of those faces Gyp
always admired, reddish-gold hair, blue eyes—the antithesis
of herself—and the song was “The Bens of Jura,” that strange
outpouring from a heart broken by love:

“ And my heart reft of its own sun——”

The shiver of some very deep response passed through her.
Dad had said: “ Love catches you, and you’re gone! ”

No! she, who was the result of love like that, did not want to
love!

The girl finished. There was little applause. She had sung
beautifully one of the most wonderful songs in the world—was
it too tragic, too painful, too strange—not “ pretty ” enough ?
Gyp felt sorry for her. She would have liked to slip away. But
she had not the needful rudeness. She would have to wait, and
''BEYOND 281

go through with this evening at Rosek’s. She had entered of her
own free will on a life which would not give her a feeling of
anchorage or home. Of her own accord she had stepped into
the cage!

On the way to Rosek’s, she disguised from Fiorsen her head-
ache and depression. He was in one of his boy-out-of-school
moods, elated by applause, mimicking her old master, the idola-
tries of his worshippers, Rosek, the girl dancer’s upturned lips.
And he slipped his arm round Gyp in the cab, crushing her
against him and sniffing at her cheek as if she had been a
flower.

Rosek had the first floor of an old mansion in Russell Square.
Incense, or some kindred perfume, was at once about one; and,
on the walls of the dark hall, electric light burned, in jars of
alabaster picked up in the Hast. The place was a sanctum of
the collector’s spirit. Its owner had a passion for black—the
walls, divans, picture-frames, even some of the tilings were
black, with glimmerings of gold, ivory, and moonlight. On a
round black table was a golden bowl filled with moonlight-
coloured velvety “palm” and “honesty”; on a black wall
gleamed the ivory mask of a-faun’s face; from a dark niche
the little silver figure of a dancing girl. It was beautiful, but
deathly. And Gyp, though excited by anything new, alive to all
beauty, longed for air and sunlight. It was a relief, close to
one of the black-curtained windows, to watch the westering sun
shower light on the trees of the Square gardens. She was intro-
duced to a Mr. and Mrs. Gallant, a dark-faced, cynical-looking
man with clever, malicious eyes, and a cornucopia of a woman
with an avid blue stare. The little dancer had “ gone to put on
nothing,” Rosek informed them.

He took Gyp the round of his treasures, scarabs, Rops draw-
ings, death-masks, Chinese pictures, and queer old flutes, with
an air of displaying them for the first time to one who could
truly appreciate. Her instinct apprehended the refined vicious-
ness of this place, where nothing, save taste, would be sacred.
It was her first glimpse into gilt-edged Bohemia, whence the
generosities, élans, struggles of Bohemia proper, are excluded as
from the spheres where bishops move. But no one could have
told that her nerves were crisping as at contact with a corpse.
While showing her those alabaster jars, Rosek laid his hand
softly on her wrist, and in taking it away, let his fingers, softer
than a kitten’s paw, ripple over the skin, then put them to his
''282 NOVELS OF LOVE

lips. Technique! A desperate desire to laugh seized her. And
he saw it. He gave her one look, passed his hand over his face,
and—behold !—it showed as before, unmortified, unconscious.
A deadly little man!

When they returned to the salon, as it was called, Miss Daphne
Wing, in a black kimono, whence her face and arms emerged
more like alabaster than ever, was sitting on a divan beside
Fiorsen. She rose at once and came across to Gyp.

“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen”—why did everything she said begin
with “ Oh! ”—“ isn’t this room lovely? It’s perfect for dancing.
T only brought cream, and flame-colour; they go so beautifully
with black.”

She threw back her kimono for Gyp to inspect her dress—a
girdled cream-coloured shift; and her mouth opened, as if for
a sugar-plum of praise. She murmured:

“Tm rather afraid of Count Rosek.”

ef Why? 29

“ Oh, he’s so critical, and smooth, and he comes up so quietly.
I do think your husband plays wonderfully. Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen,
you are beautiful, aren’t you? What would you like me to
dance first? A waltz of Chopin’s?”

“T love Chopin.”

“Then I shall. I shall dance exactly what you like, because I
do admire you, and I’m sure you’re awfully sweet. Oh, yes; I
can see it. And your husband’s awfully in love with you. You
know, I’ve been studying five years, and I haven’t come out yet.
But now Count Rosek’s going to back me, I expect it’ll be very
soon. Will you come to my first night? Mother says ve got
to be awfully careful. She only let me come this evening because
you were going to be here. Would you like me to begin?”

She slid across to Rosek:

“ Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen wants me to begin; a Chopin waltz, please.
The one that goes like this.”

Gyp sat down beside Fiorsen, and Rosek began playing, his
eyes fixed on the girl, and his mouth loosened from compression
in a sweetish smile. Miss Daphne Wing was standing with her
finger-tips joined at her breast—a statue of ebony and pale wax.
She flung away the black kimono and a thrill swept through Gyp.
She could dance—that common little girl! Every movement of
her round, sinuous limbs had the ecstasy of natural genius,
controlled by the quivering balance of a fine training. “A dove
flying!” Her face had lost its vacancy, or rather its vacancy
''BEYOND 283

had become divine, having that look—not lost but gone before—
which dance demands. Tears came up in Gyp’s eyes. It was
lovely—as when a dove flings itself up in the wind, breasting on
with wings bent back, and poised.

When, after the dance, the girl came and sat down beside her,
Gyp squeezed her hot little hand, but the caress was for her art,
not for this moist little person with the lips avid of sugar-
plums.

“Oh, did you like it? I’m so glad. Shall I go and put on
my flame-colour, now?”

The moment she was gone, comment broke out. The dark
and cynical Gallant thought her dancing like a certain Napier-
kowska’s seen in Moscow, but it had no fire—the touch of passion
would have to be supplied. She wanted love! Love! And
suddenly Gyp was back in the concert-hall, listening to that
other girl singing the song of a broken heart.

“Thy kiss, dear love—
Like watercress gathered fresh from cool streams.”

Love! in this abode—of fauns’ heads, deep cushions, silver
dancing girls! Love! She had a sudden sense of deep abase-
ment. What was she, herself, but just a feast for a man’s
senses? Her home, what but a place like this? Daphne Wing
was back again. Gyp looked at her husband’s face while she
was dancing. It ! How was it that she could see that dis-
turbance in him, and not care? If she had really loved him, to
see his lips like that would have hurt her, but she might have
understood, perhaps, and forgiven. Now she neither quite un-
derstood nor quite forgave.

And that night she murmured :

“Would you rather I were that girl—not me?”

“That girl! I could swallow her at a draught. But you,
my Gyp—I want to drink for ever!”

Was that true? Jf she had loved him—how good to hear!

 
''Vv

Arter this, Gyp was daily more and more in contact with high
Bohemia, that curious composite section of society which em-
braces the neck of music, poetry, and the drama. She felt that
she did not belong to it, nor, in truth, did Fiorsen, who was
much too genuine a Bohemian, and mocked at the Gallants
and even the Roseks of this life, as he mocked at Winton, Aunt
Rosamund, and their world. Life with him made Gyp, too, feel
less and less a part of that old orthodox, well-bred world which
she had known before she married him; but to which she had
never felt that she belonged, since she knew the secret of her
birth. She was, in truth, much too impressionable and naturally
critical to accept the dictates of fact-and-form-governed routine ;
though, of her own accord, she would never have had initiative
enough to step out of its circle. Loosened from those roots,
unable to attach herself to this new soil, and not spiritually
leagued with her husband, she was more and more lonely. Her
only truly happy hours were those spent with Winton or at her
piano. She was always wondering at what she had done, long-
ing to find the deep, the sufficient reason for ever having done it.
But the more she sought and longed, the deeper grew her be-
wildered feeling of being in a cage. Of late, too, another and
more definite uneasiness had come to her.

She spent much time in her garden, where the blossoms had
all dropped, the lilac was over, acacias coming into bloom, and
blackbirds silent.

Winton, who, by careful experiment, had found that from half-
past three to six there was little chance of stumbling across his
son-in-law, came nearly every day for tea and a quiet cigar on
the lawn. He was sitting there with Gyp, when Betty brought
out a card on which were printed the words “ Miss Daphne
Wing.”

“ Bring her out, please, Betty, and some fresh tea, and plenty
of buttered toast; and the chocolates, and any other sweets—
Betty darling.”

Betty, with the expression which always came over her when
called “ darling,” withdrew across the grass, and Gyp said to her
father:

284

coe ama
''BEYOND 285

“Tt’s the little dancer I told you of, Dad. Now you'll see
something perfect. Only, she’ll be dressed. What a pity!”

She was. In warm ivory, shrouded by leaf-green chiffon, with
a girdle of tiny artificial leaves, and a head encircled by other
green leaves, she was like a nymph peering from a bower. If
rather too arresting, it was charming, and no frock could
disguise the beauty of her figure. She was evidently nerv-
ous.

“ Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I thought you wouldn’t mind my coming.
I did so want to see you again. Count Rosek said he thought 1
might. It’s all fixed for my coming-out. Oh, how do you do?”
With lips and eyes opening, she sat down in the chair Winton
placed for her. Gyp, watching his expression, felt inclined to
laugh. Dad, and Daphne Wing!

“Have you been dancing at Count Rosek’s again lately?”

“ Oh, yes, haven’t you—didn’t you—I Oh! yes!”

The thought flashed through Gyp, ‘So Gustav’s been seeing
her, and hasn’t told me!’ But she said at once:

“ Of course; I forgot. When is your ‘ coming-out’ ?”

“ Next Friday week. At the Octagon. Isn’t it splendid?
They’ve given me such a good engagement. I do so want you
and Mr. Fiorsen to come, though!”

“ Of course we will. My father loves dancing, too; don’t you,
Dad?”

“ When it’s good,” said Winton urbanely.

“Oh, mine is good; isn’t it, Mrs. Fiorsen? I mean, I have
worked—ever since I was thirteen, you know. I simply love it.
I think you would dance beautifully, Mrs. Fiorsen. You’ve got
such a perfect figure. I simply love to see you walk.”

Gyp flushed.

“Do have one of these, Miss Wing—they’ve got whole rasp-
berries inside.”

The little dancer put one in her mouth.

“Oh, but please don’t call me Miss Wing! Do call me
Daphne. Mr. Fior—everybody does.”

Conscious of her father’s face, Gyp murmured:

“It’s a lovely name. Won’t you have another? These are
apricot.”

“They’re perfect. You know, my first dress is to be all
orange-blossom; Mr. Fiorsen suggested that. But I expect he
told you. Perhaps you suggested it really; did you?” Gyp
shook her head. “Count Rosek says the world is waiting for

 
''986 NOVELS OF LOVE

me——” She paused with a sugar-plum half-way to her lips,
and added: “ Do you think it is?”

“TI hope so.”

“ He says I’m something new. It would be nice to think that.
He has great taste ; so has Mr. Fiorsen, hasn’t he?”

Conscious of compression behind the smoke of her father’s
cigar, Gyp nodded.

The little dancer placed the sweet in her mouth.

“You see, he married you.”

Then, conscious of Winton’s eyes fixed on her, she became
confused, and said:

“Oh, and isn’t it lovely here—like the country! I’m afraid
I must go; it’s my practice time. It’s so important for me not
to miss any now, isn’t it?” She rose, and Winton got up too.
Gyp saw her eyes, lighting on his rigid hand, grow rounder; her
careful voice floated back:

“ Oh, I do hope ”? But what, could not be heard.

Gyp sat motionless. Bees were murmurous among her flowers,
pigeons among the trees; the sunlight warmed her knees, and
her stretched-out feet through the openwork of her stockings.
The maid’s laughter, the growling of the puppies at play in
the kitchen, came drifting down the garden, with the distant
ery of a milkman up the road. All was very peaceful. But in
her heart were curious emotions, strange, tangled feelings. This
enlightenment regarding the measure of her husband’s frank-
ness came on the heels of another revelation. She had said to
Winton that she did not want to have a child. In her whose
birth had caused her mother’s death there was this more or less
unconscious aversion. And now she was sure one was coming.
She had not reached, knew she could not reach, that spiritual
union which might have made the thought of motherhood a joy.
She was fairly caught in the web of her foolish and presumptuous
mistake! In a few months of marriage she was sure it was a
failure, and hopeless for the future! A hard, natural fact
is needed to bring to a yearning and bewildered spirit knowledge
of the truth. Disillusionment is not welcome, especially when
it is disillusionment with self, as well as with another. She
had been going to—what ?—save Fiorsen from himself! It was
laughable. She had only lost herself. Already she felt in prison,
and by a child would be all the more bound. To some women
the knowledge that a thing must be assuages the nerves. Gyp

 
''BEYOND 287

was the opposite of those. To force her was the way to stir up
every contrary emotion.

And so, while the pigeons cooed and the sunlight warmed
her feet, she spent the bitterest moments of her life—so far.
Pride came to her help. No one must know—certainly not her
father, who had warned her so desperately! She had made her
bed, and would have to lie on it.

When Winton came back, he said:

“JT don’t see the fascination, Gyp.”

“Don’t you think her face really rather perfect?”

“ Common.”

“Yes; but that drops off when she’s dancing.”

Winton looked at her from under half-closed eyelids.

“What does Fiorsen think of her?”

“Does he think of her? JI don’t know.”

She could feel the watchful tightening of his face.

“Daphne Wing! By George!”

The words were resentment and distrust incarnate. His
daughter in peril from—such as that!

After he was gone Gyp sat on till the sun had gone, and the
dew was stealing through her thin frock. To make others happy
was the way to be happy—they said. She would try. Betty—so
stout, and with that rheumatism in her leg—did she ever think
of herself? Or Aunt Rosamund, with her perpetual rescuings
of lost dogs, lame horses, and penniless musicians? And Dad,
for all his man-of-the-world ways, was he not always doing little
things for the men of his old regiment, always thinking of her,
too, and what he could do to give her pleasure? To love people,
and bring them happiness! Was it possible? People were hard
to love, different from birds, beasts and flowers, to love which
seemed natural and easy.

She went up and began to dress for dinner. Which of her
frocks did he like best? The pale, low-cut amber, or that white,
soft one, with the coffee-dipped lace? She decided on the latter.
Scrutinising her image in the glass, she shuddered. That would
all go; she would become like those women, who made her
wonder at their hardihood in showing themselves. Why must
one become unsightly in. order to bring life into the world?
Some women seemed proud to be like that. But she would never
dare to show herself in the days coming.

She finished dressing and went downstairs. Fiorsen had not
come in. She turned from the window with a sigh of relief,
''288 NOVELS OF LOVE

and went in to dinner. She ate with the two pups beside her,
sent them off, and sat down at her piano. And Betty, who
had a weakness for Chopin, sat by the door which partitioned off
the back premises, imagining her “ pretty ” in her white frock,
with the candle-flames on each side, and those lovely lilies in the
vase close by, smelling beautiful. And one of the maids coming
too near, she shooed her away.

It grew late. The maids had gone to bed. Gyp had long
stopped playing, and, by the French window, stood gazing out
into the dark. How warm it was—warm enough to draw forth
the scent of the jessamine along the garden wall! Not a star.
There always seemed so few stars in London. A sound made
her swing round. Something tall was over there in the dark
room, by the open door. She called out, frightened:

“Ts that you, Gustav? ”

He spoke some words that she could not understand. Shutting
the window quickly, she went toward him. The hall light fell
on one side of his face. He was pale; his eyes shone strangely ;
his sleeve was whitened. He muttered thickly:

“Little ghost!” It was the first time Gyp had ever come to
close quarters with drunkenness. How awful if anybody were
to see—how awful! She made a rush to get into the hall and
lock the door leading to the back regions, but he clutched her
shoulder. She stopped dead, fearing to make a noise or pull
him over, and his other hand clutched her other shoulder, so
that he stood steadying himself by her. She was not shocked.
She only felt: ‘What am I to do? How get him upstairs with.
out anyone knowing?’ And she looked up into his face—which
seemed to her pathetic with its shining eyes and its staring white-
ness. She said gently:

* Tt’s all right. Lean on me; we'll go up.”

More than disgust, she felt a horrid pity. Putting her arm
round his waist, she moved with him towards the stairs. If only
no one heard; if only she could get him quietly up! And she
murmured:

“ Don’t talk; lean on me!”

He seemed to make an effort; puffing out his lips with an ex-
pression that would have been comic if not so tragic.

Holding him with all her strength, she began to mount. It
was easier than she had thought. Across the landing, into
the bedroom, and the danger would be over! Done! He was
lying across the bed, and the door shut. Then she gave way to a
''BEYOND 289

fit of shivering so violent that she could hear her teeth chatter-
ing. She caught sight of herself in the big mirror. Her pretty
lace was torn; her shoulders red where his hands had gripped
her, holding himself up. She put on a wrapper and went up to
him. He was in a sort of stupor, and with difficulty she got him
to sit up and lean against the bed-rail, racking her brains for
what to give him. Sal volatile! Surely that must be right.
When at last he was in bed, she stood looking at him. His eyes
were closed; he would not see if she gave way now. But she
would not ery. There was nothing to be done but get into bed
too. She undressed, and turned out the light. He was in a
stertorous sleep. And, staring into the dark, Gyp smiled. She
was thinking of all those young wives, in novels, who, blushing, -
trembling, murmur into the ears of their young husbands that
they “ have something—something to tell them!”
''VI

Looxine at Fiorsen, next morning, still sunk in heavy sleep,
her first thought was: ‘ He looks exactly the same.’ And, sud-
denly, it seemed queer to her that she had not been, and still was
not, disgusted. It was too deep for disgust, and somehow, too
natural. She took this new revelation of his unbridled ways
without resentment. Besides, she had long known of this taste
of his—one cannot drink brandy and not betray it.

She stole from bed, gathered up his boots and clothes all
tumbled on to a chair, and took them forth to the dressing-room.
There she held the garments up to the early light and brushed
them, then, noiseless, stole back to bed, with needle and thread
and her lace. No oné must know; not even he must know. For
the moment she had forgotten that other thing so terrifically
important. It came back to her, very sudden, very sickening.
So long as she could keep it secret, no one should know that
either—he least of all.

The morning passed as usual ; but when she came to the music-
room at noon, she found that he had gone out. She was just
sitting down to lunch when her maid announced:

“ Count Rosek.”

Gyp got up, startled.

“ Say that Mr. Fiorsen is not in. But—but ask if he will have
some lunch, and get a bottle of hock.”

In the few seconds before he appeared, she experienced the
excitement one has entering a field where a bull is grazing.

Not even his severest critics could accuse Rosek of want of
tact. He had hoped to see Gustav, it was charming of her to
give him lunch.

He seemed to have renounced his corsets, and some of his of-
fending looks. His face was slightly browned, as if he had been
taking his due of air and sun. He talked without cynical sub-
meanings, was appreciative of her “charming house,” showed
warmth in his sayings about art and music. Gyp had never
disliked him less. After lunch, they went across the garden to
the music-room, and he sat down at the piano. He had that
deep, caressing touch that lies in fingers of steel worked by a
real passion for tone. Gyp sat on the divan. She was out of

290
''BEYOND 291

his sight there; and she looked at him, wondering. He was
playing Schumann’s Child Music. How could one who produced
such idyllic sounds have sinister intentions? And presently she
said :

“ Count Rosek! ”

“ Madame? ”

“ Will you tell me why you sent Daphne Wing here yester-
day?”

ce Ti ? 3

ce eens

He swung round on the music-stool and looked full at her.

“ Since you ask me, I thought you should know that Gustav
is seeing a good deal of her.”

He had given the exact answer she had divined.

“ Why should I mind that? ”

He got up and said quietly:

“Tam glad that you do not.”

“ Why glad?”

She, too, had risen. Though he was little taller than her-
self, she was conscious of how thick and steely he was beneath
his dapper garments, and of a kind of snaky will-power in his
face. Her heart beat fast.

He came toward her.

“JT am glad you understand that it is over with Gustavy—fin-
ished——” He stopped, seeing that he had gone wrong, and
not knowing quite where. Gyp had simply smiled. A flush
coloured his cheeks.

“He is a volcano soon extinguished. You see, I know him.
Better you should know him, too.”

“ Why ? 39

He said between his teeth:

“That you may not waste your time; there is love waiting
for you.”

Gyp smiled.

“Was it from love of me that you made him drunk last
night?”

“Gyp!” Gyp turned. But he was between her and the door.
“You never loved him. That is my excuse. You have given
him too much already—more than he is worth. Ah! God! I
am tortured by you; I am possessed.”

He had gone suddenly quite white, save for his smouldering
eyes. She was afraid, and, because she was afraid, she stood
''292 NOVELS OF LOVE.

her ground. Should she make a dash for the door that opened
into the little lane? She could feel that he was trying to break
through her defences by sheer intensity of gaze—by a kind of
mesmerism, knowing that he had frightened her.

Whether or no he really moved his feet, he seemed coming
closer inch by inch. She had a horrible feeling—as if his arms
were already round her.

She wrenched her gaze from his, and suddenly his crisp hair
caught her eyes. Surely—surely it was curled with tongs!
Almost inaudibly, the words escaped her lips: “ Une technique
merveiileuse!’’ His eyes wavered; his lips fell apart. Gyp
walked across the room and put her hand on the bell. She had
lost all fear. And without a word, he turned, and went out
into the garden. She watched him cross the lawn. She had
beaten him by the one thing not even violent passions can with-
stand—ridicule. Was it possible that she had really been fright-
ened, nearly failing in that encounter, nearly dominated by that
man—in her own house, with her own maids down there at

. hand?

In the garden was the first real warmth of summer. Mid-
June of a fine year—the air drowsy with hum and scent.

And, sitting in the shade, while the puppies rolled and
snapped, Gyp searched her little world for sense of safety; as if
all round her were a hot, heavy fog in which things lurked, and
she held them away only by pride and the will not to cry out
that she was struggling and afraid.

Fiorsen, leaving his house that morning, had walked till he
saw a taxi-cab. Leaning back therein, with hat thrown off, he
caused himself to be driven rapidly, at random. This was one
of his habits when his mind was not at ease. The motion was
sedative. And he needed sedatives this morning. To wake in
his own bed without remembering how he had got there, was no
more new to him than to many another man of twenty-eight, but
it was new since his marriage. If he had remembered even less,
he would have been more at ease. But he could just recollect
standing in the dark drawing-room, seeing a ghostly Gyp quite
close to him. Somehow, he was afraid; and, when afraid—like
most people—was at his worst.

Tf she had resembled other women in whose company he had
eaten passion-fruit, he would not have felt this carking humilia-
tion. If she had been like them, he would already have “ fin-
''BEYOND 293

ished,” as Rosek had said. But he knew well enough that he
had not “finished.” He might get drunk, might be loose in
every way, but Gyp was hooked into his senses. Her passivity
was her strength, the secret of her magnetism. In her, he felt
that mysterious sentiency of nature, which, even in yielding to
man’s fevers, lies apart with a faint smile—the uncapturable
smile of the woods and fields by day or night, the unfathomable,
soft, vibrating indifference of the flowers and trees and streams,
of the rocks, of bird-songs, and the eternal hum, under sunshine
or starshine. Her dark, half-smiling eyes enticed him, inspired
an unquenchable thirst. And his was one of those natures which,
encountering spiritual difficulty, at once jib off, seek anodynes,
try to bandage wounded egoism with excess—a spoiled child,
with the desperations and the inherent pathos, the something
repulsive and the something lovable which belong to all such.
Having wished for this moon, and got her, he now did not know
what to do with her, kept grasping at her, with a feeling all the
time of getting further and further away. His failure to get
near her spiritually drove him toward folly. Only work kept
him in control at all. For he did work hard; though, even there,
something was lacking. He had all the qualities of making
good, except the moral backbone, which alone could give him
his rightful—as he thought—pre-eminence. It often surprised
and vexed him to find that some contemporary held higher rank
than himself.

In his cab, he mused:

‘Did I do anything that really shocked her last night? Why
didn’t I wait for her this morning and find out the worst?’
And he smiled wryly—to find out the worst was not his forte.
Meditation, seeking as usual a scapegoat, lighted on Rosek.
Like most egoists addicted to women, he had not many friends.
Rosek was the most constant. But even for him, Fiorsen had
at once the contempt and fear that a man naturally uncontrolled
and yet of greater scope has for one of less talent but stronger
will-power. He treated him as a wayward child treats its nurse ;
and needed him as a patron with well-lined pockets.

‘Curse Paul!’ he thought. ‘He must know—he does know—
that brandy of his goes down like water. He saw I was getting
silly!’ He had some game on. Where did I go after? How did
I get home? Did I hurt Gyp?’ If the servants had seen—it
would upset her fearfully! He had a fresh access of fear. He
didn’t know her, never knew what she was thinking or feeling,
''294 NOVELS OF LOVE

never knew anything about her. It was not fair! He didn’t
hide himself from her. He was as free as nature; he let her
see everything. What had he done? The maid had looked very
queerly at him that morning! And suddenly he said to the
driver: “ Bury Street, St. James’s.” He could find out, at all
events, whether Gyp had been to her father’s. He changed his
mind several times before the cab reached that little street; and
a light sweat broke out on his forehead while he was waiting
for the door to be opened.

“ Mrs. Fiorsen here?”

No, ein

“Not been this morning? ”

“No, sir.”

He shrugged away the thought that he ought to give some
explanation of his question, and got into the cab again, telling
the man to drive to Curzon Street. If she had not been to
“that Aunt Rosamund ” either, it would be all right—there was
no one else she would go to. She had not. And, with a sigh
of relief, he began to want breakfast. He would go to Rosek’s,
borrow the money to pay his cab, and lunch there. Rosek was
not in. He would have to go home to get the cab paid. The
driver seemed to eye him queerly now, as though conceiving
doubts about the fare.

Under the trellis, Fiorsen passed a man with a long envelope
in his hand.

Gyp was sitting at her bureau adding up the counterfoils in
her cheque-book. She did not turn round.

“Ts there any lunch? ” he said.

She reached out and rang the bell. He felt sorry for himself.
He had been quite ready to take her in his arms and say: “ For-
give me, little Gyp; I’m sorry!”

Betty answered the bell.

“Please bring up some lunch for Mr. Fiorsen.”

He heard the stout woman sniff as she went out. She was a
part of his ostracism. And he said irritably:

“Do you want a husband who would die if he missed the
luncheon hour ? ”

Gyp held out her cheque-book. He read on the counterfoil:

“Messrs. Travers & Sanborn, Tailors, Account rendered:
£54.3.7.”

Fiorsen turned the peculiar colour which denoted injury to his
self-esteem.
''BEYOND 295

“Did you pay it? You have no business to pay my bills.”

“The man said if it wasn’t paid this time, he’d sue you.
think owing money is undignified. Are there many others?”

“T shall not tell you.”

“T have to keep this house and pay the maids, and I want to
know how I stand. I am not going to make debts.”

Her face had a hardness that he did not know. She was
different from the Gyp of this hour yesterday—when, last in
possession of his faculties, he had seen or spoken to her. This
novel revolt stirred him in strange ways, wounded his self-
conceit, inspired a curious fear, yet excited his senses. He said
softly:

“Money! Curse money! Kiss me!”

“Tt’s childish to curse money. I will spend all the income I
have; but not more, and I will not ask Dad.”

He flung himself down in a chair.

“Ho! Ho! Virtue!”

“ No—pride.”

He said gloomily:

“So you don’t believe in me. You don’t believe I can earn
as much as I want—more than you have—any time? You never
have believed in me.”

“T think you earn now as much as you are ever likely to
earn.”

“Oh! you think that! Well! I don’t want your money!”

rican 7

He looked round. The maid stood in the doorway.

“Please, sir, the driver says can he have his fare, or do. you
want him again? Twelve shillings.”

Fiorsen stared at her in the way that—as the maid often said
—made you ‘ feel a silly.’

© No; (Pay him.”

The girl glanced at Gyp, answered: “ Yes, sir,” and went
out.

Fiorsen laughed. It was droll coming on the top of his as-
sertion.

“That was good, wasn’t it, Gyp?”

But her face was unmoved; and, knowing that she was even
more easily tickled by the incongruous than himself, he felt
again that catch of fear. Something was different. Yes; some-
thing was really different.

“ Did I hurt you last night?”
''296 NOVELS OF LOVE

She shrugged her shoulders and went to the window. He
looked at her darkly, and swung out past her into the garden.
And, almost at once, the sound of his violin, furiously played in
the music-room, came across the lawn.

Gyp listened with a bitter smile. Money, too! But what did
it matter? She could not get out of what she had done. She
could never get out. To-night he would kiss her; and she would
pretend it was all right. And so it would go on and on! Well,
it was her own fault. Taking twelve shillings from her purse,
she put them aside on the bureau to give the maid. And sud-
denly she thought: ‘ Perhaps he’ll get tired of me. If only he
would get tired!’ It was a long way the furthest she had yet
gone.
''VII

Tsz0se who know how, in the doldrums, the sails of the listless
ship droop, and the hope of escape dies day by day, may under-
stand something of the life she began living now. Even the
doldrums come to an end. But a young woman of twenty-three,
who has made a mistake in her marriage, and has only herself
to blame, looks forward to no end, unless she be the new woman,
which Gyp was not. Having settled that she would not admit
failure, and clenched her teeth on the knowledge that she was
going to have a child, she went on keeping things sealed up
even from Winton. To Fiorsen, she managed to behave as
usual, making material life easy and pleasant—playing for him,
feeding him well, indulging his amorousness. To count herself
a martyr would be silly! Her malaise, successfully concealed,
was deeper—of the spitit; the subtle discouragement of one who
has clipped her own wings.

As for Rosek, she treated him as if that little scene had never
taken place. The idea of appealing to her husband in a difficulty
was gone for ever since the night he came home drunk. And
she did not dare to tell her father. But she was always on her
guard, knowing that Rosek would not forgive her for that dart
of ridicule. His insinuations about Daphne Wing she put out
of mind, as she never could have if she had loved Fiorsen. She
set up for herself the idol of pride, and became its faithful wor-
shipper. Only Winton, and perhaps Betty, could tell she was
not happy. Fiorsen’s irresponsibility about money did not worry
her overmuch, for she paid everything in the house—rent, wages,
food, and her own dress—and had so far made ends meet; what
he did outside the house she could not help.

The summer wore on till concerts were over, and it was sup-
posed to be impossible to stay in London. But she dreaded going
away. She wanted to stay on quietly in her little house. It
was this which made her tell Fiorsen her secret one night. His
cheeks, white and hollow from too much London, went a curious
dull red; he got up and stared at her. Gyp made an involun-
tary movement.

“You needn’t look at me. It’s true.”

He clasped his forehead and broke out:

297
''298 NOVELS OF LOVE

“But I don’t want it; I won’t have it—spoiling my Gyp.”
Then quickly going up to her with a scared face: “I don’t want
it; ’m afraid of it. Don’t have it.”

In Gyp’s heart came the same feeling as when he had stood
there drunk, against the wall—compassion, rather than contempt
of his childishness. And taking his hand, she said:

“ All right, Gustav. It shan’t bother you. When I begin to
get ugly, ’ll go away with Betty till it’s over.”

He went down on his knees.

“Oh, no! Oh,no! Oh, no! My beautiful Gyp!”

And Gyp sat like a sphinx, for fear that she too might let slip
those words: “ Oh, no!”

The windows were open, and moths had come in. One had
settled on the hydrangea plant that filled the hearth. Gyp
looked at the soft, white, downy thing, whose head was like a
tiny owl’s against the bluish petals; looked at the purple-grey
tiles down there, and the stuff of her own frock, in the shaded
gleam of the lamps. And all her love of beauty rebelled, called
up by his: “Oh, no!” She would be unsightly soon, and suffer
pain and perhaps die of it, as her own mother had died.

It interested her this night and next day to watch his treat-
ment of the disconcerting piece of knowledge. For when at
last he realised that he had to acquiesce in nature, he began to
jib away from all reminder of it. She was careful not to suggest
that he should go for a holiday without her. But when he was
gone—to Ostend with Rosek—peace fell on Gyp. To be without
that strange, disorderly presence in the house! And awaken-
ing in the sultry silence of the next morning, she utterly failed
to persuade herself that she was missing him. Her heart was
devoid of any emptiness or ache; she only felt how pleasant and
cool and tranquil it was to lie there alone. She stayed quite late
in bed. It was delicious, with window and door wide open and
the puppies running in and out, to lie and doze off, or listen
to the pigeon’s cooing, and the distant sounds of traffic, and feel
in command of herself once more, body and soul. Now that she
had told Fiorsen, she had no longer any desire to keep her condi-
tion secret. She telephoned to her father that she was alone.

Winton had not gone away. Between Goodwood and Don-
caster there was no racing he cared for; one could not ride at
this time of year, so might just as well be in London. August
was to him the pleasantest of all months in town; the club was
empty, and he could sit there without some old bore button-
''BEYOND 299

holing him. Little Boncarte, the fencing-master, was always free
for a bout—Winton had long learned to make his left hand what
his right hand used to be; the Turkish baths in Jermyn Street
were nearly void of their fat clients; he could saunter over to
Covent Garden, buy a melon, and carry it home without meeting
any but the most inferior duchesses in Piccadilly; on warm
nights he could stroll the streets or the parks, smoking his cigar,
thinking vague thoughts, recalling vague memories. The news
that his daughter was alone and free from that fellow was de-
lightful. Where should he dine her? Mrs. Markey was on her
holiday. Why not Blafard’s? Quiet—small rooms—not too
respectable—quite fairly cool. Blafard’s!

When she drove up to Bury Street he was ready, feeling like
a schoolboy off for an exeat. How pretty she was looking—
though pale—her dark eyes, her smile! And stepping quickly
to the cab, he said:

“No; I’m getting in—dining at Blafard’s, Gyp—a night
out!”

To walk into that little restaurant behind her; and passing
through its low red rooms to mark the diners turn and stare
with envy, was so pleasant. He settled her into a far corner
by a window, where she could see and be seen. He wanted her
to be seen; while he himself turned to the world the back wings
of his greyish hair. He had no notion of being disturbed by
the sight of Hivites and Amorites, lapping champagne and
shining in the heat. For, secretly, he was living not only in
this evening, but in an evening of the past, when, in this very
corner, he had dined with her mother. His face then had borne
the brunt; hers had been turned away from inquisition. But of
this he did not speak to Gyp.

He took her news with the expression she knew so well—
tightening his lips and staring a little upward.

“ When?” he said.

“ November.”

The very month! Stretching his hand across the table, he
took hers and pressed it tightly.

“Tl be all right, child; I’m glad.”

Clinging to his hand, Gyp murmured:

“Tm not; but I won’t be frightened—I promise.”

Neither was deceived. But both were good at putting a calm
face on things. Besides, this was “a night out ”—the first since
her marriage of freedom, After his, “ So he’s gone to Ostend?”
''300 NOVELS OF LOVE

and his thought: ‘He would!’ they never alluded to Fiorsen,
but talked of horses, of Mildenham—it seemed to Gyp years
since she had been there—of her childish escapades. And, look-
ing at him quizzically, she asked:

“What were you like as a boy, Dad? Aunt Rosamund says
that you used to get into white rages, when nobody could go near
you. She says you were always climbing trees, or shooting with
a catapult, or stalking things, and that you never told anybody
what you didn’t want to tell them. And weren’t you desperately
in love with your nursery-governess ? ”

Winton smiled. Miss Huntley! with crinkly brown hair, and
blue eyes, and fascinating frocks!

“Yes, yes. By Jove, what a time ago! And my father’s going
off to India. He never came back; killed in that first Afghan
business. When I was fond, I was fond. But I didn’t feel
things like you—not half so sensitive; not a bit like you,
Gyp.”

And watching her unconscious eyes following the movements
of the waiters, never staring, but taking in all that was going on,
he thought: ‘ Prettiest creature in the world!’

“ Well,” he said, “ what would you like to do now—drop into
a theatre or music-hall? ”

Gyp shook her head. It was too hot. Could they just drive,
and then perhaps sit in the park? It had gone dark, and the
air was not quite so exhausted—a little freshness of scent from
the trees in the squares and parks mingled with the fumes of
dung and petrol. Winton gave the same order he had given
that long past evening: “ Knightsbridge Gate.” It had been a
hansom then, and the night air had blown in their faces, instead
of, as now in these taxis, down the back of one’s neck. They
left the cab and crossed the Row; passed the end of the Long
Water, up among the trees. There, on two chairs covered by
Winton’s coat, they sat side by side. No dew was falling yet;
the leaves hung unstirring in the warm, sweet-smelling air.
Blotted against trees or on the grass were other couples darker
than the darkness, very silent. From Winton’s lips cigar smoke
wreathed and curled. He was dreaming. A long ash fell. He
raised his hand to brush it off. Her voice said softly in his
ear:

“Tsn’t it delicious, and warm, and bloomy dark?”

Winton shivered.

“Very jolly! But my cigar’s out, and I haven’t a match.”
''BEYOND 301

Gyp’s hand slipped through his arm.

“’All these people in love, and so dark and whispery—it makes
a sort of strangeness in the air. Don’t you feel it?”

A puff of wind ruffled the leaves; the night, for a moment,
seemed full of whispering; then the sound of a giggle jarred
out.

Gyp rose.

“T feel the dew now, Dad. Can we walk on?”

The spell was over; the night again only a common London
night; the park a space of parching grass and gravel; the people
just clerks and shop-girls walking out.
''Vat

FiorsEn’s letters were documents. He missed her horribly; but
he seemed to be enjoying himself uncommonly. He wanted
money, but failed to tell her how he spent it. Out of a balance
running low, she sent him remittances; this was her holiday,
too, and she could afford to pay for it. She sought out a shop
where she could sell jewelry, and forwarded him the proceeds.
It would give her another week.

One night she went with Winton to the Octagon, where
Daphne Wing was still performing. Remembering the girl’s rap-
ture in her garden, she wrote next day, asking her to lunch and
spend a lazy afternoon.

Miss Daphne came with avidity; pale, and droopy from the
heat, in Liberty silk, with a plain turned down straw hat. After
lunch they settled in the deepest shade of the garden, Gyp in a
wicker chair, Daphne Wing on cushions and the grass. Once
past the exclamatory stage, she laid bare her little soul with
liberality. And Gyp—excellent listener—enjoyed the revelation
of an existence so different from her own.

“ Of course I don’t mean to stay at home any longer than I can
help; only it’s no good going out into life”—this phrase she
often used—* till you know where you are. In my profession
one has to be so careful. Of course, people think it’s worse than
it is; Father gets fits sometimes. But you know, Mrs. Fiorsen,
home’s awful. We have mutton—you know what mutton is—
it’s really awful in your bedroom in hot weather. And there’s
nowhere to practise. What I should like would be a studio. It
would be lovely, somewhere down by the river, or up here near
you. That would be lovely.. You know, I’m putting by. As
soon as ever I have two hundred pounds, I shall skip. What I
think would be perfectly lovely would be to inspire painters and
musicians. I don’t want to be just a common ‘turn ’—ballet
business year after year, and that; I want to be something rather
special. But Mother’s so silly about me; she thinks I oughtn’t
to take any risks at all. I shall never get on that way. It is
so nice to talk to you, Mrs. Fiorsen, because you’re young enough
to know what I feel; and I’m sure you’d never be shocked at
anything. You see, about men: Ought one to marry, or ought

302
''BEYOND 303

one to take a lover? They say you can’t be a perfect artist till
you’ve felt passion. But, then, if you marry, that means mutton
over again, and perhaps babies, and perhaps the wrong man after
all. Ugh! But then, on the other hand, I don’t want to be
raffish. I hate raffish people—I simply hate them. What do you
think? It’s awfully difficult, isn’t it?”

Gyp, perfectly grave, answered:

“That sort of thing settles itself. I shouldn’t bother before-
hand.”

Daphne Wing buried her chin deeper in her hands.

“Yes; I rather thought that, too; of course I could do either
now. But, you see, I really don’t care for men who are not
distinguished. I’m sure I shall only fall in love with a really
distinguished man. That’s what you did—isn’t it?—so you
must understand. I think Mr. Fiorsen is wonderfully distin-
guished.”

Sunlight, piercing the shade, suddenly fell warm on Gyp’s
neck where her blouse ceased. She continued to look gravely
at Daphne Wing.

“Of course, Mother would have fits if I asked her such a
question, and I don’t know what Father would do. Only it is
important, isn’t it? One may go all wrong from the
start; and I do really want to get on. I simply adore my
work. I don’t mean to let love stand in its way; I want to
make it help, you know. Count Rosek says my dancing lacks
passion. I wish you’d tell me if you think it does. I should
believe you.”

Gyp shook her head.

“Tm not a judge.”

Daphne Wing looked up reproachfully.

“Oh, I’m sure you are! If I were a man, I should be passion-
ately in love with you. I’ve got a new dance where I’m supposed
to be a nymph pursued by a faun; it’s so difficult to feel like a
nymph when you know it’s only the ballet-master. Do you
think I ought to put passion into that? ‘You see, I’m supposed
to be flying all the time; but it would be much more subtle,
wouldn’t it, if I could give the impression that I wanted to be
caught? Don’t you think so? ”

Gyp said suddenly:

“ Yes, I think it would do you good to be in love.”

Miss Daphne’s mouth fell a little open; her eyes grew round.
She said:
''304 NOVELS OF LOVE

“You frightened me when you said that. You looked so—
so—intense.”’

A flame, indeed, had leaped up in Gyp. This fluffy, flabby
talk of love set her instincts in revolt. She did not want to
love; she had failed to fall in love. But, whatever love was like,
it did not bear talking about. How was it that this suburban
miss, when she once got on her toes, could twirl one’s emotions
as she did?

“ D’you know what I should simply revel in?” Daphne Wing
went on: “'T’o dance to you here in the garden some night. It
must be wonderful to dance out of doors; and the grass is nice
and hard now. Only, I suppose it would shock the servants.
Do they look out this way?” Gyp shook her head. “TI could
dance over there in front of the drawing-room window. Only
it would have to be moonlight. JI could come any Sunday. I’ve
got a dance where I’m supposed to be a lotus flower—that would
do splendidly. And there’s my real moonlight dance that goes
to Chopin. I could bring my dresses, and change in the music-
room, couldn’t 1?” She sat up cross-legged, gazing at Gyp, and
clasping her hands. “ Oh, may I?”

A desire to give pleasure, the queerness of the notion, and
her real love of seeing this girl dance, made Gyp say:

“ All right; next Sunday.”

Daphne Wing got up, made a rush, and kissed her. Her
mouth was soft, and she smelled of orange blossom; but Gyp
recoiled a little—she hated promiscuous kisses. Abashed, Miss
Daphne hung her head, and said:

“ You looked so lovely; I couldn’t help it, really.”

Gvp gave her hand a compunctious squeeze.

They went indoors, to try over the music for the two dances;
and soon after Daphne Wing departed, full of sugar-plums and
hope.

She arrived punctually at eight o’clock next Sunday, carrying
a small green linen bag which contained her dresses. She was
evidently a little scared. Lobster salad, hock, and peaches re-
stored her courage. She ate heartily. It did not apparently
matter to her whether she danced full or empty; but she would
not smoke.

“ Tt?s bad for the—don’t you know,” she said.

After supper, Gyp shut the dogs into the back premises;
having visions of their rending Miss Wing’s draperies, or calves.
Then they went into the drawing-room, not lighting up, so as
''BEYOND 305

to tell when the moonlight was strong enough outside. This
last night of August the heat was as great as ever—a deep, un-
stirring warmth; the climbing moon shot as yet but a thin
shaft here and there through the heavy leafage. They talked in
low voices, unconsciously playing up to the nature of the es-
capade. When the moon was high enough they stole out across
the garden to the music-room. Gyp lighted the candles.

“ Can you manage?”

Miss Daphne had already shed half her garments.

“Oh, I’m so excited, Mrs. Fiorsen! I do hope I shall dance
well.”

Gyp went back to the house and sat down at the piano, turn-
ing her eyes towards the garden. A blurred white shape flitted
suddenly across the darkness at the far end and became mo-
tionless—like a white-flowering bush under the trees—waiting
for the moon. Gyp began to play. She played a little Sicilian
pastorale that the herdsmen play on their pipes coming down
from the hills, from very far, rising, swelling to full cadence,
and falling away again to nothing. The moon rose over the
trees; its light flooded the face of the house, down on to the
grass, and spread slowly, till it caught the border of sunflowers
along the garden wall with a stroke of magical, unearthly
colour—gold that was not gold.

Gyp began to play the dance. The pale blur in the darkness
stirred. The moonlight fell on the girl now, standing with
arms spread, holding out her drapery—a white, winged statue.
Then, like a gigantic moth she fluttered forth, blanched and
noiseless, flew over the grass, spun and hovered. The moon-
light etched out the shape of her head, painted her hair a pallid
gold. In the silence, with that unearthly gleam of colour along
the sunflowers and on the girl’s head, it was as if a spirit had
dropped into the garden and was fluttering to and fro, unable
to get out.

A voice behind Gyp said: “My God! What’s this? An
angel?”

Fiorsen was standing half-way in the darkened room, star-
ing out into the garden. The girl stopped, her eyes round as
saucers, her mouth open, her limbs rigid with interest and
affright. Suddenly she turned, and, gathering her garment,
fled, her limbs gleaming in the moonlight.

Gyp sat looking up at the apparition of her husband. She
could just see his eyes straining after that flying nymph. Miss
''306 NOVELS OF LOVE

Daphne’s farm! Why, even his ears were pointed! Had she
never noticed before how like a faun he was? Yes—on her
wedding night! And she said quietly:

“Daphne Wing was rehearsing her new dance. So you're
back! Why didn’t you let me know? Are you all right—you
look splendid!”

Fiorsen bent and kissed her.

But even while his lips were pressed on hers, she felt rather
than saw his eyes straying to the garden, and thought, “ He
would like to be kissing that girl! ”

While he went to get his things from the cab, she slipped out
to the music-room.

Miss Daphne, fully dressed, was stuffing her garments into
the green linen bag. She looked up.

“Oh! Does he mind? It’s awful, isn’t it?”

Gyp strangled her desire to laugh.

“It’s for you to mind.”

“Oh, J don’t, if you don’t! How did you like the dance?”

“ Lovely! When you’re ready—come along!”

“Oh, I think I’d rather go home, please! It must seem so
funny!”

“Would you like to go by this back way into the lane? You
turn to the right, into the road.”

“Oh, yes; please. It would have been better if he could have
seen the dance properly, wouldn’t it? What will he think?”

Gyp smiled, and opened the door into the lane.

When she returned, Fiorsen was at the window, gazing out.
Was it for her or for the flying nymph?
''IX

SEPTEMBER and October passed. There were more concerts, not
very well attended. Fiorsen’s novelty had worn off, nor had his
playing enough sweetness and sentiment for the big Public. A
financial crisis had developed, but it seemed remote and unreal
in the shadow of her coming time. She made no garments, no
preparations of any kind. Why make what might never be
needed? She played for Fiorsen a great deal, for herself not
at all, read many books—poetry, novels, biographies—taking
them in at the moment and forgetting them at once. Winton
and Aunt Rosamund, by tacit agreement, came on alternate
afternoons. And Winton would take the evening train after
leaving her, to go racing or cub-hunting, returning the morn-
ing of the day after to pay his next visit. He had no dread just
then like that of an unoccupied day face to face with anxiety.

Betty, who had been present at Gyp’s birth, was in a queer
state. The obvious desirability of such events to one of a
motherly type, defrauded by fate of children, was terribly im-
pinged on by that old memory, and a solicitude for her “ pretty ”
far exceeding what she would have had for a daughter of her
own. What a peony regards as a natural happening to a peony,
she watches with awe when it happens to the lily. That other
single lady of a certain age, Aunt Rosamund, the very antithesis
to Betty—a long, thin nose and a mere button, a sense of divine
rights and no sense of rights at all, a drawl and a comforting
wheeze, length and circumference, decision and the curtsey to
providence, humour and none, dyspepsia, and the digestion of
an ostrich, with other appositions—Aunt Rosamund was also
uneasy, as only one could be who disapproved of uneasiness, and
habitually joked it into retirement.

But of all those around Gyp, Fiorsen gave the most interest-
ing display. He had not even an elementary notion of dis-
guising his state of mind. And his state of mind was primitive.
He wanted Gyp as she had been. The thought that she might
never become herself again forced him to drink brandy, and
come home only a little less far gone than that first time. Gyp
had often to help him go to bed. On two or three occasions, he
suffered so that he was out all night. To account for this, she

307
''308 NOVELS OF LOVE

devised the formula of a room at Count Rosek’s, where he slept
when music kept him late, so as not to disturb her. Whether
the servants believed her or not, she never knew. Nor did she
ever ask him where he went—too proud, and not feeling that
she had the right.

Conscious of the unesthetic nature of her condition, she felt
she could no longer be attractive to one so easily upset in his
nerves, so intolerant of ugliness. As to deeper feelings about
her—had he any? He certainly never gave anything up, or
sacrificed himself in any way. If she had loved, she herself
would want to give up everything to the loved one; but then—
she would never love! And yet he seemed frightened about her.
It was puzzling! But perhaps she would not be puzzled much
longer about that or anything; for she often had the feeling
that she would die; and, at times, felt that she would be glad
to die. Life had defrauded her, or, rather, she had defrauded
herself of life. Was it really only a year since that glorious
day’s hunting when Dad and she, and the young man with the
irrepressible smile, had slipped away ahead of all the field—the
fatal day Fiorsen descended from the clouds and asked for her?
A longing for Mildenham came on her, to get away there with
her father and Betty.

She went at the beginning of November.

Over her departure Fiorsen behaved like a tired child that
will not go to bed. He could not bear to be away from her; but
when she had gone, he spent a furious Bohemian evening. At
about five, he woke with “an awful cold feeling in my heart,”
as he wrote to Gyp next day—“an awful feeling, my Gyp; I
walked up and down for hours” (in reality, half an hour at
most). ‘‘ How shall I bear to be away from you at this time?
I feel lost.” Next day he found himself in Paris with Rosek.
“T could not stand,” he wrote, “the sight of the streets, of the
garden, of our room. When I come back I shall stay with
Rosek. Nearer to the day I will come; I must come to you.”
But Gyp, when she read the letter, said to Winton: “ Dad, when
it comes, don’t send for him. I don’t want him here.”

Those letters of his destroyed the last remnant of her feeling
that somewhere in him must be something fine and beautiful!
like the sounds he made with his violin. And yet she felt those
letters genuine in a way, pathetic, and with real feeling of a
sort.

At Mildenham she began to lose hopelessness about herself;
''BEYOND 309

had the sensation of wanting to live in the new life within her.
She first felt it going into her old nursery, where everything
was as it had been when she was a child of eight; her old red
doll’s house, the side of which opened to display the various
floors; the worn Venetian blinds, the rattle of whose fall had
sounded in her ears so many hundred times; the high fender,
near which she had lain so often on the floor, chin on hands,
reading Grimm, or “ Alice in Wonderland,” or histories of
England. Here, too, this new child would live among the old
familiars. And the whim seized her to face her hour in the
old nursery, not the room where she had slept as a girl. In the
nursery—there was safety, comfort! And when she had been at
Mildenham a week, she made Betty change her over.

No one in that house was half so calm as Gyp. Betty was not
guiltless of crying at odd moments. Mrs. Markey had never
made such bad soups. Markey forgot himself in talk. Winton
was like an unquiet spirit. His voice, so measured and dry,
too plainly disclosed the anxiety in his heart. Gyp felt it won-
derful that they should all care so much! She would sit staring
into the fire with her wide, dark eyes, unblinking as an owl’s at
night—wondering how she could make up to her father, whom
already she had nearly killed by coming into life at all.
''x

From the day of the nurse’s arrival, Winton gave up hunting.
He was never away from the house for more than half an hour
at a time. Distrust of doctors did not prevent him having ten
minutes every morning with the old practitioner who had treated
Gyp for mumps, measles, and the other ills of childhood. Old
Rivershaw was a peculiar survival. He smelled of mackintosh,
had purplish cheeks, a rim of dyed hair, and bulging grey blood-
shot eyes. He was short in body and wind, drank port-wine, took
snuff, read The Times, spoke in a husky voice, and used a very
small brougham with a very old black horse. But he had a
certain low cunning, which had defeated many ailments, and
his reputation for assisting people into the world stood high.
Every morning punctually at twelve, the crunch of his
brougham’s wheels would be heard. Winton would get up, and
take out a decanter of port, a biscuit canister, and a glass.
When the doctor appeared, he would say:

“ Well, doctor? How is she?”

“ Nicely; quite nicely.”

“ Nothing to make one anxious?”

With eyes straying to the decanter, the doctor would murmur:

“Cardiac condition, capital—a littl—um—not to matter.
Taking its course. These things!”

“ Glass of port, doctor?”

An expression of surprise would pass over the doctor’s face.

“Cold day—ah, perhaps And he would blow his nose
on his purple-and-red bandanna.

Watching him drink his port, Winton would remark:

“We can get you at any time, can’t we?”

“Never fear, my dear sir! Little Miss Gyp—old friend of
mine. At her service day and night. Never fear!”

A sensation of comfort would pass through Winton, which
would last quite twenty minutes after the crunching of the
wheels and the mingled perfumes had died away.

By Gyp’s request, they kept from him knowledge of when her
pains began. After the first bout, when she was lying half
asleep in the old nursery, he happened to go up. The nurse—a
bonny creature—met him in the sitting-room. Accustomed to

310

 
''BEYOND dll

the “fuss and botheration of men” at such times, she was pre-
pared to deliver a lecture. But, affected by the look on his face,
she simply whispered :

“Tt’s beginning; don’t be anxious—she’s not suffering just
now. We shall send for the doctor soon. She’s very plucky ” ;
and with an unaccustomed sensation of respect and pity, she
repeated: “ Don’t be anxious, sir.”

“Tf she wants to see me at any time, I shall be in my study.
Save her all you can, nurse.”

The nurse returned pensive to Gyp, who said:

“Was that my father? I didn’t want him to know.”

“That’s all right, my dear.”

“ How long do you think before it’ll begin again, nurse? I’d
like to see him.”

The nurse stroked her hair.

“ Soon enough when it’s all over and comfy. Men are always
fidgety.”

Gyp looked at her, and said quietly:

“You see, my mother died when I was born.”

The nurse smoothed the bed-clothes.

“'That’s nothing—that is, [ mean—it has no connection what-
ever.”

And seeing Gyp smile, she thought: ‘ Well, I am a fool.’

“Tf by any chance I don’t get through, I want to be cre-
mated. Will you remember, nurse? I can’t tell my father that
just now; it might upset him.”

And the nurse thought: ‘ That can’t be done without a will or
something, but I’d better promise. It’s a morbid fancy, and yet
she’s not a morbid subject, either” And she said:

“Very well, my dear; only, you’re not going to do anything
of the sort.”

“T’m awfully ashamed, wanting all this attention, and mak-
ing people miserable.”

The nurse, still busy with the bed-clothes, murmured :

“Don’t you fancy you’re half the trouble most of them are.
Yowre going to get on splendidly.” And she thought: ‘Odd!
She’s never once spoken of her husband. I don’t like it for this
sort—too sensitive; her face touches you.’

Gyp murmured:

“T’d like to see my father, please; and rather quick.”

The nurse, after a swift look, went out.

Gyp had clenched her hands under the bed-clothes. Novem-
''312 NOVELS OF LOVE

ber! Acorns and the leaves—a nice, damp, earthy smell! Acorns
all over the grass. She used to drive the old retriever in harness
on the lawn covered with acorns and the dead leaves, and the
wind still blowing them off the trees—in her brown velvet dress!
Who was it had called her once “a wise little owl,” in that
dress? And her heart sank—the pain was coming again. Win-
ton’s voice from the door said:

“ Well, my pet?”

“Tt was only to see how you are. I’m all right.”

Her forehead was wet to his lips.

Outside, in the passage, her smile, like something actual on
the air, preceded him—the smile that had just lasted out. But
when he was back in the study, he suffered. Why could he not
have that pain to bear instead ?

The crunch of the brougham brought his march over the
carpet to an end. He went out into the hall and looked into the
doctor’s face—he had forgotten that this old fellow knew noth-
ing of his special reason for deadly fear. Then he turned back
into his study. A wild south-west wind was whirling wet drift-
leaves against the panes. It was here that he had stood looking
out into the dark, when Fiorsen came down to ask for Gyp a
year ago. Why had he not bundled the fellow out neck and
crop, and taken her away ?—India, Japan—anywhere! She had
not loved that fiddler, never really loved him. Monstrous! Full
bitterness swept over Winton, and he groaned aloud. He went
over to the bookcase; there were the few books he ever read, and
he took one out. “ Life of General Lee.” He put it back and
took another, a novel of Whyte-Melville’s: “ Good for Nothing.”
Sad book—sad ending! It dropped from his hand with a flump
on to the floor. In icy discovery, he had seen his life as it would
be if for a second time he had to bear such loss. She must not
die! If she did—then, for him ! In old times they buried
a man with his horse and his dog, as if at the end of a good run.
There was always that! The extremity of this thought brought
relief. He sat down, and, for a long time, stayed staring into
the fire in a sort of coma. Then his feverish fears began again.
Why the devil didn’t they come and tell him something, any-
thing—rather than this silence, this deadly waiting? The front
door shutting? Wheels? At the doo? stood Markey, holding in
his hand some cards.

“Tady Summerhay; Mr, Bryan Summerhay. I said ‘ Not at
home,’ sir.”

 
''BEYOND 313

Winton nodded.

“You have had no lunch, sir.”

“ What time is it?”

“ Four o’clock.”

“ Bring in my fur coat and the port, and make the fire up. I
want any news there is.”

Markey nodded.

Odd to sit in a fur coat before a fire, and the day not cold!
They said you lived on after death. He had never been able to
feel that she was living on. She lived in Gyp. And now if
Gyp ! He got up and drew the curtains.

It was seven o’clock when the doctor came down. Winton was
still sitting before the fire, motionless, shrunk into his fur coat.
He raised himself a little and looked round.

The doctor puckered his face, drooping his eyelids half-way
across his bulging eyes; it was his way of smiling. “ Nicely,” he
said ; “ nicely—a girl. No complications.”

Winton’s lips opened, he raised his hand. Then, the habit of
a lifetime inhibiting, he stayed motionless.

“ Glass of port, doctor?”

Above the glass the doctor seemed to muse: ‘ H’m! “‘the fifty-
two.” Give me “ the sixty-eight ”—wmore body.’

After a time, Winton went up. In the outer room he had a
return of his cold dread. “ Perfectly successful—the patient
died from exhaustion!” A tiny squawking noise failed to re-
assure him. He cared nothing for that new being. Suddenly
he found Betty just behind him.

“ What is it, woman? Don’t!”

She was sobbing, and gurgling:

“ She looks so lovely—oh dear, she looks so lovely!”

Pushing her abruptly aside, Winton peered in through the
just-opened door. Gyp was lying still and white; her eyes, very
dark, were fastened on her baby. Her face wore a kind of won-
der. She did not see Winton, who stood stone-quiet, watching,
while the nurse moved about her business behind a screen. This
was the first time in his life that he had seen a mother with her
just-born baby. The look on her face—gone right away—
amazed him. She had never seemed to like children, had said
she did not want a child. He went ir. She made a faint mo-
tion toward the baby, and her eyes smiled. Winton looked at
that swaddled speckled mite: then, bending down, kissed her
hand and tiptoed away.

 
''314 NOVELS OF LOVE

At dinner he drank champagne, benevolent towards all the
world. Watching the smoke of his cigar, he thought: ‘ Must
send that chap a wire.’ After all, he was a fellow-being—might
be suffering, as he himself had suffered only two hours ago. To
keep him in ignorance——! And, writing:

“ All well, a daughter.—WinTon,” sent it out with the order
that a groom should take it in that night.

Gyp was sleeping when he stole up at ten o’clock.
''XI

RETURNING the next afternoon from the first ride for several
days, Winton passed the station fly rolling away from the drive-
gate with the light-hearted disillusionment of a quite empty
vehicle.

The sight of a fur coat and broad-brimmed hat in the hall
warned him of what had happened.

“ Mr. Fiorsen, sir; gone up to Mrs. Fiorsen.”

“Did he bring things? ”

“ A bag, sir.”

“ Get a room ready, then.”

To dine ¢éte-d-téte with that fellow!

Gyp had passed the strangest morning in her life, so far. The
tug of her baby’s lips gave her the queerest sensation; a sort of
meltedness, an infinite warmth, a desire to grip the little crea-
ture right into her. Yet, neither her sense of humour nor her
sense of beauty was deceived. It was a queer little creature,
with a tuft of black hair, and in grace greatly inferior to a
kitten. Its tiny, pink, crisped fingers with infinitesimal nails,
its microscopic curly toes, and solemn black eyes—when they
showed, its inimitable stillness when it slept, its incredible vigour
when it fed, were all, as it were, miraculous. Withal, she had a
feeling of gratitude to one who had not killed nor even hurt her
so very desperately—gratitude because she had succeeded, per-
formed her part of mother perfectly—the nurse had said so—
she, so distrustful of herself! Instinctively she knew, too, that
this was her baby, not his, going “to take after her,’ as they
called it. How it succeeded in giving that impression she could
not tell, unless by its passivity, and dark eyes. From one till
three they had slept together with perfect soundness and una-
nimity. She awoke to find the nurse standing by the bed, look-
ing as if she wanted to tell her something.

“Someone to see you, my dear.”

Gyp thought: ‘He! I don’t know—I don’t know.’ Her face
expressed this, for the nurse said at once:

“ Are you quite up to it?”

“Yes. Only, not for five minutes, please.”

Her spirit had been very far away, she wanted time before

315
''316 NOVELS OF LOVE

she saw him—to know in some sort what she felt now; what this
mite lying beside her had done for her and him. It was his,
too—this tiny, helpless being. No, it was not his! He had not
wanted it, and now that she had been through the torture, it was
hers, not his—never his. Then came the old accusing thought:
‘But I married him—I chose to marry him. I can’t get out of
that!’ And she felt as if she must cry out to the nurse: ‘ Keep
him away; I don’t want to see him.’ She forced the words back,
and said:

“ Now, I’m ready.”

She noticed his clothes first—a dark grey suit, with little
lighter lines—she had chosen it herself; his tie was in a bow,
not a sailor’s knot, his hair brighter than usual—as always just
after being cut; and surely the hair was growing down again in
front of his ears. Then, almost with emotion, she realised that
his whole face was quivering. He came in on tiptoe, crossed very
swiftly to the bed, very swiftly knelt down, and, taking her hand,
turned it over and put his face to it. The bristles of his
moustache tickled her palm; his nose flattened itself against her
fingers, and his lips kept murmuring words into the hand, with
the moist warm touch of his ips. Gyp knew he was burying
there all his remorse, the excesses, perhaps, he had committed
while she had been away from him, burying the fears he had felt,
and the emotion at seeing her so white and still. In a minute he
would raise a quite different face. ‘Why don’t I love him?’ she
thought. ‘There’s something lovable. Why don’t 1?’

His eyes lighted on the baby; he was grinning.

“Oh, my Gyp, what a funny one! Oh, oh, oh!” His face
slowly puckered into comic disgust. Gyp too had seen the
humours of her baby, its little reddish pudge of a face, its
twenty-seven black hairs, the dribble at its almost invisible
mouth; but she had also seen it as a miracle; and there surged
up in her all the old revolt against his lack of consideration. It
was not funny—her baby—not ugly! Or, if so, she was not fit
to be told of it. Fiorsen put his finger out and touched its cheek.

“Tt is real—so it is. Mademoiselle Fiorsen. Tk, tk!”

The baby stirred. And Gyp thought: ‘If I loved him, I
wouldn’t mind his laughing at my baby. It would be different.’

“Don’t wake her!” she whispered, felt his eyes on her, and
knew that his interest in the baby had ceased and he was think-
ing, ‘ How long before I have you in my arms again?’ And,
suddenly, she had a sinking sensation that she had never yet
''BEYOND 317

known. When she opened her eyes again, the nurse was holding
something beneath her nose and muttering: “Well, I am a
d d fool!” Fiorsen was gone,

Seeing Gyp’s eyes once more open, the nurse withdrew the
ammonia, replaced the baby, and saying: “ Now go to sleep!”
withdrew behind the screen. Like all robust personalities, she
visited on others her vexations with herself. But Gyp did not
sleep; she gazed at her sleeping baby, and at the pattern of the
wall-paper, trying mechanically to find the bird caught at in-
tervals amongst its brown-and-green foliage—one bird in each
alternate square of the pattern, so that there was always a bird
in the centre of four other birds. And the bird was of green
and yellow with a red beak.

 

On being turned out of the nursery with the assurance that it
was “only a little faint,” Fiorsen went downstairs disconsolate.
This dark house where he was an unwelcome stranger was in-
supportable. He wanted nothing in it but Gyp, and Gyp had
fainted at his touch. He opened a door. A piano! The draw-
ing-room. Ugh! No fire—what misery! He recoiled to the
doorway and stood listening. Not a sound. Grey light in the
cheerless room; dark already in the hall behind him. What a
life these English lived—worse than the winter in his old coun-
try home in Sweden, where, at all events, they kept good fires.
And, suddenly, he revolted. Stay here and face that father!
Stay here for a night of this! Gyp was not his Gyp, lying there
with that baby beside her, in this hostile house. Smothering his
footsteps, he made for the outer hall. There were his coat and
hat. He put them on. His bag? He could not see it. No
matter! They could send it after him. He would write—say
that her fainting had upset him—that he could not risk making
her faint again, nor stay in the house so near her, yet so far.
She would understand. And there came over him a sudden
wave of longing. Gyp! He wanted her. To look at her and
kiss her, and feel her his own again! And, opening the door, he
passed out on to the drive and strode away, very miserable and
sick at heart. All the way to the station through the darkening
lanes, and in the railway carriage going up, he felt that aching
wretchedness. Only in the lighted street, driving back to
Rosek’s, did he shake it off a little. At dinner and after, he
nearly lost it; but it came back again, till sleep relieved him
with its darkness and dreams.
''XII

Gyp’s recovery proceeded at first with a sure rapidity which de-
lighted Winton. As the nurse said: She was beautifully made,
and that had a lot to do with it!

Before Christmas Day, she was already out, and on Christmas
morning the old doctor, by way of present, pronounced her fit to
go home when she liked, That afternoon, she was not so well,
and next day back again upstairs. Nothing seemed definitely
wrong with her save a desperate lassitude; as if the knowledge
that to go back only needed her decision, had been too much for
her. And, since no one knew her inward feelings, all were
puzzled except Winton. The nursing of her child was promptly
stopped.

Not till the middle of January did she say to him:

“T must go home, Dad.”

The word “ home ” hurt, and he only answered :

“Very well, Gyp; when?”

“The house is quite ready. I think I had better go to-
morrow. He’s still at Rosek’s. I won’t let him know. Two or
three days there by myself first would be better for settling baby
ing’

“Very well; I'll take you up.”

He made no effort to ascertain her feelings towards Fiorsen.
He knew them too well.

They travelled next day, reaching London at half-past two.
The installation of Betty and the baby in the spare room that
was now to be the nursery, absorbed all her first energies. Light
was just beginning to fail when, still in her fur, she took a key
of the music-room and crossed the garden, to see how all had
fared during her ten weeks’ absence. What a wintry garden!
How different from that languorous, warm, moonlit night when
Daphne Wing had come dancing out of the shadow of the dark
trees, Bare and sharp the boughs against the grey, darkening
sky—not a song of any bird, not a flower! She glanced back at
the house. It looked cold and white, but there were lights in
her room and in the nursery, and someone just drawing the
curtains. The leaves were off, she could see the other houses of

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''BEYOND 319

the road, each different in shape and colour, as is the habit of
London houses. It was cold, frosty; she hurried down the path.
Four little icicles had formed beneath the window of the music-
room, and she broke one off. There must be a fire in there, she
could see the flicker through the curtains not quite drawn.
Thoughtful Ellen had been airing it! And, suddenly, she stood.
still. Through the chink in the drawn curtains she had seen
two figures seated on the divan. Something spun round in her
head. ‘Then, with a kind of deadly coolness, she deliberately
looked in. He and Daphne Wing! His arm was round the
girl’s neck, her face turned back and up, gazing at him, the lips
parted, the eyes hypnotized, adoring.

Gyp raised her hand. For a second it hovered close
to the glass. With a sick feeling, she dropped it and turned.
away.

Never would she show him or that girl that they could hurt
her! They were safe from any scene she would make—safe in
their nest! And, across the frosty grass, through the unlighted
drawing-room, she went upstairs, locked her door, and sat down
before the fire. Pride raged within her. She stuffed her hand-
kerchief between her teeth and lips, unconsciously. Her eyes
felt scorched from the fire-flames, but she did not trouble to hold
her hand before them.

Suppose she had loved him! The handkerchief dropped; she
looked at it with wonder—blood-stained. Away from the scorch-
ing of the fire, she sat quite still, a smile on her lips. That girl’s
eyes, like a little adoring dog’s—that girl, who had fawned on
her so! She had got her “distinguished man”! She sprang
up and looked at herself in the glass. In her own house! Why
not here—in this room? Why not before her eyes? Not yet a
year married! It was almost funny—almost funny! And she
had her first calm thought: ‘ I am free.’

But it did not seem to mean anything to a spirit so stricken in
its pride. She moved closer to the fire again. Why had she not
tapped on the window? To have seen that girl’s face ashy with.
fright! To have seen him—caught—in the room she had made
beautiful for him, where she had played for him so many hours!
How long had they used it for their meetings—sneaking in by
that door from the back lane? Perhaps even before she went
away—to bear his child! And there began in her a struggle
between mother instinct and the sense of outrage—a dumb
tug-of-war—would she feel her baby all hers now, or would
''320 NOVELS OF LOVE

it have slipped away from her heart, and be a thing almost
abhorrent ?

She huddled nearer the fire, cold and physically sick, with the
thought: ‘If I don’t let the servants know I’m here, they might
go out and see what I saw!’ Had she shut the drawing-room
window when she returned? She rang the bell and unlocked
the door. The maid came up.

“ Please shut the drawing-room window, Ellen; and tell Betty
I’m afraid I got a little chill travelling. I’m going to bed.
Ask her if she can manage with baby.” The girl’s face wore an
expression of concern, even of commiseration, but not that flut-
tered look which must have been there if she had known.

“Yes, m’m; I'll get you a hot-water bottle, m’m. Would you
like a hot bath and a cup of hot tea at once? ”

Gyp nodded. Anything! And when the maid was gone, she
thought: ‘ A cup of hot tea! What should it be but hot?’

The maid came back with the tea; she was an affectionate girl,
who admired Gyp, and was her partisan in a household which
lacked unity. The mistress was much too good for him—a
foreigner—and such ’abits! Manners—he hadn’t any! And no
good would come of it. Not if you took her opinion!

“ve turned the water in, m’m. Will you have a little
mustard in it?”

And, going downstairs for the mustard, she told cook:
“There’s that about the mistress that makes you quite pa-
thetic.” The cook, fingering her concertina, for which she had
a passion, answered :

“‘ She “ides up her feelin’s. Thank ’eaven she haven’t got that
drawl that ’er old aunt ’as—always makes me feel to want to say,
‘Buck up, old dear, you ain’t ’alf that precious.’ ”

And, drawing out her concertina to its full length, with cau-
tionary softness she began to practise, ““ Home, Sweet Home!”

To Gyp, lying in her hot bath, those muffled strains mounted,
like the far-away humming of large flies. The heat of the water,
the pungent smell of the mustard, and that droning hum slowly
soothed and drowsed away the vehemence of feeling. Some day
she, too, would love! Strange that she should feel that at such
a moment! Yes; some day love would come to her. And there
floated before her the adoring look on Daphne Wing’s face, the
shiver that had passed along her arm. Pity crept into her heart
—half-bitter, half-admiring. Why should she grudge—she who
did not love? The sound, like the humming of large flies, grew
''BEYOND 321

deeper, more vibrating. Cook in her passion was swelling out
her music on the phrase,

“Be it ne-e-ver so humble,
There’s no-o place like home! ”
''XIII

THat night Gyp slept as though nothing had happened and
there were no future at all before her. She woke into misery.
Her pride would force her to keep an unmoved face and live an
unmoved life; but the struggle between mother-instinct and
revolt was still going on. She was afraid to see her baby.

She got up at noon and stole downstairs. She had not realised
quite how violent was her struggle over his child till she was
passing the door of the room where it was lying. If she had not
been ordered to give up nursing, that struggle would never have
come. Her heart ached, but a demon drove her past the door.
Downstairs she pottered round, dusting her china, putting in
order the books which, after house-cleaning, the maid had ar-
ranged almost too carefully, so that the first volumes of Dickens
and Thackeray followed each other on the top shelf, and the
second volumes followed each other on the bottom shelf. And all
the time she thought: ‘ What do I care how the place looks? It
is not my home. It can never be my home!?

For lunch she drank beef tea, keeping up the fiction of
indisposition. After that, she sat down to write. Something
must be decided! But nothing came—not one word—not even
the way to address him. The maid brought a note from Aunt
Rosamund, and the dogs, who fell frantically on their mistress
and began to fight for her possession. She went on her knees to
separate them, and their avid tongues furiously licked her cheeks.
At those kisses the band round her heart gave way; she was
overwhelmed with longing for her baby. And, followed by the
dogs, she went upstairs.

Gyp wrote a postcard that evening:

“ We are back.”

He would not get it till he woke about eleven; and with the
instinct to take all the respite she could, she wandered about all
day shopping and trying not to think. Returning at tea-time,
she went straight up to her baby. He had come, and gone out
with his violin to the music-room.

Gyp needed all her self-control. Soon the girl would come
fluttering down that dark, narrow lane; perhaps at this very
minute her fingers were tapping at the door, and he was opening

322
''BEYOND 323

it to murmur: “No; she’s back!” Ah, then the girl would
shrink! The rapid whispering—some other meeting-place!
Lips to lips, and that look on the girl’s face; till she hurried
away from the shut door, in the darkness, disappointed! And
he, on that silver-and-gold divan, gnawing his moustache, his
eyes—catlike—staring at the fire! And then, perhaps, from his
violin would come one of those swaying bursts of sound, with
tears in them, and the wind in them, that had of old bewitched
her!

“ Open the window just a little, Betty dear—it’s hot.”

Music—rising, falling! Why did it so move one even when
it was the voice of insult! And she thought: ‘ He will expect
me to go out there again and play for him. But I will not,
never!’

She went into her bedroom, changed hastily into a teagown,
and went down. A little china shepherdess on the mantelshelf
attracted her attention. She had bought it three and more
years ago, when she first came to London and life seemed just
a long cotillion, with herself for leader. It seemed now the cool
and dainty symbol of another world, without depths or shadows
—not a happy world!

She had not long to wait before he tapped on the drawing-
room window. Why did faces gazing in through glass from
darkness always look hungry—searching, appealing for what you
had and they had not? And while undoing the latch she
thought: ‘ What am I going to say?’ The ardour of his gaze,
voice, hands, seemed to her comic; even more comically false his
look of disappointment when she said:

“ Please take care; I’m still brittle. Have you had a good
time at Count Rosek’s?” And, without her will, the words
slipped out: “ I’m afraid you’ve missed the music-room !”

His stare wavered ; he began to walk up and down.

“Missed! Missed everything! I have been very miserable,
Gyp. You’ve no idea how miserable. Yes, miserable, miser-
able!” With each repetition of the word his voice grew gayer.
And kneeling down, he stretched his long arms round her: “ Ah,
my Gyp! I shall be a different being, now.”

Gyp went on smiling. Between that, and stabbing these false
raptures to the heart, there seemed nothing she could do, The
moment his hands relaxed, she got up and said:

“You know there’s a baby in the house?”

“Ah, the baby! I'd forgotten. Let’s go up and see it.”
''324 NOVELS OF LOVE

Gyp answered :

“You go.”

She could feel him thinking: ‘ Perhaps it will make her nice
to me!’ He turned suddenly and went.

She stood with eyes shut, seeing the divan in the music-room
and the girl’s arm shivering. Then, going to the piano, she
began to play a polonaise.

That evening they dined out, and went to “ The Tales of Hoff-
mann.” By such devices it was possible to put off a little longer
what she was going to do. During the drive home in the dark
cab, she shrank away into her corner, pretending that his arm
would hurt her dress. Twice she was on the point of crying
out: “Iam not Daphne Wing!” But each time pride strangled
the words. And yet what other reason could she find to keep
him from her room?

But when in her mirror she saw him standing behind her—
he had crept into the bedroom like a cat—the blood rushed up
in her face, and she said:

“No, Gustav, go out to the music-room if you want a com-
panion.”

He recoiled against the foot of the bed and stared at her; and
Gyp, before her mirror, went on quietly taking the pins out of
her hair. She could see him moving his head and hands as
though in pain. Then, to her surprise, he went. And a vague
compunction confused her sense of deliverance. She lay awake
a long time, watching the fire-glow brighten and darken on the
ceiling, while tunes from “The Tales of Hoffmann” ran in her
head, and thoughts and fancies criss-crossed in her excited brain.
Falling asleep at last, she dreamed she was feeding
doves, and one of them was Daphne Wing. She woke with a
start. By the firelight she saw him crouching at the foot of
the bed, as on their wedding night—the same hungry yearn-
ing in his face, and an arm outstretched. Before she could
speak, he began:

“Oh, Gyp, you don’t understand! All that is nothing—it is
only you I want. I am a fool who cannot control himself.
Think! It’s a long time since you went away from me.”

Gyp said, in a hard voice:

“T didn’t want to have a child.”

“No; but now you have it, you are glad. Don’t be unmerci-
ful, my Gyp! It is like you to be merciful. That girl—it is all
over—I swear—lI promise.”

 
''BEYOND 325

Gyp thought: ‘Why does he come and whine to me like this?
He has no dignity—none !?

“ How can you promise? You have made the girl love you.
I saw her face.”

“You saw her?”

ce Yeas,

“ She is a little fool. I do not care for the whole of her as
much as I care for your one finger. What does it matter if one
does not care? The soul, not the body, is faithful.”

Gyp said :

“Tt matters when it makes others miserable.”

“ Has it made you miserable, my Gyp?”

His voice had a ring of hope. She answered, startled:

“1? No—her.”

“Her? It is experience—it is life. It will do her no harm.”

“No; nothing will do anybody harm if it gives you pleasure.”

At that bitter retort, he kept silence a long time, now and
then heaving a long sigh. ‘The soul, not the body, is faithful!’
Was he, after all, more faithful to her than she had ever been,
could ever be—who did not love, had never loved him? What
right had she to talk, who had married him out of vanity, out of
—what?

And suddenly he said:

“Gyp! Forgive!”

She sighed, and turned away her face.

He bent down against the eiderdown. She could hear him
drawing long, sobbing breaths, and in the midst of her lassitude
and hopelessness, a sort of pity stirred her. What did it matter?
She said, in a choked voice:

“Very well, I forgive.”
''XIV

Gyp never really believed that Daphne Wing was of the past.
Her sceptical instinct told her that what Fiorsen might honestly
mean to do was very different from what he would do under
stress of opportunity carefully put within his reach.

Since her return, Rosek had begun to come again, careful not
to repeat his mistake, but not deceiving her at all. Though his
self-control was as great as Fiorsen’s was small, she felt he had
not given up his pursuit of her, and would take very good care
that Daphne Wing was afforded every chance of being with her
husband. But pride never let her allude to the girl. Besides,
what good to speak of her? They would both lie—Rosek, be-
cause he obviously saw the mistaken line of his first attack;
Fiorsen, because his temperament did not permit him to suffer
by speaking the truth.

Having set herself to endure, she lived in the moment, never
thinking of the future, never thinking much of anything. She
gave herself up to her baby. In watching, and feeling it warm
against her, she succeeded in reaching the hypnotic state of
mothers. But the baby slept a great deal, and much of its time
was claimed by Betty. Those hours were difficult. If she read,
she began at once to brood. She was cut off from the music-
room, had not crossed its threshold since her discovery. Aunt
Rosamund’s efforts to take her into society were fruitless, and,
though her father came, he never stayed long for fear of meeting
Fiorsen. In this condition of affairs, she turned more and more
to her own music, and one morning, having unearthed some
compositions of her girlhood, she made a resolution. That
afternoon she sallied forth into the February frost.

Monsieur Edouard Harmost inhabited the ground floor of a
house in the Marylebone Road. He received his pupils in a
large back room overlooking a little sooty garden. A Walloon
by extraction, and of great vitality, he grew old with difficulty,
preserving a soft corner in his heart for women, and a passion
for novelty, even for new music.

When Gyp was shown into this well-remembered room, he was
seated, with his yellow fingers buried in his stiff grey hair. He
stared hard at Gyp.

326
''BEYOND 327

“ Aha!” he said, “my little friend! She has come back! ”
And, making for the mantelpiece, he took therefrom a bunch of
Parma violets, brought by his last pupil, and thrust them under
her nose. “Take them, take them. How much have you for-
gotten? Come!” And, seizing her by the elbow, he almost
forced her to the piano. “Take off your furs. Sit down!”

And while Gyp was taking off her coat, he fixed on her his
prominent brown eyes from under their squared eyelids and
cliffs of brow. She had on what Fiorsen called her “ humming-
bird” blouse—dark blue, shot with peacock and old rose, and
looked very warm and soft. Monsieur Harmost’s stare seemed
to drink her in, with the rather sad yearning of old men who
love beauty and know that their time for seeing it is getting
short.

“ Play me the ‘ Carnival,” he said. “We shall soon see!”

Gyp played. He nodded; tapped his fingers on his teeth,
showed the whites of his eyes—which meant: “That will have
to be very different!” And once he grunted. When she had
finished, he sat down beside her, took her hand in his, and, ex-
amining the fingers, began:

“Yes, yes! Spoiling yourself, playing for that fiddler! Trop
sympathique! The backbone, the backbone—we shall improve
that. Four hours a day for six weeks—and we shall have some-
thing again.”

“T have a baby, Monsieur Harmost.”

“What! That is a tragedy!” Gyp shook her head. “You
like it? A baby! Does it not squall?”

“ Very little.”

“Mon Dieu! Well, you are still beautiful. That is some-
thing. Now, what can you do with this baby? Could you get
rid of it a little? This is a talent in danger. A fiddler, and a
baby! C'est beaucoup! C'est trop!”

Gyp smiled. And Monsieur Harmost, whose exterior covered
much sensibility, stroked her hand.

“You have grown up, my little friend,’ he said gravely.
“Never mind; nothing is wasted. Buta baby! Well; courage!
We shall do things yet! ”

Gyp turned her head away to hide the quivering of her lips.
The scent of latakia tobacco which had soaked into things, of
old books and music, a dark smell, like Monsieur Harmost’s
complexion ; the old brown curtains, the sooty little back garden
beyond, with its cat-runs, and its one stunted sumach tree; the
''328 NOVELS OF LOVE

dark-brown stare of Monsieur Harmost’s rolling eyes—all
brought back that time of happiness, when she used to come
week after week, full of gaiety and importance, and chatter
away, basking in his brusque admiration and in music, with the
glamourous feeling that she was making him happy, and herself
happy, and going to play finely some day.

The voice of Monsieur Harmost boomed on, soft and gruff.

“Come, come! The only thing we cannot cure is age. You
“were right to come, my child. If things are not all they ought
‘to be, you shall soon forget. In music—in music, we can get
away. After all, my little friend, they cannot take our dreams
from us—not even a wife, not even a husband can do that. We
‘shall have good times yet!”

From those who serve art devoutly radiates a kind of glamour.
‘She left Monsieur Harmost that afternoon infected by his pas-
sion for music. Poetic justice—on which all homeopathy is
founded—would try and cure her life by a dose of what had
spoiled it. To music she now gave all the hours she could spare.
She went to him twice a week, though uneasy at the expense, for
monetary conditions were ever more embarrassed. At home, she
practised steadily and worked hard at composition. She finished
several songs and studies during the spring and summer, and
left still more unfinished. Monsieur- Harmost was tolerant,
seeming to know that harsh criticism would cut her impulse
down, as frost cuts the life of flowers. Besides, there was some-
thing fresh and individual in her compositions.

“What does your husband think of these?” he asked one day.

“T don’t show them to him.”

She never had; she dreaded his ruthlessness when anything
grated on his nerves—a breath of mockery would wither her
belief in herself, frail enough plant already. The only person,
besides her master, to whom she confided her efforts was—
strangely enough—Rosek. He had surprised her one day copy-
ing out some music. The warmth with which he praised that
little “‘ caprice ” was surely genuine; and she gratefully played
him others, and then a song for him to‘sing. From that day
she began to have for him a certain friendliness, to be a little
sorry, watching him, pale, trim, and sphinxlike, in her drawing-
room or garden, getting no nearer to the fulfilment of his desire.
He had never again made love to her, though she knew that at
the least sign he would. His face and his invincible patience
vere pathetic. She could not actively dislike one who admired
''BEYOND 329

her so much. She consulted him about Fiorsen’s debts. There
were hundreds of pounds owing, besides much to Rosek himself.
How did he get into debt like this? What became of the money
he earned? His fees, this summer, were good. Was it on that
girl, on other women, that he spent it?

Watching Fiorsen closely, she was conscious of a change, a
sort of loosening, something in him had given way—as when, in
winding a watch, the key turns on and on, the ratchet being
broken. Yet he was working harder than ever. She would hear
him, across the garden, going over and over a passage, as if he
never would be satisfied. But his playing had lost its fire and
sweep; was stale, and as if disillusioned; as though he had said
to himself: ‘ What’s the use?” In his face, too, there was a
change. She knew—she was certain that he was drinking
secretly. Was it his failure with her? or the girl? or simply
heredity from a hard-drinking ancestry ?

Gyp never faced these questions. To face them would mean
useless discussion, useless admission that she could not love him,
useless asseverations about the girl, useless denials of all sorts.
Hopeless!

He was very irritable, and seemed to resent her music lessons,
alluding to them with sneering impatience. She felt that he
despised them as amateurish. He was often impatient, too, of
the time she gave to the baby. His own conduct with the little
creature was characteristic. He would go to the nursery, much
to Betty’s alarm, and be charming with the baby for about ten
minutes, then dump it back into its cradle, stare at it gloomily,
or utter a laugh, and go out. Sometimes he would come up
when Gyp was there, and after watching her a little in silence,
would drag her away.

Suffering always from the consciousness of having no love for
him, and ever more from her sense that, instead of saving him,
she was pushing him down-hill—ironical nemesis for vanity !—
Gyp was more and more compliant to his demands on her. But
this compliance, when all the time she felt further and further
away, was straining her to breaking-point. Hers was a nature
that passively endures till something snaps; after that—no
more.

That spring and summer were like a long drought, with mois-
ture gathering far away, coming nearer, nearer, till, at last, the
deluge bursts and sweeps the garden,
''XV

Tu tenth of July that year was as the first day of summer.
There had been much fine weather, always easterly or northerly ;
but now, after a broken, rainy fortnight, the sun had come in
full summer warmth with a gentle breeze, drifting here and
there scent of opening lime-blossom. Under the trees at the
far end of the garden, Betty was sewing a garment, and the baby
was in her seventh morning sleep. Gyp stood before a bed of
sweet peas—bright, frail growing things, whose little green
tridents, branching out from the flat stems, resembled the
antenne of insects.

The sound of footsteps on the gravel made her turn to see
Rosek coming from the drawing-room. He bowed, and said:

“ Gustav is not up yet. I thought I would speak to you first.
Can we talk?”

Hesitating just a second, Gyp drew off her gardening-gloves.

“Here? Or in the drawing-room?”

“Tn the drawing-room, please.”

With a faint tremor she led the way, seating herself where she
could see Betty and the baby. Rosek stood very still—the
sweetish gravity of his well-cut lips and spotless dandyism stirred
in her a kind of unwilling admiration.

“ What is it? ”

“A bad business, I’m afraid. Something must be done at
once. I have been trying to arrange things, but they will not
wait. They are even threatening to sell up this house.”

With a sense of outrage, Gyp cried:

“ Nearly everything here is mine.”

Rosek shook his head.

“The lease is in his name—you are his wife. They can do it,
T assure you. And I cannot help him any more—just now.”

“No—of course! You ought not to have helped him at all.
I can’t bear How much does he owe altogether?”

“ About thirteen hundred pounds. It isn’t much, of course.
But there is something else——”

“ Worse?”

Rosek nodded.

“You will think again that I am trying to make capital

330

 

ia ceaeaale
''BEYOND 331

out of it. I cannot afford that you should think that, this
time.”

Gyp shook her head.

“No; tell me, please.”

“There is a man called Wagge, an undertaker—the father of
someone you know i.

“ Daphne Wing?”

“Yes, A child is coming. They have made her tell. It
means the cancelling of her engagements, of course—and other
things.”

Gyp said slowly:

“Can you tell me, please, what this Mr—Wagge can do?”

“He is rabid—a rabid man of his class is dangerous. A lot
of money will be wanted—some blood, perhaps.”

He moved swiftly to her, and said very low:

“Gyp, it is a year since I told you of this. You did not
believe me then. I told you, too, that I loved you. I love you
more, now, a hundred times! Don’t move! Ieam going up to
Gustav.”

He turned, and Gyp thought he was really going; but he
stopped and came back past the line of the window. The ex-
pression of his face was so hungry, that, for a moment, she felt
pity. It must have shown in her face, for he suddenly caught
at her, and tried to kiss her lips; she wrenched back, and he could
only reach her throat. Letting her go as suddenly, he bent his
head and went out.

Gyp wiped his kisses off her throat with the back of her hand,
dumbly, thinking: ‘ What have I done to be treated like this?
What have I done?’ And rage against all men flared up inher.
Going to her bureau, she took out her address book and looked
for the name: Wing—Frankland Street, Fulham. Unhooking
her little bag from off the back of the chair, she put her cheque-
book into it. Then, taking care to make no sound, she passed
into the hall, caught up her sunshade, and went out.

She walked quickly towards Baker Street. She had come out
without gloves, and went into the first shop to buy a pair. In
choosing them she forgot her emotions for a minute. Out in
the street again, they came back bitterly. And the day was so
beautiful—the sun bright, the sky blue, the clouds dazzling
white; from the top of her bus she could see all its brillance.
She remembered the man who had kissed her arm at her first
ball. And now—this! Mixed with her rage was a sort of nn-

 
''332 NOVELS OF LOVE

willing compassion and fellow-feeling for that girl, that silly,
sugar-plum girl, brought to such a pass by—her husband. In
Fulham, she got down at the nearest corner, walked up a widish
street of narrow grey houses till she came to the number. On
that newly-scrubbed step, she very nearly turned and fled. What
exactly had she come to do?

The door was opened by a servant in an untidy frock. Mut-
ton! The smell of mutton—just as the girl had said!

“Is Miss—Miss Daphne*Wing at home?”

“Yes; Miss Disey’s in. D’you want to see ’er? What
nyme?”

Then, opening the first of two brown doors, she said:

“ Tyke a seat; I’ll fetch her.”

In the middle of that dining-room, Gyp tried to subdue the
sense of nausea. The table against which her hand rested was
coveredtwith red baize, to keep the stains of mutton from pene-
trating to the wood. On a mahogany sideboard reposed a cruet-
stand and a green dish of very red apples. A bamboo-framed
tale screen painted with white and yellow marguerites stood
before a fireplace filled with pampas-grass dyed red. The chairs
were of red morocco, the curtains a brownish-red, the walls
green, and on them hung a set of Landseer prints. This red and
green in juxtaposition added to her distress. And, suddenly, her
eyes lighted on a little deep-blue china bowl. It stood on a
black stand on the mantelpiece, with nothing in it. In this
room, with the smell of mutton creeping in, that bowl was from
another world. Daphne Wing—not Daisy Wagge—had surely
put it there! And it touched her—emblem of stifled beauty, of
all that the girl had tried to pour out in her garden nearly a
year ago. Thin Eastern china, good and beautiful! A wonder
they allowed it to pollute this room!

A sigh made her turn. Back to the door, with a white, scared
face, the girl was standing. Gyp thought: ‘She has suffered
horribly ’; and held out her hand.

Daphne Wing sighed out: “ Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen! ” and kissed it.
Gyp saw that her new glove was wet. Then the girl relapsed
against the door. Gyp was swept again by rage against men,
and fellow-feeling for one about to go through what she herself
had just endured.

“Tt’s all right,” she said, gently ; “ only, what’s to be done?”

Daphne Wing put her hands up over her white face and sobbed
—so quietly but so terribly that Gyp herself had the utmost diffi-
''BEYOND 333

culty not to cry. This was the real despair of a creature bereft
of hope and strength, above all, of love—such weeping as is
drawn from suffering souls only by the touch of fellow-feeling.
It filled her with rage against Fiorsen, who had taken this girl
for his pleasure and then thrown her away. She seemed to see
him discarding her for cloying his senses and getting on his
nerves, discarding -her with caustic words, to abide alone the
consequences of infatuation. She timidly stroked that shaking
shoulder. The girl said brokenly:

“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I do love him so!” A painful wish to
laugh seized Gyp, making her shiver from head to foot. Daphne
Wing saw it, and went on: “I know—it’s awful; but I do—and
now he——” Her quiet but really dreadful sobbing broke out
again. And again Gyp began stroking her shoulder. “ And I
have been so awful to you! Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, do forgive me,
please! ”

“Yes, tyes; that’s nothing! Don’t cry—don’t cry!”

‘Very slowly the sobbing died away, but still the girl held her
hands over her face and her face down. The red and green
room, the smell of mutton—creeping !

At last, a little of that white face showed; the lips, no longer
craving for sugar-plums, murmured:

“Tt’s you he—he—really loves all the time. And you don’t
love him—that’s so funny. Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, if I could just see
him! He told me never to come again; and I haven’t dared. I
haven’t seen him for three weeks—not since I told him about i#.
Oh! What shall I do?”

Gyp felt pity and yet violent revolt that any girl should want
to crawl back to a man who had spurned her. Daphne Wing
said piteously :

“T don’t seem to have any pride. I don’t mind what he does
to me, or what he says, if only I can see him,”

Gyp’s revolt yielded to her pity.

“ How long before? ”

“ Three months.”

Three months—in this state of misery!

“T shall do something desperate. Now that I can’t dance, and
they know, it’s too awful! If I could see him, I wouldn’t mind
anything. But I know he’ll never want me again. Oh, Mrs.
Fiorsen, I wish I was dead! I do!”

A heavy sigh escaped Gyp, and, bending suddenly, she kissed
the girl’s forehead. Still that scent of orange-blossom about her
''334 NOVELS OF LOVE

skin or hair, as when she asked whether she ought to love or not;
as when she came, moth-like, from the tree-shade into the moon-
light, spun, and fluttered, with her shadow fluttering before her.
To relieve the strain, she pointed to the bowl and said:

“ You put that there, I’m sure.”

The girl answered, with piteous eagerness :

“Oh, would you like it? Do take it. Count Rosek gave it me.
Oh, that’s papa. He’ll be coming in!”

Gyp heard a man clearing his throat, and the rattle of an
umbrella falling into a stand; the girl wilted and shrank against
the sideboard. The door opened; Mr. Wagge entered. Short,
thick, in a black frock coat and trousers, and a greyish beard, he
stared. He looked what he was, an English chapel-goer, nour-
ished on sherry and mutton, who could and did make his own
way in the world. His features, coloured by a deep liverishness,
were thick, like his body, and not ill-natured, except for the
anger in his small, piggy grey eyes. In a voice permanently
gruff, but impregnated with professional ingratiation, he said:

“Ye-es? Whom ’ave I——?”

“ Mrs. Fiorsen.”

The sound of his breathing could be heard distinctly; he
twisted a chair round.

“Take a seat, won’t you?”

Gyp shook her head.

In Mr. Wagge’s face deference struggled with some more
primitive emotion. Taking out a large, black-edged handker-
chief, he blew his nose, passed it freely over his visage, and turn-
ing to his daughter, muttered :

“Go upstairs.”

The girl turned quickly and went out. Mr. Wagge cleared his
throat with a sound suggestive of enormously thick linings.

“May I ask what ’as given us the honour?”

“T came to see your daughter.”

His little eyes travelled from her face to her feet, to his own
watch-chain, to his hands rubbing themselves together, to her
breast, higher than which they dared not mount. Their infinite
embarrassment struck Gyp. She could almost hear him think-
ing: * Now, how can I discuss this with that attractive young
female, wife of the scoundrel who’s ruined my daughter? Deli-
cate—that’s what it is!’ The words burst hoarsely from him.

*“ Tt’s an unpleasant business, ma’am. I don’t know what to
say. Reelly I don’t. It’s awkward; very awkward.”
''BEYOND 335

Gyp said quietly :

“ Your daughter is desperately unhappy ; that can’t be good for
her just now.”

Mr. Wagge’s thick figure seemed to swell.

“ Pardon me, ma’am,” he spluttered, “but I must call your
*usband a scoundrel. I’m sorry to be impolite, but I must do it.
If I ’ad ’im ’ere, I don’t know that I should be able to control
myself—I don’t indeed.” Apparently interpreting a movement
of her hand as sympathy, he went on in a stream of husky utter-
ance: “It’s delicate before a lady, and she the injured party;
but one has feelings. From the first I said this dancin’ was in
the face of Providence; but women have no more sense than an
egg. Her mother, she would have it. Career, indeed! Pretty
career! I tell you, ma’am, I’m angry; if that scoundrel comes
within reach of me, I shall mark ’?im—I’m not a young man, but
I shall mark ’im. An’ what to say to you, I don’t know. That my
daughter should be’ave like that! Well, it’s ’urt me. An’ now I
suppose her name’ll be dragged in the mud. I tell you frankly,
I ’oped you wouldn’t hear of it, because after all the girl’s got
her punishment. And this divorce-court—it’s not nice—it’s an
’orrible thing for respectable people. And, mind you, I won’t
see my girl married to that scoundrel, not if you do divorce *im.
No; she’ll have her disgrace for nothing.”

Gyp raised her head, and said:

“ There’ll be no public disgrace, Mr. Wagge, unless you make
it yourself. If you send Daphne—Daisy—quietly away some-
where till her trouble’s over, no one need know anything.”

Mr. Wagge’s mouth opened slightly, his breathing could have
been heard in the street.

“Do I understand you to say that you’re not goin’ to take
proceedings, ma’am? ”

Gyp inclined her head.

Mr. Wagge stood silent, slightly moving his pug face.

“Well,” he said at length, “it’s more than she deserves; but
I don’t disguise it’s a relief to me. And I must say, in a young
lady like you, and handsome, it shows a Christian spirit.” Again
Gyp shook her head. “Ah! but it do. As a man old enough to
be your father—and a regular attendant.”

He held out his hand. Gyp put her gloved hand into it.

“Tm very, very sorry. Please be nice to her.”

Mr. Wagge stood for some seconds ruefully rubbing his hands
together.
''336 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Tm a domestic man,” he said suddenly. “A domestic man
in a serious line of life; and I never thought to have anything
like this in my family—never! It’s been—well, I can’t tell you
what it’s been! ”

Gyp took up her sunshade. She felt that she must get away;
at any moment he might say something she could not bear—and
the smell of mutton rising fast!

“TI am sorry,” she said again; “ good-bye”; and moved past
him to the door. She heard him breathing hard as he followed
her to open it; he passed her and put his hand on the latch of the
front door. His piggy eyes scanned her almost timidly.

“Well,” he said, “I’m very glad to have the privilege of your
acquaintance; and, if I may say so, you ’ave my ’earty sym-
pathy. Good-day.”

Gyp took a long breath. Her cheeks were burning ; and, with a
craving for protection, she put up her sunshade. But the girl’s
white face came up again before her, and the sound of her words:

“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I wish I was dead! I do!”
''XVI

Sue walked on beneath her sunshade, making unconsciously for
the peace of trees. Her mind was a whirl—Daphne Wing against
the door, Mr. Wagge’s puggy countenance, the red pampas-grass,
the blue bowl, Rosek swooping at her, her baby asleep under the
trees!

She reached Kensington Gardens, and sat down. It was near
the luncheon hour ; nursemaids, dogs, perambulators, old gentle-
men—all were hurrying toward their food. They glanced at
this pretty young woman, leisured and lonely at such an hour,
trying to find out what was wrong with her beauty—bow legs,
or something, to balance a face like that! Gyp noticed none of
them, except now and again a dog which sniffed her knees in
passing. For so long she had cultivated insensibility, refused
to face reality; but the barrier was forced now, and the flood
had swept her away. “ Proceedings!” To those who shrink
from letting their affairs be known even by their nearest friends,
the notion of a public exhibition of troubles simply never comes;
it had certainly never come to Gyp. With a bitter smile she
thought: ‘I’m better off than she is, after all! Suppose I loved
him, too? No, I never—never—want to love. Women who love
suffer too much.’

She sat a long time before remembering that she was due at
Monsieur Harmost’s at three o’clock. It was well past two
already ; and she set out across the grass. The day was full of
murmurings of bees and flies, cooings of pigeons, soft swish and
stir of leaves, the scent of lime-blossom under a sky blue, with a
few white clouds slow and calm and full. Why be unhappy?
And one of those spotted spaniel dogs which have broad heads,
with frizzy topknots, and are always rascals, circled her, hoping
she would throw her sunshade on the water for him to fetch, in
his view the only reason why anything was carried in the hand.

Monsieur Harmost was fidgeting about his room, whose opened
windows could not rid it of the scent of latakia.

“T thought you were not coming!” he said. “ You look pale.
Is it the heat? Or”—he looked hard into her face—“ has some-
one hurt you, my little friend?” Gyp shook her head. “Ah!
yes, you tell me nothing; you tell nobody nothing! You close

337
''338 NOVELS OF LOVE

up your pretty face like a flower at night. At your age, my child,
one should make confidences; a secret grief is to music as the
east wind to the stomach. Come, tell me your troubles. For
a long time I have been meaning to ask. We are only once
oung; I want to see you happy.”

Would it be a relief to pour her soul out? His brown eyes
questioned her like an old dog’s. She did not want to hurt one
so kind. And yet—impossible!

Monsieur Harmost sat down at the piano. Resting his hands
on the keys, he looked round at her.

“JT am in love with you, you know. Old men can be very
much in love, but they know it is no good—that makes them
endurable. Still, we like to feel of use to youth and beauty;
it gives us a little warmth. Tell me your grief!” He waited a
moment, then said irritably: “Well, well, we go to music
then!”

It was his habit to sit by her at the piano, but to-day he stood
as if prepared to be exceptionally severe. And Gyp played,
whether from overexcited nerves or from not having had any
lunch, better than she had ever played—the Chopin polonaise
in A flat, that song of revolution, which had always seemed so
unattainable. When she had finished, Monsieur Harmost lifted
one of her hands and put his lips to it. She felt the scrub of
his little bristly beard, and raised her face with a sigh of satis-
faction. A voice behind them said mockingly:

“ Bravo!”

Fiorsen stood in the doorway.

“ Congratulations, madame! I have long wanted to see you
under the inspiration of your—master!”

Gyp’s heart began to beat. Monsieur Harmost had not moved.
His eyes were startled.

Fiorsen kissed the back of his own hand.

“This old Pantaloon! Pho-o—what a lover!”

Gyp saw the old man quiver; she sprang up, crying: “ You
brute!”

Monsieur Harmost’s voice behind her said:

“ Before you go, monsteur, give me some explanation of this
imbecility ! ”

Fiorsen shook his fist, and went out muttering. They heard
the front door slam. Gyp turned abruptly to the window, and
stood looking into the back yard. Even there summer had
crept in. The leaves of the sumach-tree were glistening; in a
''BEYOND 339

patch of sunlight, a black cat with a blue ribbon round its neck
was basking. The voice of one hawking strawberries drifted
from a side street. She knew that Monsieur Harmost was stand-
ing with a hand pressed to his mouth, and she felt a passion of
compunction and anger. Kind and harmless old man—to be so
insulted! It was the culmination of all her husband’s outrages!
She would never forgive him this! He had insulted her as
well, beyond what could be endured! She turned, and put both
her hands into Monsieur Harmost’s.

“Tm so awfully sorry. Good-bye, dear, dear Monsieur Har-
most; I shall come on Friday!” And, before he could stop her,
she was gone.

Just as she reached the pavement on the other side, she felt
her dress plucked and saw Fiorsen behind her. She shook her-
self free and walked swiftly on. Was he going to make a scene
in the street? Again he caught her arm. She faced round on
him, and said, in an icy voice:

“ Please don’t make scenes in the street, and don’t follow me
like this. If you want to talk to me, you can—at home.”

Then, very calmly, she walked on. But he still followed her,
some paces off. To the first cab that passed she made a sign.

“Bury Street—quick!” She saw Fiorsen rush forward, too
late to stop her. He stood still, deadly pale under his broad-
brimmed hat. She was far too angry and upset to care.

She had determined to go to her father. She would not go
back to Fiorsen; but how to get Betty and her baby? Winton
was almost sure to be at his club. And leaning out, she said:
“No; Hyde Park Corner, please.”

The hall porter, who knew her, after calling to a page-boy:
“Major Winton—sharp, now!” came out of his box to offer
her a seat and The Times.

Gyp sat with the journal on her knee, vaguely conscious of a
thin old gentleman anxiously weighing himself in a corner, of a
white-calved footman crossing with a tea-tray ; a number of hats
on pegs; the green-baize board with its white rows of tapelike
paper, and three members standing before it. One, tall, stout,
good-humoured, in pince-nez and a white waistcoat, removed his
straw hat and took up a position whence, without staring, he
could gaze at her; he seemed to find her to his liking. Then
her father’s unhurried figure passed that little group; and eager
to get out of this sanctum of masculinity, she met him at the top
of the low steps.
''340 NOVELS OF LOVE

“T want to talk to you, Dad.”

He gave her a quick look, selected his hat, and followed to
the door. In the cab, he put his hand on hers.

“ Now, my dear?”

“T want to come back to you. I can’t go on there. It’s—it’s
—Il’ve come to an end.”

His hand pressed hers tightly, as if trying to save her the
need for saying more. Gyp went on:

“ But I must get baby; I’m terrified he’ll try to keep her, to
get me back.”

“Ts he at home?”

“T don’t know. I haven’t told him that I’m going to leave
him.”

Winton looked at his watch.

* Does the baby ever go out as late as this?”

“Yes; after tea. It’s cooler.”

“T’ll take this cab on, then. You stay and get the room
ready for her. Don’t worry, and don’t go out till I return.”

How wonderful of him not to have asked a single question!

The cab stopped at the Bury Street door. He said quietly:

“Do you want the dogs? ”

*’Yes—oh, yes! He doesn’t care for them.”

“ All right. There’ll be time to get you in some things for
the night after I come back. I shan’t run any risks to-day.
Make Mrs. Markey give you tea.”

Gyp watched the cab gather way again, saw him wave his
hand; and, with a deep sigh, half anxiety, half relief, she rang —
the bell.

 
''XVII

In St. James’s Street, Winton gave the order: “ Quick as you
can!” A little red had come into his brown cheeks; his eyes
under their half-drawn lids were keener; his lips tightly closed ;
he looked as he did when a fox was breaking cover. He was
going to take no risks—make no frontal attack. Time for that
later, if need were. He had better nerves than most men, and
that steely determination and resource which makes many Eng-
lishmen of his class formidable in small operations. At Fiorsen’s
he kept his cab, rang, and asked for Gyp, with a kind of pleasure
in his ruse.

“ She’s not in yet, sir. Mr. Fiorsen’s in.”

“Ah! And baby?”

fe Yes, B10.)

“T’ll come in and see her. In the garden?”

Yea, Airs”

“Togs there, too?”

“Yes, sir. And will you have tea, please, sir?”

“No, thanks.” How to effect this withdrawal without caus-
ing gossip, and suspicion of collusion with Gyp? And he added:
“Unless Mrs. Fiorsen comes in.”

Passing out into the garden, he became aware that Fiorsen
was at the dining-room window watching him. The baby was
under the trees at the far end, and the dogs came rushing with a
fury which lasted till they came within scent of him. Winton
went up to the perambulator, and, saluting Betty, looked down
at his grandchild. She lay under an awning of muslin, for fear
of flies, and was awake. Her solemn, large, brown eyes, already
like Gyp’s, regarded him with gravity. Clucking to her, he
moved so as to face the house and have Betty with her back
to it.

“T’m here with a message from your mistress, Betty. Keep
your head; don’t look round, but listen to me. She’s at Bury
Street and going to stay there; she wants you and baby and the
dogs.” The stout woman’s eyes and mouth opened. Winton
put his hand on the perambulator. “Steady! Go out as usual
with this thing. It’s about your time; and wait for me at the
turning to Regent’s Park. I’ll come on in my cab and pick

341
''342 NOVELS OF LOVE

you all up. Don’t get flurried; don’t take anything; do exactly
as you usually would. Understand?”

It is not in the nature of stout women with babies in their
charge to receive such an order without question. Her colour,
and the heaving of that billowy bosom, made him add quickly:

“Now, Betty, pull yourself together; Gyp wants you. Ill
tell you all about it in the cab.”

“Yes, sir. Poor little thing! What about its night-things?
And Miss Gyp’s?”

Conscious of that figure still at the window, Winton made
some passes at the baby.

“ Never mind them. As soon as you see me at the drawing-
room window, get ready and go. Eyes front, Betty; don’t look
round ; Il] cover your retreat! Don’t fail Gyp, now. Pull your-
self together.”

With a vast sigh, Betty murmured: “ Very well, sir; oh,
dear!” and adjusted the strings of her bonnet. Winton sa-
luted, and began his march again towards the house. He kept
his eyes to this side and that, as if examining the flowers, but
noted that Fiorsen had receded from the window, and, entering
by the drawing-room window, he went quickly into the hall.
He listened a second before opening the dining-room door.
Fiorsen was pacing up and down. He stared haggardly at
Winton, who said:

“How are you? Gyp not in?”

ce No?

That “No” touched Winton with a vague compunction. To
be left by Gyp! But his heart hardened again. The fellow
was such a rotter.

“ Baby looks well,” he said.

Fiorsen began to pace up and down again.

“Where is Gyp? I want her.”

Winton took out his watch.

“Tt’s not late.” And suddenly he felt aversion for the part
he was playing. To get the baby; to make Gyp safe—yes! But
not this pretence that he knew nothing about it. He turned
on his heel and walked out. He could not stay prevaricating
like this. Had that woman got clear? He went back into the
drawing-room. They were just passing the side of the house.
In five minutes they would be down at the turning. He stood
waiting. If only that fellow did not come in! Through the
partition wall he could hear him still tramping up and down
''BEYOND 343

the dining-room. What a long time a minute was! Only three
had gone when he heard the dining-room door opened, and
Fiorsen crossing the hall to the front door. What was he after,
standing there as if listening? And suddenly Winton heard
him sigh—just such a sound as many times, in the long-past
days, had escaped himself, waiting, listening for footsteps, in
parched and sickening anxiety. Did this fellow then really
love? And in revolt at spying on him, he advanced and said:

“Well, I won’t wait any longer. Good-bye!” The words:
“Give my love to Gyp,” perished on their way up to his lips.

“Good-bye!” Fiorsen echoed. Winton went out under the
trellis, conscious of that forlorn figure still standing at the half-
opened door. Betty was nowhere in sight; she must have reached
the turning. His mission had succeeded, but he felt no elation.
Round the corner, he picked up his convoy, and, with the per-
ambulator hoisted on to the taxi, journeyed on at speed. He
had meant to explain in the cab, but all he said was:

“Yow’ll all go down to Mildenham to-morrow.”

And Betty, who had feared him ever since their encounter
so many years ago, eyed his profile, without daring to ask ques-
tions. Winton stopped at a post-office on the way, and sent this
telegram:

“Gyp and the baby are with me—letter follows—WINTON.”

It salved his conscience ; besides, it was necessary, lest Fiorsen
should go to the police. The rest must wait till he had talked
with Gyp.

It was late before they could begin their talk.

Close to the open windows where Markey had placed two
hydrangea plants—bought on his own responsibility, in token
of silent satisfaction—Gyp began. She kept nothing back, re-
counting the whole miserable fiasco of her marriage. When
she came to Daphne Wing and her discovery in the music-room,
she could see the glowing end of her father’s cigar move con-
vulsively. In her own house—her own house! And—after
that, she had gone on with him! He did not interrupt, but
his stillness almost frightened her.

Coming to the incidents of the day, she hesitated. Must she
tell him too, of Rosek? Candour prevailed, and Winton made
no sign. When she had finished, he got up and slowly extin-
guished the end of his cigar against the window-sill ; then look-
ing at her lying back in her chair as if exhausted, he said: “ By
God!” and turned to the window.
''344 NOVELS OF LOVE

At that hour before the theatres rose, a lull brooded in the
London streets, broken by the clack of a half-drunken woman
bickering at her man as they lurched along home, and the strains
of a street musician’s fiddle, trying to make up for a blank day.
The sound vaguely irritated Winton, reminding him of those two
damnable foreigners by whom she had been so treated. To
have them at the point of a sword or pistol—to teach them a
lesson! He heard her say:

“ Dad, I should like to pay his debts. Then things would be
as they were when I married him.”

He emitted an exasperated sound. He did not believe in
heaping coals of fire.

“T want to make sure, too, that the girl is all right till she’s
over her trouble. Perhaps I could use some of that—that
other money, if mine is all tied up?”

Anger, not disapproval of her impulse, made him hesitate ;
money and revenge would never be associated in his mind.

“T want to feel as if I’d never let him marry me. Perhaps
his debts are all part of that—who knows?”

How like—her figure sunk back in the old chair, and the
face lifted in shadow! And exultation came to Winton. He
had got her back!
''XVIII

Friorsen’s bedroom was—as the maid would remark—“ a proper
pigsty ’—until he was out of it and it could be renovated each
day. He had a talent for disorder, so that the room looked as
if three men instead of one had gone to bed in it. Clothes and
shoes, brushes, water, tumblers, newspapers, French novels, and
cigarette-ends—none were ever where they should have been; and
the stale fumes from cigarettes incommoded anyone whose duty
it was to take him tea and shaving-water. When, on the morn-
ing of that day, the maid had brought Rosek up to him, he had
been lying a long time on his back, dreamily watching the smoke
from his cigarette and four flies waltzing in the sunlight that
filtered through the green sun-blinds. This hour, before he
rose, was his creative moment, when he could best see the form
of music and feel inspiration for its rendering. Of late, he
had been stale and dull; but this morning he felt again the stir
of fancy, that vibrating, half-dreamy state when emotion finds
shape and the mind pierces through to new expression. Hearing
the maid’s knock, and her murmured: “ Count Rosek to see you,
sir,” he thought: ‘What the devil does he want?’ A larger
nature, drifting without control, in contact with a smaller which
knows its own mind exactly, will instinctively he irritable.

It would be money he had come about, or—that girl! That
girl—he wished she were dead! Soft, clinging creature! A
baby! God! What a fool he had been—ah, what a fool!
First Gyp—then her! He had tried to shake the girl off. As
well try to shake off a burr! How she clung! He had been
patient—patient and kind, but how to go on when one was tired !
He wanted only Gyp, only his own wife? And now, when for
an hour or two, he had shaken off worry, been feeling happy—
this fellow must come, and stand there with his face of a sphinx!

“Well, Paul! sit down. What troubles have you brought?”

aie lit a cigarette. He struck even Fiorsen by his unsmiling
pallor.

“You had better look out for Mr. Wagge, Gustav; he came
to me yesterday. He has no music in his soul.”

Fiorsen sat up.

“Satan take Mr. Wagge! What can he do?”

345
''346 NOVELS OF LOVE

“T am not a lawyer, but I imagine he can be unpleasant—
the girl is young.”

Fiorsen glared at him, and said:

“Why did you throw me that cursed girl?”

A did not, my friend,”

“You did. What was your game? You never do anything
without a game. You know you did. Come, what was your
game?”

“You like pleasure, I believe.”

Fiorsen said violently:

“ Look here: I have done with your friendship—I have never
really known you. It is finished. Leave me in peace.”

Rosek smiled.

“ My dear, friendships are not finished lke that. You owe
me a thousand pounds.”

“ Well, I will pay it. My wife will lend it to me.”

“Oh! Is she so fond of you? I thought she only loved her
music-lessons.”

Crouching forward with his knees drawn up, Fiorsen hissed
out :

“Get out of this! I will pay you your thousand pounds.”

Rosek, still smiling, answered:

“Don’t be a fool, Gustav! With a violin to your shoulder,
you are a man. Without—you are a child. Lie quiet, my
friend, and think of Mr. Wagge. But you had better come and
talk it over with me. Good-bye for the moment. Calm your-
self.” And, flipping the ash off his cigarette on to the tray by
Fiorsen’s elbow, he went.

Fiorsen put his hand to his head. Cursed be every one of
them—the father and the girl, Rosek and all the other sharks!
He went out on to the landing. The house was quite still below.
Rosek had gone—good riddance! He called to Gyp. No answer.
He went into her room, superlatively dainty, with a scent of
cyclamen! He looked out into the garden. There was the baby
at the end, and that fat woman. No Gyp! Never in when she
was wanted. Wagge! He shivered; and, going back into his
bedroom, took a brandy-bottle from a locked cupboard and drank
some. It steadied him; he locked up the cupboard again, and
dressed.

Going out to the music-room, he stopped under the trees to
make passes with his fingers at the baby. Sometimes he felt
that it was an adorable little creature, with its big, dark eyes
''BEYOND 347

so like Gyp’s. Sometimes it excited his disgust—a discoloured
brat. This morning, while looking at it, he thought suddenly
of the other that was coming—and grimaced. Catching Betty’s
stare of horrified amazement at the face he was making at her
darling, he burst into a laugh and turned away into the music-
room.

While he was keying his violin, Gyp’s conduct in never having
come there for so long, struck him as bitterly unjust. As if that
wretched girl made any real difference! Gyp had never loved
him, never given him what he wanted, never quenched his thirst
of her! That was the heart of it. No other woman had ever
been like that—kept his thirst unquenched. He had always
tired of them before they tired of him. She gave him nothing!
Had she no heart or did she give it elsewhere? What
had Paul said about her music-lessons? And suddenly it struck
him that he knew nothing, absolutely nothing, of where she
went or what she did. Music-lessons? Every day, nearly, she
went out, was away for hours. Where? To the arms of another
man? He put down his violin in actual sickness. Why not?
That whipping of the sexual instinct which makes the ache of
jealousy so terrible, was at its full in such a nature as Fiorsen’s.
He shuddered. But the remembrance of her fastidious pride,
her candour, above all her passivity, cut in across his fear. No,
not Gyp!

He went to a little table whereon stood a tantalus, and pouring
out some brandy, drank. It steadied him. And he began to
practise. He took a passage from Brahms’s violin concerto and
played it over and over. He found he was repeating the same
flaws each time; he was not attending. The fingering of that
thing was ghastly! Music-lessons! Why did she take them?
Waste of time and money—she would never be anything but an
amateur! Had she gone there to-day? It was past lunch-time.
Perhaps she had come in.

He went back to the house. No sign of her! The maid came
to ask if he would lunch. No! Was the mistress to be in?
She had not said. He went into the dining-room, ate a biscuit,
and drank a brandy and soda. It steadied him. He came back
to the drawing-room and sat down at Gyp’s bureau. How tidy!
On the little calendar a pencil-cross was set against to-day—
Wednesday, another against Friday. What for? Music-lessons!
He reached to a pigeon-hole, and took out her address book.
''348 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ H—Harmost, 305A, Marylebone Road,” and against it the
words in pencil, “3 p.m.”

Three o’clock. That was her hour! His eyes rested on a
little old coloured print of a Bacchante, with flowing green
scarf, shaking a tambourine at a naked Cupid, who with a baby
bow and arrow in his hands, was gazing up at her. He turned
it over: on the back was written in a pointed, scriggly hand,
“To my little friend—H. H.’ Fiorsen went to the piano.
He opened it and began to play, staring vacantly before him,
scarcely knowing what he played. A great artist? Often, now-
adays, he did not care if he never touched a violin again. Tired
of standing up before a sea of dull faces, seeing the blockheads
knock their silly hands one against the other! Sick of the same-
ness of it all!

He got up, went into the dining-room, and drank some
brandy. Gyp could not bear his drinking. Well, she shouldn’t
be out so much—taking music-lessons. Music-lessons! Nearly
three o’clock. He would go and see what she really did—go
and offer her his escort home! An attention. It might please
her. Better than waiting here till she chose to come in with
her face closed up. He drank a little more brandy, took his
hat and went. He walked in the hot sun, and reached the house
feeling dizzy. A maid-servant opened the door:

“T am Mr. Fiorsen. Mrs. Fiorsen here?”

“Yes, sir; will you wait?”

Why did she look at him like that? Ugly girl! How hateful
ugly people were! When she was gone, he reopened the door
of the waiting-room, and listened.

Chopin! The polonaise in A flat. Good! Could that be
Gyp? Very good! He moved out, down the passage, drawn
on by her playing, and softly turned the handle. The music
stopped. He went in.

When Winton had left him, an hour and a half later that
afternoon, Fiorsen continued to stand at the front door. The
brandy-nurtured burst of jealousy which had made him insult

his wife and old Monsieur Harmost, had died suddenly when
' Gyp turned on him in the street and spoke in that icy voice;
since then he had felt fear, increasing every minute. Would she
forgive? To one who always acted on the impulse of the
moment, so that he rarely knew afterward exactly what he had
done, or whom hurt, Gyp’s self-control had ever been mys-
terious and a little frightening. Where had she gone? Why
''BEYOND 349

did she not come in? His anxiety, like a ball rolling down-
hill, gathered momentum. Suppose she did not come back !
But she must—there was the baby—their baby!

-For the first time, the thought of it gave him unalloyed satis-
faction. He left the door, and, after drinking a glass to steady
him, flung himself down on the sofa in the drawing-room.
And while he lay there, the brandy warm within him, he
thought: ‘I will turn over a new leaf; give up drink, give up
everything, send the baby into the country, take Gyp to Paris,
Berlin, Vienna, Rome—anywhere out of England, away from
that father of hers and all these stiff, dull folk! She loves
travelling!’ Yes, they would be happy! Delicious nights—
delicious days—air that did not weigh you down and make you
feel that you must drink—real inspiration—real music! The
wood-smoke scent of Paris streets, the blistening of the Thiergar-
ten, a serenading song in a Florence back street, fireflies in
Italian summer dusk—he had intoxicating memories of them all!
The warmth of the brandy died away, he felt chill and shuddery.
He shut his eyes, thinking to sleep till she came in. But very
soon he opened them, because—a thing usual with him of late—
he saw such ugly things—faces, vivid, changing as he looked,
growing ugly and uglier, becoming all holes—holes—holes
Corruption—matted, twisted, human tree-root faces! Horrible!
He opened his eyes, for when he did that they went. It was
very silent. No sound from above. No sound of the dogs. He
would go up and see the baby.

While he was crossing the hall, there came a ring. A tele-
gram! He tore the envelope.

“Gyp and the baby are with me—letter follows—WINTON.”

With a laugh he shut the door in the boy’s face, and ran
upstairs; why: ! There was nobody there now! Did it
mean that she had really left him? He stopped by Gyp’s bed,
and flinging himself forward, lay across it, burying his face.
And he sobbed, unmanned by drink. Had he lost her? Never
to see her eyes closing and press his lips against them! Never
to soak his senses in her loveliness! He leaped up. Lost her?
Absurd! That calm, prim, devilish Englishman, her father—
he had worked it all—stealing the baby!

He went downstairs and drank some brandy. It steadied him
a little. What should he do? “Letter follows.” Go to Bury
Street? No. Drink! Enjoy himself!

Catching up his hat, he went out, walking furiously, till his

 

 
''350 NOVELS OF LOVE

head began to whirl; then, taking a cab, was driven to a Soho
restaurant. He had eaten nothing but a biscuit since breakfast,
always a small matter, and he ordered soup and a flash of their
best Chianti—solids he could not face. More than two hours
he sat, white and silent, perspiration on his forehead, now and
then grinning and flourishing his fingers, to the amusement and
sometimes the alarm of those sitting near. But for being known
there, he would have been regarded with suspicion. About half-
past nine, having finished his wine, he got up, put a piece of
gold on the table, and went out without waiting for his change.

The lamps were lighted, but daylight not quite gone. He
walked unsteadily, toward Piccadilly. A girl of the town passed
and looked up at him. Staring hard, he hooked his arm in hers;
it steadied him, and they walked on together. Suddenly the girl
stopped and tried to disengage her arm; a frightened look had
come into her dark-eyed powdered face. Fiorsen held it firm,
and laughed. “Come on!” he said. “You are like my wife.
Will you have a drink?”

The girl shook her head, and, with a sudden movement,
slipped her arms out and dived away like a swallow through the
pavement traffic. Fiorsen stood still and laughed. The second
time to-day She had slipped from his grasp. Passers looked at
him, amazed. Ugly devils! With a grimace, he turned out of
Piccadilly, past St. James’s Church, and made for Bury Street.
They wouldn’t let him in, of course! But he would look at the
windows; they had flower-boxes! And, suddenly, he groaned
aloud—thinking of Gyp among the flowers at home. He came
in at the bottom of the street, where a fiddler in the gutter was
scraping on an old violin. Fiorsen stopped to listen. Poor
devil! Pagliacci! He put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Friend,” he said, “lend me your fiddle. I am a great
violinist. Il make some money for you.”

“ Vraiment, Monsieur!”

“ Ah! Vraiment! Voyons! Donnez—un instant—wous verrez.”

The fiddler, doubting but hypnotised, handed him the fiddle;
his dark face changed when he saw the stranger fling it up to
his shoulder and the ways of his fingers with the bow and
strings. Fiorsen had begun to walk up the street, searching
for the flower-boxes. He saw them, stopped, and began playing
“Che faro?” He played it wonderfully on that poor fiddle;
and the fiddler, who had followed at his elbow, stood watching,
uneasy, envious, a little entranced. This tall, pale monsieur

si cs a aac
''BEYOND 351

with the strange face and the drunken eyes and hollow chest,
played like an angel! Ah, but it was not so easy as all that to
make money in the streets of this sacred town! You might play
like forty angels and not a copper! He had begun another tune
now—like little pluckings at your heart—trés joli—tout a@ fait
éceurant! But there it was—a monsieur as usual closing the
window, drawing the curtains! Always same thing! The violin
and the bow were thrust back into his hands with some silver ;
and the tall strange monsieur was off as if devils were after him
—not badly drunk, that one! And with an uneasy feeling that
he had been involved in something that he did not understand,
the lame, dark fiddler limped his way round the nearest corner,
and for two streets at least did not stop. Then, counting the
silver Fiorsen had put into his hand and carefully examining
his fiddle, he uttered the word “ Bigre!” and started for home.
''XIX

Gyp hardly slept at all. Three times she rose, stole to the door,
and looked in at her sleeping baby. The afternoon had shaken
her nerves. It was so hot, and the sound of the violin was still
in her ears. By that little air of Poise, she had known for
certain it was Fiorsen; and her father’s abrupt drawing of the
curtains had clinched that certainty. If she had seen him, she
would not have been half so disturbed as by that echo of an old
emotion. It had reforged the lnk which yesterday she had
thought broken for good. The sobbing of that old fiddle had
been his way of saying, “ Forgive me; forgive!” To leave him
would have been so much easier if she had really hated him.
Difficult to live with, he was quite as difficult to hate. He was
so flexible—only the rigid can be hated. She hated the things
he did, and him when he was doing them; but afterward again
could hate him no more than she could love him, and that was
—not at all. Resolution and a sense of the practical came back
with daylight. It was better to recognize that things were
hopeless and harden one’s heart.

Winton, whose night had been as sleepless—to play like a
beggar in the street, under his windows, had seemed to him the
limit !—announced at breakfast that he must see his lawyer,
and find out what could be done to secure Gyp against persecu-
tion. Some deed was probably necessary; he was vague on all
such matters. In the meantime, neither Gyp nor the baby must
go out. Gyp spent the morning writing to Monsieur Harmost,
trying to express her chagrin, without saying that she had left
Fiorsen.

Her father came back from Westminster quiet and angry.
He had with difficulty been made to understand that the baby
was Fiorsen’s property, so that, if the fellow claimed it, in law
they would be unable to resist. The point opened the old
wound, forced him to remember that his own daughter had once
belonged to another—father. He had told the lawyer that he
would see the fellow damned first, and had directed him to draw
a deed of separation, providing for the payment of Fiorsen’s
existing debts on condition that he left Gyp and the baby in
peace. After telling Gyp this, he went into the extempore

352
''BEYOND 353

nursery. Until then, the little creature had only been of
interest as part of Gyp; now it had for him an existence of
its own—this tiny, dark-eyed creature, watching him so gravely,
clutching his finger. Suddenly the baby smiled—not a beau-
tiful smile, but one that made on Winton an indelible im-
pression.

Wishing first to settle this matter of the deed, he put off going
down to Mildenham; but “not trusting those two scoundrels a
yard,” he insisted that the baby should not go out without two
attendants, and that Gyp should not go out alone. He carried
precaution to the point of accompanying her to Monsieur Har-
most’s on the Friday afternoon, and expressed a wish to go in
and shake hands with the old fellow. It was a queer meeting.
Those two had as great difficulty in finding anything to say
as though they had been denizens of different planets. When,
after a minute or so of friendly embarrassment, he retired to
wait for her, Gyp sat down to her lesson.

Monsieur Harmost said quietly:

“ Your letter was very kind, my little friend—and your father
is very kind. But, after all, it was a compliment your husband
paid me.” And his smile seemed to sum up many resignations.
“ So you stay again with your father! When will you find your
fate, I wonder?”

“ Never!”

“ Ah, you think! No, that is impossible! Well, we must not
waste your father’s time. To work.”

Winton’s comment in the cab was:

“ Quite a nice old chap!”

At Bury Street, they found Gyp’s agitated parlour-maid.
Going to do the music-room that morning, she had “found the
master sitting on the sofa, holding his head, and groaning awful.
He’s not been at home, ma’am, since you—you went on your
visit, so I didn’t know what to do. I ran for cook and we got
him wo to bed, and not knowing where you’d be, ma’am, I
telephoned to Count Rosek, and he came—I hope I didn’t do
wrong—and he sent me down to see you. The doctor says his
brain’s on the touch and go, and he keeps askin’ for you, ma’am.
So I didn’t know what to do.”

Gyp, pale to the lips, said:

“ Wait here a minute, Ellen,” and went into the dining-room.
Winton followed.

“Oh, Dad, what am I to do? His brain! It would be too
''354 NOVELS OF LOVE

awful to feel I’d brought that about. I must go and see. [If it’s
really that, I couldn’t bear it. I’m afraid I must go, Dad.”

Winton nodded.

“T’ll come too,” he said. “The girl can go back in the cab
and say we're on the way.”

Taking a parting look at her baby, Gyp thought bitterly:
‘This is my fate, and no getting out of it!’ On the journey,
she and Winton were silent—but she held his hand tight. While
the cook was taking up to Rosek the news of their arrival, Gyp
stood looking out at her garden. ‘Two days and six hours only
since she had stood there above her pansies; since, at this very
spot, Rosek had kissed her throat! And slipping her hand
through Winton’s arm, she said:

“Dad, please don’t make anything of that kiss. What does
it matter?”

A moment later Rosek entered. Before she could speak,
Winton said:

“ Now that my daughter is here, there will be no further need
for your kind services. Good-day!”

Gyp gave the tiniest start forward. She had seen the curt
words go through Rosek’s armour as a sword through brown
paper. With a sickly smile, he bowed, and went out. Winton
followed—precisely as if he did not trust him with the hats in
the hall. When the outer door was shut, he said:

“T don’t think he’ll trouble you again.”

Gyp’s gratitude was qualified by a queer compassion. His
offence had only been that of wanting her.

Fiorsen had been taken to her room, which was larger and
cooler than his own. He opened his eyes presently:

“@Gyp! Is it you? The awful things I see—don’t go away
again! Oh, Gyp!” He raised himself and rested his forehead
against her. And Gyp felt—as on the first night he came home
drunk—a merging of other emotions in the desire to protect.

“Tt’s all right,” she murmured. “I’m going to stay. Keep
quite quiet, and you'll soon be well.”

In a quarter of an hour he was asleep. The expression of
terror which had been coming and going on his face until he
fell asleep went to her heart. Anything to do with the brain
was so horrible! She must stay—his recovery depended on her.
She was still sitting there, motionless, when the doctor came and
beckoned her out. He looked a kindly man, with two waistcoats ;
and while he talked, he winked at Gyp, and, with each wink she

 
''BEYOND 355

felt that he ripped the veil off one more domestic secret. Sleep
was the ticket! Had something on his mind—yes! And—er—
a little given to—brandy? All that must stop! Stomach as
well as nerves affected. Seeing things—nasty things—sure sign.
Not a very careful life before marriage. And married—how
long? His kindly eyes swept Gyp from top to,toe. Year and
a half! Quite so! Hard worker at his violin? No doubt!
Musicians always a little inclined to be immoderate—too much
sense of beauty—burn the candle at both ends! She must see
to that. She had been away, had she not—staying with her
father? Yes. No one like a wife for nursing. ‘Treatment?
Weil! One would shove in a dash of what he would prescribe,
night and morning. Perfect quiet. No stimulant. A little
cup of strong coffee without milk, if he seemed low. In bed
at present. No worry; no excitement. Young man still. Plenty
of vitality. No undue anxiety. ‘To-morrow they would see
whether a night nurse would be necessary. No violin for a
month, no aleohol—in every way the strictest moderation! And
with a last wink, leaning heavily on the word “ moderation,” he
took out a stylographic pen, scratched on a leaf of his notebook,
shook Gyp’s hand, smiled, buttoned his upper waistcoat, and
was gone.

Gyp went back to her seat by the bed. Irony! She whose
only desire was to be free, was mainly responsible for his break-
down! But for her, there would be nothing on his mind—he
would not be married! His drinking, debts, even the girl—had
she caused them, too? And when she tried to free him and
herself—this was the result! Was there something fatal in her
that destroyed the men she had to do with? She had made her
father unhappy, Monsieur Harmost—Rosek, and her husband!
Even before she married, how many had tried for her love, and
gone away unhappy! And, going up to a mirror, she looked at
herself long and sadly.
''XX

THREE days after her abortive attempt to break away, Gyp wrote
to Daphne Wing, telling her of Fiorsen’s illness, and mentioning
a cottage near Mildenham, where—if she liked to go—she would
be comfortable and safe from curiosity, and finally begging to be
allowed to make good the losses from broken dance contracts.

Next morning she found Mr. Wagge with a tall, crape-banded
hat in his black-gloved hands, standing in the very centre of
her drawing-room. He was staring into the garden, as if
vouchsafed a vision of that warm night when the moonlight
shed ghostly glamour on the sunflowers, and his daughter had
danced out there. She had a perfect view of his thick red neck
in a turndown collar, crossed by a black bow over a shiny white
shirt. And, holding out her hand, she said:

“ How do you do, Mr. Wagge? It was kind of you to come.”

Mr. Wagge turned. His pug face wore a downcast expression.

“T hope I see you well, ma’am. Pretty place you ’ave
’ere. I’m fond of flowers myself. They’ve always been my
’obby.”

“They're a great comfort in London.”

“Ye-es; I should think you might grow the dahlia ’ere.”
Having obeyed the obscure instincts of savoir faire, satisfied
some obscure desire to flatter, he went on: “My girl showed
me your letter. I didn’t like to write; in such a delicate matter
I'd rather be vivey vocey. Very kind, in your position, I’m sure.
I always try to do the Christian thing myself. Flesh passes;
you never know when you may have to take your turn. I said
to my girl I’d come and see you.”

“T’m very glad. I hoped perhaps you would.”

Mr. Wagge cleared his throat, and went on.

“T don’t want to say anything harsh about a certain party
in your presence, especially as I read he’s indisposed, but really
I hardly know how to bear the situation. I can’t bring myself
to think of money in relation to that matter; all the same, it’s
a serious loss to my daughter, very serious loss. I’ve got my
family pride to think of. My daughter’s name, well—it’s my
own; and, though I say it, ’m respected—a regular attendant—
I think I told you. Sometimes, I assure you, I feel I can’t

356
''BEYOND 357

control myself, and it’s only that—and you, if I may say so, that
keeps me in check.”

His black-gloved hands were clenching and unclenching, and
he shifted his broad, shining boots. Gyp gazed at them, not
daring to look up at his eyes thus turning from Christianity
to shekels, from his honour to the world, from his anger to
herself.

“ Please let me do what I ask, Mr. Wagge. I should be so
unhappy if I mightn’t do that little something.”

Mr. Wagge blew his nose.

“Tis a delicate matter,’ he said. “I don’t know where my
duty lays. I don’t, reelly.”

Gyp looked up.

“The great thing is to save Daisy suffering, fen’ bh 1b???

Mr. Wagge’s face wore for a moment an expression as if from
the thought: ‘Sufferin’?! You must leave that to her father!’
Then it wavered; the furtive warmth of the attracted male came
for a moment into his little eyes; he averted them, and. coughed.
Gyp said softly:

“To please me.”

Mr. Wagge’s readjusted glance stopped in confusion at her
waist. He answered, in a voice that he strove to soften:

“Tf you put it that way, I don’t reelly know ’ow to refuse ;
but quite between you and me—I can’t withdraw my attitude.”

“(Of course. Thank you so much; you'll let me know later.
I mustn’t take up your time now.” And she held out her hand.

Mr. Wagge took it in a lingering manner.

“Well, I have an appointment,” he said; “a gentleman on
Campden Hill. He starts at twelve. Dm never late. Good
morning.”

When she had watched him, square and black, pass through
the outer gate, busily rebuttoning those shiny gloves, she went
upstairs and washed her face and hands.

For several days Fiorsen wavered; but his collapse had come
just in time, and with every hour the danger lessened. At the
end of a fortnight of a perfectly white life, there remained
nothing to do, in the words of the doctor, but “ to shove in sea
air, and avoid recurrence of the predisposing causes.” Gyp had
locked them all up, including herself; she could control him
so long as he was tamed by his own weakness. But she passed
some very bitter hours before she sent for her baby, Betty, and
'' 

358 NOVELS OF LOVE

the dogs, and definitely took up life in her own house again. —
His debts had been paid, including the thousand pounds to —
Rosek, and the losses of Daphne Wing. The girl had gone down —
to that cottage where no one had ever heard of her, to pass her
time in lonely terror, with the aid of a black dress and a gold
band on her third finger.

August and the first half of September were spent near Bude.
Fiorsen’s passion for the sea kept him singularly moderate and
free from restiveness. He had been thoroughly frightened, and
such terror is not easily forgotten. They stayed in a farmhouse,
where he was at his best with the simple folk, and his best could
be charming. He was always trying to get his “mermaid ”
away from the baby, away to himself, along the grassy cliffs and
among the rocks and yellow sands. His delight was to find every
day some new nook where they could bathe, and dry themselves
by sitting in the sun. And very like a mermaid she was, on a
seaweedy rock, with her feet close together in a little pool, her
fingers combing her drowned hair. If she had loved him! But
though, close to nature like this, he was much more easy to bear,
her heart never opened to him, never fluttered at his voice, or
beat more quickly under his kisses. Her eyes when they looked
at her baby, and when they looked at him, were so different that
not even an egoist could help seeing; he began to hate that tiny
rival, and she began to notice that he did.

When the weather broke, he grew restless, craving his violin,
and they went back to town, in robust health. Gyp had never
been free from the feeling that it was just a lull, and the
moment they were back, the feeling gathered density, as rain
gathers in the sky after a fine spell. She had often thought of
Daphne Wing, and had written, getting in return this answer:

“Dear Mrs. Frorsen,

“Oh, it is kind of you to write, because I know what you
must be feeling about me; and it was so kind of you to let me
come here. I try not to think about things, but of course I
can’t help it; and I don’t seem to care what happens now.
Mother is coming down here later on. Sometimes I lie awake
all night, listening to the wind. Don’t you think the wind is
the most melancholy thing in the world? I wonder if I shall
die? I hope I shall. Oh, I do, really! Good-bye, dear Mrs.
Fiorsen. I shall never forgive myself about you.

“Your grateful, DarHne WING.”
''BEYOND 359

The girl had never once been mentioned between her and
Fiorsen ; she did not know whether he ever gave the little dancer
a thought, or even knew what had become of her. But now that
the time was getting near, Gyp felt more every day as if she
must go down and see her. She wrote to her father, who, after
a dose of Harrogate with Aunt Rosamund, was back at Milden-
ham. Winton answered that the nurse was there, and that
there seemed to be a.woman, presumably the mother, staying
with her, but that he had not of course made direct inquiry.
Could not Gyp come down? He was alone, and cubbing had
begun. It was like him to veil his longings under such dry
statements. But the thought of giving him pleasure, and of a
gallop with hounds fortified her feeling that she ought to go.
Baby was well, Fiorsen not drinking, she might surely snatch
this little holiday and satisfy her conscience about the girl.
Since Cornwall, she had played for him in the music-room as
of old, and she chose the finish of a morning practice to say:

“T want to go to Mildenham this afternoon for a week.
Father’s lonely.”

She saw his neck grow red.

“To him? No. He will steal you as he stole the baby. Let
him have the baby if he likes. Not you. No.”

At this unexpected outburst, revolt blazed up in her. She
never asked him anything; he should not refuse this. He came
up behind and put his arms round her.

“My Gyp, I want you here—I am lonely, too. Don’t go
away.”

She tried to force his arms apart, but could not, and her
anger grew. She said coldly:

“ There’s another reason.”

“No good reason—to take you from me.”

“The girl who is going to have your child is staying near
Mildenham, I want to see how she is.”

He let go of her then, and recoiling against the divan, sat
down. And Gyp thought: ‘I’m sorry—but it serves him
right.’

“She may die. I must go; but you needn’t be afraid I that
shan’t come back. I shall be back to-day week; I promise.”

He looked at her fixedly.

“Yes. You don’t break your promises; you will not break it.”
But, suddenly, he said again: “ Gyp, don’t go!”

1 aust.”
''360 NOVELS OF LOVE

He caught her in his arms.

“Say you love me, then! ”

But she could not. It was one thing to put up with embraces,
quite another to pretend that. When at last he was gone, she
sat smoothing her hair, staring before her with hard eyes,
thinking: ‘Here—where I saw him with that girl! What
animals men are!’

Late that afternoon, she reached Mildenham. Winton met
her at the station. On the drive up, they passed the cottage
where Daphne Wing was staying. It stood in front of a small
coppice, a creepered, plain-fronted, little brick house, with a
garden still full of sunflowers, tenanted by the old jockey,
Pettance, his widowed daughter, and her three small children.
“That talkative old scoundrel,” as Winton called him, was still
employed in the Mildenham stables, and his daughter was
laundress to the establishment. Gyp had secured for Daphne
Wing the nurse who had watched over her own event; the same
old doctor, too, was to be the presiding deity. There were no
signs of life about the cottage, and she would not stop, too
eager to be at home again, see the old rooms, smell the old savour
of the house, get to her old mare, and feel its nose nuzzling
her for sugar. It was so good to be back once more, feeling
strong and well and able to ride. The smile of Markey at the
front door was a joy to her, even the darkness of the hall, where
a gleam of last sunlight fell across the skin of Winton’s first
tiger, on which she had so often sunk down dead tired after
hunting.

In her mare’s box, old Pettance was putting a last touch to
cleanliness. His shaven, skin-tight old face smiled deeply.

“Good evenin’, miss; beautiful evenin’, ma’am!” And his
little burning brown eyes, just touched by age, regarded her
lovingly.

“Well, Pettance, how are you? And how’s Annie, and how
are the children? And how’s this old darling? ”

“Wonderful, miss; artful as a kitten. Carry you like a bird
to-morrow, if you’re goin’ out.”

“ How are her legs? ”

And Gyp passed her hand down those iron legs.

“They ’aven’t filled not once since she come in—she was out
all July and August; but I’ve kept ’er well at it since, in ’opes
you might be comin’.”

 
''BEYOND 361

“They feel splendid.” Still bending, Gyp asked: “ And how
is your lodger—the young lady I sent you?”

“Well, ma’am, she’s very young, and these very young ladies
they get a bit excited, you know, at such times; I should say
she’ve never been——” With obvious difficulty he checked the
words, “to an ’orse before!” “ Well, you must expect it. And
her mother, she’s a dreadful funny one. She does needle me!
Oh, she puts my back up properly! No class, of course—that’s
where it is. But this ’ere nurse—well, you know, miss, she
won’t ’ave no nonsense; so there we are. And, of course, she’s
bound to ’ave *ighsteria, a bit—losin’ her ’usband as young as
that.”

Gyp could feel his wicked old smile even before she raised
herself. What did it matter if he did guess? He would keep
a stable secret.

“Oh, we’ve ’ad some pretty flirts-up and cryin’, dear me!
I sleeps in the next room—oh, yes, at night-time—when you’re
a widder at that age, you can’t expect nothin’ else. I remember
when I was ridin’ in Ireland for Captain O’Neill, there was a
young woman——”

Gyp thought: ‘I mustn’t let him get off—or I shall be late
for dinner, and she said:

“Oh, Pettance, who bought the young brown horse? ”

“Mr. Bryn Summer’ay, ma’am, over at Widrington, for an
’unter, and ’ack in town, miss.”

“Summerhay? Ah!” Gyp recalled the young man with
the clear eyes and teasing smile, on the chestnut mare, the bold
young man who reminded her of somebody.

“That'll be a good home for him, I should think.”

“Oh, yes, miss; good ’ome—nice gentleman, too. He come
over here to see it, and asked after you. I told ’im you was a
married lady now, miss. ‘Ah,’ he said; ‘she rode beautiful!’
And he remembered the ’orse well. The major, he wasn’t ’ere
just then, so I let him try the young un; he popped ’im over a
fence or two, and when he come back he says, ‘ Well, I’m goin’
to have *im.’ Speaks very pleasant an’ don’t waste no time—
’orse was away before the end of the week. Carry ’im well;
’e’s a strong rider, too, and a good plucked one, but bad ’ands,
I should say.”

“Yes, Pettance; I must go in now. Will you tell Annie I
shall be round to-morrow, to see her?”
'' 

362 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Very good, miss. *Ounds meet at Filly Cross, seven-thirty.
So you'll be goin’ out?” |

“ Rather. Good night.”

Flying back across the yard, Gyp thought: ‘“ She rode beau-
tiful!” How jolly. I’m glad he’s got my horse.’
''XXI

GLow1ne from her morning in the saddle, she started out next
day at noon on her visit to the cottage. It was one of those
lingering mellow mornings of late September, when the air, just
warmed through, lifts off the stubbles, and the hedgerows are
not yet dried of dew. The short cut led across two fields, a
narrow strip of village common, where linen was drying on
gorse bushes coming into bloom, and one field beyond; she met
no one. Crossing the road, she passed into the cottage garden.
Sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies in great profusion were
tangled along the low red-brick garden walls, under some poplar
trees yellow-flecked already. A single empty chair, with a book
turned face downward, stood outside an open window. Smoke
wreathing from one chimney was the only sign of life. Stand-
ing undecided before the half-open door, Gyp was conscious
of too much stillness, of something unnatural in the silence.
She was just raising her hand to knock, when she heard the
sound of smothered sobbing. Peeping through the window,
she saw a woman dressed in green, evidently Mrs. Wagge, seated
at a table, crying into her handkerchief. And at that moment
a low moaning came from the room above. Gyp went in and
knocked on the door of the room where the woman in green was
sitting. It was opened, and Mrs. Wagge stood there. The nose
and eyes and cheeks of her thin, acid face were red, and in her
green dress, and with her greenish hair (for it was going grey
and she put on it a yellow lotion smelling of cantharides), she
seemed to Gyp just like one of those green apples that turn red-
dish so unnaturally in the sun. Her face shone in streaks, and
her handkerchief was still crumpled in her hand. It was hor-
rible to come, fresh and glowing, into the presence of this poor
woman, evidently in bitter sorrow. And a desire came over
Gyp to fly. It seemed dreadful for anyone connected with him
to be coming here at all. She said softly:

“Mrs. Wagge? Please forgive me—but is there any news?
It was I who got Daphne down here.”

The woman before her, evidently torn this way and that, at
last answered, with a sniff:

“ It—it—was born this morning—dead.”

363
''364 NOVELS OF LOVE

Gyp gasped. To have gone through it all for that! Mother-
feeling rebelled and sorrowed; but reason said: Better so!
Much better!

“ How is she? ”

“Bad—very bad. I don’t know, I’m sure, what to say—
my feelings are all anyhow, and that’s the truth. It’s so dread-
fully upsetting altogether.”

“Ts my nurse with her?”

“Yes. She’s a very headstrong woman, but capable, I don’t
deny. Daisy’s very weak. Oh, it is upsetting! And now I
suppose there’ll have to be a burial. There really seems no end
to it. And all because of—of that man.” Mrs. Wagge turned
away again to cry into her handkerchief.

Gyp stole out. She hesitated whether to go up or
no, but at last she mounted softly. It would be in the front
room that the bereaved girl was lying—the girl who, but a
year ago, had debated with such naive self-importance whether
it was her duty to take a lover. The nurse opened the door
an inch, and seeing who it was, slipped through into the cor-
ridor.

“You, my dear! That’s nice!”

“ How is she? ”

“Fairly well—considering. You know about it?”

“Yes; can I see her? ”

“I hardly think so. I can’t make her out. She’s got no
spirit, not an ounce. She doesn’t want to get well, I believe.
It’s the man, I expect.” And, looking at Gyp, she asked: “Is
that it? Is he tired of her?”

7 Sess Ease.” ’

The nurse swept her up and down.

“It’s a pleasure to look at you. You’ve got quite a colour,
for you. After all, I believe it might do her good to see you.
Come in!”

Gyp passed in behind her. With eyes closed, fair hair still
damp on the forehead, one white hand lying on the sheet above
her heart—what a frail madonna of the sugar-plums! On all
that bed the only colour seemed the gold hoop round the wedding
finger.

“Look, my dear; I’ve brought you a nice visitor.”

Daphne Wing’s eyes and lips opened, and closed again. And
the thought went through Gyp: ‘Poor thing! She thought it
was going to be him, and it’s only me!’ The white lips said:
''BEYOND 365

“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, it’s you—it is kind of you!” Again
the eyes opened, but very little, differently.

The nurse had slipped away. Gyp sat down, and timidly
touched the hand.

Two tears slowly ran down the girl’s cheeks.

“It’s over,” she said just audibly, “and there’s nothing now:
—it was dead, you know. I don’t want to live. Oh, Mrs. Fior-
sen, why can’t they let me die, too? ” :

Gyp bent over, stroking the hand, unable to bear the sight
of those two slowly rolling tears. Daphne Wing murmured on:

“You are good to me. I wish my poor little baby hadn’t
died.”

Gyp raised herself and managed to get out the words:

“Bear up! Think of your work!”

“Dancing!” She gave the least little laugh. “It seems so
long ago!”

“Yes; but now it’ll all come back to you again.”

Daphne Wing answered by a feeble sigh.

With eyes and mouth closed, and all alabaster white, the face
was perfect, purged of its little commonnesses. Strange freak
that this white flower of a face could ever have been produced
by Mr. and Mrs. Wagge!

Daphne Wing opened her eyes.

“Oh! Mrs. Fiorsen, I feel so weak, and lonely—there’s noth-
ing anywhere.”

Gyp got up, carried into the mood of the girl’s heart, and
afraid it would be seen.

“When nurse said she’d brought a visitor, I thought it was
him; but I’m glad now. If he had looked at me like he did—
I'd have died straight off.”

Gyp put her lips to the damp forehead, where, very faint, was
still the scent of orange-blossom.

Back in the garden, she hurried away; but, instead of cross-
ing the fields, turned past the side of the cottage into the coppice
behind. And, sitting down on a log, her hands pressed to her
cheeks and her elbows to her breast, she stared at the sunlit
bracken and the flies chasing over it. Love! Was it always
hateful and tragic? Darting and taking, and darting away!
Or darting one on the other, then breaking away too soon. Did
never two dart, seize, and cling, and ever after be one? Love!
It had spoiled her father’s life, and Daphne Wing’s; never came
when wanted; always when not. Malevolent wanderer, tiring of
''366 NOVELS OF LOVE

the spirit before the body; or the body before the spirit. Better
have nothing io do with it—far better! Who that was free
would become a slave like Daphne Wing? Like her own hus-
band to his want of a wife who did not love him! Like her
father had been—to a memory! And watching the sunlight on
the bracken, Gyp thought: ‘Love! Keep far from me!’

Every morning she made her way to the cottage, every morn-
ing passed through the hands of Mrs. Wagge. The good lady
had taken a fancy to her, confiding to the nurse, who confided
it to Gyp, that she was “very distangey—and such pretty eyes,
quite Italian.” She was one of those many whose passion for
distinction was a little too much for their passionate propriety.
Worship of distinction had caused her to foster her young daugh-
ter’s talent for dancing. Who knew to what it might lead in
these days? She explained to Gyp how she had always “ brought
Daisy up like a lady—and now this is the result.” And she
would look piercingly at Gyp’s hair or ears, hands, or instep.
The burial worried her dreadfully. “I’m using the name of
Daisy Wing; she was christened ‘ Daisy’ and the Wing’s pro-
fessional, so that takes them both in, and is quite the truth.
But I don’t think anyone would connect it, would they? About
the father’s name, do you think I might say the late Mr. J oseph
Wing? You see, it never was alive, and I must put something.
I couldn’t bear they should guess the truth; Mr. Wagge would
be so distressed. It’s in his own line, you see. Oh, it is up-
setting!”

Gyp would murmur:

“Oh! yes, anything.”

Though deathly white and spiritless, it soon became clear that
Daphne Wing was going to pull through. With each day, more
colour and commonness came back. She would, in the end,
return to Fulham purged of her infatuation, a little harder,
perhaps a little deeper.

On the last day, Gyp wandered again into the coppice, and
sat down on the same log. The light shone level on the yellow-
ing leaves all round her; a startled rabbit pelted out of the
bracken and back, and, from the far edge of the little wood, a
jay cackled harshly, shifting its perck. Now that she was so
near having to go back to Fiorsen, she knew that she had not
been wise to come. Contact with the girl had made the thought
of life with him less tolerable even than before. Only the long-
ing to see her baby made return seem possible. She was very
''BEYOND 367

near to loathing at that moment. He, the father of her baby!
The thought seemed ridiculous. That little creature seemed to
bind him to her no more than if it were the offspring of some
chance encounter, some pursuit of nymph by faun. No! It
was hers alone. But a sudden feverish longing to get back to
it overpowered all other thought.

Next morning Winton took her back to London. Putting her
into the cab, he asked:

“Have you still got your key of Bury Street? Good! Re-
member, Gyp—any time day or night—there it is for you.”

She had wired to Fiorsen, and reached home soon after three.
He was not in, and her telegram lay unopened in the hall. She
ran up to the nursery. The pathetic sound of some small crea-
ture that cannot tell what is hurting it, met her ears. She went
in with the half-triumphant thought: ‘Perhaps that’s for
me!’

Betty, very flushed, was rocking the cradle, and examining
the baby’s face with a perplexed frown. Seeing Gyp, she gasped:

“Oh, be joyful! Oh, my dear! I am glad. I can’t do any-
thing with baby since the morning. Whenever she wakes, she
cries like that. And till to-day she’s been a little model. There,
there |”

Gyp took up the baby, whose black eyes fixed themselves on her
mother in momentary contentment; but, at the first movement,
she began again her fretful plaint. Betty went on:

“ She’s been like that ever since this morning, when Mr. Fior-
sen came in. The fact is, baby don’t like it. He stares at her so.
This morning I thought—well—I thought: ‘ You’re her father.
It’s time she was getting used to you.’ So I let them be a
minute; and when I came back—I was only just across to the
bathroom—he was comin’ out lookin’ quite fierce, and baby—
screamin’! And except for sleepin’, she’s hardly stopped cryin’
since.”

Pressing the baby to her breast, Gyp sat very still.

““ How has he been, Betty?”

Betty plaited her apron; her moon-face troubled.

“Well,” she said, “I think he’s been drinkin’. Oh, I’m sure
he has—I’ve smelt it about him. The third day it began. And
night before last he came in dreadfully late—I could hear him
abusing the stairs as he was comin’ up. Oh dear—it is a pity.”

The baby, who had been still since she lay in her mother’s lap,
suddenly raised her voice again. Gyp said:
''368 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ Betty, I believe something hurts her arm. She cries the
moment she’s touched there. Is there a pin or anything? Just
see. Take her things off. Oh—look!”

Both the tiny arms above the elbow were circled with dark
marks, as if they had been squeezed by ruthless fingers. The
two women looked at each other in horror.

ce He ! 39

Gyp had flushed crimson; her eyes filled but dried at once.
At sight of her face, now gone very pale, with lips tightened to
a line, Betty stopped her outburst of ejaculation. When they
had wrapped the baby’s arms in remedies and cottonwool, Gyp
went into her bedroom, and, throwing herself down on her bed,
burst into a passion of weeping, smothering it in her pillow.

It was the crying of sheer rage. The brute! To dig his claws
into that precious mite! Just because the poor little thing cried
at that cat’s stare of his! The brute! The devil! And he
would come to her and whine about it, and say: “My Gyp, I
never meant—how should I know I was hurting? Her crying
was so—— Why should she cry at me? I was upset! I wasn’t
thinking!” She could hear him pleading and sighing to her
to forgive him. But she would not—this time! Her fit of cry-
ing ceased. She lay listening to the tick of the clock, marshalling
a hundred little evidences of his malevolence toward her baby—
his own baby. How could he? Was he really going mad? And
such chilly shuddering seized her that she crept under the eider-
down. She retained just enough sense of proportion to under-
stand that this, like his insults to Monsieur Harmost, her father
and others, were ungovernable accesses of nerve-irritation. But
this did not lessen her feeling. Her baby! That tiny thing!
She hated him at last ; and lay thinking out the coldest, cruellest,
most cutting things to say. She had been too long-suffering.

He did not come in that evening; and she went up to bed at
ten o’clock. She had a longing to have the baby with her—a
feeling that to leave her was not safe. She carried her off, still
sleeping, and, locking her doors, got into bed. For a long time
she lay awake, expecting every minute to hear him return. She
fell asleep at last, and woke with a start. There were vague
noises down below. It must be he! She had left the light on in
her room, and leaned over to look at the baby’s face. It was
still sleeping, drawing its tiny breaths peacefully. Gyp sat up
by its side,

Yes; he was coming up, and, by the sounds, not sober:—a
''BEYOND 369

loud creak, a thud, as if he had clutched at the banisters and
fallen; muttering, and the noise of boots dropped. Swiftly
she thought: ‘If he were quite drunk, he would not have taken
them off at all;—nor if he were quite sober. Does he know I’m
back?’ Another creak, as if he were raising himself by the
banisters, a creeping and breathing behind the door—then he
fumbled at the door and turned the handle. He must know
that she was back, had noticed her travelling-coat or seen the
telegram. The handle was tried again, then, after a pause, the
handle of the door between his room and hers was fiercely shaken.
She could hear his voice, flown with drink, thick, a little
drawling.

“ Gyp—let me in—Gyp!”

After that, sounds were more confused, as if he were now at
one door, now at the other; then creakings, as if on the stairs
again ; after that, no sound at all.

Fully half an hour Gyp continued to sit up, straining her
ears. Where was he? What doing? On her over-excited nerves
possibilities came crowding. He must have gone downstairs
again. In that half-drunken state, where would his baffled
frenzies lead him? And, suddenly, she thought that she smelled
burning. It went, and came again; she crept to the door, noise-
lessly turned the key, and pulling it open a few inches, sniffed.

All was dark on the landing. There was no smell of burning
out there. Suddenly, a hand clutched her ankle. All the blood
rushed from her heart; she stifled a scream, and tried to pull
the door to. But his arm and her leg were caught between, and
she saw the black mass of his figure lying full-length on its
face. Like a vise his hand held her; he drew himself up on to
his knees, on to his feet, and forced his way through. Panting,
in utter silence, Gyp struggled to drive him out. His drunken
strength seemed to come and go in gusts, but hers was con-
tinuous, greater than she had ever thought, and she panted:

“Go! go out of my room—you—you—wretch! ”

Then her heart stood still with horror; he had slued round to
the bed and was stretching his hands out above the baby.

She flung herself on him from behind, dragging his arms
down, and, clasping her hands together, held him fast. He
twisted round in her arms and sat down on the bed. In that
moment of his collapse, Gyp snatched up her baby and fled out,
down the dark stairs, hearing him stumbling, groping in pur-
suit. She fled into the dining-room and locked the door, heard
''370 NOVELS OF LOVE

him run against it and fall down. Snuggling her baby, who was
crying now, inside her nightgown for warmth, she stood rocking
and hushing it, trying to listen. There was no more sound.
By the hearth, whence a little heat still came forth, she cowered
down. With cushions and the thick white felt from the dining-
table, she made the baby snug, and wrapped her shivering self in
the tablecloth, sat staring wide-eyed before her—always listening.
There were sounds at first, then none. A long, long time she
stayed like that, before she stole to the door. She did not mean
to make a second mistake. She could hear the sound of heavy
breathing, and listened to it, till she was certain it was the
breathing of sleep. Then stealthily she opened, and looked. He
was lying against the bottom stair in heavy, drunken slumber.
She knew that sleep so well; he would not wake from it.

It gave her a sort of evil pleasure that they would find him
like that in the morning when she was gone. Taking the baby,
with infinite precaution, she stole past him. Once more in her
locked room, she went to the window and looked out. Just
before dawn; her garden grey and ghostly—the last time she
would see it!

She did her hair and dressed in furs—she was very cold and
shivery. She took a few little things she was fondest of and
slipped them into her wrist-bag with her purse. She did every-
thing very swiftly, wondering at her own power of knowing what
to take. When she was ready, she scribbled a note to Betty
to follow with the dogs to Bury Street, and pushed it under the
nursery door. Then, wrapping the baby in jerseys and a shawl,
she went downstairs. The dawn had broken, grey light was
striking into the hall. She passed Fiorsen’s sleeping figure
safely, and, for one moment, stopped for breath. He was lying
with his back against the wall, his head in the hollow of an arm
raised against a stair, his face turned a little upward. That face
which, hundreds of times, had been so close to her own, and
something about this crumpled body, about his tumbled hair,
those cheekbones, and the hollows beneath, about the lips just
parted under the dirt-gold of his moustache—something of lost
divinity in all that inert figure—clutched for a second at Gyp’s
heart. Just fora second. It was over, this time! Never again!
And, turning stealthily, she slipped her shoes on, opened the
front door, took up her burden, closed the door softly behind
her, and walked away.

 
''PART (Tt
I

GyP was going up to town. All the winter and spring she had
been at Mildenham, riding, and pursuing her music, seeing
hardly anyone except her father; and this departure for London
brought her the feeling that comes on an April day, when the
sky is blue, with white clouds, and in the fields the grass is warm
for the first time. At Widrington a porter entered her carriage,
with a kit-bag, an overcoat, and some golf-lubs; and round the
door a little group clustered. Gyp noted a tall woman whose
blonde hair was going grey, a young girl with a fox-terrier on a
lead, a young man with a Scotch terrier under his arm and his
back to the carriage. The girl was kissing the Scotch terrier’s
head.

“Good-bye, old Ossy! Was he nice! Tumbo, keep down!
You're not going!”

“Good-bye, dear boy! Don’t work too hard!”

The young man’s answer was not audible, but it was followed
by irrepressible gurgles and a smothered:

“Oh, Bryan, you are Good-bye, dear Ossy!” ‘“ Good-
bye!” “Good-bye!” The young man got in. Then the train
moved. Gyp caught a side view of him, waving his hat from
the carriage window. It was her acquaintance of the hunting-
field—the “ Mr. Bryn Summer’ay,” as old Pettance called him,
who had bought her horse last year. Seeing him pull down his
overcoat, to bank up the old Scotch terrier against the jolting
of the journey, she thought: ‘I like men who think first of their
dogs.’ His round head, with curly hair, broad brow, clean-cut
lips, gave her again the wonder: ‘ Where have I seen someone
like him?’ He raised the window, and said:

“ How would you like Oh, how d’you do! We met out
hunting. You don’t remember me, I expect.”

“Yes; perfectly. And you bought my horse last summer.
How is he?”

“Tn great form. I forgot to ask what you called him; I’ve

371

 

 
''372 NOVELS OF LOVE

named him Hotspur—he’ll never be steady at his fences. I re-
member how he pulled with you that day.”

They were silent, smiling.

Looking at the dog, Gyp said:

“ He looks rather a darling. How old?”

“Twelve. Beastly when dogs get old!”

There was another little silence while he contemplated her
with his clear eyes.

“T came over to call once—with my mother; November the
year before last. Somebody was ill.”

“ Yes—I.”

“ Badly? 7

Gyp shook her head.

“T heard you were married The little drawl in his voice
had increased, as though covering the abruptness of that remark.
Gyp looked up.

“Yes; but my little daughter and I live with my father
again.”

“Ah! What a run that was!”

“ Perfect! Was that your mother on the platform?”

“Yes—and my sister Edith. Extraordinary dead-alive place,
Widrington ; I expect Mildenham isn’t much better?”

“It’s very quiet, but I like it.”

“ By the way, I don’t know your name now?”

“ Fiorsen.”

“Oh, yes! The violinist. Life’s a bit of a gamble, isn’t it?”

Gyp did not answer that odd remark. He took from his
pocket a little red book.

“Do you know these? I always take them travelling. Finest
things ever written! ”

The book was open at the lines:

29

 

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration firds,

Or bends with the remover to remove 2?

 

Gyp read on:

“Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom y

 
''BEYOND 373

The sun, far down in the west, shone almost level over wide,
whitish-green space, and the spotted cattle browsed or stood by
the ditches, lazily flicking their tufted tails. A shaft of sunlight
flowed into the carriage, filled with dust motes; and, handing the
little book back through that streak of radiance, she said softly :

“Do you read much poetry?”

“More law, ’'m afraid. But it is about the finest thing in
the world, isn’t it? ”

“No; I think music.”

“Are you a musician? You look as if you might be. I
should think you had it badly.”

“Thank you. And you haven’t it at all?”

“T like opera.”

“The hybrid form—and the lowest! ”

“That’s why it suits me. Don’t you like it, though?”

“Yes; that’s why I’m going up to London.”

“Really? Are you a subscriber?”

“This season.”

“So am I. Good—I shall see you.”

Gyp smiled. It was long since she had talked to a man of
her own age, long since she had seen a face that roused her
curiosity and admiration, long since she had been admired. The
sun-shaft, shifted by a westward trend of the train, bathed her
from the knees up; its warmth increased her light-hearted sense
of being in luck.

Much can be talked of in two or three hours of a railway
journey! And round them a friendly after-warmth will cling.
The difficulty of making themselves heard provoked confidential
utterance. The isolation carried their friendship faster and
further than any spasmodic acquaintanceship of weeks. In that
long talk he was far the more voluble. There was too much of
which she could not speak. She liked listening to his slightly
drawling voice—his audacious wit, the irrepressible bubble of
laughter that kept breaking from him. He disclosed his past
freely—public-school and college life, efforts at the Bar, his
ambitions, tastes, even his scrapes. And in this spontaneous
unfolding there was perpetual flattery ; Gyp felt through it all
a sort of subtle admiration. He asked her, presently, if she
played piquet.

“I play with my father nearly every evening.”

“ Shall we have a game?”

She knew he only wanted to play because he could sit nearer,
''3t4 NOVELS OF LOVE

joined by the evening paper over their knees, hand her the cards
after dealing, touch her hand by accident, look in her face. And
this was not unpleasant; for she, in turn, liked looking at his
face, which had “charm ”—that something light and unepis-
copal, lacking to so many solid, handsome faces.

When he gripped her hand to say good-bye, she gave his an in-
voluntary little squeeze. Standing by her cab, with a look of
frank, rather wistful, admiration on his face, he said:

“J shall see you at the opera, then, and in the Row perhaps;
and I may come along to Bury Street, some time, mayn’t I?”

Nodding, Gyp drove off through the sultry London evening.
Her father was not in, and she went straight to her room. After
so long in the country, it seemed very close. Putting on a wrap-
per, she sat down to brush the train-smoke out of her hair.

For months after leaving Fiorsen, she had felt nothing but
relief. Only of late had she begun to see her new position—
that of a woman married yet not married; disillusioned, yet in
secret seeking a real mate, with every hour that ripens her
heart and beauty. Gazing at her face, reflected, intent and
mournful, in the mirror, she saw her arid position more i
than she had ever seen it. What was the use of being pretty?
No longer use to anyone! Not yet twenty-six, and in a nunnery!
With a shiver, though not of cold, she drew her wrapper close.
This time last year she had at least been in the main current
of life. And yet—hetter far be derelict like this than go back
to him whom memory painted always standing over her sleeping
pee with his arms stretched out and his fingers crooked like
claws.

After that early-morning escape, Fiorsen had lurked after
her for weeks, in town, at Mildenham, and even in Scotland,
when Winton carried her off there. But she had not weakened
in her resolution a second time, and he had given up pursuit,
and gone abroad. Since then—nothing had come from him,
save a few wild or maudlin letters, written evidently during
drinking-bouts. Even they had ceased, and for four months
she had heard no word. He had “ got over” her, it seemed,
wherever he was.

She stopped brushing, and thought of that walk with her baby
through the empty, silent streets, in the early misty morning
last October, of waiting dead-tired, on the pavement, ringing till
they let her in. Often, since, she had wondered how fear could
have worked her up to that weird departure. Her father and
''BEYOND 375

Aunt Rosamund had wanted her to try for a divorce. But her
instincts refused to let everyone know her secrets and sufferings
—refused to hollow pretence involved, that she had loved him
when she never had. It had been her fault for marrying him
without love

 

* Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds! ”

What irony—if her fellow-traveller had only known!

She got up from before the mirror, looking round her room,
the same she had always slept in as a girl. So he had remem-
bered her all this time! It had not seemed like meeting a
stranger. They were not strangers now, anyway. And, sud-
denly, on the wall before her, she saw his face. Of course!
How stupid of her not to have known at once! There, in a
brown frame, hung a photograph of the celebrated Botticelli or
Masaccio “ Head of a Young Man” in the National Gallery.
She had fallen in love with it years ago, and on the wall of
her room it had been ever since. That broad face, the clear
eyes, the bold, clean-cut mouth, the audacity—only, the live face
was English, not Italian, had more humour, more “ breeding,”
less poetry—something “old Georgian” about it. How he
would laugh if she told him he was like that peasant-acolyte with
fluffed-out hair, and a little ruching round his neck! Smiling,
she plaited her own hair and got into bed.

She could not sleep; she heard her father come in and go
up to his room, heard the clocks strike midnight, then one, then
two, and always the dull roar of Piccadilly. She had nothing
over her but a sheet, and still it was too hot. There was a scent
in the room, as of flowers. Where could it come from? She
got up at last, and went to the window. here, behind the cur-
tains, was a bowl of cyclamen. Her father’s thought—how sweet
of him!

And, burying her nose in those blossoms, she remembered
her first ball. Perhaps Bryan Summerhay had been there! If
he had been introduced to her then, if she had happened to dance
with him instead of with that man who had kissed her arm,
might she not have felt different towards all men? And if he
had admired her—and had not everyone, that night—might
she not have liked, perhaps more than liked, him in return? Or
would she have looked on him as on all her swains before she
''376 NOVELS OF LOVE

met Fiorsen, so many moths fluttering round a candle, foolish
to singe themselves! Perhaps she had been bound to have her
lesson, to be humbled and brought low!

With a cyclamen blossom to her nose, she went up to that
picture. She could just see the outline of the face and the
eyes gazing at her: in her heart, something faintly stirred, as a
leaf turns over, as a wing flutters. And, blossom and all, she
clasped her hands over her breast, where again her heart quivered
with that faint, shy tremor.

It was late, no—early, when she fell asleep and had a strange
dream. She was riding her old mare through a field of flowers.
She had on a black dress, and round her head a crown of bright,
pointed crystals; she sat without saddle, her knee curled up,
perched so lightly that she hardly felt the mare’s back, and
the reins she held were long twisted stems of honeysuckle. Sing-
ing as she rode, her eyes flying here and there, over the field,
up to the sky, she felt lighter than thistledown; and while they
raced along, the old mare kept turning her head and biting at
the honeysuckle flowers. Then, suddenly, that chestnut face be-
came the face of Summerhay, looking back at her with his smile.
She awoke. Sunlight, through the curtains where she had
opened them to find the flowers, was shining on her.
''II

Late that same night, Summerhay came out of the little Chelsea
house, which he inhabited, and walked towards the river. In
certain moods men turn insensibly towards any open space—
downs, woods, waters—where the sky is free to the eye. A man
is alone when he loves, alone when he dies; nobody cares for one
so absorbed, and he cares for nobody, no—not he! Summerhay
stood by the river-wall and looked up at the stars through the
plane-tree branches. Every now and then he drew a long breath
of the warm, unstirring air. And he thought of little, of noth-
ing; but a sweetish sensation beset his heart, a kind of quivering
lightness his limbs. He sat down on a bench and shut his eyes.
He saw a face—only a face. The lights went out one by one in
the houses opposite; no cabs passed now, and scarce a passenger
was afoot, but Summerhay sat like a man in a trance, the smile
coming and going on his lips; and the air above the river stirred
with the tide flowing up.

It was just coming dawn, when he went in, and, instead of
going to bed, sat down to a case in which he was junior on the
morrow, and worked right on till it was time to ride before his
bath and breakfast. He had one of those constitutions—not
uncommon among barristers—that thrive on long spurts. With
capacity and a liking for his work, he was on his way to make his
name; though, at times, no one could drift more imperturbably
on the tides of the moment. He was something of a paradox.
He chose to live in that little Chelsea house rather than in the
Temple or St. James’s, for the sake of solitude; yet he was an
excellent companion, whose many friends felt for him an aftfec-
tionate distrust. To women, he was almost universally attractive,
but he had kept heart-free on the whole. He was a gambler,
the sort who gets in deep, and then, by a plucky, lucky plunge,
gets out again, until some day perhaps—he stays there. His
father, a diplomatist, had been dead fifteen years; his mother was
well known in the semi-intellectual circles of society. He had
no brothers, two sisters, and an income of his own. Such was
Bryan Summerhay at the age of twenty-six, with his wisdom-
teeth to cut.

When he started that morning for the Temple, he had still a

377
''378 NOVELS OF LOVE

feeling of extraordinary lightness, still saw that face—its perfect
regularity, warm pallor, dark smiling eyes rather wide apart,
its fine, small, close-set ears, and the sweep of the black-brown
hair across the low brow. Or was it something much less defi-
nite he saw—an emanation, a trick, a turn, an indwelling grace,
a something that appealed and touched him? It would not let
him be, and he did not desire that it should. For this was in
his character; if he saw a horse that he liked, he put his money
on it whenever it ran; if charmed by an opera, he went to it
over and over again; if by a poem, he learned it by heart. And
while he walked along the river—his usual route—he had queer
sensations, and felt happy.

He was rather late, and went at once into court. In wig and
gown, he was notably “old Georgian.” A beauty-spot or two, a
full-skirted coat, a sword and snuff-box, with that grey wig or
its equivalent, and there would have been the eighteenth-century
—the strong, light build, the breadth of face, brown pallor,
clean and unpinched cut of lips, the slight insolence and devil-
may-caredom, the clear glance, the bubble of vitality. Almost a
pity to have been born so late!

When at last in chambers, he had washed off that special reek
of clothes, and parchment, faraway herrings, and distemper,
which clings about the Law, dipping his whole curly head in
water, and towelling vigorously, he set. forth along the Embank-
ment, smoking a cigar. It was nearly seven. Just this time
yesterday he had got into the train and seen the face which had
refused to leave him since. Fever recurs at certain hours. One
could not call at seven o’clock! But he could go up Bury Street
on the way to his club!

He passed his boot shop, where, for some time, he had been
meaning to give an order, and went by thinking: ‘I wonder
where she goes for things.’ Her figure came to him so vividly
—sitting in her corner, or standing by the cab, her hand in his.
She had been scented like flowers, and—and a rainy wind! He

stood still before a plate-glass window, not taking in at all the
reflected image of his frowning, rueful face, and the cigar ex-
tinct between his lips. He walked on faster. He came to Bury
Street, with a queer, weak sensation down the back of his legs.
No flower-boxes this year broke the plain front of Winton’s
house; nothing whatever but its number and the beating of his
heart marked it out for Summerhay from any other dwelling.
Turning into Jermyn Street, he felt suddenly morose. His

1c rele
''BEYOND 379

club was at the top of St. James’s Street, and he passed at once
into the least frequented room. This was the library; and going
to the French section, he took down “The Three Musketeers,”
seating himself with his back to anyone who might come in.
His favourite romance might give him warmth and companion-
ship; but he did not read. From where he sat he could throw
a stone to where she was sitting perhaps; except for walls he
could almost reach her with his voice, certainly see her. This
was imbecile! A woman he had only met twice. Imbecile! ...

“ Point of five! Three queens—three knaves! Do you know
that thing of Dowson’s: ‘I have been faithful to thee, Cynara,
in my fashion’? Better than any Verlaine, except ‘ Les sanglots
longs.’ What have you got?”

“Only quart to the queen. Do you like the name ‘ Cynara

“¥es;'don’t you 27)

“Oynara! Cynara! Ye-es—an autumn, rose-petal, whirling,
dead-leaf sound.”

“Good! Pipped. Shut up, Ossy—don’t snore!”

“Ah, poor old dog! Let him. Shuffle for me, please. Oh!
there goes another card!” Her knee touched hi vee

The book had dropped—Summerhay started.

Dash it! Hopeless! And, turning round in his huge arm-
chair, he snoozed down into its depths. In a few minutes he was
asleep. He slept without a dream.

Two hours later a friend, seeking distraction, came on him,
and stood grinning down at that curly head and face which just
then had the sleepy abandonment of a small boy’s. Maliciously
he gave the chair a little kick.

Summerhay stirred, and thought: ‘What! Where am I?’

In front of the grinning face, above him, floated another
filmy, charming. He shook himself. “Oh, damn you!”

“ Sorry, old chap! ”

“ What time is it?”

“Ten o'clock.”

Summerhay uttered an unintelligible sound, and turned over
on the other arm. But he slept no more. Instead, he saw her
face, heard her voice, and felt again the touch of her warm,
gloved hand.

2 ipiiaal

 
''III

Art the opera, on Friday evening, they were playing “ Cavalleria ”
and “ Pagliacci,’ which, with “ Faust” and “Carmen,” were
the only operas Winton could not sleep through.

Women’s eyes, which must not stare, cover more space than
the eyes of men. Gyp had seen Summerhay before he saw her;
seen him come in and fold his opera hat against his white waist-
coat, looking round, as if for—someone. He looked well in
evening clothes. When he sat down, she could still see his pro-
file; and, vaguely watching the Santuzza and the stout Turiddu,
she wondered whether, by fixing her eyes on it, she could make
him turn. Just then he saw her. It was rather startling to
find, after that exchange of looks, that she at once began to
want another. Would he like her dress? Was her hair nice?
She wished she had not had it washed that morning. But at
the interval she did not look round, till his voice said:

“ How d’you do, Major Winton? ”

Winton had been told of the meeting in the train. He was
pining for a cigarette, but had not liked to desert his daughter.
After a few remarks, he got up.

“Take my seat a minute, Summerhay, I’m going to have a
smoke.”

Summerhay sat down. To Gyp it was, queerly, as if house
and people vanished, and they two were back again in the rail-
way carriage—alone. Ten minutes to make the most of! To
enjoy the look in his eyes, the sound of his voice and laugh. To
laugh, and be nice to him. They were friends.

“'There’s a picture in the National Gallery I want you to
look at,” she said, as he was leaving her.

“Will you take me? To-morrow? What time? Three?”

She knew she was flushing, and, with that warmth in her
cheeks and a smile in her eyes, had the sensation, so rare and
pleasant, of feeling beautiful. Then he was gone! Her father
was slipping back into his stall; and, afraid of her face, she
touched his arm:

“Dad, do look at that headdress in the next row but one;
did you ever see anything so delicious? ”

And while Winton was gazing, the orchestra struck up the

380
''BEYOND 381

overture to “ Pagliacci.” Watching the progress of that heart-
breaking little plot, she felt as if for the first time she under-
stood it with other than her wsthetic sense. Poor Nedda! Poor
Canio! Poor Silvio! Her eyes filled with tears. Within those
doubled figures of the tragi-comedy she seemed to feel that
passionate love—too swift, too strong, too violent, sweet and
fearful.

“Thou hast my heart, and I am thine for ever—
To-night and for ever I am thine!
What is there left to me? What have I but a heart that is broken?”

La commedia é finita!

While putting on her cloak, her eyes sought Summerhay’s.
She tried to smile—could not, slowly forced her gaze away, and
turned to follow Winton.

She was not late by coquetry, she was afraid of letting him
think her eager. She saw him at once under the colonnade,
and marked the change in his face when he caught sight of her.
She led him straight up to the picture. Its likeness to him,
was not improved by a top hat and modern collar, but it was
there still.

“ Well!”

“What are you smiling at?”

“Tye had a photograph of that ever since I was fifteen ; so
you see I’ve known you a long time.”

He stared.

“Great Scott! Am I like that? I shall try and find you,
now.”

Gyp shook her head.

“'There’s my most favourite picture, ‘The Death of Procris.’
The wonder in the faun’s face, Procris’s closed eyes; the dog,
and the swans, and the pity for what might have been! ”

“For what might have been! Did you enjoy ‘ Pagliacci’? ”

“T think I felt it too much.”

“TI thought so. I watched you.”

“Destruction by—love—seems so terrible! Show me your
favourites. I can tell you what they are, though.”

“Well? ”

“The ‘ Admiral,’ for one.”

“Yes. What others?”
''382 NOVELS OF LOVE

“The two Bellinis.”

“ By Jove, you are uncanny!”

Gyp laughed.

“You want decision, clarity, colour, and fine texture. Is that
right? Here’s another of my pets.”

It was a tiny “ Crucifixion” by da Messina—a thin high
cross, a thin, humble, suffering Christ, lonely, and actual in the
clear, darkened landscape.

“That touches me more than the big, idealised sort. One
feels it was like that. Oh! And the Francescas! Aren’t they
lovely?” :

He nodded, but his eyes said: ‘ And so are you.’

They spent two hours among those endless pictures, almost
as alone as in the railway-carriage. And when she had refused
to let him walk back with her, he stood stock-still beneath the
colonnade. The sun streamed in under; the pigeons preened
their feathers; people passed in the square, black and tiny
against the lions and the great column. He took in nothing of
all that. She was like no one he had ever known! Different
from girls and women in society! Still more different from
anything in the half-world! Not the new sort—college, suf-
frage! Like no one! And he knew so little of her! Not even
whether she had ever really been in love. Her. husband—where
was he; what was he to her? “The rare, the mute, the inex-
pressive She!” When she smiled; when her eyes—but her
eyes were too quick for him see right into them! How beautiful
she had looked, gazing at the pictures, her lips just smiling!
Tf he could kiss them! With a sigh, he moved down the grey
steps into the sunlight. And London, throbbing with the sea-
son’s life, seemed to him quite empty. To-morrow—ah, to-mor-
row he could call!
''IV

Arrer that Sunday call, Gyp sat by a bowl of heliotrope, think-
ing over a passage of words... .

“Mrs. Fiorsen, tell me about yourself.”

“ What do you want to know?”

“Your marriage?”

“T made a fearful mistake—against my father’s wish. I
haven’t seen my husband for months; I shall never see him
again if I can help it. Is that enough?”

“You don’t love him?”

“ Now? :

“Cant you get free?”

“The Divorce Court! Ugh! I couldn’t!”

“Yes, I know—it’s hellish! ”

He had gripped her hand so hard! ...

She buried her face in the heliotrope; then, going to the piano,
began to play. She was still playing when her father came in.
During these past nine months of his daughter’s society, Winton
had regained a measure of youthfulness, an extra touch of
dandyism in his clothes, and in the gloss of his short hair.

“Mr. Summerhay’s been here, Dad. He was sorry to miss
you.”

An appreciable pause.

“My dear, I doubt it.”

She could never again be friends with a man without that
pause! And conscious that her father was gazing at her, she
said:

“Was it nice in the Park?”

“Thirty years ago they were all nobs and snobs; now God
himself doesn’t know what they are!”

“ But the flowers? ”

“Oh! Ah! and the birds—but, by Jove, the humans, Gyp!
Tell me, what sort of fellow is young Summerhay? ”

“Oh! very nice.”

She could always read her father’s thoughts quicker than he
could read hers, and: knew that he was struggling between the
wish that she should have a good time and the desire to convey
some kind of warning. With a sigh, he said:

“What does a young man’s fancy turn to in summer, Gyp?”

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''384 NOVELS OF LOVE

Women, subtle and experienced, can impose restraint on
would-be lovers. Gyp knew that a word from her would change
everything; but she did not speak it. And yet she saw Sum-
merhay most days—in the Row, at the opera, or at Bury Street.
She had a habit of going to St. James’s Park in the late after-
noon and sitting by the water. One day he passed on his way
home from chambers, and, after, they sat there together con-
stantly. Why make her father uneasy by letting him come too
often to Bury Street? It was pleasant, out there, talking calmly,
while in front of them small ragged children fished and put the
fishes into glass bottles, to eat, or watch on rainy days, as is the
custom of man with the minor works of God.

When the seasons are about to change, the days pass, tranquil,
waiting for the wind that brings in the new. Was it not natural
to sit under the trees, by the flowers and the water, the pigeons
and the ducks?
''Vv

SumMMERHAY did not wear his heart on his sleeve, and when,
on the closing-day of term, he left his chambers to walk to that
last meeting, his face was much as usual. But, in truth, he
had come to a pretty pass. He had his own code. It was per-
haps a trifle “old Georgian,” but it forbade his distressing a
woman. So far he had kept himself in hand; it had cost him
more than he cared to reflect on. The only witness of his strug-
gles was his old Scotch terrier, whose dreams he had disturbed
night after night, tramping the long sitting-room of his little
house. She must know what he was feeling, and, if she wanted
his love, had but to raise her finger; and she had not raised it.
When he touched her, when her dress disengaged its perfume
or his eyes traced the slow, soft movement of her breathing,
his head would go round, and to keep calm and friendly had
been torture.

While he could see her almost every day, control had been
just possible; now that he was about to lose her—for weeks—
his heart felt sick within him. He had been hard put to it, too,
before the world. A man passionately in love craves solitude,
oscillating between fierce exercise and that trance-like stillness
when he is busy conjuring up her face. He had managed to
get through his work, had been grateful for it; but to his friends
he had not given attention enough to prevent them saying:
“ What’s up with Bryan Summerhay?” Always rather elusive
in his movements, he was now too elusive altogether for those
who had been accustomed to lunch, dine, dance, and sport with
him. And yet he shunned his own company—going wherever
anything distracted him, without demanding real attention. He
had come unwillingly to discovery of his passion, which meant
giving up so much. And yet he had never asked himself
whether Gyp was worth loving. He wanted her exactly as she
was; he did not weigh her in any sort of balance.

About her past he dismissed speculation. He had heard that
she was Winton’s natural daughter; it had only made him long
to punch the head of the scandalmonger. Even her wretched
marriage did not matter—nothing mattered except to be with
her as much as she would let him. And now she was going

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''386 NOVELS OF LOVE

to the sea, and he himself to Perthshire to shoot grouse. A —
month !

Dared he speak? At times, her face was like a child’s when
it expects some harsh or frightening word. One could not hurt
her! But once or twice he had caught a slow soft glance—gone
as soon as seen.

Leaning on the river parapet, he watched the tide run down.
The sun brightened its yellowish swirl and black eddies—water
that had flowed under the willows past Eynsham, past Oxford,
below the church at Clifton, past Moulsford, past Sonning. To
have her to himself one day on the river—one whole long day!
Why had he been so pusillanimous all this time? He passed
his hand over his face, and it felt thin to him. If she only knew
how he was longing, how he suffered! He turned away, toward
Whitehall. He passed two men he knew, one of them just
married. They, too, were off to Scotland for the twelfth. How
stale and flat seemed that which till then had been the acme of
the whole year to him! Ah, but if he had been going to Scot-
land with her!

He entered St. James’s Park and passing along the water,
making for their usual seat. And suddenly he saw that she was
sitting there already. No more craning—he would speak!

She was wearing a maize-coloured muslin, and sat leaning
back, her knees crossed, one hand resting on the knob of her
furled sunshade, her face half hidden by a shady hat. Summer-
hay went straight up to her.

“Gyp! This can’t goon! You know I worship you! If you
can’t love me, I’ve got to break away. Gyp, do you want me
to gor?’

She made a little movement, as if in protest, and answered
very low:

“ Of course I don’t want you to go. How could I?”

“Then you do love me?”

“Wait, please. Wait a little longer. When we come back
Pll tell you!”

“So long? ”

“A month. It’s not easy for me.” She lifted her eyes to his.
* Please not any more now.”

That evening at his club, through the smoke of cigarette after
cigarette, he saw her face as she had lifted it for that one second;
and now he was in heaven, now in hell.

 
''VI

Tu verandahed bungalow on the South Coast, built for an
artist friend of Aunt Rosamund’s, had a garden with one pine-
tree which had strayed in advance of the wood behind. The
house stood in solitude, above a low cliff whence the beach
shelved in sandy ridges.

Looking from her bedroom at night, Gyp would get a feeling
of being the only creature in the world. The crinkled, silvery
sea, that lonely pine-tree, the cold moon, the sky dark cornflower
blue, the hiss and sucking rustle of the surf over the beach
pebbles, even the salt, chill air, seemed lonely. By day, too—
in the hazy heat when the coarse sea-grass hardly quivered, and
sea-birds passed close above the water with chuckle and cry—
it all often seemed part of a dream. She bathed, and grew as
tanned as her little daughter ; but she would feel a kind of resent-
ment against all the happy life round her these summer days—
the sea-birds, the sunlight, and the waves; the white sails far
out; the calm sun-steeped pine-trees; her baby, tumbling and
smiling and softly twittering; and Betty and the other servants
—all this life that seemed so simple and untortured.

To the one post each day she looked forward terribly. And
yet his letters, which began like hers: “ My dear friend,” might
have been read by anyone—almost. Now that he was away
from her, would he not feel that it was best to break, and forget
her? He had everything before him; could he possibly go on
wanting one who had nothing before her? Some blue-eyed girl
with auburn hair—that type so superior to her own—would
sweep him from her! What then? No worse than it used to be?
Ah, so much worse that she dared not think of it!

Then, for five days, no letter came. And she felt a growing
ache of longing and jealousy, utterly unlike the mere outraged
pride with which she had caught sight of Fiorsen and Daphne
Wing in the music-room—so long, it seemed, ago. When on the
fifth day the postman left nothing but a bill for little Gyp’s
shoes, and a note from Aunt Rosamund at Harrogate, where
she had gone with Winton for the annual cure, Gyp’s heart sank
to the depths. Was this the end? With a blind, numb feeling,
she wandered out into the wood.

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''388 ‘ NOVELS OF LOVE

She went along till she could see no outer world for the grey:
brown tree-stems streaked with gum-resin ; and, throwing herself
down on her face, dug her elbows deep into the pine-dust.
Tears, rare with her, forced their way up. But crying only
made her ill. She turned over on her back and lay motionless.
Silent here, even at noon! The sough of the calm sea could
not reach so far; the flies were few; no birds sang. The tall
bare pine-stems rose like columns in a temple roofed with dark
boughs and sky. Cloud-fleeces drifted over the blue. There
should be peace—but in her heart was none!

A dusky shape came padding through the trees, another—
two donkeys loose from somewhere; they stood licking each
other’s necks and noses. Humble beasts, friendly, they made
her feel ashamed. Why should she be sorry for herself, who
had everything in life she wanted—except the love she had
thought she would never want? Ah, but she wanted it now,
wanted it at last with all her being!

With a shudder she sprang up; the ants had got to her, and
she had to pick them off her neck and dress. She wandered
back towards the beach. If he had truly found someone to fill
his thoughts and drive her out, she would never, by word or
sign, show him that she missed and wanted him—never! She
would sooner die!

She came out into the sunshine. It was low tide; and the
wet foreshore gleamed with opal tints; there were wandering
tracks on the sea, as of serpents writhing beneath the surface;
and away to the west the archwayed, tawny rock which cut the
line of coast was like a dream-shape. All was dreamy. And,
suddenly her heart began beating to suffocation. On the edge of
the low cliff, by the side of the path, Summerhay was sitting!

He got up and came towards her. She said calmly:

“Yes; it’s me. Did you ever see such a gipsified object?
I thought you were still in Scotland. How’s Ossy?” Then
her self-possession failed.

“ It’s no good, Gyp. I must know.”

It seemed that her heart had given up beating; but she said
quietly: “ Let’s sit down a minute,’ moving down under the
cliff bank where they could not be seen from the house. Drawing
the coarse grass-blades through her fingers, she said:

“JT didn’t try to make you. I never tried.”

“No; never.”

“It’s wrong.”

 

|
''BEYOND 389

“Who cares? No one could care who loves as I do. Oh, Gyp,
can’t you love me? I know I’m nothing much. But it’s eleven
weeks to-day since we met in the train, and I don’t think I’ve
had one minute’s let-up since.”

Gyp sighed.

“Then what is to be done? Look over there—that bit of
blue in the grass is my baby daughter. There’s here—and my
father—and—I’m afraid—afraid of love, Bryan!”

At the first use of his name, Summerhay seized her hand.

“ Afraid—how—afraid ? ”

Gyp said very low:

“T might love you too much. Don’t say any more now. No;
don’t! Let’s go in and have lunch.” And she got up.

He stayed till tea-time, and not a word more of love did he
speak. But when he was gone, she sat under the pine-tree with
little Gyp on her lap. Love! If her mother had checked love,
she herself would never have been born. The midges were biting
before she went in. After watching Betty give little Gyp her
bath, she crossed the passage to her bedroom and leaned out
of the window. Could it have been to-day she had lain on the
ground with tears of despair running down her cheeks? Away
to the left of the pine-tree, the moon had floated up, barely
visible in the paling sky. A new world, an enchanted garden!

That evening she sat with a book on her lap, not reading;
and in her went on the strange revolution of first love—the
sinking of “I” into “Thou,” the passionate subjection, the
intense, unconscious giving-up of will, in preparation for com-
pleter union.

She slept without dreaming, awoke heavy and oppressed. 'T'oo
languid to bathe, she sat listless on the beach with little Gyp all
the morning. Had she energy or spirit to meet him in the after-
noon by the rock archway, as she had promised? For the first
time since she was a small and naughty child, she avoided the
eyes of Betty, afraid of her knowing too much. After early tea,
she started out; if she did not, he would come, and she did not
want the servants to see him two days running.

This last day of August had a warm and still beneficence—
the corn all gathered in, the apples mellowing, robins singing
already, a few slumberous, soft clouds, a pale blue sky, a smiling
sea. She went inland, across the stream. No pines grew on
that side, where the soil was richer—of a ruddy brown. In the
second crops of clover, already high, bumble-bees were hard at
''390 NOVELS OF LOVE

work; and the white-throated swallows dipped and soared. Gyp
gathered a bunch of chicory flowers. She was close above the
shore before she saw him standing in the rock archway below,
looking for her across the beach. Away from the hum of bees
and flies, it was very quiet here—only the faint hiss of tiny
waves. He had not yet heard her coming, and the thought
flashed through her: ‘If I take another step, it is for ever!’
She stood, scarcely breathing, the chicory flowers held before
her lips. Then she heard him sigh, and, moving quickly for-
ward, said:

“ Here I am.”

He seized her hand, and, without a word, they passed through
the archway. They walked on the hard sand, side by side, scram-
bled up the low cliff and went along the grassy top to a gate
into a stubble-field. He held it open for her, but, as she passed,
caught her in his arms and kissed her lips. To her, who had
been kissed a thousand times, it was the first kiss. Deadly pale,
she fell back from him against the gate; then, her lips still
quivering, with eyes very dark, she looked at him distraught.
And suddenly turning round to the gate, she buried her face
on her arms. A sob came up in her throat which seemed to
tear her to bits; she cried as if her heart would break. His
timid despairing touches, his voice close to her ear, imploring,
were not of the least avail, she could not stop. That kiss had
broken down a barrier in her soul, swept away her life up to that
moment, done something terrible and wonderful. At last, she
struggled out:

“’m sorry—so sorry! Don’t—don’t look at me! Go away
a little, and PU—T'll be all right.”

He obeyed without a word, and, passing through the gate,
sat down on the cliff with his back to her, looking out over
the sea.

Gripping the wood of the old grey gate till it hurt her hands,
Gyp gazed at the butterflies chasing in the sunlight towards
the crinkly foam edging to the quiet sea till they were but white
specks out in the blue.

But she was no nearer to feeling that she could trust herself.
What had happened in her was too violent, too sweet, too terri-
fying. And she said:

“ Let me go home now by myself. To-morrow!”

“Whatever you wish, Gyp—always!”

He pressed her hand against his cheek, then, folding his arms
''BEYOND 391

tight, resumed his stare at the sea. Gyp did not go in for a
long time, sitting in the pine-wood till evening gathered and
stars crept out in a sky of that mauve-blue which the psychic
say is the soul-garment colour of the good.

Late that night, when she had finished brushing her hair, she
opened her window and stepped out on to the verandah. Not
a sound from the sleeping house—not a breath of wind! Her
face, her hands, her body, felt as if on fire. The moon was
filling every cranny of her brain with a wakefulness. The shiver
of the surfless sea on a rising tide, rose, fell, rose, fell. The
sand cliff shone like a bank of snow. All was inhabited, as a
moonlit night is wont to be. A, big moth went past her face.
A little night beast somewhere was scrattling in the sand.
Suddenly the shadow of the pine-trunk moved—moved—ever so
little! There, joined to the trunk, Summerhay was standing,
his face just visible against the stem, the moonlight on one
cheek, a hand shading his eyes. He held it out in supplication.
Gyp did not stir, looking straight at that beseeching figure.
Then, with a feeling she had never known, she saw him coming.
He stood looking up at her. She could see all the workings
of his face—passion, reverence, amazement; heard his awed
whisper :

“Ts it you, Gyp? Really you? You look so young!”
''VII

From the moment of surrender, Gyp passed into a state the
more enchanted because she had never believed in it, never
thought she could love as she now loved. Days and nights went
by in a sort of dream. Just as she had never felt it possible to
admit the world into the secrets of her married life, so now
she did not consider the world at all. But the thought of her
father weighed on her conscience. He was back in town. And
she felt that she must tell him.

Two days before her month at the bungalow was up, she went,
leaving Betty and little Gyp to follow on the last day. Winton,
pale from his cure, found her when he came in from the club.
She had put on evening dress, and above the pallor of her
shoulders, her sun-warmed face and throat had almost the colour
of a nectarine. He had never seen her look like that, nor her
eyes so full of light. And he uttered a quiet grunt of satisfac-
tion. It was as if a flower, which he had last seen in close and
elegant shape, had bloomed in full perfection. She did not
meet his gaze quite steadily and all that evening kept putting
her confession off. It was not easy—far from easy. At last,
when he was smoking his “ go-to-bed ” cigarette, she sank down
beside his chair, leaning against his knee, where her face was
hidden, as on that day after her first ball, when she had listened
to his confession.

“Dad, do you remember my saying once that I didn’t under-
stand what you and my mother felt for each other?” Winton
did not speak. Gyp went on: “I know now how one would
rather die than give someone up.”

“Whom? Summerhay?”

“Yes; I used to think I should never be in love, but you
knew better.”

Better!

In disconsolate silence, he thought rapidly: ‘ What’s to be
done? What can Ido? Get her a divorce?’

Because of the ring in her voice, or the sheer seriousness of
the position, he did not resent it, as when he lost her to Fiorsen.
Love! A passion such as had overtaken her mother and himself !
For this young man? A decent fellow, a good rider—compre-

392
''BEYOND 393

hensible! If the course had only been clear! He put his hand
on her shoulder and said:

“ Well, Gyp, we must go for the divorce, then, after all.”

“Ti’s too late. Let him divorce me, if he only will!”

Too late? Already! Sudden recollection, that he had not
the right, alone kept him silent. Gyp went on:

“T love him, with every bit of me. I don’t care what comes—
open or secret. I don’t care what anybody thinks.”

She had turned round to him. This was a Gyp he had never
seen! Glowing, soft, quick-breathing, with just that lithe watch-
ful look of the mother cat or lioness whose whelps are threatened.
He remembered how, as a child, with face very tense, she would
ride at fences that were too big. At last he said:

“T’m sorry you didn’t tell me sooner.”

“T couldn’t. I didn’t know. Oh, Dad, I’m always hurting
you! Forgive me!”

She was pressing his hand to her cheek that felt burning hot.
And he thought: ‘ Forgive! Of course I forgive. That’s not
the point; the point is ?;

A vision beset him of his loved one talked about, bandied
from mouth to mouth, or else—for her what there had been
for him, a hole-and-corner life, an underground existence of
stealthy meetings kept dark, above all from her own little
daughter. Ah, not that! And yet—was not even that better
than tongues wagging, eyes winking or uplifted in righteous-
ness? Summerhay’s world was more or less his world; and
scandal, which—like all parasitic growths—flourishes in enclosed
spaces, would have every chance. His brain began to search,
steely and quick, for some way out; and the expression as when
a fox broke covert came on his face.

“ Nobody knows, Gyp?”

* Nobody.”

That was something! With an irritation that rose from his
very soul, he muttered:

“T can’t stand it that you should suffer, and that fellow
Fiorsen go scot-free. Can you give up seeing Summerhay while
we get you a divorce? We might do it, if no one knows. I think
you owe it to me, Gyp.”

Gyp got up and stood by the window a long time without
answering. Winton watched her face. At last she said:

“T couldn’t. We might stop seeing each other; it isn’t that.
It’s what I should feel. I shouldn’t respect myself after. Oh,

 
''394 NOVELS OF LOVE

‘Dad, don’t you see? He really loved me in his way. And to
pretend! To make out a case for myself, tell about Daphne
Wing, about his drinking, and baby; pretend that I wanted him
to love me, when I got to hate it and didn’t care really whether
he was faithful or not—and knowing all the while that I’ve been
everything to someone else! I’d much rather let him know, and
ask him to divorce me.”

Winton replied:

“ And suppose he won’t? ”

“Then my mind would be clear, anyway; and we would take
what we could.”

“ And little Gyp?”

Staring before her as if trying to see into the future, she said
slowly :

“ Some day she’ll understand. Or perhaps it will be all over
before she knows. Does happiness ever last?”

She bent over, kissed his forehead, and went out. The warmth
from her lips, and the scent of her, remained with Winton as if
wafted from the past.

Was there then nothing to be done? Men of his stamp do not,
as a rule, see very deep even into those who are nearest to them;
but to-night he saw his daughter’s nature more fully than ever
before. No use to importune her to act against her instincts!
And yet—to sit and watch it all—watch his own passion with
its ecstasy and its heart-burnings re-enacted in her—perhaps
for many years? The old vulgar saying passed through his
mind: “ What’s bred in the bone will come out in the meat.”
Now she had given, she would give with both hands—beyond
measure—beyond !—as he himself, as her mother had given!
Ah, well, she was better off than his own loved one had been.
One must not go ahead of trouble, or cry over spilled milk!
''VIII

Gyp lay wakeful. The question of telling Fiorsen kept her
thoughts in turmoil. Was he likely to divorce her if she did?
His contempt for what he called “ these bourgeois morals,” his
instability, the very unpleasantness, and offence to his vanity—
all would prevent him. No; he would not divorce her, she was
sure, unless by chance he wanted legal freedom, which was so
unlikely. What then would be gained? Had she any right to
ease her conscience if it brought harm to her lover—conscience,
too, in regard to one who, within a year of marriage, had taken
to himself a mistress, and not even spared the home paid for
and supported by his wife? No; if she told Fiorsen, it would
only be to salve her pride, wounded by doing what she did not
avow.

She came down to breakfast, no whit advanced towards deci-
sion. Neither of them mentioned their last night’s talk, and
Gyp went back to her room to busy herself with dress, after
those weeks away. It was past noon when, at a muffled knock,
she found Markey outside her door.

“Excuse me, m’m.”

Gyp beckoned him in. Markey closed the door.

“ Mr. Fiorsen—in the hall, m’m—slipped in when I answered
the bell; short of shoving, I couldn’t keep him out.”

“Ts my father in?”

“No, m’m; the major’s gone to the fencin’-club.”

* What did you say?”

“Said I would see. So far as I was aware, nobody was in,
Shall I have a try to shift him, m’m?”

Gyp shook her head.

“Say no one can see him.”

Markey’s woodcock eyes, under their thin, dark, twisting
brows, fastened on her dolefully; he opened the door to go.
Fiorsen was standing there, and, with a quick movemert, came
in. She saw Markey raise his arms as if to catch him round
the waist, and said quietly:

“ Markey—wait outside, please.”

When the door was shut, she retreated against her dressing

395
''396 NOVELS OF LOVE

table and stood gazing at her husband; her heart throbbed as
if it would leap through its coverings.

He had grown a short beard, his cheeks seemed a little fatter,
and his eyes surely more green; otherwise, he looked much as
she remembered him. And her first thought was: ‘ Why did I
ever pity him? He'll never fret or drink himself to death—
he’s got enough vitality for twenty men.’

The fixed nervous smile on his face passed; his eyes roved
round the room in the old half-fierce, half-futile way.

“Well, Gyp,” he said, and his voice shook a little: “ At last!
Won’t you kiss me?”

How idiotic! Suddenly she felt quite cool.

“Tf you want to speak to my father—he’s out.”

Fiorsen gave one of his fierce shrugs.

“Look, Gyp! I returned from Russia yesterday. I made a
lot of money out there. Come back to me! I will be good—
I swear it! Ah, Gyp, come back to me, and see how good I will
be! I will take you abroad, you and the bambina. We will go
to Rome—anywhere you like—live how you like. Only come
back to me!”

Gyp answered stonily:

“You are talking nonsense.”

“Gyp, I swear I have not sen a woman fit to put beside you.
Be good to me once more. This time I will not fail. Try me!
Try me!”

At his tragic tones, which seemed to her both false and child-
ish, Gyp realised the strength of the new feeling in her heart.
And the more that feeling throbbed within her, the harder her
face and her voice grew.

“Tf that is all you came to say—please go. I will never
come back to you. Once for all, understand, please.”

His silence impressed her far more than his appeal; with one
of his stealthy movements he came quite close, and putting his
face forward till it almost touched her, said:

“You are my wife. I want you back. I must have you. If
you don’t come, I will kill myself, or you.”

And suddenly his arms, knotted behind her back, crushed her
to him. She stifled a scream; then, very swiftly, took a resolve,
and, rigid in his arms, said:

“Let go; you hurt me. Sit down quietly. I will tell you
something.”

The tone of her voice made him loosen his grasp and crane
''BEYOND 397

back to see her face. Gyp detached his arms, sat down on an old
oak chest, and motioned him to the window-seat. Her heart
thumped pitifully; waves of almost physical sickness passed
through and through her. She had smelt brandy in his breath
when he was close to her. It was like being in the cage of a
wild beast; it was like being with a madman! The remem-
brance of his fingers stretched out like claws above her baby was
so vivid at that moment, that she could scarcely see him,
sitting there, waiting for what she was going to say. Fixing
her eyes on him, she said softly:

“You say you love me, Gustav. I tried to love you, too, but
I never could—never from the first. I tried very hard. Surely
you care what a woman feels, even if she happens to be your
wife?”

She saw his face quiver, and went on:

“When I found I couldn’t love you, I felt I had no right
over you. I didn’t stand on my rights, did 1?”

Again his face quivered, and again she hurried on:

“But you wouldn’t expect me to go all through my life with-
out ever feeling love—you who’ve felt it so many times?” Then,
clasping her hands tight, with wonder at herself, she murmured :
“Tam in love. I have given myself.”

He made a queer, whining sound, covering his face. The
beggar’s tag: “’Ave a feelin’ ’eart, gentleman—ave a feelin’
’eart!” passed through Gyp’s mind. Would he get up and
strangle her? Should she dash to the door—call out? For a
long, miserable moment she watched him swaying on the
window-seat, with his face covered. Then, without looking at
her, he crammed a clenched hand up against his mouth, and
rushed from the room.

Through the open door Gyp had a glimpse of Markey’s
motionless figure, coming to life as Fiorsen passed. She locked
the door, and lay down on her bed. Her heart beat dreadfully.
If on this shock he began to drink, what might not happen?
He had said something wild. But what right had he to feel
jealous rage against her? What right? She went to the glass,
trembling, and mechanically tidied her hair. Miraculous that
she had come through unscathed !

Summerhay was to meet her at three o’clock by the seat in
St. James’s Park. But all was different, now; difficult and
dangerous! She must wait, take counsel with her father. Yet,
if she did not keep that tryst, he would be anxious—thinking
''398 NOVELS OF LOVE

of what had happened to her; thinking, perhaps—oh, foolish !—
that she had forgotten, or even repented of her love. What
would she herself think, if he were to fail her at their first tryst
after those days of bliss? That he had changed his mind, seen
she was not worth it, seen that to a woman who could give
herself so soon, so easily, he could not sacrifice his life.

In this cruel uncertainty she spent the next two hours, till it
was nearly three. If she did not go, he would come on to Bury
Street, which would be still more dangerous. She put on her
hat and walked swiftly towards St. James’s Palace. Once sure
that she was not being followed, her courage rose. She was ten
minutes late, and saw him walking up and down, turning his
head every few seconds so as not to lose sight of the bench.
When they had greeted with that pathetic casualness of lovers
which deceives so few, they walked on together into the Green
Park, beneath the trees. She told him about her father; but
only when his hand was holding hers under cover of the sun-
shade that lay across her knee, did she speak of Fiorsen.

He dropped her hand, and said:

“Did he touch you, Gyp?”’

Gyp heard that question with a shock. Touch her! Yes!

He made a shuddering sound. His hands and teeth were
clenched. She said softly:

“Bryan! Don’t! I wouldn’t let him kiss me.”

He seemed to have to force his eyes to look at her.

“ It’s all right.”

She sat motionless, cut to the heart. She was soiled, and
spoiled for him! Of course! But her heart had never been
touched ; it was his utterly. Not enough for a man—he wanted
an untouched body, too. That she could not give; he should
have thought of that sooner, instead of only now. And, mis-
erably, she stared before her.

A little boy came and stood still in front of them, with round,
unmoving eyes. He had a slice of bread and jam in his hand,
and his mouth and cheeks were smeared with red. A woman
called: “Jackey! Come on, now!” He was hauled away,
still looking back, holding out his bread and jam as though
offering her a bite. Summerhay’s arm slipped round her.

“It’s over, darling. Never again--I promise you!”

Ah, he might promise—might even keep that promise. But
he would suffer, always suffer, thinking of that other. And she
said:
''BEYOND 399

“You can only have me as I am, Bryan. I can’t make myself
new for you; I wish I could—oh, I wish I could!”

“Don’t think of it! Come home to me and have tea—there’s
no one there. Come!” :

He took her hands. And all else left Gyp but the joy of
being close to him.
''IX

Passtne Markey like a blind man, Fiorsen made his way into
the street: he had not gone a hundred yards before he was hur-
rying back. He had left his hat. The servant, still standing
there, handed him that wide-brimmed object and closed the door
in his face. He went towards Piccadilly. But for the expression
on Gyp’s face, what might he not have done? Mixed with sick-
ening jealousy, he felt relief, as if he had been saved from
something horrible. So she had never loved him! Never at all?
Impossible that a woman on whom he had lavished such passion
should never have felt any in return! Images of her passed
before him—surrendering, surrendering. It could not all have
been pretence! He was not a common man—he had charm—
or, other women thought so! She had lied; she must have lied!

He went into a café and asked for a fine champagne. They
brought him a carafe, with the measures marked. He sat there
a long time. When he rose, he had drunk nine, and felt a kind
of ferocity pleasant in his veins, a kind of nobility pleasant in
his soul. Let her love! But let him get his fingers on her
lover’s throat! He stopped in his tracks. There on a sandwich-
board in front of him were the words: “ Daphne Wing. Pan-
theon. Daphne Wing. Plastic Danseuse. Poetry of Motion.
To-day at three o’clock. Pantheon. Daphne Wing.”

She had loved him—little Daphne! It was past three. Going
in, he took his place in the stalls, close to the stage, with bitter
amusement. This was irony indeed! Here she came! A
Pierrette—in short, diaphanous muslin, her face whitened to
match it; a Pierrette who stood slowly spinning on her toes,
with arms raised and hands joined in an arch above her glisten-
ing hair.

An idiotic pose! But there was the old expression on her
face, limpid, dovelike. And that something divine about her
dancing smote Fiorsen through all the imbecility of her pos-
turings. Across and across she flitted, pirouetting, and caught
up at intervals by a Pierrot in black tights with a face as
whitened as her own, held upside down, or right end up with
one knee bent sideways, and the toe of a foot pressed against
the ankle of the other, and arms arched above her. Then, with

400
''BEYOND 401

Pierrot’s hands grasping her waist, she would stand upon one
toe and slowly twiddle, lifting her other leg towards the roof,
while the trembling of her form manifested to all how hard
it was; then, off the toe, she capered out to the wings and
capered back, wearing on her face that lost, dovelike look, while
her perfect legs gleamed white. On the stage she was ador-
able! Raising his hands high, Fiorsen clapped and called out:
“Brava!” We marked the sudden roundness in her eyes, a
tiny start—no more. She had seen him. ‘Some don’t forget
me!’ he thought.

She came on for her second dance, assisted this time by her
own image reflected in a little weedy pool about the middle of
the stage. “Ophelia’s last dance.” Fiorsen grinned. In a
clinging sea-green gown, cut here and there to show her inev-
itable legs, with marguerites and cornflowers in her unbound
hair, she circled her own reflection, languid, pale, desolate; then
slowly gaining the abandon needful to full display, danced with
frenzy till, in a gleam of limelight, she sank into the apparent
water and floated among paper water-lilies on her back. Lovely
she looked there, with her eyes still open, her lips parted, her
hair trailing behind. Again Fiorsen raised his hands high to
clap, again called out: “ Brava!” The curtain fell, and Ophelia
did not take her call. Was it the sight of him, or was she
preserving the illusion that she was drowned? That “arty”
touch would be just like her.

With an audible “ Pish!” at the two comedians in calico,
beating each other about the body, he rose, and made his way
out. He scribbled on a card, “ Will you see me?—G. F.” and
took it round to the stage-door. The answer came back:

“Miss Wing will see you in a minute, sir.”

Leaning against the distempered wall of the draughty corridor,
Fiorsen wondered why the devil he was there, what the devil
she would say.

She was standing with her hat on, while her “ dresser ” but-
toned her patent-leather shoes. Holding out her hand over the
woman’s back, she said:

“Oh, Mr. Fiorsen, how do you do?”

Fiorsen took the little moist hand; his eyes passed over her,
avoiding a direct meeting with her eyes. Her face was the same,
yet not the same—harder, more self-possessed ; only her perfect
supple little body was as it had been. The dresser murmured -
“ Good afternoon, miss,” and went.
'':

402 NOVELS OF LOVE

Daphne Wing smiled faintly.

“T haven’t seen you for a long time, have I?”

“No; I’ve been abroad. You dance as beautifully as ever.”

“ Oh, yes; it hasn’t hurt my dancing.”

With an effort, he looked her in the face. Was this really the
same girl who had clung to him, cloyed him with her kisses, her
tears, her appeals for love—just a little love? Ah, but she was
more desirable, much more desirable than he had remembered !
And he said:

“Give me a kiss, little Daphne!”

Daphne Wing did not stir; her white teeth rested on her lower
lip; she said:

“Oh, no, thank you! How is Mrs. Fiorsen?”

Fiorsen turned abruptly :

“There is none.”

“ Oh, has she divorced you? ”

“No. Stop talking of her; stop talking, I say!”

Daphne Wing, still motionless in the centre of her little
crowded dressing-room, said, in a matter-of-fact voice:

“ You are polite, aren’t you? It’s funny; I can’t tell whether
I’m glad to see you. I had a bad time, you know; and Mrs.
Fiorsen was an angel. Why do you come to see me now?”

Exactly! Why had he come? The thought flashed through
him: ‘ She’ll help me to forget.’ And he said:

“T was a great brute to you, Daphne. I came to make

3?

“ Oh, no; you can’t make up—thank you!” She began draw-
ing on her gloves. “ You taught me a lot, you know. I ought
to be quite grateful. Oh, you’ve grown a little beard! D’you
think that improves you? It makes you look rather like
Mephistopheles, I think.”

Fiorsen stared fixedly at that perfectly shaped face, where a
faint, underdone pink mingled with the fairness of the skin.
Was she mocking him? She—so matter-of-fact!

“Where do you live now?” he said.

“T’m on my own, in a studio. You can come and see it, if
you like. Only you’d better understand. I’ve had enough of
love.

Fiorsen grinned.

“Even for another?” he said.

Daphne Wing answered calmly:

“T wish you would treat me like a lady.”
''BEYOND 403

Fiorsen bit his lip.

“ May I have the pleasure of giving you some tea?”

“Yes, thank you; I’m very hungry. I don’t eat lunch on
matinée days; I find it better not. Do you like my Ophelia
dance ?””

“ Artificial.”

“ Yes—it’s done with mirrors and wire netting, you know.
But do I give you the illusion of being mad?” Fiorsen nodded.
“T’m so glad. Shall we go? I do want my tea.”

She turned round, scrutinised herself in the glass, touched
her hat with both hands, revealing, for a second, all the poised
beauty of her figure, took a little bag from the back of a chair,
and said:

“T think, if you don’t mind going on, it’s less conspicuous.
Pll meet you at Ruffel’s—they have lovely things there. Au
revotr.

Bewildered, irritated, queerly meek, Fiorsen passed down
Coventry Street, and entering the empty Ruffel’s, took a table
near the window. A sudden vision of Gyp sitting on that oaken
chest, at the foot of her bed, blotted the girl clean out, till, look-
ing up, he saw Daphne Wing outside, gazing at the cakes in the
window. She came in.

“Oh, here you are! I should like iced coffee and walnut
cake, and some of those marzipan sweets—oh, and some whipped
cream with my cake. Do you mind?” And, sitting down, she
fixed her eyes on his face.

“Where have you been abroad?”

“ Stockholm, Budapest, Moscow, other places.”

“How perfect! Do you think I should make a success in
Budapest or Moscow?”

“You might; you are English enough.”

“Oh! Do you think I’m very English?”

“Utterly. Your kind of——’ He was not quite capable
of adding—‘ your kind of vulgarity could not be produced any-
where else.’

“My kind of beauty?”

Fiorsen grinned and nodded.

“Oh, I think that’s the nicest thing you ever said to me!
Only, of course, I should like to think 1’m more of the Greek
type—pagan, you know.”

Her profile at that moment, against the light, was very pure
and soft in line. And he said:
''404 NOVELS OF LOVE

“T suppose you hate me, little Daphne? You ought to hate
me.”

Daphne Wing’s round, blue-grey eyes passed over him much
as they had been passing over the marzipan.

“No; I don’t hate you—now. Of course, if I had any love
left for you, I should. Oh, isn’t that Irish? But one can think
anybody a rotter without hating them, can’t one?”

“So you think me a ‘ rotter’?”

“But aren’t you? You couldn’t be anything else—could
you?’—with the sort of things you did.”

“And yet you don’t mind having tea with me?”

Daphne Wing, who had begun to eat, said with her mouth
full:

“You see, I’m independent now, and I know life. That
makes you harmless.”

Fiorsen stretched out his hand and seized hers just where her
little warm pulse was beating very steadily. She looked at it,
changed her fork over, and went on eating with the other hand.
Fiorsen drew his away as if he had been stung.

“You have changed—that is certain! ”

“Yes; you wouldn’t expect anything else, would you? You
see, one doesn’t go through that for nothing. I think I was a
dreadful little fool She stopped, with her spoon on its
way to her mouth—“ and yet, ei

“T love you still, little Daphne.”

A faint sigh escaped her.

“Once I would have given a lot to hear that.”

And, turning her head away, she picked a large walnut out of
her cake and put it in her mouth.

“Are you coming to see my studio? I’ve got it rather nice
and new. I’m making twenty-five a week; my next engagement,
I’m going to get thirty. I should like Mrs. Fiorsen to know——
Oh, I forgot; you don’t like me to speak of her! Why not? I
wish you’d tell me!” Gazing at his furious face, she went on:
“Tm vot a bit afraid of you now. I used to be. Oh, how is
Count Rosek? Is he as pale as ever? Aren’t you going to have
anything more? You’ve had hardly anything. D’you know
what I should like—a chocolate éclair and a raspberry ice-
cream soda with a slice of tangerine in it.”

When she had slowly sucked up that beverage, prodding the
slice of tangerine with her straws, they went out and took a
cab. On that journey to her studio, Fiorsen tried to possess

 

 
''BEYOND 405

himself of her hand, but, folding her arms across her chest, she
said quietly :

“Tt’s very bad manners to take advantage of cabs.” With-
drawing sullenly, he watched her askance. Was she playing
with him? Or had she really ceased to care the snap of a
finger? It seemed incredible. The cab, which had been thread-
ing the maze of Soho streets, stopped. Daphne Wing alighted,
proceeded down a narrow passage to a green door on the right,
and, opening it with a latch-key, paused to say:

“TJ like its being in a little sordid street—it takes away all
amateurishness. It wasn’t a studio, of course; it was the back
part of a paper-maker’s. Any space conquered for art is some-
thing, isn’t it?” She led the way up a few green-carpeted
stairs, into a large room with a skylight, whose walls were cov-
ered in Japanese silk the colour of yellow azaleas. Here she
stood for a minute without speaking, as though lost in the beauty
of her home; then, pointing to the walls, she said:

“It took me ages, I did it all myself. And look at my little
Japanese trees; aren’t they dickies?” Six little dark abortions
of trees were arranged scrupulously on a lofty window-sill,
whence the skylight sloped. She added suddenly: “I think
Count Rosek would like this room. There’s something bizarre
about it, isn’t there? I wanted to surround myself with that,
you know—to get the bizarre note into my work. It’s so im-
portant nowadays. But through there I’ve got a bedroom and
a bathroom and a little kitchen with everything to hand, all.
quite domestic; and hot water always on. My people are so
funny about this room. They come sometimes, and stand about.
But they can’t get used to the neighbourhood; of course it is
sordid, but I think an artist ought to be superior to that.”

Suddenly touched, Fiorsen answered :

* Yes, little Daphne.”

She looked at him, and another tiny sigh escaped her.

“Why did you treat me like you did?” she said. “It’s such
a pity, because now I can’t feel anything at all.” And she sud-
denly passed the back of her hand across her eyes. Really
moved, Fiorsen went towards her, but she put out her hand to
keep him off, with half a tear glistening on her eyelashes.

“ Please sit down on the divan. Will you smoke? These are
Russians.” And she took a white box of pink-coloured ciga-
rettes from a little golden birchwood table. “I have everything
Russian and Japanese; I think they help more than anything
'' 

 

406 NOVELS OF LOVE

with atmosphere. I’ve got a balalaika; you can’t play on it, can
you? Whata pity! If only I hada violin! I should have liked
to hear you play again.” She clasped her hands: “Do you
remember when I danced to you before the fire?”

Fiorsen remembered very well. The pink cigarette trembled
in his fingers, and he said rather hoarsely :

“ Dance to me now, Daphne!”

She shook her head.

“T don’t trust you a yard. Nobody would—would they?”

Fiorsen started up.

“Then why did you ask me here? What are you playing at,
you littl——?” With round, unmoving eyes, she said calmly:

“T thought you’d like to see that I’d got over it—that’s all.
But, of course, if you don’t, you needn’t stop.”

Fiorsen sank back on the divan. A conviction that everything
she said was literal had begun slowly to sink into him. He
puffed smoke out with a laugh.

“ What are you laughing at?”

“T was only thinking that you are as great an egoist as I.”

“T want to be. It’s the only thing, isn’t it?”

Fiorsen laughed again.

“You needn’t worry. You always were.”

She had seated herself on a stool, and answered gravely :

“T wasn’t, while I loved you. But it didn’t pay, did it?”

“Tt has made a woman of you, Daphne. Your face is dif-
ferent. Your mouth is prettier. All over, you are prettier.”
Pink came up in Daphne Wing’s cheeks. Encouraged by that
flush, he went on warmly: “If you loved me now, I should not
tire of you. Oh, you can believe me! I a

She shook her head.

“We won’t talk about love, will we? Did you have a big
triumph in Moscow and St. Petersburg? It must be wonderful
to have really great triumphs!”

Fiorsen answered gloomily:

“T made a lot of money.”

“ Oh, I expect you’re very happy.”

Did she mean to be ironic?

“Tm miserable.”

He got up and went towards her. She looked up in his
face.

“T’m sorry if you’re miserable. I know what it feels like.”

“You can help me not to be. Little Daphne, you can help

 
''BEYOND 407

me to forget.” He had stopped, and put his hands on her shoul-
ders. Without moving, she answered:

“T suppose it’s Mrs. Fiorsen you want to forget?” .

“ As if she were dead. Let it all be as it was, Daphne! You
have grown up; you are a woman now, an artist.”

Daphne Wing had turned her head towards the stairs.

“That was the bell. Suppose it’s my people? It’s just their
time! Oh, isn’t that awkward?”

Fiorsen recoiled against the wall. With his head touching
one of the little Japanese trees, he stood biting his fingers.

“My mother’s got a key, and it’s no good putting you any-
where, because she always has a good look round. But perhaps
itisn’t them. Besides, I’m not afraid now; it makes a wonderful
difference being on one’s own.”

She disappeared. Fiorsen could hear a woman’s acid voice, a
man’s, rather hoarse and greasy, the sound of a smacking kiss.
He stood at bay. Trapped! The little dovelike devil! He
saw a lady in a green silk dress, shot with beetroot colour, a
short, thick gentleman with a round, greyish beard, in a grey
suit, having a small dahlia in his buttonhole, and, behind them,
Daphne Wing, flushed, and round-eyed. He took a step, in-
tending to escape without more ado. The gentleman said:

“Introduce us, Daisy. I didn’t catch—Mr. Dawson? How
do you do, sir? One of my daughter’s impresarios, I think.
’Appy to meet you, I’m sure.”

Fiorsen bowed. Mr. Wagge’s small piggy eyes fixed them-
selves on the dwarf trees.

“She’s got a nice little place here for her work—quiet and
unconventional. I hope you think well of her talent, sir? You
might go further and fare worse, I believe.”

Again Fiorsen bowed.

“You may be proud of her,” he said; “she is the rising
siars:

Mr. Wagge cleared his throat.

“ Ow,” he said; “ye-es! From a little thing we thought she
had stuff in her. Wve come to take a great interest in her
work. Not in my line, but she’s a sticker, and I like to see
perseverance. Where you’ve that, you’ve ’alf the battle of suc-
cess. So many of these young people seem to think life’s all
play. You must see a lot of that in your profession, sir.”

“ Robert! The name was not Dawson.”

A long moment. On the one side was that vinegary woman
''408 NOVELS OF LOVE

poking her head forward like an angry hen; on the other,
Daphne, her eyes round, her cheeks red, her hands clasped to her
perfect breast; in the centre, a broad, grey-bearded figure, with
reddening face, angry eyes, and hoarsening voice:

“You scoundrel! You infernal scoundrel!” It lurched,
raising a pudgy fist. Fiorsen sprang down the stairs, wrenched
open the door, and sped away.
''x

THAT same evening, from the corner of Bury Street, Summer-
hay watched Gyp going swiftly to her father’s house. Gone!
The longing to have her always with him was growing fast. Since
her husband knew—why wait? There would be no rest for
either of them, with the menace of that fellow. She must come
away with him abroad—till things had declared themselves ; and
then he would find a place where they could live and she feel safe
and happy. For this he must set his affairs in order. And
he thought: ‘No good doing things by halves. Mother must
know. The sooner the better!’ With a grimace, he set out for
his aunt’s house in Cadogan Gardens, where his mother always
stayed when in town.

Lady Summerhay was waiting for dinner and reading a book
on dreams. A red-shaded lamp cast a mellow tinge over her
grey frock, one reddish cheek and one white shoulder. Impor-
tant, with blonde hair just turning grey, she had married young
and been a widow fifteen years—a naturally free spirit netted
by association with people of public position. Bubbles were
still rising from her submerged soul that would not again set
eyes on the horizon. Neither narrow nor illiberal, as people in
society go, she judged everything now as those of public position
must—discussion, of course, but no alteration in one’s way of
living. The countless movements in which she and her friends
were interested for the emancipation and the benefit of others,
were, in fact, only conduit-pipes for letting off superfluous good-
will and the directing spirit bred in her. She acted in terms of
the public good, regulated by what people of position said at
lunch and dinner. It was not her fault that such people lunched
and dined. When her son kissed her, she held up the book,
and said:

“T think this man’s book disgraceful; he runs his sex-idea
to death. We aren’t all so obsessed as that. He ought to be
put in his own lunatic asylum.”

Summerhay answered :

“ve got bad news for you, Mother.”

Lady Summerhay searched his face apprehensively. She

409
''410 NOVELS OF LOVE

knew that expression, that poise of his head, as if butting. He
looked like that when he came to her in gambling scrapes.

“The people at Mildenham, Major Winton and his daughter
—Il’m in love with her—I’m her lover.”

Lady Summerhay gasped.

bryan!”

“That fellow she married drinks. She had to leave him a
year ago, with her baby—other reasons, too. Look here, Mother:
this is hateful, but you’d got to know. There’s no chance of a
divorce.” His voice grew higher. “ Don’t try to persuade me
out of it. It’s no good.”

Lady Summerhay, from whose comely face the frock, as it
were, had slipped, clasped her hands.

The swift descent of “life”? on one to whom it had ever been
a series of “cases” was cruel, and her son felt this without
quite realising why. An abominably desolate piece of news!
Taking her hand, he put it to his lips.

“Cheer up, Mother! She’s happy, and so am I.”

Lady Summerhay could only murmur:

“Ts there—is there going to be a scandal?”

“T hope not; but, anyway, he knows about it.”

* Society doesn’t forgive.”

“ Awfully sorry for you, Mother.”

“Oh, Bryan!”

The repetition jarred his nerves.

“You needn’t tell anybody. We don’t know what’ll happen
yet.”

In Lady Summerhay all was sore and blank. A woman she
had never seen, whose origin was doubtful, whose marriage must
have soiled her, some kind of a siren, no doubt! Too hard!
She believed in her son, had dreamed of public position for him,
felt he would attain it as a matter of course. She said feebly:

“This Major Winton is a man of breeding, isn’t he?”

* Rather! She’s good enough for anyone. And the proudest
woman I’ve ever met. If you’re bothering as to what to do
about her—don’t! She won’t want anything of anybody—I
can tell you. She won’t accept crumbs.”

“ That’s lucky!” But, gazing at her son, Lady Summerhay
became aware that she stood on the brink of a downfall in his
heart. She said coldly:

“ Are you going to live together openly?”

“Tf she will.”
''BEYOND 411

“You don’t know yet?”

“T shall—soon.”

The book on dreams slipped off her lap. She went to the
fireplace and stood looking at her son. His merry look was
gone; his face was strange to her. She remembered it like that
once in the park at Widrington, when he lost his temper with a
pony and came galloping past her, his curly hair stivered up like
a little demon’s. She said sadly:

“You can hardly expect me to like it for you, Bryan, even
if she is what you say. And isn’t there some story?”

“The more there is against her, the more I love her.”

Lady Summerhay sighed.

“What is this man going to do? I heard him play
once.”

“Morally and legally, he’s out of court. I only wish to God
he would bring a case, and I could marry her; but Gyp says he
won't.”

“yp? Is that her name?” A sudden longing, not friendly.
to see this woman seized her. “ Will you bring her to see me?
I’m alone here till Wednesday.”

“T don’t think she’ll come. Mother, she’s wonderful!”

A smile twisted his mother’s lips. No doubt! Aphrodite!
And—afterwards ?

“ Does Major Winton know?”

ce Weaic:

“ What does he say to it?”

“From your point of view, or his, it’s rotten. But in her
position, everything’s rotten.”

The flood-gates gave way in Lady Summerhay, she poured
forth a stream of words.

“Oh, my dear, can’t you pull up? I’ve seen so many of these
affairs go wrong. It really is not for nothing that law and con-
ventions are what they are. The pressure’s too great. It’s only
once in a way—very exceptional people, very exceptional circum-
stances. You mayn’t think now that it'll hamper you, but it
will—most fearfully. If you were a writer or an artist, who
could take his work where he likes, live in a desert if he wants;
but you’ve got to do yours here in London. Do think, before
you go butting up against society! It’s all very well to say it’s
no affair of anyone’s, but you'll find it is, Bryan. Can you pos-
sibly make her happy in the long run?”

She stopped at the expression on his face.
''412 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ Mother, you don’t seem to understand. I’m devoted sa
that there’s nothing else for me.”

“You mean bewitched.”

“JT mean what I said. Good night!”

“ Won’t you stay to dinner, dear? ”

But he was gone, and vexation, anxiety, wretchedness, came
on Lady Summerhay. She went to her dinner desolate and
sore.

Summerhay made straight for home. The lamps were bright-
ening in the early-autumn dusk; a draughty, ruffling wind flicked
a yellow leaf here and there from off the plane-trees. Evening
blue stained the colour of the town—the hour of fusion when
day’s hard and staring shapes are softening, growing dark, mys-
terious, and all that broods behind the lives of men and trees
and houses comes down on the wings of illusion, and the poetry
in a man wells up. But Summerhay still heard his mother’s
voice, and knew that his hand was against everyone’s. There
was a difference, it seemed to him, in the expression of each
passer-by. Nothing any more would be a matter of course;
and so far everything had been a matter of course. He did
not realise this clearly yet; but had begun to take what nurses
call “notice,” forced on to the defensive against society.

Putting his latch-key into the lock, he recalled his sensation
that afternoon, opening to Gyp for the first time—furtive, de-
fiant. It would all be defiance now. Lighting a fire in his
sitting-room, he began pulling out drawers, sorting and destroy-
ing, burning, making lists, packing papers. Finishing, he sat
down to smoke. The room was quiet, and Gyp seemed to fill
it with her presence. By closing his eyes he could see her there
by the hearth, as she stood before they left, turning her face up
to him. The more she loved him, the more he would love her!
And he said aloud: “ By God!” The old Scotch terrier, Ossian,
came from his corner and shoved his long black nose into his
master’s hand.

“Come along up, Ossy! Good dog, Oss!” And comforted
by the warmth of that black body beside him in the chair, Sum-
merhay fell asleep in front of the fire smouldering with his
past.
''XI

TrouaH Gyp had never seemed to look round, she had been quite
conscious of Summerhay standing where they had parted, watch-
ing her into the house in Bury Street. The strength of her own
feeling surprised her, as a bather in the sea is surprised, finding
her feet will not touch bottom, carried away by the tide.

For the second night running, she hardly slept, hearing Big
Ben boom, hour after hour. At breakfast, she told her father of
Fiorsen’s reappearance. He received the news with a shrewd
glance.

“Well, Gyp?”

“T told him.”

Curiosity, disapproval, to which he was not entitled, admira-
tion of her pluck, fears for the consequences, disturbance at
knowing her at last launched into the deep waters of love—it was
the least of these feelings that found expression.

“ How did he take it?”

“Rushed away. I feel sure he won’t divorce me.”

“No, I don’t suppose even he would have that impudence!”
And Winton was silent. “ Well,” he said suddenly, “it’s on the
knees of the gods then. But be careful, Gyp.”

About noon, Betty returned from the sea, with a solemn, dark-
eyed, cooing little Gyp, brown as a roasted coffee-berry. When
she had been given all that she could wisely eat after the
journey, Gyp carried her off to her own room, cuddled her up
in a shawl and lay down with her on the bed. A few sleepy
coos and strokings, and little Gyp left for the land of Nod.
Her mother lay gazing at her black lashes with a kind of pas-
sion. She was not a great child-lover, but this child of hers,
with her dark softness, plump delicacy, giving disposition, coo-
ing voice, constant adjurations to “dear mum,” was adorable,
insidiously seductive. She had developed quickly, with the grace-
ful roundness of a little animal, the perfection of a flower. The
Italian blood of her great-great-grandmother was prepotent in
her as yet; and her hair, which had lost its baby darkness, was
already curving round her neck and waving on her forehead.
One of her tiny brown hands had escaped the shawl ana grasped
its edge with determined softness. Gyp gazed at the pinkish

413
''414 NOVELS OF LOVE

nails and their absurdly wee half-moons, at the sleeping tran-
quillity stirred by breathing no more than a rose-leaf on a wind-
less day, and her lips grew fuller, trembled, reached towards the
dark lashes, till she had to rein her neck back to stop her self-
indulgence.

That evening, at dinner, Winton said calmly:

. “ve been to see Fiorsen, and warned him off. Found him
at that fellow Rosek’s. And-I met that girl, the dancer, coming
out of the house as I was going in—made it plain I’d seen her,
so I don’t think he’ll trouble you.”

“How was she looking, Dad?”

Winton smiled. How to convey his impression of the figure
he had seen coming down the steps—of those eyes growing round
at sight of him, of that mouth opening ?

“Much the same. Rather flabbergasted. A white hat—very
smart. Attractive in her way, but common, of course. Those
two were playing the piano and fiddle when I went up. They
tried not to let me in. Queer place, that!”

Gyp could see it all so well. The black walls, silver statuettes,
Rops drawings, dead rose-leaves and cigarettes—those two by
the piano—her father so cool and dry!

“One can’t stand on ceremony with fellows like that. I
hadn’t forgotten that Polish chap’s behaviour to you, my dear.”

Through Gyp passed a quiver of dread.

“T’m almost sorry you went, Dad. Did you say anything
ver ay

“No; I think I was quite polite. I won’t swear I didn’t call
one of them a ruffian. They said something about my presum-
ing on being a cripple.”

“Oh, darling!”

“That Polish chap——”

Again she felt that dread. Rosek’s pale, suave face, with eyes
behind which were such hidden things, and lips sweetish, re-
strained, sensual—he would never forgive! But Winton was
smiling. He was pleased with an encounter which had re-
lieved his feelings.

Gyp spent all that evening writing her first real love-letter.
But when, next afternoon at six, in fulfilment of its wording, she
came to Summerhay’s little house, the blinds were down and
it had a deserted look. He should have been at the window,
waiting. Had he, then, not got her letter, not been home since
yesterday? The chill fear which besets lovers’ hearts at failure

 
''BEYOND 415

of a tryst smote her for the first time. In the three-cornered
garden stood a decayed Eros with a broken bow—a sparrow on
its greenish shoulder ; sooty lilac-leaves round its head, and at its
legs the old Scotch terrier sniffing. “Ossy!” The old dog
came, wagging its tail feebly.

“ Master! Where is master?”

Ossian poked his long nose into her calf. She passed from the
deserted house with all manner of frightened thoughts. Where
had he gone? Why had he not let her know? Her scepticism
ran riot. What did she know of him, except that he said he
loved her? The jealous feelings that had so besieged her at
the bungalow when his letters ceased, came again with re-
doubled force. There must be some woman who had claim on
him, some girl whom he admired. She was amazed by her
capacity for jealousy. She had always thought she would be
too proud to feel that sensation so dark and wretched and un-
dignified—so horribly real and clinging.

Winton had gone to his club, and she partook of a little
trumped-up meal ; then put on her things again and slipped out.
She went past St. James’s Church into Piccadilly, to the farther,
crowded side, and began to walk towards the park. To do a
foolish thing was some relief, and she went along with a faint
smile. Women of the town came rounding out of side streets,
with their skilled, rapid-seeming slowness. And at the dis-
comfited, half-hostile stares on their rouged and powdered faces,
Gyp felt a wicked glee. She was disturbing, hurting them—and
she wanted to hurt.

A man, in evening dress, with overcoat thrown open ranged
up beside her. She walked straight on, with her half-smile,
knowing him puzzled and fearfully attracted. Then at the ex-
pression on her face, he wilted away, and again she felt that
wicked glee.

She crossed out into the traffic, to the park side, and turned
back towards St. James’s, possessed now by a profound, black
sadness. If only her lover were beside her among the lights
and shadows of the trees, in the warm air! Why was he not
among these passers-by? She could bring any casual man to her
side by a smile, but could not conjure up the only one she
wanted from this great desert of a town! At the corner of St.
James’s Street she stopped. That was his club. Perhaps he was
there, playing cards or billiards, a few yards away, and yet as
in another world. Presently he would come out, go to some
''416 NOVELS OF LOVE

music-hall, or stroll home thinking of her—perhaps not even
thinking of her! And, close under the windows of the club, she
hurried home.

Next morning brought a letter. Summerhay wrote from an
inn on the river, asking her to come down by the eleven o’clock
train. He would meet her at the station. He wanted to show
her a house he had seen; they could have the afternoon on the
river! She received this letter with an ecstasy she could not
quite conceal. And Winton, who had watched her face, said:

“T think I shall go to Newmarket, Gyp. Home to-morrow
evening.”

In the train on the way down, she sat in a sort of trance. If
her lover had been there, he could not have seemed nearer.

She saw him as the train ran in; they met without a hand-
clasp, without a word, just looking at each other.

A little victoria “dup up”—as Summerhay said— horse,
driver and all,” carried them off, with hands clasped under cover
of the rug.

The day was of early September when the sun is hot, yet not
too hot, and its light falls silken on trees just losing the opulence
of summer, on silvery-gold reaped fields, silvery-green uplands,
golden mustard ; when shots ring out in the distance, and, as one
gazes, a leaf falls, without seeming reason. By a lane, past a
clump of beeches, they reached a lonely house, of very old red
brick, covered by Virginia creeper just turning; with an ingle-
nook and low, broad chimneys. Before it was a walled, neglected
lawn, with poplars and a large walnut-tree. The sunlight seemed
to have collected in that garden, and there was a great hum-
ming of bees. Above the trees, the downs could be seen where
racehorses, they said, were trained. Summerhay had the keys,
and they went in. It was like a child’s “ pretending ”—to
imagine they were going to live there together, to sort out the
rooms and consecrate each. She would not spoil it by argument
or admission of the need for a decision. And when he asked:

“ Well, darling, what do you think of it?” she only answered:

“Oh, lovely, in a way; but let’s go back to the river and make
the most of it.”

They took boat at the inn where he was staying. To Summer-
hay, a rowing man at Oxford, the river was known from Leich-
lade to Richmond: but Gyp had never in her life been on it,
and its placid magic almost overwhelmed her. On this glisten-
ing, windless day, to drift along past the bright, flat water-lily
''BEYOND 417

leaves over the greenish depths; to listen to the pigeons cooing,
watch the dragon-flies flitting past, the fish leaping lazily, letting
her hand dabble in the water, cooling her sun-warmed cheek with
it, gazing at her lover, was a voyage down the river of dreams,
the fulfilment of felicity. Had she really had a life with another
man only a year ago?

But when, in the last backwater, he tied the boat up and came
to sit with her once more, it was already late, and the vague
melancholy of the shadowy river came stealing into her. With
a sinking at her heart, she heard him begin to plead.

“yp, we must go away together. We can never stand it
apart, just snatching hours like this.”

“Why not, darling? Hasn’t this been perfect? What could
we ever have more perfect? It’s been paradise itself!”

“Yes; but to be thrown out every day! To be whole days
and nights without you! Gyp, you must! Don’t you love me
enough?”

“Too much. It’s tempting Providence to change. Let’s go
on as we are, Bryan.”

“Why are you afraid?”

“Oh! Let it be like this. Don’t let’s change or risk any-
thing.”

“Ts it people—society—youw’re afraid of? I thought you
wouldn’t care.”

Gyp smiled.

“ Society? No; I’m not afraid of that.”

“ What, then? Of me?”

“T don’t know. Men soon get tired. I’m a doubter, I can’t
help it.”

“As if anyone could tire of you! Are you afraid of your-
self?”

Again Gyp smiled.

“ Not of loving too little.”

“How can one love too much?”

She drew his face down to her lips.

“No, Bryan; let’s go on as we are. I’ll make up to you when
I’m with you. If you were to tire of me, I couldn’t bear it.”

For a long time more he pleaded—with anger, with kisses,
with reasonings; but, to all, she opposed that same tender, half-
mournful “ No.” It was dusk when they left the boat, and dew
was falling. Just before they reached the station, she caught
his hand to her breast.
''4:18 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Darling, don’t be angry with me! Perhaps I will—some
day.”

And, in the train, she tried to think herself once more in
the boat, among the shadows and the whispering reeds and all
the quiet wonder of the river.
''XII

Sur let herself in stealthily, and went up at once to her room.
She was taking off her blouse when Betty entered, with tears
rolling down her cheeks.

“Betty! What is it?”

“Oh, my dear, where have you been? They’ve stolen her!
That wicked man—your husband—he took her right out of her
pram—and went off with her in a great car—he and that other
one! I’ve been half out of my mind!” Gyp stared aghast.
“The major away and all—what was I to do? Td just turned
round to shut the gate of the square gardens, and I never saw
him till he’d put his great long arm over the pram and snatched
her out.” And, sitting on the bed, she gave way utterly.

Gyp stood motionless, in terror. That vengeful wretch, Rosek !

“Oh, Betty, she must be crying!”

A fresh outburst of moans was the only answer. And she
remembered suddenly what the lawyer had said a year ago—in
law, Fiorsen could claim her child. She eould have got her
back, then, by bringing a horrible case against him, but now—
perhaps she could not. Was it her return to Fiorsen that they
aimed at—or the giving up of her lover? She went over to her
mirror, saying:

“We'll go at once, Betty, and get her back somehow. Wash
your face.”

While she made ready, she fought down those two horrible
fears—of losing her child, of losing her lover; the less she
feared, the better she could act, the more subtly, swiftly. Some-
where she had a little stiletto, given her a long time ago. She
hunted it out, slipped off its red-leather sheath, and, stabbing
the point into a tiny cork, slipped it beneath her blouse. If
they could steal her baby, they were capable of anything. She
wrote a note to her father, telling him what had happened, and
where she had gone. Then, in a taxi, they set forth. Cold water
and the calmness of her mistress had removed from Betty the
main traces of emotion; but she clasped Gyp’s hand, and gave
vent to heavy sighs.

Gyp would not think. If she thought of her little one crying,
she knew she would cry too. But her hatred for those who

419
''420 NOVELS OF LOVE

had dealt this cowardly blow grew within her. She took a reso-
lution and said quietly:

“Mr. Summerhay, Betty. That’s why they’ve stolen our dar-
ling. I suppose you know he and I care for each other. They’ve
stolen her so as to make me do anything they like.”

A wheeze answered her.

That moon-face seemed all in conflict between morality and
belief in Gyp, fears for her and wishes for her happiness, the
loyal retainer and the old nurse.

“Oh dear! He’s a nice gentleman, too! I never did hold you
was rightly married to that foreigner in that horrible registry
place—no music, no flowers, no blessin’ asked, nor nothing. I
cried me eyes out at the time.”

“No; Betty, I only thought I was in love.” A convulsive
squeeze and creaking heralded a fresh outburst. “ Don’t cry;
we're just there. Think of our darling!”

The cab stopped. Feeling for her little weapon, she got out,
and with her hand slipped firmly under Betty’s arm, led the
way upstairs, haunted by memories of Daphne Wing and Rosek,
of that large woman—what was her name ?—of other faces and
unholy hours; memories of late returnings down these wide
stairs out to their cab, of Fiorsen beside her in the darkness, his
face moody in the corner or pressed close to hers. Once they
had walked a long way homeward in the dawn, Rosek with them.
Dim, unreal memories! Grasping Betty’s arm more firmly, she
rang the bell.

“Ts Mr. Fiorsen in, Ford?”

“No ma’am; Mr. Fiorsen and Count Rosek went into the
country this afternoon. I haven’t their address at present.” She
must have turned white, for she heard the man say: “‘ Anything
I can get you, ma’am?”

“When did they start, please? ”

“One o’clock, ma’am—by car. Count Rosek was driving. I
should say they wont be away long—they just had their bags
with them. I could let you know the moment they return,
ma’am, if you’d kindly leave me your address.”

Giving her card, and murmuring:

“Thank you, Ford; thank you very much,” she grasped
_ Betty’s arm again and leaned heavily on her going down the
stairs.

It was real, black fear now. To lose helpless things—children
—dogs—and know for certain that one cannot get to them, no
''BEYOND 421

matter what they may be suffering! To be pinned down to
ignorance and have in her ears the crying of her child—this
horror Gyp suffered now. And nothing to be done! Nothing
but to go to bed and wait! Mercifully—thanks to her long day
in the open—she fell at last into a dreamless sleep. When she
was called, there was a letter from Fiorsen on the tray with her
tea.

“Gwps

“TJ am not a baby-stealer like your father. The law gives me
the right to my own child. But swear to give up your lover,
and the baby shall come back to you at once. If you do not give
him up. I will take her away out of England. Send me an
answer to this post-office, and do not let your father try any
tricks upon me.

“ Gustav FIorsen.”

Beneath was written the address of a West End post-office.

After a moment of mental anguish, her wits and wariness
came back. Had he been drinking when he wrote that letter?
She could fancy she smelled brandy, but it was easy to fancy
what one wanted to. She read it through again. If he had
composed the wording himself, he would never have resisted a
gibe at the law, or a gibe at himself for thus safeguarding her
virtue. It was Rosek’s dictation. Her anger flamed up anew.
Why need she herself be scrupulous? She sprang out of bed
and wrote:

“How could you do such a brutal thing? At all events, let
the darling have her nurse. It’s not like you to let a little child
suffer. Betty will be ready to come the minute you send for her.
As for myself, you must give me time to decide. I will let you
know within two days.

ce Gavi?

When she had sent this off, and a telegram to her father at
Newmarket, she read Fiorsen’s letter once more, and was more
than ever certain it was Rosek’s wording. And, suddenly, she
thought of Daphne Wing. Through her there might be a chance.
She seemed to see again the girl lying white and void of
hope, robbed by death of her own babe. Surely it was worth
trying.
''422 NOVELS OF LOVE

An hour later, her cab stopped before the Wagges’ door. She
was ringing the bell when a voice from behind her said:

“Allow me; I have a key. Ow, it’s you!” Mr. Wagge, in
professional habiliments, was standing there. “Oome in; come
in,” he said. “I was wondering whether perhaps we shouldn’t
be seeing you after what’s transpired.”

Hanging up his tall black hat, craped nearly to the crown, he
said huskily:

“TI did think we’d seen the last of that,” and opened the din-
ing-room door.

In that too well-remembered room the table was laid with a
stained white cloth and a bottle of Worcester sauce. The little
blue bowl was gone; nothing now marred the harmony of red
and green. Gyp said quickly:

“ Doesn’t Daph—Daisy live at home, then, now?”

On Mr. Wagge’s face suspicion, relief, and craftiness were
blended with that furtive admiration which Gyp seemed always
to excite in him.

“Do I understand that you—er .

“TI came to ask if Daisy would do something for me.”

Mr. Wagge blew his nose.

“You didn’t know: a?

“Yes; I dare say she sees my husband; but I don’t mind—he’s
nothing to me now.”

Mr. Wagge’s face became further complicated by the expres-
sion of a husband.

“Well, it’s not to be wondered at, perhaps, in the circum-
stances. I’m sure I always thought ee

Gyp interrupted swiftly.

“ Please, Mr. Wagge—please! Will you give me Daisy’s ad-
dress ? ”

Mr. Wagge remained a moment in deep thought, then said, in
a gruff, jerky voice:

“Seventy-three Comrade Street, So’o. Up to seeing him
there on Tuesday, I must say I cherished every hope. Now I’m
only sorry I didn’t strike him,—he was too quick for me——”
He had raised one of his gloved hands and was sawing it up and
down. “It’s her blasted independence—I beg pardon—but who
wouldn’t?” he ended suddenly.

_ Gyp passed him.

“Who wouldn’t?” she heard his voice behind her. “I did

think she’d have run straight this time ” And while she

 

 

 

 
''BEYOND 423

was fumbling at the outer door, his pudgy face, with its round
grey beard, protruded over her shoulder. “ If you’re going to see
her, I hope you'll :

In her cab Gyp shivered. Once she had lunched with her
father at a restaurant in the Strand. It had been full of Mr.
Wagges.

 
''XIII

SEVENTY-THREE Comrade Street, Soho, was difficult to find; but,
with the aid of a milk-boy, Gyp discovered the right door. A
plump white hand and wrist emerging took the can, and Daphne
Wing’s voice said:

“ Oh, where’s the cream?”

“ Ain’t got none.”

“Oh! I told you always—two pennyworth at twelve o’clock.”

“Two penn-orth.” The boy’s eyes goggled.

“ Didn’t you want to speak to her, miss?” He beat the clos-
ing door. “Lidy wants to speak to you! Good mornin’,
miss.”

The figure of Daphne Wing in a blue kimono was revealed.
Her eyes peered round at Gyp.

Obl ghe said. *

“May I come in?”

“Oh, yes! Oh, do! I’ve been practising. Oh, I am glad to
see you!”

In the middle of the studio, a little table was laid for two.

Daphne Wing went up to it, holding in one hand the milk-can
and in the other a short knife, with which she had evidently
been opening oysters. She turned round to Gyp. Her face
was deep pink, and so was her neck, which ran V-shaped down
into the folds of her kimono. Her eyes, round as saucers, met
Gyp’s.
“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I am glad! I really am. I wanted you
so much to see my room—do you like it? How did you know
where I was?” She looked down and added: “I think I’d
better tell you. Mr. Fiorsen came here, and, since then, I’ve
seen him at Count Rosek’s—and—and——”

“Yes; but don’t trouble to tell me, please.”

Daphne Wing hurried on.

“Of course, I’m quite mistress of myself now.” Then, all at
once, the uneasy woman-of-the-world mask dropped from her
face and she seized Gyp’s hand. “Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I shall
never be like you! ”

“T hope not.” How could she ask this girl anything? She
choked back that feeling, and said stonily: “Do you remember

424
''BEYOND 425

my baby? No, of course; you never saw her. He and Count
Rosek have just taken her away from me.”

Daphne Wing convulsively squeezed the hand.

“Oh, what a wicked thing! When?”

“ Yesterday afternoon.”

“Oh, I am glad I haven’t seen him since! Oh, I do think
that was wicked! Aren’t you dreadfully distressed?” 'The least
of smiles played on Gyp’s mouth. Daphne Wing burst forth:
“D’you know—I think—I think your self-control is something
awful. It frightens me. If my baby had lived and been stolen
like that, I should have been half dead by now.”

Gyp answered stonily :

“Yes; I want her back, and I wondered ig

Daphne Wing clasped her hands.

“Oh, I expect I can make him ” She stopped, confused,
then added hastily: “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“T shouldn’t mind if he had fifty loves. Perhaps he has.”

Daphne Wing’s teeth came down rather viciously on her lower
lip.
“JT mean him to do what J want now, not what he wants me.
That’s the only way when you love. Oh, don’t smile like that,
please ; you do make me feel so—uncertain.”

“ When are you going to see him next?”

Daphne Wing grew very pink.

“He might be coming in to lunch. It’s not as if he were a
stranger, is it?” Casting up her eyes a little, she added: “ He
won’t even let me speak your name; it makes him mad. That’s:
why I’m sure he still loves you; only, his love is so funny.”
And, seizing Gyp’s hand: “I shall never forget how good you
were to me. I do hope you—you love somebody else.” Gyp
pressed those damp, clinging fingers, and Miss Wing hurried
on: “I’m sure your baby’s a darling. How you must be suffer-
ing! You look quite pale. But it isn’t any good suffering. I
learned that.”

Gyp bent forward and put her lips to the girl’s forehead.

“Good-bye. My baby would thank you if she knew.”

And she turned to go. She heard a sob. But before she could
speak, Daphne Wing struck herself on the throat, and said, in a
strangled voice:

“Tha—that’s idiotic! I—I haven’t cried since—since, you
know. I—I’s perfect mistress of myself; only, 1—only—I sup-
pose you reminded me—I never cry!”

 

 
''426 NOVELS OF LOVE

Those words and the sound of a hiccough accompanied Gyp
down.the alley to her cab.

Back in Bury Street, she found Betty sitting in the hall with
her bonnet on. She had not been sent for, nor had any reply
come from Newmarket. Gyp could not eat, could settle to
nothing. She went up to her bedroom to get away from the
servants’ eyes. Every other minute she stopped to listen to
sounds that meant nothing, went a hundred times to the window.
Betty was in the nursery opposite; Gyp could hear her moving
about among her household gods. Presently, those sounds
ceased, and, peering into the room, she saw the stout woman
sitting on a trunk, with her back turned, uttering heavy sighs.
Gyp stole back into her own room, trembling. If—if her baby
really could not be recovered except by that sacrifice! If that
cruel letter were the last word, and she forced to decide between
them! Which would she give up? Which follow—her lover or
her child?

She went to the window for air—the pain about her heart was
dreadful. She felt dizzy from the violence of a struggle that
refused coherent thought or feeling, was just a dumb pull of
instincts, both so strong—how terribly strong she had not till
then realised.

Her eyes fell on the picture that reminded her of Bryan; it
seemed now to have no resemblance—none. He was much too
real, and loved, and wanted. Less than twenty-four hours ago,
she had turned a deaf ear to his pleading that she should go to
him for ever. How funny! She would rush to him now—go
when and where he liked! If only she were back in his arms!
Never could she give him up! But then in her ears sounded
the cooing words, “ Dear mum!” Her baby—that tiny thing—
how could she give her up, never again hold close and kiss that
round, perfect little body, that grave little dark-eyed face?

The roar of London came in through the open window. So
much life, so many people—and not a soul could help! She left
the window and went to the cottage-piano she had there, out of
Winton’s way. And she sat with arms folded, looking at the
keys. The song that girl had sung at Fiorsen’s concert—song
of the broken heart—came back to her.

No, no; she couldn’t—couldn’t! It was to her lover she would
cling. And tears ran down her cheeks.

A cab had stopped below, but not till Betty came rushing in
did she look up.
''XIV

Wuen, trembling violently, she entered the dining-room, Fior-
sen was standing by the sideboard, holding the child.

He came straight up and put her into Gyp’s arms.

“Take her,” he said, “and do what you will. Be happy.”

Hugging her baby, Gyp answered nothing. She could not
have spoken a word to save her life; grateful, bewildered,
abashed, yet instinctively aware of something evanescent and
unreal in his altruism. Daphne Wing! What bargain did this
represent ?

Fiorsen must have felt the chill of this instinctive vision, for
he cried out:

“You never believed in me; you never thought me capable of

ood! ”
Gyp bent to hide the quivering of her lips.

“ T am sorry—very sorry.”

Fiorsen looked into her face.

“ By God, I am afraid I shall never forget you—never!”

Tears had come into his eyes, and Gyp watched them, moved,
troubled, but still deeply mistrustful.

He brushed his hand across his face. ‘He means me to see
them!’ she thought.

Fiorsen saw, and muttering suddenly:

“ Good-bye, Gyp! I am not all bad!” was gone.

That passionate “I am not!” saved Gyp from breakdown.
Even at his highest pitch of abnegation, he could not forget
himself.

Overwhelming relief is slowly realised ; but presently it seemed
as if she must cry out, and tell the whole world of her intoxicat-
ing happiness. And the moment little Gyp was in Betty’s arms,
she sat down and wrote to Summerhay:

* DARLING, *

“ve had a fearful time. My baby was stolen by him while I
was with you. He wrote saying he would give her back if I gave
you up. But I found I couldn’t give you up, not even for my
baby. And then, a few minutes ago, he brought her—none the
worse. ‘To-morrow we shall all go down to Mildenham; but

427
''428 NOVELS OF LOVE

very soon, if you still want me, I’ll come with you wherever
you like. My father and Betty will take care of my treasure
till we come back ; and then, perhaps, the old red house we saw—
after all. Only—now is the time for you to draw back. Don’t
let any foolish pity—or honour—weigh with you; be utterly
sure, I beseech you. I can just bear it now if it’s for your good.
The worst misery of all would be to make you unhappy. Oh,
make sure—make sure! I shall understand. I mean this with
every bit of me. And now, good-night, and perhaps—good-bye.
Our
“ Gyr.”

She read it over. Did she really mean that she could bear it
if he drew back—if, looking into the far future, he decided that
she was not worth the candle?

She closed and sealed the letter. Why had one a heart so
much too soft?

Ten days later, at Mildenham station, holding her father’s
hand, Gyp could scarcely see him for the mist before her eyes.

“Good-bye, my love! Take care of yourself; wire from
London, and again from Paris. He has luck; I had none.”

The mist became tears, rolled down, fell on his glove.

“ Not too long out there, Gyp!”

She pressed her wet cheek to his. The train moved, but, so
long as she could see, she watched him waving his grey hat;
then sat down, blinded with tears behind her veil. She had not
cried when she left him the day of her fatal marriage; she cried
now that she was leaving him to go to happiness.

But her heart had grown since then.
''PART IV
I

Lirrte Gyp, aged nearly four and a half that first of May, stood
at the edge of the tulip border, bowing to two hen turkeys who
were poking their heads among the flowers. She was very like
her mother, with the same oval-shaped face, dark arched brows,
large and clear brown eyes; but she had the modern child’s open-
air look; her hair, curling over at the ends, was not allowed to
be long, and her polished brown legs were bare to the knees.

“Turkeys! You aren’t good, are you? Come on/” And,
stretching out her hands with the palms held up, she backed
away from the tulip-bed. The turkeys, trailing delicately their
long-toed feet and uttering liquid interrogations, moved after
her in hopes of what she was not holding in her little brown
hands. The slanting sun painted that small procession—the
deep blue frock of little Gyp, the glint of gold in the chestnut
of her hair; the daisy-starred grass; the dark birds with trans-
lucent red dewlaps and checkered tails, the tulips, puce, red and
yellow. Having lured them to the open gate, little Gyp raised
herself, and said:

“ Aren’t you duffies, dears? Shoo!” And on the tails of the
turkeys she shut the gate. Then she went to where, under the
walnut-tree—the one large tree of that walled garden—a very
old Scotch terrier was lying. Sitting down beside him, she
began stroking his white muzzle, saying:

“ Ossy, Ossy, do you love me?”

Then, seeing her mother in the porch, she jumped up, and
crying out: “ Ossy—Ossy! Walk!” rushed to Gyp and em-
braced her legs, while the old Scotch terrier slowly followed.

Nearly three years had changed Gyp a little. Her face was
softer, rather more grave, her form a little fuller, her hair darker,
and, instead of waving in wings, smoothly gathered round in a
lustrous helmet, better revealing the shape of her head.

“ Darling, go and ask Pettance to put a fresh piece of sulphur
in Ossy’s water-bowl, and to cut up his meat finer. You can

429
''430 NOVELS OF LOVE

give Hotspur and Brownie two lumps of sugar each; and then
we'll go out.” Going on her knees, she parted the old dog’s
hair, and examined his eczema, thinking: ‘Oh, ducky, you’re not
smelling your best! Yes; only—not my face!’

A telegraph-boy was coming from the gate. She opened the
missive with the faint tremor she always felt when Summer-
hay was not with her.

“ Detained; shall be down by last train; need not come up
to-morrow.— Bryan.”

When the boy was gone, she stooped and stroked the old dog’s
head.

“Master home all day to-morrow, Ossy—master home!”

A voice from the path said, “ Beautiful evenin’, ma’am.”

The “ old scoundrel,” Pettance, stiffer in the ankle-joints, with
more lines in his gargoyle’s face, fewer stumps in his gargoyle’s
mouth, more film over his dark, burning little eyes, was standing
before her, and, behind him, little Gyp, one foot rather before
the other, as Gyp had been wont to stand, waited gravely.

“Oh, Pettance, Mr. Summerhay will be at home all to-mor-
row, and we’ll go a long ride; and when you exercise, will you
call at the inn, in case I don’t go that way, and tell Major
Winton I expect him to dinner to-night ? ”

“Yes, ma’am; and I’ve seen the pony for little Miss Gyp this
morning, ma’am. It’s a mouse pony, five year old, sound, good
temper, pretty little paces. I says to the man: ‘ Don’t you come
it over me, I says; ‘I was born on an ’orse. Talk of twenty
pound for that pony! Ten, and lucky to get it!’ ‘ Well, he
says, ‘ Pettance, it’s no good to talk round an’ round with you.
Fifteen!’ he says. ‘Ill throw you one in,’ I says, ‘ Eleven!
Take it or leave it. ‘Ah!’ he says, ‘ Pettance, you know ’ow to
buy an ’orse. All right, he says; ‘twelve!’ She’s worth all of
fifteen, ma’am, and the major’s passed her. So if you likes to
have ’er, there she is! ”

Gyp looked at her little daughter, who had given one excited
hop, but now stood still, her eyes flying up at her mother and
her lips parted; and she thought: ‘ The darling! She never begs
for anything!’

“Very well, Pettance; buy her.” |

“ Yes, ma’am—very good, ma’am. Beautiful evenin’, ma’am.”
And, withdrawing at his gait of one whose feet are at per-
''BEYOND 431

manent right angles to the legs, he mused: ‘ And that’ll be two
in my pocket.’

Ten minutes later Gyp, with her child and dog, set out for
their evening walk. They went, not as usual, up to the downs,
but towards the river, making for what they called “ the wild ”—
two sedgy meadows, hedged by banks on which grew oaks and
ashes. An old stone linhay, covered to its broken thatch by a
huge ivy bush, stood at the angle where the meadows met. The
spot was strange in that kempt countryside of cornfields, grass,
and beech-clumps, favoured by beasts and birds, and little Gyp
had recently seen two baby hares. From an oak-tree, where the
crinkled leaves were not yet large enough to hide him, a cuckoo
was calling and they stopped to look till he flew off. The
singing and serenity, the green and golden oaks and ashes, the
flowers—marsh-orchis, ladies’ smocks, and cuckoo-buds, starring
the rushy grass—all brought to Gyp that feeling of the uncap-
turable spirit which lies behind the forms of nature, the sha-
dowy, hovering smile of life ever vanishing and springing again
out of death. Close to the linhay a bird came flying in wide
circles, uttering shrill cries. It had a long beak, long, pointed
wings, and seemed distressed. Little Gyp squeezed her mother’s
hand.

“Tsn’t it a poor bird, mum?”

“Tt’s a curlew. Perhaps its mate is hurt.”

“ What is its mate?”

“ The bird it lives with.”

“Tts afraid of us.”

“Shall we go and see if we can find out what’s the matter? ”

The curlew continued to circle, always uttering those shrill
eries. Little Gyp said:

“Mum, could we speak to it? Because we’re not going to
hurt nothing, are we?”

“Of course not, darling! But I’m afraid the poor bird’s too
wild. Try, if you like.”

Little Gyp’s piping joined the curlew’s cries in the quiet of
the evening.

“Oh, look; it’s dipping close to the ground, over there—it’s
got a nest! We won’t go near, will we?”

Little Gyp echoed in a hushed voice:

“It’s got a nest.”

They stole back out of the gate close to the linhay, the curlew
still flighting and crying behind them.
''432 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ Aren’t we glad the mate isn’t hurt, mum?”

Gyp answered with a shiver:

“Yes, darling, fearfully glad. Shall we go down and ask
Grandy to come up to dinner?”

Little Gyp hopped. And they went towards the river,

At the river inn Winton had for two years had rooms. He
had refused to make his home with Gyp, desiring to be on hand
only when she wanted him. He led a simple life in those sim-
ple quarters, riding with her when Summerhay was in town,
laying plans for the defence of her position, visiting the cot-
tagers, devoting himself to the whims of little Gyp. This mo-
ment, when his grandchild was to begin to ride, was in a manner
sacred to one for whom life had scant meaning apart from
horses. Looking at them, hand in hand, Gyp thought: ‘ Dad
_ loves her as much as he loves me now.’

Lonely dinner at the inn was an infliction studiously con-
cealed ; he accepted their invitation without alacrity.

The Red House contained nothing that had been in Gyp’s
married home except the piano. It had white walls, furniture
of old oak, and reproductions of her favourite pictures. Winton
got on well enough with Summerhay, but enjoyed himself much
more when alone with his daughter. This evening he was espe-
cially glad to have her to himself; she had seemed of late rather
grave and absent-minded.

“T wish you saw more people,” he said.

* Oh no, Dad?’

Watching her smile, he thought: ‘ That’s not “ sour grapes ”—
What is the trouble, then ?’

“I suppose you’ve not heard anything of Fiorsen lately ? ”

“Not a word. But he’s playing again in London this season,
I see.”

“Ah! that?ll cheer them.” It was not that, then. But there
was something !

“T hear that Bryan’s going ahead. I met a man in town last
week who spoke of him as the most promising junior at the
bar.

“Yes; he’s doing awfully well.” A faint sigh caught his
ears. “ Would you say he’s changed much since you knew him,
Dad?”

“A little less jokey.”

“Yes; he’s lost his laugh.”

Evenly and softly said, it affected Winton.
''~

BEYOND 433

“Can’t expect him to keep that,” he answered, “turning
people inside out, day after day—and most of them rotten.”

Strolling back in the moonlight, he wished he had said di-
rectly : ‘Are you worrying about him—or have people been mak-
- ing themselves unpleasant ?’

In these last three years he had become unconsciously inimical
to his own class, more than ever friendly to the poor—visiting
the labourers, small farmers, small tradesmen, doing them little
turns, giving their children sixpences. That they could not af-
ford to put on airs of virtue escaped him; he perceived only that
they were respectful and friendly to Gyp. His heart warmed
to them in proportion as he grew exasperated with the two or
three landed families, and that parvenu lot in the riverside
villas.

When he first came down, the chief landowner—a man he had
known for years—had invited him to lunch. He had accepted
with the deliberate intention of finding out where he was, and
had taken the first natural opportunity of mentioning his daugh-
ter. She was, he said, devoted to her flowers; the Red House
had quite a good garden. His friend’s wife had answered with a
nervous smile: “Oh! yes; of course—yes.” And silence had
fallen. Since then, Winton had saluted his friend and his
friend’s wife with frigid politeness. He had not gone there
fishing for Gyp to be called on, but to show these people that his
daughter could not be slighted with impunity. And yet, man
of the world to his finger-tips, he knew perfectly well that, living
with a man to whom she was not married, she could not be
recognised by people with any pretensions to goodness; Gyp
was beyond even the debatable ground on which stood those who
have been divorced and are married again. But even a man of
the world is not proof against the warping of devotion, and
ae was ready to charge any windmill at any moment on her

ehalf.

Exhaling the last puffs of his good-night cigarette, he thought:
‘What wouldn’t I give for the old days, and a chance to wing
some of these moral upstarts!’
''At

Tue last train was not due till eleven-thirty, and Gyp went to
Summerhay’s study, over which was their bedroom. She would
have been horrified if she had known of her father’s sentiments.
She had certainly no wish to see more people. The conditions
of her life often seemed to her ideal. She was free of people she
did not care about, and of all empty social functions. Lvery-
thing she had now was real—love, and nature, riding, music.
animals, and poor people. What else was worth having? It
often seemed to her that books and plays about unhappy women
in her position were false. If one loved, what could one want
better? Such women could have no pride; or else could not
really love! She had recently been reading “ Anna Karenina,”
and had often said to herself: “ There’s something not true about
it—as if Tolstoy wanted to make us believe that Anna was
secretly feeling remorse. If one loves, one doesn’t feel re-
morse.”

She derived positive joy from the feeling that her love im-
posed isolation; she liked to be apart—for him. Besides, by
her birth she was outside the fold of society, her love beyond the
love of those within it—as her father’s love had been before her.
And her pride greater than theirs, too. How could women mope
and moan because they were cast out, and try to scratch their
way back where they were not welcome? Even if Fiorsen died,
would she marry her lover? What difference would it make?
She could not love him more. For herself, she would rather
go onas she was. But for him, she was not certain. He was not
bound now, could leave her when he tired! And yet—did he
not perhaps feel himself more bound that if they were married—
unfairly bound? It was this thought—this shadow of a thought
—which had given her, of late, the extra gravity noticed by her
father.

In that unlighted room with the moonbeams drifting in, she
sat down at Summerhay’s bureau, where he often worked too
late at his cases, depriving her of himself. Resting her bare el-
bows on the wood, she gazed out into the moonlight, drifting on
a stream of memories beginning from the year when he came into
her life.

434
''BEYOND 435

So many memories, nearly all happy! Adroit of the jeweller
who put the human soul together to give it power to forget the
dark and remember the sunshine! The year and a half of her
life with Fiorsen, the empty months that followed it were as
mist dispersed by the radiance of the last three years. The
only cloud had been the doubt whether Summerhay really loved
her as much as she loved him. Her mind was ever at stretch
on that point, comparing past days and nights with the days
and nights of the present. Her prevision that, when she loved,
it would be desperately, had been fulfilled. He had become her
life. And since her besetting strength and weakness alike was
pride—no wonder that she doubted.

For their Odyssey they had gone to Spain—that brown un-
European land of “ lyrio” flowers, and cries of “ Agua 1? in the
streets, where the men seem cleft to the waist when astride of
horses, under their wide black hats, and black-clothed women
with wonderful eyes still look as if they missed Eastern veils.
They had spent a month of gaiety and glamour, last. days of
September, early days of October, a revel of enchanted wander-
ings in the streets of Seville, of embraces and laughter, of
strange scents, strange sounds, of orange light and velvety
shadows, and all the warmth and deep gravity of Spain. The
Alcazar, the cigarette-girls, the Gipsy dancers of Triana, the old
brown ruins to which they rode, the streets, and the square with
its grave talkers sitting on benches in the sun, the water-sellers
and the melons; the mules, and the dark ragged man out of a
dream, picking up the ends of cigarettes, the wine of Malaga,
the grapes of Alicante! They had come back across the burnt
uplands of Castile to Madrid and Goya and Velasquez, till it was
time for Paris, before the law-term began. There, in a queer
little French hotel, they had spent a week, with many pleasant
and one disconcerting memory. On the last night they were
having supper after the theatre, when in a mirror she saw three
people come in and take seats at a table behind—Fiorsen, Rosek,
and Daphne Wing! While they were ordering, she was safe,
for Rosek was a gourmet, and the girl would certainly be hungry ;
but, after that, nothing could save her being seen! Should she
pretend to feel faint and slip out? Or let Bryan know? Or sit
there talking, eating, as if nothing were behind her?

Her face in the mirror had a flush, her eyes were bright.
They would see that she was happy in her love. Her foot sought
Summerhay’s beneath the table. Splendidly brown and fit he
''436 NOVELS OF LOVE

looked, compared with those pale, towny creatures! And he
was gazing at her as though just discovering her beauty. How
could she ever have endured that man with his little beard, his
white face, those eyes! Then, in the mirror, she saw Rosek’s
dark-circled eyes betray recognition by a sudden gleam, saw his
lips compressed, and a faint red come up in his cheeks. What
would he do? The girl’s back was turned—she was eating. And
Fiorsen was staring straight before him in that moody way she
knew so well. All depended on that deadly little man, who
had once kissed her throat. She felt quite sick. If her lover
knew that within five yards of him were those two men! Rosek
had seen that she was conscious. She saw him whisper to the
girl. Daphne Wing turned to look, her mouth opened in a
smothered “Oh!” and Gyp saw her uneasy glance at Fiorsen.
Surely she would want to get away before he saw! Yes; very
soon she rose. What little airs—quite mistress of the situation!
The wrap must be placed exactly on her shoulders; and how she
walked, with one startled look back from the door. Gone! Gyp
said:

“Let's go, darling.”

She felt as if they had both escaped a deadly peril—not from
anything those two could do to him or her, but from the ache
and jealousy which the sight of that man would have brought
him.

All through the first weeks of life together, there was a kind
of wise watchfulness in Gyp. He was only a boy in knowledge,
though his character was so much more decided, active, and
insistent than her own; it lay with her to shape the course,
avoid the shallows and sunken rocks. While the house under the
Berkshire downs was being got ready, they lived at a London
hotel. She let him tell no one of their life together. She wanted
to be firmly settled in first, with little Gyp and Betty and the
horses, as much like respectable married life as possible. But in
the first week after their return a card was brought up to her:
“Lady Summerhay.” When the page-boy was gone, she looked
at herself doubtfully in the glass. She seemed to know exactly
what that tall woman whom she had seen on the platform
would think of her—soft, not capable, not right for him !—not
even if legally his wife. And touching her hair, laying a dab of
scent on her eyebrows, she went downstairs fluttering, outwardly
calm.

In the low-roofed lounge, “entirely renovated,’ her visitor
''BEYOND 437

was rapidly turning the pages of a magazine, as people will at a
dentist’s when their minds are set on a coming operatiop. And
she thought: ‘I believe she’s more frightened than I am!’

Lady Summerhay held out a gloved hand.

“How do you do? I hope you'll forgive my coming.”

“Tt was very good of you. I’m sorry Bryan isn’t in. Will you
have some tea?”

“T’ve had tea; but do let’s sit down. How do you find the
hotel?”

“Very nice.”

On a velvet lounge that had survived renovation, they sat
side by side, screwed round towards each other.

“ Bryan’s told me what a pleasant time you had abroad. He’s
looking very well, I think. I’m devoted to him, you know.”

Gyp answered softly:

“Yes, you must be.” Her heart felt suddenly hard as flint.

Lady Summerhay gave her a quick look.

“JT—TI hope you won’t mind my being frank—I’ve been so
worried. It’s an unhappy position, isn’t it? If there’s anything
I can do to help, I should be so glad—it must be horrid for
you.”

Gyp said very quietly:

“Oh! no. I couldn’t be happier.”

Lady Summerhay was looking at her fixedly.

“ One doesn’t realise these things at first—neither of you will,
till you see how dreadfully society can cold-shoulder.”

Gyp smiled.

“One can only be cold-shouldered if one puts oneself in the
way of it. I should never wish to see anyone who couldn’t take
me just for what I am. And I don’t really see what difference
it will maké to Bryan; most men of his age have someone,
somewhere.” She hated this society woman, who—disguise it
as she would—was at heart her enemy, regarded her as an
enslaver, a despoiler of her son’s worldly chances, a Delilah drag-
ging him down. And still more quietly she said: “ He need tell
no one of my existence; and you can be quite sure that if ever
he feels he’s had enough of me, he’ll never be troubled by the
sight of me again.”

She got up. Lady Summerhay also rose.

“T hope you don’t think—I really am only too anxious to——”

“T think it’s better to be frank. You will never like me, or
forgive me for ensnaring Bryan. And so it had better be, please,
''438 NOVELS OF LOVE

as if I were his common mistress. That will be perfectly all
right for both of us. It was very good of you to come, though.
Thank you—and good-bye.”

Lady Summerhay literally faltered away among the little
tables and elaborate chairs, till her tall figure had disappeared
behind a column. Gyp sat down again on the lounge, pressing
her hands to her burning ears. The strength of the pride-
demon within her; at the moment, it was almost stronger than
her love! She was still sitting there when the page-boy brought
her another visitor—Winton, elated at sight of her after this long
absence. Having given her the news of Mildenham and little
Gyp, he had looked at her steadily, and said:

“The coast’ll be clear for you both down there, and at Bury
Street, whenever you like to come. I shall regard this as your
real marriage, Gyp. I shall have the servants in and make that

plain.”
A row as at family prayers—and Dad standing very straight:
“You will be so good in future as to remember > *T shall be

 

obliged if you will,” and so on; Betty’s round face pouting at
being brought in with all the others; Markey’s soft, inscrutable ;
Mrs. Markey’s demure and goggling; the maids’ rabbit-faces ; old
Pettance’s carved grin: ‘Ho! Mr. Bryn Summer’ay; he bought
her ’orse, and so she’s gone to em!’ And she said:

“Darling, I don’t know! It’s awfully sweet of you. We’ll
see later.”

Winton patted her hand. “We must stand up to them, you
know, Gyp.”

Gyp laughed.

That same night, across the strip of blackness between their
beds, she said:

“ Bryan, promise me something! ”

“Tt depends. I know you too well.”

“No; it’s quite reasonable, and possible. Promise!”

“All ripht 5 ifitlis?

“T want you to let me take the lease of the Red House—let it
be mine, the whole thing—let me pay for everything there.”

“ What’s the point?”

“Only that I shall have a proper home of my own. I can’t
explain, but your mother’s coming to-day made me feel I must.”

“My child, how could I possibly live on you there? It’s
absurd!”

“You can pay for everything else; London—travelling—
''BEYOND 439

clothes, if you like. We can make it square. It’s not the money,
of course. I only want to feel that if, at any moment, you don’t
need me any more, you can simply stop coming.”

“That’s brutal, Gyp.”

“No; so many women lose men because they claim things of
them. I don’t want to lose you that way—that’s all.”

“That’s silly, darling!”

“Ts not. Men—and women, too—tug at chains. And when
there is no chain ix

“ Well then; let me take the house, and you can go away when
yow’re tired of me.” His voice sounded smothered, resentful ;
she could hear him turning and turning, as if angry with his
pillows.

“No; I can’t explain. But I really mean it.”

“We're just beginning life together, and you talk as if you
want to split it up. It hurts, Gyp, and that’s all about He

A dead silence followed, both lying quiet in the darkness,
trying to get the better of each other by sheer listening. An
hour passed before he sighed, and, feeling his lips on hers, she
knew that she had won.

 
''ot

In the study the moonlight had reached her face; and still more
memories came—of first days in this old house together.

Summerhay had damaged himself out hunting that first win-
ter. The memory of nursing him was strangely pleasant, now
that it was two years old. For convalescence they had gone to
the Pyrenees—Argelés in March, all almond-blossom against the
blue—a wonderful fortnight. In London on the way back they
had their first awkward encounter, coming out of a theatre one
evening. A woman’s voice: “ Why, Bryan! What ages!” His
answer defensively drawled:

“Hallo! Diana!”

“Where are you nowadays? Why don’t you come and see
us? ”

“Down in the country. I will, some time. Good-bye.”

A tall girl—red-haired, with a wonderful white skin, and
brown—yes, brown eyes; Gyp could see those eyes sweeping her
up and down with a sort of burning-live curiosity. Then his
hand was thrust under her arm.

“Come on, let’s walk and get a cab.”

Clear of the crowd, she pressed his hand, and said:

“Who was it?”

“A second cousin. Diana Leyton.”

“Do you know her very well?”

“ Oh yes—used to.”

* And do you like her very much?”

* Rather ! ”

He looked round into her face, laughter bubbling behind his
gravity. But to this day that tall girl with burning-white skin,
burning-brown eyes, burning-red hair, was not quite a pleasant
memory. After that night they did not hide their union, going
wherever they wished, whether likely to meet people or not.
Nothing was so easily ignored as Society when the heart was set
on other things. And they were seldom in London. But she
never lost the feeling that the ideal for her was not ideal for him.
He ought to go into the world and meet people; ought not to be
cut off from social pleasures and duties, and then some day feel
that he owed his starvation to her. To go up to London every

440
''BEYOND 441

day was too tiring, and she persuaded him to take a set of
chambers in the Temple, and sleep there three nights a week.
In spite of all his entreaties, she never went to those chambers,
staying always at Bury Street when she came up. She would
not risk making him feel that she was hanging round his neck.
She wanted to keep herself so little a matter of course that
he would hanker after her when he was away. And she never
asked where he went or whom he saw. But, sometimes, she
wondered whether he could still love her as he used to. Love
such as hers—passionate, adoring, protective, longing to sacri-
fice itself, to give all that it had to him, yet secretly demanding
all his love in return—for how could a proud woman love one who
did not love her ?—such love was always longing for a union more
complete than was possible in a world where all things move
and change. But against its grip she never dreamed of fighting.
She made no reservations; all her eggs were in one basket, as her
father’s had been before her.

The moonlight shone full on the old bureau and a vase of
tulips, giving the flowers colour that was not colour, as if they
came from a world beyond human consciousness. It glinted on a
bronze of old Voltaire, till he seemed to be smiling from the
hollows of his eyes. Gyp turned the bust a little, to catch the
light on its far cheek; a letter was disclosed between it and the
oak. She drew it out.

“ DrEaR BRYAN,

“ But J say—you are wasting yourself .

 

She pushed it back under the bust, and got up, tempted to
read the rest of that letter and see from whom it was. No! One
did not read letters. But the full import of those few words
struck into her: “ Dear Bryan. But J say—you are wasting
yourself.” A woman’s hand; but not his mother’s, nor his
sisters——she knew their writings. Who had dared to say he was
wasting himself? A letter in a chain of letters! An intimate
‘correspondent, whose name she did not know, because—he had
not told her! Wasting himself—on what ?—on his life with her
down here? Was he? She began searching her memory. Last
Christmas vacation—that clear, cold, wonderful fortnight in
Florence, he had been full of fun. May now! No memory
since—of his old infectious gaiety! “ But Z say—you are wast-
''442 NOVELS OF LOVE

ing yourself.” Hatred flared up in her against the unknown
woman who had said that thing—her ears burned. She longed
to tear the letter; but the guarding bust seemed mocking her;
and she turned with the thought: ‘ I'll go and meet him; I can’t
wait here.’

She walked out into the moonlit garden, and slowly down the
whitened road towards the station. A magical, dewless night!
She took a short cut through a beech clump. The moonbeams
had stolen in, frosting the boles and boughs, casting a ghostly
grey over the shadow-patterned beech-mast. Not a leaf moved
in there, no living thing stirred. ‘Tl bring him back through
here,’ she thought. And she waited at the far corner, where
he must pass. The train came in; a car went whizzing by, a
cyclist, the first foot-passenger, breaking into a run. It was he,
and, calling out, she ran back into the shadow of the trees. He
came rushing after her.

They sat down on a great root, and leaning against him, she
said:

“ Have you had a hard day?”

“Yes; got hung up by a late consultation; and old Leyton
asked me to come and dine.”

Under Gyp the ground seemed to give a little.

“The Leytons—EHaton Square? A big dinner?”

“No. Only the old people, and Bertie and Diana.”

“Diana? The girl we met coming out of the theatre?”

“When? Oh—ah!—What a memory, Gyp!”

“Yes; it’s good for things that interest me.”

“Why? Did she interest you?”

Gyp looked up.

“Yes. Is she clever?”

“T suppose you might call her so.”

“ And in love with you?”

“Great Scott! Why?”

“Ts it very unlikely? I am.”

He began kissing her. And, closing her eyes, Gyp thought:
‘If only that’s not because he doesn’t want to answer!’ Then,
for some minutes, they were silent.

*“* Answer me truly, Bryan. Do you never feel as if you were
wasting yourself on me?”

She was certain of a quiver in his grip of her; but his face
was open and serene, his voice teasing.

“Well, hardly ever! Aren’t you funny, dear?”
''BEYOND 443

“ Promise to let me know when you’ve had enough of me.”
« All right! But don’t look for fulfilment in this life.”
“T’m not so sure.”

66 + am.”
''IV

Comine down next morning, Summerhay went straight to his:
bureau; his mind was not at ease. “ Wasting yourself!” What
had he done with that letter of Diana’s? He remembered Gyp’s
coming in just as he finished reading it. Searching the pigeon--
holes and drawers, moving everything that lay about, he twitched
the bust—and the letter lay disclosed. He took it up with a
sigh of relief :

“ DEAR BRYAN,

“But I say—you are wasting yourself. Why, my dear, of
course! ‘JJ faut se faire valoir!’ You have only one foot to:
put forward ; the other is planted in I don’t know what mysteri-
ous hole. One foot in the grave—at thirty! Really, Bryan!
Pull it out. There’s such a lot waiting for you. It’s no good
your telling me to mind my business. I’m speaking for everyone
who knows you. We all feel the blight on the rose. Besides,.
you always were my favourite cousin, ever since I was five and
you a horrid little bully of ten; and I simply hate to think of
you going slowly down instead of quickly up. Oh! I know
“Damn the world!’ But—are you? I should have thought it
was ‘damning’ you! Enough! When are you coming to see
us? I’ve read that book. The man seems to think love is noth-
ing but passion, and passion always fatal. I wonder! Perhaps:
you know.

“ Don’t be angry with me for being such a grandmother.

“ Au revoir.

“Your very good cousin,
“ Diana LEYTON.”

He crammed the letter into his pocket. It must have lain two
days under that bust! Had Gyp seen it? He looked at the
bronze face; and the philosopher looked back from his hollow
eyes, as if saying: ‘ What do you know of the human heart, my
boy—your own, your mistress’s, that girl’s, or anyone’s? A
pretty dance the heart will lead you yet! Wrap it round, seal
it, drop it in a drawer, and lock the drawer! To-morrow it will
be out and skipping on its wrappings. Ho! Ho!’ And Sum-

444
''BEYOND 445

merhay thought: ‘ Old goat! You never had one!’ In the room
above, Gyp would still be standing as he had left her, putting the
last touch to her hair—a man would be a scoundrel who, even in
thought ! ‘Hallo!’ the eyes of the bust seemed saying:
‘Pity! That’s queer! Why not pity that red-haired girl, with
the skin so white, and the eyes so burning brown!’ Satan!
Gyp had his heart; no one in the world could take it from
her!

How he had loved her, did love her!. She would always be
what she had been to him. And the sage’s mouth seemed to
twist! ‘Quite so, my dear! But the heart is very funny—very
—capacious!’ A sound made him turn.

Little Gyp was standing in the doorway.

“ Hallo, Baryn!” She came flying to him, and stood on his
knees with the sunlight shining on her fluffed-out hair.

“Well, Gipsy! Who’s getting a tall girl?”

“Tm goin’ to ride.”

E00, Bote

“ Baryn, let’s do Humpty-Dumpty! ”

“ All night!??

Gyp was still doing one of those hundred things which occupy
women for a quarter of an hour after they are “ quite ready,”
when those two came in, and at little Gyp’s shout of,
“ Humpty!” she suspended her needle to watch the sacred rite.

Summerhay had seated himself on the foot-rail of the bed,
rounding his arms, sinking his neck, blowing out his cheeks to
simulate an egg, till with an unexpectedness that little Gyp
could always see through, he rolled backward on to the bed.

Simulating “all the king’s horses,” she tried in vain to put
him up again. This immemorial game, watched by Gyp a hun-
dred times, had to-day a special preciousness. If he could be so
ridiculously young, what became of her doubts? Looking at his
face pulled this way and that, imperturbable under the pommel-
ling of small fingers, she thought: ‘ And that girl dared to say
he was wasting himself!’ The tall girl with the white skin, the
girl of the theatre—the Diana of his last night’s dinner—it was
she who had written those words! She was sure of it!

That afternoon, at the end of a long gallop on the downs, she
turned her head away and said suddenly:

“Ts she a huntress? ”

“ Whow?

“Your cousin—Diana.”

 
''446 NOVELS OF LOVE

In his laziest voice, he answered:

“T suppose you mean—does she hunt me?”

She knew that tone, that expression on his face, knew he was
angry ; but could not stop herself.

mL idid.?

“So you’re going to become jealous, Gyp?”

At that cold, naked saying his heart sank, and hers quivered.
She cantered on. When she reined in again, he glanced at her
face and was afraid. It was closed up against him. He said
softly:

“JT didn’t mean that, Gyp.”

But she shook her head. He had meant to hurt her! And
she said:

“ Look at that long white cloud, and the apple-green in the
sky—rain to-morrow. One ought to enjoy any fine day as if it
were the last.”

Uneasy, ashamed, yet still a little angry, Summerhay rode on
beside her.

That night she cried in her sleep; and, when he awakened her,
elung to him and sobbed out:

“Oh! I thought you'd left off loving me!”

For a long time he held and soothed her. Never! He would
never leave off loving her!

But a cloud no broader than your hand can spread and cover
the Whole day.
''Vv

Turn summer passed, with always a little patch of silence in her
heart, and in his. The tall, bright days grew taller, slowly passed
their zenith, slowly shortened. On Saturdays and Sundays,
sometimes with Winton and little Gyp, but more often alone,
they went on the river, which for Gyp had never lost the magic
of their first afternoon upon it. All the week she looked forward
to these hours with him, as if the surrounding water secured her
against a world that would take him from her, if it could, and
against that side of his nature, which, so long ago she had named
“old Georgian.” She had once adventured to the law courts,
to see him in his wig and gown. Under that stiff grey crescent
on his broad forehead, he seemed so hard and clever—so of a
world to which she never could belong, a_ brilliant, bullying
world. She only possessed and knew one side of him! On the
river, she had him utterly to herself—lovable, lazy, impudently
loving, lying with his head in her lap, plunging in for a swim,
splashing round her; or plying his slow sculls down-stream,
singing, “ Away, my rolling river.” It was blessed to lose for a
“aw hours each week the growing consciousness that she could
never have the whole of him. But all the time the patch of
silence grew.

When the long vacation came, she heroically resolved that he
must have a month away from her. While Betty was at the sea
with little Gyp, she would take her father for his cure. She held
inflexibly to this resolve, and, after many protests, he said with
a shrug:

“ Very well—if you’re so keen to get rid of me.”

Keen to get rid! She forced her feeling back, and said, smil-

ing:

“ At last! There’s a good boy!” If only it would bring him
back to her exactly as he had been. She asked no questions as
to where, or to whom, he would go.

Tunbridge Wells, that charming purgatory where the retired
prepare their souls for more permanent retirement, was dream-
ing on its hills in long rows of adequate villas. Its commons
and woods had remained unscorched, so that the retired had not

447
''448 NOVELS OF LOVE

to any extent deserted it for the sea. They still shopped in the
Pantiles, strolled the uplands, or flourished their golf-clubs in
the grassy parks; still drank tea in each other’s houses and fre-
quented the many churches. From every kind of life they had
retired, and, waiting now for a more perfect day, were doing
their utmost to postpone it.

Winton had rooms in a hotel where he could bathe and drink
waters without having to climb hills. It was the first cure Gyp
had attended since Wiesbaden, six years ago. She felt so
utterly, so strangely different! Then life had been sparkling
sips of every drink; now it was one long still draught, to quench
a thirst unquenchable.

She lived for the post, and if, by any chance, she did not
get her daily letter, her heart sank to the depths. She wrote
every day, sometimes twice, then tore up the second letter, re-
membering why she had set herself to undergo this separation.
During the first week, his letters had a certain equanimity; in
the second, they became ardent; in the third, they were fitful—
beginning to look forward, or moody and dejected; and they
were shorter. During this third week Aunt Rosamund joined
them. She was a staunch supporter of Gyp’s new life, which,
in her view, served Fiorsen right. She had a definitely low
opinion of men, and a lower of the existing marriage-laws; any
woman who struck a blow at them was something of a heroine,
though in fact Gyp was quite guiltless of the desire to strike a
blow. Aunt Rosamund’s aristocratic and rebellious blood boiled
with hatred of what she called the “stuffy people” who still
held that women were men’s property. It had made her specially
careful never to put herself in that position.

She brought a piece of news.

“T was walking down Bond Street past that tea-and-tart shop,
my dear—you know, where they have those special coffee creams,
and who should come out of it but Miss Daphne Wing and our
friend Fiorsen; and pretty hang-dog he looked. He came
up to me, with his little lady watching him like a lynx. Really,
my dear, I was rather sorry for him; he’d got that hungry look
of his; she’d been doing all the eating, I’m sure. He asked me
how you were.

“** When you see her,’ he said, ‘tell her I haven’t forgotten
her, and never shall. But she was quite right; this is the sort of
lady that I’m fit for.’ And the way he looked at that girl made
me feel quite uncomfortable. Then he gave me one of his little
''BEYOND 449

bows; and off they went, she as pleased as Punch. I really was
half sorry for him.”

Gyp said quietly:

“You needn’t have been, Auntie; he’ll always be able to be
sorry for himself.”

Aunt Rosamund was silent, a little shocked. The poor lady
had not lived with Fiorsen !

That same afternoon Gyp was sitting in a shelter on the com-
mon, thinking her one long thought: ‘To-day is Thursday!
Eleven days—still!’—when three figures came toward her, a
man, a woman, and what should have been a dog. Love of beauty
and the rights of man had forced its nose back, deprived it of
half its ears, and all but three inches of tail. It had asthma—
and waddled. <A voice said:

“'This’ll do, Maria. We can take the sun ’ere.”

In that voice was the permanent cold hoarseness caught beside
innumerable graves. Gyp recognised Mr. Wagge. He had
taken off his beard, leaving side-whiskers, and Mrs. Wagge had
filled out wonderfully. They settled down beside her.

“You sit here, Maria; you won’t get the sun in your eyes.”

“No, Robert; I’ll sit here. You sit there.”

“No, you sit there.”

“No, J will. Come, Duckie! ”

The dog, stock still on the pathway, was gazing at Gyp. Mr.
Wagge followed the direction of its glance.

“Oh!” he said, “this is a surprise!” And fumbling at his
straw hat, he passed his other hand over his sleeve and held it
out. While she was shaking it, the dog moved forward and sat
down on her feet. Mrs. Wagge also extended a shiny glove.

“This is a pleasure,’ she murmured. “Who would have
thought of meeting you! Oh, don’t let Duckie sit against your
pretty frock! Come, Duckie!”

Duckie rested his back against Gyp’s shinbones. Mr, Wagge
said abruptly:

“You ’aven’t come to live here, ’ave you?”

“Oh no! I’m only with my father for the baths.”

“Ah! I thought not, never havin’ seen you. We’ve been re-
tired here ourselves a matter of twelve months. A pretty spot.”

“Yes; lovely, isn’t it?”

“We wanted nature. The air suits us, though a bit—er—too
irony, as you might say. But it’s a long-lived place. We were
quite a time lookin’ round.”
''450 NOVELS OF LOVE

Mrs. Wagge added:

“We'd thought of Wimbledon, but Mr. Wagge liked this bet-
ter; he can get his walk, here; and it’s more—select, perhaps.
We have several friends. The church is very nice.”

Mr. Wagge said bluffly :

“7 was always chapel; but there’s something in a place like
this makes church seem more suitable; my wife always had a
leaning that way. I never conceal my actions.”

“It?s a question of atmosphere, isn’t it?”

Mr. Wagge shook his head.

“No; I don’t hold with incense—we’re not *Igh Church. And
how are you, ma’am? We often speak of you. You're looking
well.”

His face had become a dusky orange, Mrs. Wagge’s the colour
of a doubtful beetroot. The dog stirred, snuffled, and fell heavily
against her legs again. She said quietly:

“T was hearing of Daisy to-day. She’s quite a star now, isn’t
she?”

Mrs. Wagge sighed. Mr. Wagge looked away and answered:

“Tt?s a sore subject. Making her forty and fifty pound a
week, and run after in all the papers. A success—no doubt
about it. Saving a matter of fifteen ’undred a year, I shouldn’t
be surprised. Why, at my best, the years the influenza was so
bad, I never cleared a thousand nett. She’s a success.”

Mrs. Wagge added:

“Have you seen her last photograph—the one where she’s
standing between two hydrangea tubs? It was her own
idea.”

Mr. Wagge mumbled suddenly:

“T’m always glad to see her when she takes a run down in a
car. But I’ve come here for quiet after the life I’ve led, and I
don’t want to think about it, especially before you, ma’am. I
don’t-—and that’s a fact.”

A silence followed, during which Mr. and Mrs. Wagge looked
at their feet, and Gyp looked at the dog.

“ Ah!—here you are!” Winton had come up from behind
the shelter. Gyp could not help a smile. Her father’s weath-
ered, narrow face, half-veiled eyes, thin nose, little crisp, grey
moustache which did not hide his firm lips, his lean, erect figure ;
the very way he stood; his thin, dry, clipped voice, were the ob-
solute antithesis of Mr. Wagge’s thickset, stoutly-planted form,
thick-skinned, thick-featured face, thick, rather hoarse yet oily
''BEYOND 451

voice. It was as if Providence had arranged a demonstration
of the extremes of social type.

“Mr. and Mrs. Wagge—my father.”

Winton raised his hat. Gyp remained seated, the dog Duckie
still on her feet.

“?Appy to meet you, sir. I hope you have benefit from the
waters. They’re supposed to be most powerful, I believe.”

“Thank you—not more deadly than most. Are you drinking
them ? ”

Mr. Wagge smiled.

“Nao!” he said; “we live here.”

“Indeed! Do you find anything to do?”

“ Well, as a fact, I’ve come here for rest. But I take a Turk-
ish bath once a fortnight to keep the pores of the skin acting.”

Mrs. Wagge added gently:

“ Tt seems to suit my husband wonderfully.”

Winton murmured:

“Yes. Is this your dog? Bit of a philosopher, isn’t he? ”

Mrs. Wagge answered :

“Oh, he’s a naughty dog, aren’t you, Duckie? ”

The dog Duckie, cynosure of every eye, rose and stood pant-
ing into Gyp’s face. She took the occasion to get up.

“We must go, I’m afraid. Good-bye. It’s been very nice to
meet you again. When you see Daisy, please give her my love.”
Mrs. Wagge unexpectedly took a handkerchief from her reti-
cule. Mr. Wagge cleared his throat heavily. Gyp was conscious —
of the dog Duckie waddling after her, and of Mrs. Wagge call-

ing, “ Duckie! Duckie!” from behind her handkerchief.

Winton said softly:

“So those two got that pretty filly! Well, she didn’t show
much quality, when you come to think of it. She’s still with
our friend, according to your aunt.”

Gyp nodded.

“Yes; I do hope she’s happy.”

“ He isn’t, apparently. Serve him right!”

Gyp shook her head.

“On ne, Dads,

“Well, one oughtn’t to wish any man worse than he’s likely
if get. But when people dare to look down their noses at you,

“ Darling, what does that matter?”

“Tt matters very much to me!” His mouth relaxed into a

 
''452 NOVELS OF LOVE

grim little smile: “ Ah, well—there’s not much to choose be-
tween us so far as condemning our neighbours goes.”

They opened out to each other more in those few days at
Tunbridge Wells than they had for years. Whether the process
of bathing softened his crust, or the air that Mr. Wagge found
“a bit—er—too irony” had on Winton the opposite effect, he
certainly relaxed that first duty of man, the concealment of his
spirit.

On the last afternoon of their stay, she strolled out with him
through one of the long woods. Moved by the beauty among
those sunlit trees, she found it difficult to talk. But Winton,
about to lose her, was loquacious. Starting from the sinister
change in the racing-world—so plutocratic now, with the Amer-
ican seat, the increase of bookmaking owners, and other tragic
occurrences—he launched forth into a jeremiad on the condi-
tion of things in general. Parliament, now that members were
paid, had lost its self-respect ; the towns had eaten up the coun-
try; hunting was threatened; the power and vulgarity of the
press were appalling; women had lost their heads; and every-
body seemed afraid of “breeding.” By the time little Gyp was
Gyp’s age, they would all be under the thumb of Watch Com-
mittees, live in Garden Cities, and have to account for every
half-crown they spent, and every half-hour of their time; the
horse, too, would be an extinct animal, brought out once a year
at the lord mayor’s show. He hoped he might not be alive to
see it. And suddenly he added: “ What do you think happens
after death, Gyp?”

“Nothing, Dad. I think we just go back.”

“ Ah My idea, too! ”

Neither of them had ever known what the other thought
about it before!

Gyp murmured :

“ La vie est vaine—
On peu d@amour,

Un peu de haine,
Et puis bonjour!”

 

Not quite a laugh issued from Winton’s lips.

* And what they call ‘ God,’”’ he said, “ after all, what is it?
Just the very best you can get out of yourself—so far as I can
see. You can’t imagine anything more than you can imagine.
But there’s one thing always puzzled me, Gyp. All my life I’ve
''BEYOND 453

had a single heart. Death comes, and out I go! Then why
did I love, if there’s to be no meeting after?”

“ Perhaps loving somebody or something with all your heart
is all in itself.”

Winton stared.

“'Ye-es,” he said at last. “The religious Johnnies are sav-
ing their money to put on a horse that’ll never run after all.
Those Yogi chaps in India—there they used to sit, the world
might rot for all they cared—they were going to be all right
themselves, in Kingdom Come. But suppose it doesn’t come?”

Slipping her hand through his arm, she pressed close up to
him.

“Dad; you and I will go off into the wind and the sun, and
the trees and the waters, like Procris in my picture.”
''VI

Bryan SUMMERHAY got into the midnight express from Edin-
burgh with two distinct emotions in his heart—regret for the
girl he was leaving behind, and longing for the woman he was
going to rejoin. How could he feel both at once? And yet he
found it perfectly easy, lying in his bunk, to dwell on mem-
ories of Diana handing him tea, or glancing up while he turned
the pages of her songs, with enticement in her eyes; and the
next moment to be swept by longing for Gyp’s arms around him,
for her voice, her eyes, and her lips on his. He was returning to
feelings and companionship which he knew were the most deeply
satisfying he would ever have. Yet he could ache a little for
that red-haired girl!

From that queer seesaw of feeling he fell asleep, dreamed as
men only can in a train, was awakened by the hollow silence in
some station, slept again, for hours it seemed, woke still at the
same station, fell into a sound sleep at last that ended at Willes-
den in broad daylight. He had but one emotion now, one long-
ing—to get to Gyp. And in his cab he smiled, enjoying the
smell of the London morning.

She was standing in her bedroom, at the hotel, deadly pale,
quivering from head to foot; and when he flung his arms round
her, she closed her eyes. With his lips on hers, he could feel
her almost fainting ; and he too had no consciousness of anything
but that long kiss.

Next day they went to a little place near Fécamp. In that
Normandy countryside all things were large—people, beasts, the
unhedged fields, the courtyards of the farms squared by tall
trees, the skies, the sea, even the blackberries large. Gyp was
at first supremely happy. But twice there came letters, in a too
well remembered writing, with a Scottish postmark. A phantom
increases in darkness, solidifies when seen in mist. Jealousy is
rooted not in reason, but in the nature that loves desperately,
feels proudly. And jealousy flourishes on scepticism. Even if
pride would have let her ask, she would not have believed his
answers. He would say—if only out of pity—that he never let
his thoughts rest on another woman. But, as yet, it was only a

454
''BEYOND 458)

phantom. There were many hours in those three weeks when
she felt he really loved her, and so—was happy.

They went back at the end of the first week in October.
Little Gyp was now an accomplished horsewoman. Under the
tutelage of old Pettance, she had been riding round “ the wild,”
her firm brown legs astride of ther mouse-coloured pony, her
little brown face, with excited, dark eyes, erect, her auburn curls
flopping on her little straight back. She wanted to “go out
riding” with Grandy and Mum and Baryn. The first days were
spent by them all in fulfilling her new desires. Then term
began, and Gyp sat down again to the long sharing of Summer-
hay with his other life,
''Vil

Tue old Scotch terrier, Ossian, lay on the path in the pale
November sunshine. He had lain there since his master went
up by the early train. Sixteen years old, he was deaf now and
disillusioned, and every time his eyes seemed to say: “ You will
leave me once too often!” The other nice people about the
house were becoming daily less a substitute for what he had not
much time left to enjoy; nor could he any longer bear a stranger
within the gate. From her window, Gyp saw him get up and
stand with ridged back, growling at the postman. Fearing for
the man’s calves, she hastened out.

A letter in that dreaded handwriting marked “ Immediate,”
and forwarded from his chambers. She put it to her nose. A
scent—of what? Her thumb-nails sought the flap. She laid the
letter down—she wanted to open it too much. And instantly
the thought went through her: ‘If I read it, and there was
nothing!’ All her jealous misgivings of months past would be
at rest! But if there were something! She would lose at one
stroke her faith in him, her faith in herself—his love, and her
own self-respect. Could she not take it up to him herself? By
the three o’clock slow train, she could get to him soon after five.
Just time to walk to the station. She ran upstairs. Little Gyp
was sitting on the top stair, looking at a picture-book.

“Tm going up to London, darling. Tell Betty I may be
back to-night, or perhaps not. Give me a good kiss.”

Little Gyp gave the good kiss.

“ Let me see you put your hat on, Mum.”

While she was putting on her hat and furs, she thought: ‘I
shan’t take a bag; I can always make shift.’ She ran down,
caught up the letter, and hastened away to the station. In the
train she took the letter out. How she hated that writing for
the fears it had given her these past months! If that girl knew
what anxiety and suffering she caused, would she stop writing?
And she tried to conjure up that face seen only for a minute,
the sound of the voice—but once heard—of one accustomed to
have her own way. No! It would only make her persevere.
Fair game, against a woman with no claim—but that of love.
Thank heaven she had not taken him away from any woman—

456

a
''BEYOND 45%

unless—that girl! In all these years she had never got to know
his secrets. She stood at the window of her empty carriage.
There was the river—and there the backwater where he had
begged her to come to him for good. It looked so different, bare
and shorn, under the light grey sky; the willows all polled, the
reeds cut down.

The train was late; it was already growing dark when she
reached Paddington and took a cab to the Temple. Strange to
be going there for the first time! At Temple Lane she stopped
the cab and walked down that narrow, ill-lighted, busy channel
into the heart of the Great Law.

“Up those stone steps, miss; along the railin’, second door-
way.” In the doubtful light she scrutinised the names. “ Sum-
merhay—second floor.” Her heart beat fast. What would he
say? How greet her? Was it not absurd, dangerous, to have
come? He would be having a consultation, perhaps. There
would be a clerk or someone to beard, and what name could she
give? On the first floor she paused, took out a blank card, and
pencilled on it:

“Can I see you a minute ?—G.”

Then, taking a long breath to quiet her heart, she went on up.
There was the name, and there the door. She rang—no one
came ; listened—could hear no sound. All looked massive and
bleak and dim—the iron railings, stone stairs, bare walls, oak
door. She rang again. What should she do? Leave the letter?
Not see him after all—her little romance all come to naught—
just a chilly visit to Bury Street, where perhaps there would be
no one but Mrs, Markey, for her father, she knew, was at Milden-
ham, hunting, and would not be up till Sunday! And she
thought: ‘ I’ll leave the letter, go back to the Strand, have some
tea, and try again.’ :

She took out the letter, pushed it through the slit of the door,
heard it fall into the wire cage; then went slowly down into
Temple Lane. It was thronged with men and boys, at the end
of the day’s work. She had nearly reached the Strand, when a
woman’s figure caught her eye. She was walking with a man
on the far side; their faces were turned towards each other.
Gyp heard their voices, and stood looking back after them. They
passed under a lamp; the light glinted on the woman’s hair, on
a trick of Summerhay’s, the lift of his shoulder, when he was
''458 NOVELS OF LOVE

denying something; she heard his voice, high-pitched. She
watched them cross, mount the stone steps she had just come
down, pass along the railed stone passage, enter the doorway,
disappear. And such horror seized on her that she could hardly
walk away.

“Ohno! Ohno! Ohno!” So it went in her mind—moan-
ing, like a cold, rainy wind through dripping trees. What did it
mean? In this miserable tumult she never once thought of going
back to his chambers. She had no notion what she was doing,
where going, and crossed the streets without the least attention
to traffic. She came to Trafalgar Square, and leaned against its
parapet in front of the National Gallery. Here she had her first
coherent thought: So that was why his chambers had been
empty! No clerk—no one! That they might be alone. Only
that morning he had kissed her! A dreadful little laugh got
caught in her throat, confused with a sob. Why had she a
heart? Against the plinth of one of the lions, a young man
leaned, with his arms round a girl, pressing her to him. Gyp
turned from the sight and resumed her wandering. She went
up Bury Street. No light! It did not matter; she could not
have gone in.

The trees of the Green Park, under which she passed, had still
a few leaves, gleaming copper-coloured as that girl’s hair. Tor-
turing visions came to her. Those empty chambers! And he
would lie to her. He had acted a lie already! She had not
deserved that. Sense of the injustice done her was the first
relief she felt—definite emotion in a mind clouded by sheer
misery. She had not had one thought or look for any man but
him since that night down by the sea, when he came to her across
the garden in the moonlight—not one thought! Poor relief
enough! In Hyde Park, wandering along a pathway diagonally
across the grass, she began searching her memory for signs of
when he had changed to her. She could not find them. He had
not changed to her. Could one act love, then? Act passion, or
—when he kissed her nowadays, was he thinking of that girl?

Love! Why had it such possession of her, that a little thing—
only the sight of him with another—should make her suffer so?
What should she do? Crawl home, creep into her hole! At
Paddington she found a train just starting, and got in. There
were other people in the carriage, business men from the city,
lawyers, from that—place where she had been. She was glad of
the crackling evening papers and stolid faces giving her looks
''BEYOND 459

of stolid interest from behind them, glad to have to keep her
mask on, afraid of the violence of her emotion. One by one they
got out, to their cars or their constitutionals, and she was left
alone to gaze at the deserted river in the light of a moon
smothered behind the sou’-westerly sky. For one wild moment
she thought: ‘ Shall I open the door and step out—one step—
ace |’

a les hurried away from the station. It was raining, and she
was glad of the freshness on her hot face. Through the beech
clump the wind was sighing, soughing, driving the dark boughs,
tearing off the leaves, little black wet shapes whirling at her face.
Wild melancholy in that swaying wood. She ran through the
deep rustling drifts not yet quite drenched, They clung all wet
round her thin stockings. At the edge, she paused for breath,
peering back; then, bending her head to the rain, ran on n the
open.

the reached her room, without being seen. Huddling before
the freshly-lighted fire, she listened to the wind driving through
the poplars; and there came back to her the words of that
Scottish song:

* And my heart reft of its own sun,
Deep lies in death-torpor cold and grey.”

Presently she crept into bed, and at last fell asleep.

She woke next morning with the joyful thought: ‘ It’s Satur-
day; he’ll be down soon after lunch!’ And then she remem-
bered. It was as if a devil entered into her—of stubborn pride,
blacker with every hour of that morning. That she might not
be in when he came, she ordered her mare, and rode up on the
downs alone. The rain had ceased, but the wind still blew strong
from the sou’-west, and the sky was torn and driven in swathes
of white and grey—puffs of what looked like smoke scurrying
across the cloud-banks and glacier-blue rifts between. One could
see far—over to Wittenham Clumps across the Valley, to the
high woods above the river in the east—away, in the south and
west, under that strange, torn sky, to a whole autumn land, of
whitish grass, bare field, woods of grey and gold and brown, fast
being pillaged. But all that sweep of wind, and sky, freshness
of rain, and distant colour, could not drive out of her heart the
hopeless aching, the devil begotten of it.
''VIII

Some men are born gamblers. They cannot repulse fate when
it tantalises them with a risk.

Summerhay loved Gyp, was not tired of her either physically
or mentally, even felt sure he would never tire, yet he had dallied
for months with the risk which yesterday had come to a head.
And now, in the train, returning to her, he felt unquiet. Look-
ing back, it was difficult to tell when the sapping of his defences
had begun. The girl was herself a gambler. He did not respect
her as he respected Gyp; she did not touch him as Gyp touched
him, was not—not half—so deeply attractive; but she had the
power of turning his head at moments, a queer, burning, skin-
deep fascination, the lure of an imperious vitality. In love with
life, she had made him feel that he was letting things slip by.
And to drink deep of life was his nature, too. Their far-off
cousinhood had bred familiarity not great enough to breed con-
tempt, just sufficient to remove those outer defences to intimacy,
the conquest of which, as a rule, demands conscious effort.

He had not realised the extent of the danger; certainly not
foretold the crisis of yesterday evening. He had received a
telegram from her at lunch-time, exacting the fulfillment of a
jesting promise, made in Scotland, that she should have tea
with him and see his chambers—a small and harmless matter.
He had not reckoned that she would look so pretty, lying back in
his big Oxford chair, with furs thrown open so that her white
throat showed. Not reckoned that, when he bent to take her cup,
she would put out her hands, draw his head down, press her lips
to his, and say: “ Now you know!” His head had gone round,
still went round, thinking of it! That was all. A little matter.
And yet—poison was in his blood; a kiss cut short—leaving him
gazing at her, inhaling that scent of hers—like a pine-wood’s
scent, while she gathered up her gloves, fastened her furs, as if
it had been he, not she, who had,snatched that kiss. And her
hand had pressed his arm against her as they went down the
stairs. At the Temple Station, she had looked back at him with
a little half-mocking smile of challenge, comradeship, promise.
Back in his chambers, he had found the letter, readdressed by
Gyp from the Red House. And a faint uneasiness at its having

460
''BEYOND 461

gone down there passed through him. He spent a restless eve-
ning at the club, playing cards and losing; sat up late in his
chambers over a case; had a hard morning’s work, and only now
that he was nearing Gyp, realised that he had lost utterly the
straightforward simplicity of things.

Finding that she had gone out riding alone, his uneasiness
increased. Usually she waited for him to ride with her. Had
she not expected him by the usual train? He changed and went
to the stables. Old Pettance was sitting on a corn-bin, poring
over an old Ruff’s Guide, containing records of his long-past
glory, scored under by a pencil: “June Stakes: Agility. EH.
Pettance 3rd.” “ Tidport Selling H’Cap: Dorothea, E. Pet-
tance, 0.” “Salisbury Cup: Also ran Plum Pudding, E. Pet-
tance,” with other triumphs.

“Good afternoon, sir; windy afternoon, sir. The mistress ’as
been gone over two hours, sir. She wouldn’t take me with ’er.”

“Hurry up, then, and saddle Hotspur.”

“Yes, sir; very good, sir.”

Over two hours! He went up on to the downs, by the way
they generally came home, and for an hour he rode, keeping a
sharp lookout, before turning home, hot and uneasy. On the
hall table were her riding-whip and gloves. His heart cleared,
and he ran upstairs. She was doing her hair and turned her
head sharply as he entered. Hurrying across, he had the absurd
feeling that she was standing at bay. She drew back, and said:

“No! Don’t pretend! Anything’s better than pretence! ”

He had never seen her look or speak like that—her face so
hard, her eyes so stabbing! And he recoiled.

“ What’s the matter, Gyp? ”

“Nothing. Only—don’t pretend!” And, turning to the
glass, she went on coiling up her hair.

She looked lovely, flushed from her ride in the wind; he had
a longing to seize her in his arms. With fear and a sort of
anger, he said:

“You might explain, I think.”

“ You can do that. I am in the dark.”

“T don’t in the least understand.”

“Don’t you?” There was something deadly in her disregard
of him, while her fingers moved swiftly about her dark, shining
hair—something appallingly sudden in this hostility. Summer-
hay sat down on the bed. Was it that letter? But how? It
had not been opened.
''462 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ What on earth has happened, Gyp, since I went up yester-
day? Speak out, don’t keep me like this!”

She turned and looked at him.

“Don’t pretend that you’re upset because you can’t kiss me!
Don’t be false, Bryan! You know it’s been pretence for
months.”

Summerhay’s voice grew high.

“T think you’ve gone mad. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, yes, you do. Did you get a letter yesterday marked
‘Immediate ??”

So it was that! He hardened, and said stubbornly:

“Yes; from Diana Leyton. Do you object?”

“No; only, how do you think it got back to you from here
so quickly?”

He said dully:

“T don’t know. By post, I suppose.”

“No; I put it in your letter-box myself—at half-past five.”

Summerhay’s mind was trained to quickness, the full meaning
of those words came home to him at once.

“T suppose you saw us, then.”

ce Wies”

He got up, made a helpless movement, and said:

“Oh, Gyp, don’t! Don’t be so hard! I swear by——”

Gyp gave a little laugh, turned her back, and went on coiling
at her hair. And a horrid feeling that he must knock his head
against something rose in Summerhay. He said helplessly:

“T only gave her tea. .Why not? She’s my cousin. It’s
nothing! Why should you think the worst of me? She asked
to see my chambers. I couldn’t refuse.”

“Your empty chambers? Don’t, Bryan—it’s pitiful! I can’t
bear to hear you.”

At that lash of the whip, Summerhay turned on her.

“Tt pleases you to think the worst, then?”

Gyn stopped the movement of her fingers.

“ve always told you that you were perfectly free. Do you
think I haven’t felt it going on for months? There comes a
moment when pride revolts—that’s all. Don’t lie to me, please!”

“T am not in the habit of lying.” An awful feeling of a net
round him, through which he could not break—a net woven by
that cursed intimacy, kept from her all to no purpose—beset
him. How to make her see the truth, that it was only her he
really loved?
''BEYOND 463

“ Qyp, I swear to you there’s nothing but one kiss, and that
was not my yf

She cried out:

“ Oh, go away!”

He put his hands on her shoulders,

“It?s only you I really love. I swear it! You must believe
me. It’s foolish—foolish! Think of our love—think of all

” Her face was frozen; he loosened his grasp, and mut-
tered: “ Oh, your pride is awful!”

“Yes, it’s all I’ve got. You can go to her when you like.”

“Go to her! If you wish, I’ll never see her again.”

“ Oh, don’t! What is the use?”

At that moment, Summerhay meant absolutely what he said.
And he could not make Gyp believe it! How truly terrible!
How unjust and unreasonable of her! What had he done that
she should be so unbelieving—should think him such a shallow
scoundrel? Could he help the girl’s kissing him? Help her
being fond of him? Help having a man’s nature? Unreason-
able, unjust, ungenerous! And giving her a furious look, he
went out.

He went down to his study, flung himself on the sofa and
turned his face to the wall. He had not been there five minutes
before his anger evaporated into the chill of deadly and insistent
fear. He was up against her nature—its pride and scepticism—
yes—and the very depth and singleness of her love! She wanted
nothing but him, he wanted and took so much else. He per-
ceived this but dimly, part of the feeling that he could not
break through, of the irritable longing to put his head down and
butt his way out, no matter what the obstacles. How long was
this state of things to last? He got up and began to pace the
room, his head thrown back; and every now and then he shook
that head, trying to free it from this deadly “Chancery.”
Diana! He had said he would not see her again. After that
kiss—after her last look back at him! How break so suddenly?
He shivered. Ah! how wretched it all was! There must be
some way out—some way! Surely some way! But how?

Tn the wood of life, fatality had halted, turned her dim dark
form among the trees, shown him her pale cheek and those black
eyes of hers, shown with awful swiftness her strange reality !

 

 
''IX

Grp stayed in her room doing little things—as a woman will
when particularly wretched—sewing ribbons into her garments,
polishing her rings. The devil that had entered into her when
she awoke that morning, having had his fling, slunk away, leav-
ing the old bewildered misery. She had stabbed her lover, felt
pleasure in stabbing, and now was bitterly sad. What use—what
satisfaction? How by vengeful prickings cure this deep wound,
disperse the canker in her life? How heal herself by hurting
him she loved? If he came up again and made a sign, she would,
throw herself into his arms. But he did not come, and she did
not go down—too miserable. It grew dark, but she did not draw
the curtains; sight of the windy moonlit garden and the leaves
driving across brought a melancholy distraction. Little Gyp
came in. There was a tree blown down, and she had climbed on
it; they had picked two baskets of acorns, and the pigs had been
so greedy; she had been blown away, Betty had run after her.
Baryn was walking in the study; he was so busy he had only
given her one kiss.

The wind! If only it would blow out of her heart this sicken-
ing sense that all was over, no matter how he might pretend to
love her out of pity! In her nature, so sceptical and self-
distrustful, confidence, shaken to the roots, could never be
restored. Her proud nature that went all lengths, could never
be content with a half-love. She—who had been afraid of love,
and when it came had fought till it swept her away; who, since
then, had lived for love and nothing else, who gave all, and
wanted all—knew for certain and for ever that she could not
have that all.

For months he had been thinking at least a little of another
woman. Even if she believed that there had been no more than
a kiss—was it nothing that they had reached that kiss? This
girl—this cousin—held all the cards,—the world, family influ-
ence, security of life; and more, terribly much more—a man’s
longing for the young and unawakened. This girl he could
marry! It was this thought which haunted her. A mere mo-
mentary outbreak of man’s natural wildness she could forget—
oh, yes! But this girl, his own cousin, besieging, dragging him

464
''BEYOND 465

away. How, in decent pride, keep him from her, fetter
him ?

She heard him come up to his dressing-room, and while he
was still there, stole out and down. Life must go on, the ser-
vants be hoodwinked. She went to the piano and played. He
came in presently and stood by the fire, silent.

Dinner, with the needful talk, was almost unendurable, and
directly it was over, they went, he to his study, she back to-the
piano. There she sat, ready to strike the notes if anyone came
in; and tears fell on the hands in her lap. She longed to go and
clasp him in her arms and cry: “I don’t care—I don’t care!
Do what you like—go to her—if only you'll love me a little! ”
And yet to love or be loved—a little! Was it possible? Not to
her!

In sheer misery she went to bed, heard him come up and go
into his dressing-room—and, at last, in the firelight saw him
kneeling by her.

“ Gyp ! 9

She raised herself and threw her arms round him. Such an
embrace a drowning woman might have given. Pride was aban-
doned in her effort to feel him close once more, to recover the
irrecoverable past. For a long time she listened to his justifica-
tions, his protestations of undying love—strange to her and
painful, boyish and pathetic. And she soothed him. In that
hour she rose to a height above herself. What happened to her
own heart did not matter if he was happy, had all that he wanted
with her and away from her—if need be, always away from
her.

But, when he had gone to sleep, a terrible time began; for in
the small hours, when things are at their worst, she could not
keep back her weeping. It woke him, and all began again; the
burden of her cry: “ It’s gone!” the burden of his: “ It’s not/”
As in all human tragedies, both were right according to their
natures. She gave him all herself, wanted all in return, and
could not have it. He wanted her, the rest besides, and no com-
plaining, and could not have it. He did not admit impossibility ;
she did.

At last came another of those pitying lulls. Long she lay
awake, staring at the darkness, admitting despair, trying to find
how to bear it, not succeeding. Impossible to cut his other life
away from him—impossible that, while he lived it, this girl
should not be tugging him away from her. Impossible to watch
''466 NOVELS OF LOVE

and question him. Impossible to live dumb and blind, accepting
the crumbs left over, showing nothing. He was not single-
hearted and she was. In spite of all his protestations, she knew
he didn’t really want to give up that girl. Even if the girl
would let him go! And slowly there formed within her a grue-
some little plan to test him. Gently withdrawing her arms, she
turned over and slept, exhausted.

Next morning, remorselessly carrying out her plan, she forced
herself to smile and talk as if nothing had happened, watching
the relief in his face, his obvious delight at the change, with a
fearful aching in her heart. She waited till he was ready to go
down, and then, still smiling, said:

“ Forget all about yesterday, darling. Promise me you won’t
let it make any difference. You must keep up your friendship;
you mustn’t lose anything. I shan’t mind; I shall be quite
happy.” He knelt down with his forehead against her waist.
And, stroking his hair, she repeated: “I shall only be happy if
you take everything that comes your way. I shan’t mind it a
bit.” And she watched his face that had lost its trouble.

“Do you really mean that?”

“Yes, really!”

“Then you do see that it’s nothing, never has been anything—
compared with you—never ! ” :

He had accepted her crucifixion.

“Tt would be so awkward for you to give up that intimacy.
It would hurt your cousin so.”

She saw the relief in his face deepen, and suddenly laughed.
He got up from his knees and stared at her.

“Oh, Gyp, for God’s sake don’t begin again!”

With a sob she turned away and buried her face in her hands.
To all his prayers and kisses she answered nothing, and, break-
ing away from him, rushed towards the door. A wild thought
possessed her. If she were dead, it would be all right for him,
quiet—peaceful, quiet—for them all! But he had thrown him-
self in the way.

“Gyp, for heaven’s sake! I'll give her up—of course I’ll give
her up. Do—do—be reasonable! I don’t care a finger-snap for
her compared with you!” ;

And presently there came another of those lulls that both
were beginning to know were mere pauses of exhaustion.

The church bells were ringing, there was a lull, too, in the
sow’-westerly gale—one of those calms that fall in the night and
''BEYOND 467

last twelve or fifteen hours, and the garden was all strewn with
leaves, from green spotted with yellow to deep copper.

Summerhay kept with her all the morning, making all sorts
of little things to do. And gradually he lost his fear, she seemed
so calm now, and his was a nature that bore trouble badly, ever
impatient to shake it off. But, after lunch, the spirit-storm beat
up again, with a swiftness which showed once more how fear-
fully deep and lasting was the wound. He had simply asked her
whether he should try to match something for her when he went
up to-morrow. She was silent a moment, then answered :

“Oh no, thanks; you’ll have other things to do; people to
see!”

Her voice, her face, showed him, with fresh force of revela-
tion, what paralysis had fallen on his life. If he could not
reconvince her of his love, he would be in perpetual fear—that he
might come back and find her gone, that she might even do
something terrible to herself. He looked at her with a sort of
horror, and went out of the room. The feeling that he must hit
his head against something was on him again, and again he
sought to get rid of it by tramping up and down. Such a little
thing, such fearful consequences! All her balance, her sanity
almost, destroyed. Was what he had done so very dreadful?
He could not help this girl loving him!

In the night Gyp had said: “ You are cruel. Is there any man
in the world I wouldn’t hate the sight of if I knew that to see
him gave you a moment’s pain?” It was true—he felt it true.
But he couldn’t hate this girl simply because she loved him—
not even to save Gyp pain. It was not reasonable, not possible.
Why could not women see things in proportion? See that a man
might want other friendships, passing moments of passion, and
yet love her just the same? She thought him cruel—what for?
Because he had kissed a girl who had kissed him; because he
liked talking to her, and—yes, might even lose his head with
her. But cruel! He was not! Gyp would always be first with
him. He must make her see it. How? Give up everything?
Give up—Diana? Well, he could! His feeling was not deep—
that was God’s truth! But it would be difficult, awkward,
brutal, to give her up completely! It could be done, though,
sooner than that Gyp should think him cruel to her. It could
be—should be done!

Only, would it be any use? Would she believe? Would she
not always now suspect him when he was away from her, what-
''468 NOVELS OF LOVE

ever he did? Must he then sit down here in inactivity? A gust
of anger swept him. Why should she treat him as if he were
unreliable? Or—was he? He stood still. When Diana had
put her arms round his neck, he could no more have resisted
answering her kiss than he could now fly over those poplar-trees.
But he was not a blackguard, not cruel, not a liar! How could
he have helped it all? He need never have answered the girl’s
first letter, nearly a year ago. But how could he foresee? Since
then, all so gradual; nothing, really, almost nothing! Again
anger surged in his heart. She must have read the letter under
that cursed bust all those months ago. The poison had been
working ever since! And in sudden fury at that miserable mis-
chance, he drove his fist into the bronze face. The bust fell
over; Summerhay looked stupidly at his bruised hand. A silly
thing to do! But it had quenched his anger. What could he
do? If only she would believe! But again he had the sickening
conviction that nothing would avail. He was only at the begin-
ning of a trouble that had no end. Like a rat in a cage, his mind
tried to rush out of this entanglement now at one end, now at
the other. Ah, well! If it was hopeless—let it go! And,
shrugging his shoulders, he went out to the stables, and told old
Pettance to saddle Hotspur. While waiting, he thought: ‘ Shall
I ask her to come?’ But he could not stand another bout of
misery ; and, mounting, he rode up towards the downs,

Hotspur, the sixteen-hand brown horse, with not a speck of
white, that Gyp had ridden hunting the day she first saw Sum-
merhay, was nine years old. His master’s two faults as a horse-
man—a habit of thrusting, and not too light hands—had hard-
ened his rather hard mouth, and something had happened in the
stables to put him into a queer temper; or perhaps he felt—as
horses will—the disturbance raging within his rider. He gave
an exhibition of his worst qualities, and Summerhay derived a
perverse pleasure from his waywardness. He rode a good hour
up there; then, hot, with aching arms, he made his way back
towards home and entered what little Gyp called “the wild,”
those two rough sedgy fields with the linhay in the corner where
they joined. There was a gap in the hedge-growth of the bank
between them, and at this he put Hotspur at speed. The horse
went over like a bird; and Summerhay felt a moment’s joy. He
turned him round and sent him at it again, and again Hotspur
cleared it beautifully. But the animal’s blood was up. Sum-
merhay could hardly hold him. With an: “ Oh, you brute, don’t
''BEYOND 469

pull!” he jagged the horse’s mouth. Into his mind darted
Gyp’s word: “Cruel!” And, in one of those queer nerve-crises
that beset us all, he struck the pulling horse.

They were cantering towards the corner where the fields
joined, and suddenly he was aware that he could no more hold
the beast than if a steam-engine had been under him. Straight
at the linhay Hotspur dashed, and Summerhay thought: ‘ My
God! He’ll kill himself!’ Straight at the old stone linhay,
covered by the great ivy bush. Right at it—into it! Summer-
hay ducked his head. Not low enough—the ivy concealed a
beam! A sickening crash! Torn backward out of the saddle,
he fell on his back in a pool of leaves and mud. And the horse,
slithering round the linhay walls, checked in his own length,
unhurt, snorting, frightened, came out, turning his wild eyes on
his master, who never stirred, then trotted back into the field,
throwing up his head.
''x

WHEN, at her words, Summerhay went out of the room, Gyp’s
heart sank. All the morning she had tried so hard to keep back
her despairing jealousy, and now at the first reminder had broken
down again. It was beyond her strength! To live day after day
knowing that he, up in London, was either seeing that girl or
painfully abstaining from seeing her! And, when he returned,
to be to him just what she had been, to show nothing—would it
ever be possible? If he really loved her, how could he hesitate
one second? ‘The very thought of the girl would be abhorrent
to him. He would have shown that, not merely said it wildly.
Words were no use when they contradicted action. She, who
loved with every bit of her, could not grasp that a man can
really love and want one woman, yet, at the same time, be
attracted by another.

Would life be less miserable if she withdrew from him and
went back to Mildenham? Life without him? Impossible!
Life with him? Just as impossible, it seemed! She had reached
a point of mental anguish when her mind did not really work at
all, but rushed helplessly from one fate to the other, no longer
trying to decide. And she went on doing little things—mending
a hole in one of his gloves, brushing and applying ointment to
old Ossy, sorting bills and letters.

At five o’clock, knowing little Gyp must soon be back from her
walk, and feeling unable to take part in gaiety, she slipped out
and went down towards the river. The lull was over; a south-
west wind had begun sighing through the trees again, and
gorgeous clouds were piled up from the horizon into the pale
blue. She stood watching the grey flood, edged by a scum of
torn-off twigs and floating leaves, with the wind shivering above
it through the spoiled plume-branches of the willows. She had a
sudden longing for her father; he alone could help her—just a
little—by his quietness, and his love, by his mere presence.

She turned away and went up the lane again, walking slowly,
thinking hard. Could they not travel—go round the world?
Would he give up his work for that? Dared she propose it?
But would even that be anything more than a putting-off? She
was not enough for him now, she would be still less if his work

470
''BEYOND 471

were cut away. And yet it seemed a gleam in the blackness.
She came in at the far end of the fields they called “the wild.”
Red already tinged the white cloud-banks, towered up in the east
beyond the river; and peeping over that mountain-top was the
moon, fleecy and unsubstantial in the flax-blue sky. All was
wild colour. The oak-trees above the hedgerows had not lost
their leaves, and in the rain-washed light had a sheen of old
gold with heart of ivy-green; the half-stripped beeches flamed
with copper; the russet tufts of the ash-trees glowed. And past
Gyp, a single leaf blown off, went soaring, turning over, going
up on the rising wind, up—up, into the sky, till it was lost—
away.

The rain had drenched the grass, and she turned back. At the
gate beside the linhay, a horse was standing. It whinnied to her.
Hotspur, saddled, bridled, with no rider! Why? Where—?
Then she undid the latch, ran ‘through, and saw Summerhay
lying in the mud—on his back, with eyes wide open, forehead
and hair all blood. Some leaves had dropped on him. God!
O God! His eyes had no sight, his lips no breath; his heart did
not beat; the leaves had dropped even on his face—in the blood
on his poor head. Gyp raised him—stiffened, cold as ice! She
gave one cry, and fell, embracing his stiffened body with all her
strength, kissing his lips, his eyes, his broken forehead ; clasping,
warming him, trying to pass life into him; till, at last, she too
lay still, her lips on his cold lips, her body on his cold body in
the mud and the fallen leaves, while the wind crept and rustled
in the ivy, and went over with the scent of rain. Close by, the
horse, uneasy, put his head down and sniffed at her, then, back-
a away, neighed, and broke into a wild gallop round the

Ce Pig

Old Pettance, waiting for Summerhay’s return to stable up
for the night, heard that distant neigh and went to the garden
gate, screwing up his little eyes against the sunset. He could
see a loose horse galloping down there in “ the wild,’ where no
horse should be, and thinking: ‘There now; that artful devil’s
broke away from the guv’nor! Now I’ll ’ave to ketch ’im!’ he
went back, got some oats, and set forth at the best gait of his
stiff-jointed feet. The old horseman characteristically did not
think of accidents. The guv’nor had got off, no doubt, to un-
hitch that heavy gate—the one you had to lift. That ’orse—he
was a masterpiece of mischief! His difference with the animal
still rankled in a mind that did not easily forgive.
''AN2 NOVELS OF LOVE

Half an hour later, he entered the lighted kitchen, shaking
and gasping, tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks into the
corners of his gargoyle’s mouth.

“OQ my Gord! Fetch the farmer—fetch an ’urdle! O my
Gord! Betty, you and cook—I can’t get ’er off him. She don’t
speak. I felt her—all cold. Come on, you sluts—quick! O my
Gord! The poor guvnor! That ’orse must ’a’ galloped into
the linhay and killed him. I’ve seed the marks on the devil’s
shoulder where he rubbed it scrapin’ round the wall. Come on
—come on! Fetch an ’urdle or she'll die there on him in the
mud. Put the child to bed and get the doctor, and send a wire
to London, to the major, to come sharp. Oh, blarst you al—
keep your ’eads! What’s the good o’ howlin’ and blubberin’! ”

In the whispering corner of those fields, ight from a lantern
and the moon fell on the old stone linhay, on the ivy and the
broken gate, on the mud, the golden leaves, and the two quiet
bodies clasped together. Gyp’s consciousness had flown; there
seemed no difference between them. And presently, over the
rushy grass, a procession moved back in the wind and the moon-
light—two hurdles, two men carrying one, two women and a
man the other, and, behind, old Pettance and the horse.
''XI

Gyv recovered consciousness in her bed, and her first drowsy
movement was towards her mate. With eyes still closed, she
turned, and put out her hand to touch him before she dozed off
again, No warmth, no substance; through her mind, still in
the mists of morphia, thoughts passed vague and lonely: ‘ Ah,
yes, in London!’ She turned on her back. London! Some-
thing up there! She opened her eyes. So the fire had kept in
all night! Someone in a chair, or—was she dreaming? And,
suddenly, without knowing why, she began to gasp. The figure
moved, turned her face in the firelight. Betty! Gyp closed her
eyes. Icy sweat had broken out all over her.

“ Betty!”

“Yes, my darlin’.”

“ What is it?”

“Don’t ’ee think—don’t ’ee think! Your Daddy’l) be here
directly, my sweetie!”

Gyp’s eyes passed from the firelight and that rocking figure to
the chink of light, hardly light as yet, at one corner of the cur-
tain. Her tongue stole out and passed over her lips; beneath the
bedclothes she folded both hands tight across her heart. Then
she was not dead with him—not dead! Not gone back with him
into the ground—not And suddenly there flickered up in
her a flame. They were keeping her alive! Curse them!

“ Betty, I’m so thirsty. Get me a cup of tea.”

ie Yes, my lovey, at once. It’ll do you good. That’s a brave
girl.

The moment the door clicked to, Gyp sprang up. Her whole
soul was alive with cunning. She ran to the wardrobe, seized
her long fur coat, thrust her bare feet into her slippers, wound
a piece of lace round her head, and opened the door. All dark,
all quiet! Stifling the sound of her feet, she glided down the
stairs, slipped back the chain of the front door, opened it, and
fled. Like a shadow she passed across the grass, out of the
garden gate, down the road under the black dripping trees. The
beginning of light was mixing its grey hue into the darkness;
she could just see her feet among the puddles on the road. She
heard the whirring of a car on its top gear grinding up the hill,

473

 
''AT4 NOVELS OF LOVE

and cowered away against the hedge. Its light came searching
along, picking out with a mysterious momentary brightness the
bushes and tree-trunks, making the wet road gleam. Gyp saw
the chauffeur turn his head back at her, then the car’s body
passed up into darkness, and its tail-light vanished. A car going
to the Red House with her father, or the doctor, helping to keep
her alive! She flew on. A man with a dog came out of a gate,
and called “ Hallo!” She had lost her slippers, and ran with
bare feet, unconscious of stones, or the torn-off branches strewing
the road, making for the lane that ran down to the river, to the
left of the inn, where the bank was free.

She turned into it; a hundred or more yards away, she could
see the willows, the width of lighter grey that was the river.
The river—and the happiest hours of all her life! If he were
anywhere, she would find him there, where he had lain with his
head on her breast; where she had dreamed, and seen beauty,
and loved him so! She reached the bank. Cold, grey, silent,
swifter than yesterday, the stream was flowing down, the shores
brightening slowly in the dawn. Gyp stood motionless, gasping
after her long run; her knees gave way. She sank down on the
wet grass, clasping her arms round her drawn-up legs, rocking
to and fro, with her hair loosened over her face. Her heart felt
suffocated. She sat, waiting for breath—breath and strength to
let life go, to slip down into the grey water. And that queer
apartness from self, which is the property of fever, came on her,
so that she seemed to see herself sitting there, waiting; and she
thought: ‘I shall see myself dead, floating among the reeds.
I shall see the birds wondering above me!’ And, suddenly, she
broke into a storm of sobbing. Her boy—her boy—and his poor
hair! And swaying over, she lay face down, clasping at the wet
grass and the earth.

The sun laid a pale streak along the water; a robin twittered ;
a leaf fell on her bare ankle.

Winton, who had been hunting on Saturday, had returned to
town on Sunday by the evening train, anf gone straight to his
club for supper. Falling asleep over his cigar, he had to be
awakened when they desired to close the club for the night. It
was past two when he reached Bury Street and found the tele-

gram.

“ Something dreadful happened to Mr. Summerhay. Come
quick.—Berry.”
''BEYOND AUS

Never had he so cursed the loss of his hand as during the time
that followed, when Markey had to dress, help his master, pack
bags, and fetch a taxi equipped for so long a journey. At half-
past three they started. Winton, wrapped in his fur coat, sat a
little forward on his seat, ready to put his head through the
window and direct the driver. It was a wild night; he would
not let Markey, whose chest was not strong, go outside to act as
guide. Twice that silent one had spoken.

“ That?ll be bad for Miss Gyp, sir.”

“ Bad, yes—terrible.”

And later: :

“ D’you think it means he’s dead, sir?”

“ God knows, Markey! We must hope for the best.”

Could Fate be cruel enough to deal one so soft and loving such
a blow?

Betty and a maid were standing at the open garden gate, in
the breaking darkness, wringing their hands. Leaping out, he
cried :

“ What is it, woman? Quick!”

“Oh, sir! My dear’s gone. I left her a moment to get her
a cup of tea. And she’s run out in the cold!”

Winton stood for two seconds as if turned to stone. Then,
taking Betty by the shoulder, he asked quietly:

“ What happened to him?”

Betty could not answer, but the maid said:

“The horse killed him at that linhay, sir, down in ‘ the wild.’
And the mistress was unconscious till quarter of an hour ago.”

“ Which way did she go? ”

“Out here, sir; the door and the gate was open—can’t tell
which way.”

The river!

“Turn the cab round! Stay in, Markey! Betty and you,
girl, go down to ‘the wild,’ and search there at once. Yes?
What is it? ”

“ As we came up the hill, sir, I see a lady or something in a
long dark coat with white on her head, against the hedge.”

“Right! Drive down again sharp, and use your eyes.”

At such moments, thought is impossible. But of thought there
was no need, for the gardens of villas and the inn blocked the
river at all but one spot. Winton stopped the car where the
narrow lane branched down to the bank, and ran. He ran
silently on the grass edge, and Markey, imitating, ran behind.
''476 NOVELS OF LOVE

When he came in sight of a black shape lying on the bank, he
suffered a moment of intense agony, for he thought it was just
a dark garment thrown away. Then he saw it move, and, hold-
ing up his hand for Markey to stand still, walked on, tiptoeing
in the grass. Between that prostrate figure and the water he
knelt down and said:

“My darling!”

Gyp raised her head and stared at him. Her white face, with
eyes unnaturally dark and large, and hair falling all over it,
was strange to him—the face of grief itself. And he knew not
how to help, or comfort, or save. In her eyes was the look of a
wild animal at the moment of its capture, and instinct made
him say:

“T lost her just as cruelly, Gyp.”

He saw the words reach her brain, and that wild look waver.
Stretching out his arm, he drew her close to him till her cheek
was against his, her shaking body against him, and kept mur-
muring:

“For my sake, Gyp; for my sake! ”

When, with Markey’s aid, he had got her to the cab, they took
her, not back to the house, but to the inn. She was in high
fever, and soon delirious. By noon, Aunt Rosamund and Mrs.
Markey, summoned by telegram, had arrived; and the whole inn
taken lest any noise should disturb her.

At five o’clock Winton was summoned to the little so-called
reading-room. A tall woman was standing at the window, shad-
ing her eyes with the back of a gloved hand. Though they had
lived so long within ten miles of each other, he only knew Lady
Summerhay by sight, and he waited for her to speak first.

“There is nothing to say; only, I thought I must see you.
How is she?”

“ Delirious.”

“My poor boy! Did you see him—his forehead? I will take
him back home.” Tears rolled one after the other slowly down
her face under her veil. She had turned to the window, passing
her handkerchief up under the veil. Staring at the little strip
of darkening lawn, Winton said:

“I will send you all his things, except anything that might
help my poor girl.”

She turned.

“And so it’s ended like this! Major Winton, is there any-
thing behind—were they really happy?”

 
''BEYOND Av?

Winton looked straight at her and answered:

“Too happy!”

Without a quiver, he met those tear-darkened eyes straining at
his; with a heavy sigh she once more turned away, drew down
her veil, and hastened away.

It was not true—he knew from the mutterings of Gyp’s fever
—but no one, not even Summerhay’s mother, should hear a
whisper if he could help it.

In the days that followed, Gyp, robbed of memory, hung be-
tween life and death. Winton hardly left her room, that low
room with creepered windows whence the river could be seen,
gliding down under the pale November sunshine or black beneath
the stars. He watched it, fascinated. He had snatched her
from it as by a miracle.

He had refused to have a nurse. Aunt Rosamund and Mrs.
- Markey were skilled in sickness, and he could not bear that a

strange person should listen to those delirious mutterings. His
own part of the nursing was to sit and keep her secrets from the
others—if he could. He would stay for hours, with eyes fixed
on her face. No one could supply so well as he the thread of
the familiar, by which the fevered, without knowing, perhaps
find their way a little in the mazes where they wander.

He was astonished by the number of inquiries, even people
whom he had considered enemies left cards or sent their ser-
vants. But the small folk touched him most by their genuine
concern for one whose grace and softness had won their hearts.
One morning he received a letter forwarded from Bury Street.

“ Dear Magor WINTON,

“T have read a paragraph in the paper about poor Mr. Sum-
merhay’s death. And, oh, I feel so sorry for her! She was so
good to me; I do feel it most dreadfully. If you think she
would like to know how we all feel for her, you would tell her,
wouldn’t you? I do think it’s cruel.

“Very faithfully yours,
“ DaPpHNE WING.”

So they knew Summerhay’s name—he had not somehow ex-
pected that. He did not answer, not knowing what to say.

Sometimes he would cover his ears, to avoid hearing of that
long stress of mind at which he had now and then glimpsed.
Of the actual tragedy, her wandering spirit did not seem con-
''478 NOVELS OF LOVE

scious; her lips were always telling her love, repeating the dread
of losing his; except when they would give a whispering laugh,
uncanny and enchanting, as at some gleam of perfect happiness.
Those little laughs were worst of all to hear. He drew a grue-
some comfort from the conclusion slowly forced on him. Sum-
merhay’s tragic death had cut short a situation which might
have had an even more tragic issue. One night in the big chair
at the side of her bed, he woke to see her eyes fixed on him, .
They saw, were her own eyes again. Her lips moved.

“ Dad.’

“Yes, my pet.”

“T remember everything.”

At that dreadful little saying, Winton leaned forward and put
his lips to her hand, that lay outside the clothes.

“Where is he buried?”

“ At Widrington.”

“ ye es.”

It was rather a sigh than a word, and, raising his head, Winton
saw her eyes closed again. The white transparency of her cheeks
and forehead against the dark lashes and hair, was too startling.
Was it a living face, or was its beauty that of death?

He bent over. She was breathing—asleep.,

 
''XII

Tre return to Mildenham was made by easy stages on New
Year’s day—Mildenham, dark, smelling the same, full of the
ghosts of old days. For little Gyp, more than five years old now,
and beginning to live, this was the pleasantest home yet. In
watching her become the spirit of the place, as she herself had
once been, Gyp found rest at times. She had not picked up
much strength, and if her face was taken unawares, it was the
saddest face. Her chief preoccupation was not being taken
unawares. To Winton, her smile was almost as sad. He was
at his wits’ end about her that winter and spring. She made the
utmost effort to keep up, and there was nothing to do but watch
and wait. No use to force the pace. Time alone could heal—
perhaps.

Spring came and passed, and physically she grew strong
again; but she had never once gone outside the garden, never
once spoken of the Red House, never once of Summerhay. Not
that she cherished her grief; she appeared, rather, to do all in
her power to forget and mask it. She only had what used to
be called a broken heart. Little Gyp, who had been told that
“Baryn” had gone away for ever, and that she must “ never
speak of him for fear of making Mum sad,” would stand and
watch her mother with puzzled gravity. She once remarked to
Winton:

“Mum doesn’t live with us, Grandy; she lives away some-
where, I think. Is it with Baryn?”

“ Perhaps it is, sweetheart; but don’t say that to anybody but
me. Don’t ever talk of Baryn to anyone else.”

“ Yes, I know; but where is he, Grandy?”

What could Winton answer?

He rode a great deal with the child, who, like her mother
before her, was never so happy as in the saddle; but to Gyp he
did not dare suggest it. She never spoke of horses, never went to
the stables, passed all the days doing little things about the
house, gardening, and sitting at her piano, sometimes playing a
little, or merely looking at the keys, her hands clasped in her
lap. This was early in the fateful summer, before any as yet felt
the world-tremors, or saw the darkness beginning to gather. He

479
''480 NOVELS OF LOVE

often thought: ‘If only she had something to take her out of
herself ! ”

In June he proposed a visit to London. To his surprise, she
acquiesced at once. They went up in Whit-week. Passing
Widrington, he forced himself to a spurt of talk; but later, glanc-
ing stealthily round his paper, he saw her face turned to the
fields and tears rolling down it. She made no sound, no move-
ment; only, those tears kept rolling down. And, behind his
paper, Winton’s eyes narrowed and retreated; his face hardened
till the skin seemed tight drawn over the bones.

From the station to Bury Street the cab went by narrow by-
streets, where the misery of the world was on show—ill-looking
men, draggled, over-driven women, jaunty ghosts of little chil-
dren in gutters and on doorsteps proclaiming by their clay-
coloured faces and underfed bodies, the post-datement of the
millennium. The lean and smutted houses had a look of dissolu-
tion indefinitely put off; there was no more trace of beauty than
in a sewer. Gyp sat leaning forward, and Winton felt her hand
slip into his.

That evening after dinner—in the room he had furnished for
her mother, where the satinwood chairs, the little Jacobean
bureau, the old brass candelabra were still as they had been
nearly thirty years ago—she said:

“Dad, would you mind if I could make a sort of home at
Mildenham for poor children to come and get good air and
food?”

Strangely moved by the first wish he had heard her express
since the tragedy, Winton said:

“My dear, are you strong enough?”

“Quite. There’s nothing wrong with me now except here.”
She touched her heart. “ What’s given, one can’t get back. I
would if I could. It’s been so dreadful for you. But if I had
them to see after, I shouldn’t be able to think so
much; the more I had to do, the better. I should like to
begin it at once.”

Winton nodded. Anything that could do her good—any-
thing!

“Rosamund’ll help you find ’em,’ he muttered. “She’s
first-rate at all that sort of thing.” Then, looking at her
fixedly, he added: “ Courage, my soul; it7ll all come back some
day.”

Gyp forced herself to smile.

 
''BEYOND 481

“ And yet,” she said, very quietly, “I wouldn’t have been
without it.”

Her hands were clasped in her lap, her eyes shone strangely,
the faint smile still hovered on her lips. And Winton thought:
‘Love! Beyond measure—beyond death !’

1915.
'' 
''BOOK fi

SAINT’S PROGRESS

“He but usurp’d his life”
—Lear
'' 
''Perl
I

Sucw a day made glad the heart. All the flags of July were
waving; the sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies
spiring up and twining, and the bees busy on the snapdragons.
The lime-trees were coming into flower. Tall white lilies in
the garden beds already rivalled the delphiniums; the York and
Lancaster roses were full-blown round their golden hearts.
There was a gentle breeze, and a swish and stir and hum rose
and fell above the head of Edward Pierson, coming back from
his lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey. He had arrived at Kes-
trel, his brother Robert’s home on the bank of the Wye only that
morning, having stayed at Bath on the way down; and now he
had got his face burnt in that parti-coloured way peculiar to
the faces of those who have been too long in London. As he
came along the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the sound of
a waltz thrummed out on a piano fell on his ears, and he smiled,
for music was the greatest passion he had. His dark grizzled
hair was pushed back off his hot brow, which he fanned with
his straw hat. Though not broad, that brow was the broadest
part of a narrow oval face whose length was increased by a short,
dark, pointed beard—a visage such as Vandyk might have
painted, grave and gentle, but for its bright grey eyes, cinder-
lashed and crow’s-footed, and its strange look of not seeing what
was before it. He walked quickly, though he was tired and hot;
tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on whose black
kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.

Above his brother’s house, whose sloping garden ran down
to the railway line and river, a large room had been built out
apart. Pierson stood where the avenue forked, enjoying the
sound of the waltz, and the cool whipping of the breeze in the
sycamores and birches. A man of fifty, with a sense of beauty,
born and bred in the country, suffers fearfully from nostalgia
during a long unbroken spell of London; so that his afternoon
in the old Abbey had been almost holy. He had let his senses

485
''486 NOVELS OF LOVE

sink into the sunlit greenery of the towering woods opposite;
he had watched the spiders and the little shining beetles, the fly-
catchers, and sparrows in the ivy; touched the mosses and the
lichens; looked the speedwells in the eye; dreamed of he knew
not what. A hawk had been wheeling up there above the woods,
and he had been up there with it in the blue. He had taken
a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret of London off
his soul.

For a year he had been working his parish single-handed—his
curate having gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real
holiday since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too,
to his brother’s home. He looked down at the garden, and up
at the trees of the avenue. Bob had found a perfect retreat
after his quarter of a century in Ceylon. Dear old Bob! And
he smiled at the thought of his elder brother, whose burnt face
and fierce grey whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the
kindest fellow that ever breathed! Yes, he had found a perfect
home for Thirza and himself. And Edward Pierson sighed.
He too had once had a perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound
of whose death, fifteen years ago, still bled a little in his heart.
Their two daughters, Gratian and Noel, had not “taken after ”
her; Gratian was like his own mother, and Noel’s fair hair and
big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin Leila, who
—poor thing!—had made that sad mess of her life, and now,
he had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa. Ah!
What a pretty girl she had been!

Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of
the music-room. A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound
of feet slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel
waltzing slowly in the arms of a young officer in khaki. Round
and round they went, circling, backing, moving sideways with
curious steps which seemed to have come in recently, for he did
not recognise them. At the piano sat his niece Eve, with a
teasing smile on her rosy face. But it was at his young daugh-
ter that Edward Pierson looked. Her eyes were half-closed,
her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled
into her slim round neck. Quite cool she seemed, though the
young man in whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery
hot; a handsome boy, with blue eyes and a little golden down
on the upper lip of his sunny red-cheeked face. Edward Pier-
son thought: ‘Nice couple!’ And had a moment’s vision of
himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago Cambridge May

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 487

Week—on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that
she must have been a year younger than Nollie was now! This
would be the young man she had talked of in her letters during
the last three weeks. Were they never going to stop?

_ He passed into view of those within, and said:

“ Aren’t you very hot, Nollie? ”

She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and
self-conscious, and Eve called out:

“Tt’s a bet, Uncle. They’ve got to dance me down.”

Pierson said mildly:

“A bet? My dears!”

Noel murmured over her shoulder:

“Tt’s all right, Daddy!” And the young man gasped:

“She’s bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir! ”

Pierson sat down, a little hypnotised by the sleepy strum-
ming, the slow giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-
closed swimming eyes of his young daughter, looking at him
over her shoulder as she went by. He sat with a smile on his
lips. Nollie was growing up! Now that Gratian was married,
she had become a great responsibility. If only his dear wife
had lived! The smile faded from his lips; he looked suddenly
very tired. The struggle, physical and spiritual, he had been
through, these fifteen years, sometimes weighed him almost to
the ground. Most men would have married again, but he had,
always felt it would be sacrilege. Unions were for ever, real,
though the Church permitted remarriage.

He watched his young daughter with a mixture of esthetic
pleasure and perplexity. Could this be good for her? But they
looked very happy; and there was so much in young creatures
that he did not understand. Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy,
seemed sometimes possessed of a little devil. Edward Pierson
attributed those outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of
her mother when she was such a mite; for Gratian, only two
years older, had never taken a mother’s place. That had been
left to himself, and he was more or less conscious of failure.

He sat there looking up at her with whimsical distress. And,
suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn
each word a little, she said:

“Tm going to stop!” and, sitting down beside him, took up
his hat to fan herself.

Eve struck a triumphant chord. “ Hurrah! I’ve won! ”

The young man muttered:
''488 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Tsay, Noel, we weren’t half done!”

““T know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren’t you, dear?
This is Cyril Morland.”

Pierson shook the young man’s hand.

“Daddy, your nose is burnt!”

“My dear; I know.”

“T can give you some white stuff for it. You have to sleep
with it on all night. Uncle and Auntie both use it.”

** Nollie!”

“Well, Eve says so. If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look
out for that current!”

The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration,
muttered :

“ Rather!” and went out.

Noel’s eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.

“ Tf you’re going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you’d better
hurry up.”

“ All right. Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?”

“ Lovely; like a great piece of music.”

“ Daddy always puts everything into music. You ought to
see it by moonlight; it’s gorgeous then. All right, Eve; I’m
coming.” But she did not get up, and when Eve was gone,
cuddled her arm through her father’s and murmured:

“ What d’you think of Cyril? ”

“ My dear, how can I tell? He seems a nice-looking young
man.”

“ All right, Daddy; don’t strain yourself. It’s jolly down
here, isn’t it?” She got up, stretched herself a little, and
moved away, looking like a very tall child, with her short hair
curling in round her head.

Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought:
‘What a lovely thing she is!’ And he got up too, but instead
of following, went to the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn’s
Prelude and Fugue in E minor. He had a fine touch, and
played with a sort of dreamy passion. It was his way out of
perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never quite
failed him,

At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a pro-
fession, but family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders,
and an emotional Church revival of that day had caught him
in its stream. He had always had private means, and those
early years before he married had passed happily in an East-

 
''!

SAINT’S PROGRESS 489

End parish. To have not only opportunity but power to help
in the lives of the poor had been fascinating; simple himself, the
simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his heart. When,
however, he married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish of his
own on the borders of East and West, where he had been ever
since, even after her death had nearly killed him. It was better
to go on where work and all reminded him of one whom he had
resolved never to forget in other ties. But he knew that his
work had not the zest it used to have in her day, or even before
her day. It may well be doubted whether he, who had been
in Holy Orders twenty-six years, quite knew now what he be-
lieved. Everything had become circumscribed, and fixed, by-
thousands of his own utterances; to have taken fresh stock of
his faith, to have gone deep into its roots, would have been
like taking up the foundations of a still-standing house. Some
men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible—for which
one formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pier-
son undoubtedly preferred his High-Church dogma to that of,
say, the Zoroastrians. The subtleties of change, the modifica-
tions by science, left little sense of inconsistency or treason on
his soul. Sensitive, charitable, and only combative deep down,
he instinctively avoided discussion on matters where he might
hurt others or they hurt him. And, since explanation was the
last thing which could be expected of one who did not base him-
self on Reason, he had found but scant occasion ever to examine
anything. Just as in the old Abbey he had soared off into the
infinite with the hawk, the beetles, and the grasses, so now, at
the piano, by these sounds of his own making, he was caught
away again into emotionalism, without realising that he was
in one of his most religious moods.

“ Aren’t you coming to tea, Edward?”

The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown,
had one of those faces which remain innocent to the end of the
chapter, in spite of the complete knowledge of life which apper-
tains to mothers. In days of suffering and anxiety, like these
of the great war, Thirza Pierson was a valuable person. Without
ever expressing an opinion on cosmic matters, she reconfirmed
certain cosmic truths, such as that though the whole world was
at war, there was such a thing as peace; that though all the sons
of mothers were being killed, there remained such a thing as
motherhood; that while everybody was living for the future,
the present still existed. Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-fact
''490 NOVELS OF LOVE

busyness, and the dew in her eyes, had been proof against
twenty-three years of life on a tea-plantation in the hot part of
Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against the anxiety of having
two sons at the front, and the confidences of nearly every one
she came across. Nothing disturbed her. She was like a paint-
ing of “ Goodness” by an Old Master, restored by Kate Green-
away. She never went to meet life, but when it came, made the
best of it. This was her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in
her presence.

He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the
big tree at the bottom of the garden.

“* How d’you think Noel is looking, Edward?”

“Very pretty. That young man, Thirza?”

“Yes; I’m afraid he’s over head and ears in love with
her.”

At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round
arm within his. “ He’s going to the front soon, poor boy!”

“ Have they talked to you?”

“He has. Not Nollie.”

* Nollie is a queer child, Thirza.”

“Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character,
Edward.”

Pierson sighed.

Under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the “rather
desperate character ” was sitting in a swing. “ What a picture
she is!” he said, and sighed again.

The voice of his brother came to them, high and steamy, as
though corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:

“You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted! We’ve eaten all the
raspberries. Hve, give him some jam; he must be dead! Phew!
the heat! Come on, my dear, and pour out his tea. Hallo,
Cyril! Had a good bathe? By George, wish my head was wet!
Squattez-vous down over there, by Nollie; she’ll swing, and keep
the flies off you.”

“ Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob

“What! Your father doesn’t te

“ Just for the flies. You don’t mind, Daddy?”

“ Not if it’s necessary, my dear.”

Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed
to swim under their long lashes.

“Tt isn’t necessary, but it’s nice.”

“ Ah, ha!” said Bob Pierson. “ Here you are, Nollie!”

9?

 

 

 

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 491

But Noel shook her head. At that moment she struck her
father as startlingly grown-up—so composed, swaying above that
young man at her feet, whose sunny face was all adoration. ‘No
longer a child!’ he thought. ‘ Dear Nollie!’
''fT

1 §

AWAKENED by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Ed-
ward Pierson lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself
back in London. A wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of
flowers on the window-sill, and the scent of sweetbrier, shattered
that illusion. He drew the curtain, and, kneeling on the win-
dow-seat, thrust his head out into the morning. The air was
intoxicatingly sweet. Haze clung over the river and the woods
beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and two wagtails strutted
in the dewy sunshine. ‘Thank God for loveliness!’ he thought.
‘Those poor boys at the front!’ And kneeling with his elbows
on the sill, he began to say his prayers. The same feeling which
made him beautify his church, use vestments, good music, and
incense, filled him now. God was in the loveliness of His world,
as well as in His churches. One could worship Him in a grove
of beech-trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by the
banks of a bright river. God was in the rustle of the leaves,
and the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent
of flowers; God was in everything! And he added to his usual
prayer this whisper: “I give Thee thanks for my senses, O
Lord. In all of us, keep them bright, and grateful for beauty.”
Then he remained motionless, prey to a sort of happy yearning
very near to melancholy. Great beauty ever had that effect on
him. One could capture so little of it—could never enjoy it
enough! Who was it had said not long ago: “ Love of beauty
is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union
satisfies.” Ah! yes, George—Gratian’s husband. George Laird!
And a little frown came between his brows, as though at some
thorn in the flesh. Poor George! But then, all doctors were
materialists at heart—splendid fellows, though; a fine fellow,
' George, working himself to death out there in France. One
must not take them too seriously. He plucked a bit of sweet-
brier and put it to his nose, which still retained the shine of that
bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using. The sweet
smell of those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching. He
492

 

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 493

dropped them, and drew back. No longings, no melancholy ; one
ought to be out, this beautiful morning!

It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and
preach at least one sermon; this day of rest was really to be
his own, for once. It was almost disconcerting; he had so
long felt like the cab horse who could not be taken out of the
shafts lest he should fall down. He dressed with deliberation,
and had not quite finished when there came a knock on his door,
and Noel’s voice said: “Can I come in, Daddy?”

In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned
where it met on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her
father a perfect vision of freshness.

“ Here’s a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home
ill, and he’s gone to our house. She’s got leave from her hos-
pital to come home and nurse him.

Pierson read the letter. ‘‘ Poor George!”

“ When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy? ”

“We must wait till you’re eighteen, Nollie.”

“T could easily say I was. It’s only a month; and I look
much more.”

Pierson smiled.

% Done Ee?

“ You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear,
according as you behave.”

“T want to go out as near the front as possible.”

Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face,
which was rather broad—the brow rather too broad—under the
waving light-brown hair, the nose short and indeterminate ;
cheeks still round from youth, almost waxen-pale, and faintly
hollowed under the eyes. It was her lips, dainty yet loving,
and above all her grey eyes, big and dreamily alive, which made
her a swan. He could not imagine her in nurse’s garb.

“This is new, isn’t it, Nollie?”

“Cyril Morland’s sisters are both out; and he'll be going
soon. Everybody goes.”

“Gratian hasn’t got out yet. It takes a long time to get
trained.”

“T know; all the more reason to begin.”

She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about
to speak, but did not. A little colour had come into her cheeks.
Then, obviously making conversation, she asked:

“ Are you going to church? It’s worth anything to hear Uncle
''494 NOVELS OF LOVE

Bob read the Lessons, especially when he loses his place. No;
you’re not to put on your long coat till just before church time.
I won’t have it!”

Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.

“ Now, you see, you can have my rose. Your nose ts better!”
She kissed his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole
of his short coat. ‘ That’s all. Come along!” And with her
arm through his, they went down. But he knew she had come
to say something which she had not said.

28

Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice,
his breathing never adjusted to the length of any period. The
congregation, accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the
necessary gentry with the necessary finger in the pie. It was
his own family whom he perturbed. In the second row, Noel,
staring solemnly at the profile of her father in the front row,
was thinking: ‘Poor Daddy! His eyes look as if they were
coming out. Oh, Daddy! Smile! or itll hurt you!’ Young
Morland beside her, rigid in his tunic, was thinking: ‘She
isn’t thinking of me!’ And just then her little finger crooked
into his. Edward Pierson was thinking: ‘Oh! My dear old
Bob! Oh!’ And, beside him, Thirza thought: ‘ Poor dear
Ted! how nice for him to be having a complete rest! I must
make him eat—he’s so thin!’ And Eve was thinking: ‘Oh,
Father! Mercy!’ But Bob Pierson was thinking: ‘Cheer oh!
Only another three verses!’ Noel’s little finger unhooked itself,
but her eyes stole round to young Morland’s eyes, and there was
a light in them which lingered through the singing and the
prayers. At last, in the reverential rustle of the settling con-
gregation, a surpliced figure mounted the pulpit.

“T come not to bring Peace, but a sword.”

Pierson looked up. He felt deep restfulness. There was a
pleasant light in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle
made all the difference to the quality of silence. No critical
thought stirred within him, nor any excitement. He was think-
ing: ‘Now I shall hear something for my good; a fine text;
when did I preach from it last?? Turned a little away from
the others, he saw nothing but the preacher’s homely face up
there above the carved oak; it was so long since he had been

 

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 495

preached to, so long since he had had a rest! The words came
forth, dropped on his forehead, penetrated, met something which
absorbed them, and disappeared. ‘A good plain sermon!’ he
thought. ‘I suppose I’m stale; I don’t seem > © Let us not,
dear brethren,” droned the preacher’s earnest voice, “ think that
our dear Lord, in saying that He brought a sword, referred to a
physical sword. It was the sword of the spirit to which He was
undoubtedly referring, that bright sword of the spirit which in
all ages has cleaved its way through the fetters imposed on men
themselves by their own desires, imposed by men on other men
in gratification of their ambitions, as we have had so striking
an example in the invasion by our cruel enemies of a little neigh-
bouring country which had done them no harm. Dear brethren,
we may all bring swords.” Pierson’s chin jerked; he raised his
hand quickly and passed it over his face. ‘ All bring swords,’
he thought, ‘swords—I wasn’t asleep—surely!’ “ But let us
be sure that our swords are bright; bright with hope, and bright
with faith, that we may see them flashing among the carnal
desires of this mortal life, carving a path for us towards that
heavenly kingdom where alone is peace, perfect peace. Let us
pray.”

Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on
his knees. In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had
also fallen on their knees their faces covered each with a single
hand; but her left hand and his right hung at their sides.
They prayed a little longer than any others and, on rising, sang
the hymn a little louder.

 

3 §

No paper came on Sundays—not even the local paper, which
had so long.and so nobly done its bit with head-lines to win
the war. No news whatever came, of men blown up, to enliven
the hush of the hot July afternoon, or the sense of drugging
which followed Aunt Thirza’s Sunday lunch. Some slept, some
thought they were awake; but Noel and young Morland walked
upward through the woods towards a high common of heath and
furze, crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks. Between
these two young people no actual word of love had yet been
spoken. Their lovering had advanced by glance and touch alone.

Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two
Pierson boys now at the front. He had no home of his own,
''A496 ° NOVELS OF LOVE

for his parents were dead; and this was not his first visit to
Kestrel, Arriving three weeks ago, for his final leave before he
should go out, he had found a girl sitting in a little wagonette
outside the station, and had known his fate at once. But who
knows when Noel fell in love? She was—one supposes—just
ready for that sensation. For the last two years she had been
at one of those high-class finishing establishments where, in
Spite of the healthy curriculum, perhaps because of it, there
is ever an undercurrent of interest in the opposing sex; and
not even the gravest efforts to eliminate instinct are quite suc:
cessful. The disappearance of every young male thing into
the maw of the military machine put a premium on instinct.
The thoughts of Noel and her school companions were turned,
perforce, to that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they
could afford to regard as of secondary interest. Love and Mar-
riage and Motherhood, fixed as the lot of women by the count-
less ages, were threatened for these young creatures. They not
unnaturally pursued what they felt to be receding.

When young Morland showed, by following her about with
his eyes, what was happening to him, Noel was pleased. From
being pleased, she became a little excited; from being excited
she became dreamy. Then, about a week before her father’s
arrival, she secretly began to follow the young man about with
her eyes; became capricious too, and a little cruel. If there had
been another young man to favour—but there was not; and she
favoured Uncle Bob’s red setter. Cyril Morland grew desperate.
During those three days the demon her father dreaded certainly
possessed her. And then, one evening, while they walked back
together from the hay-fields, she gave him a sidelong glance;
and he gasped out: “Oh! Noel, what have I done?” She
caught his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze. What a change!
What blissful alteration ever since! ...

Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing
himself up to put things to the touch. Noel too mounted si-
lently, thinking: ‘I will kiss him if he kisses me!’ Eagerness,
and a sort of languor, were running in her veins; she did not
look at him from under her shady hat. Sunlight poured down
through every chink in the foliage; made the greenness of the
steep wood marvellously vivid and alive ; flashed on beech leaves,
ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little runlets ;
painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the
ferns ; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads

 

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 49%

of ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life.
The whole wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a
happy Being which had come to dwell therein. At a half-way
spot, where the trees opened and they could see, far below them,
the gleam of the river, she sat down on the bole of a beech-
tree, and young Morland stood looking at her. Why should
one face and not another, this voice and not that, make a heart
beat ; why should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and
a touch from another awaken nothing? He knelt down and
pressed his lips to her foot. Her eyes grew very bright; but
she got up and ran on—she had not expected him to kiss her foot.
She heard him hurrying after her, and stopped, leaning against
a birch trunk. He rushed to her, and, without a word spoken,
his lips were on her lips. The moment in life, which no words
can render, had come for them. They had found their en-
chanted spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their
arms round each other, while the happy Being of the wood
watched. A marvellous speeder-up of Love is War. What might
have taken six months, was thus accomplished in three weeks.

A short hour passed, then Noel said:

“JT must tell Daddy, Cyril. I meant to tell him something
this morning, only I thought I’d better wait, in case you didn’t.”

Morland answered: “Oh, Noel!” It was the staple of
his conversation while they sat there.

Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:

“T shall go off my chump if we’re not married before I go
out.”

“ How long does it take?”

“No time, if we hurry up. I’ve got six days before I rejoin,
and perhaps the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him.”

“ Poor Daddy! Kiss me again; a long one.”

When the long one was over, she said:

“Then I can come and be near you till you go out? Oh,
Cyril!”

“Oh, Noel!”

“Perhaps you won’t go so soon. Don’t go if you can help it! ”

“ Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan’t be able.” .

“No, of course not; I know.”

Young Morland clutched his hair. “ Everyone’s in the same
boat, but it can’t last for ever; and now we’re engaged we can
be together all the time till I’ve got the licence or whatever it is.
And then: i

 
''498 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ Daddy won’t like our not being married in a church; but I
don’t care!”

Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on
her cheeks, young Morland thought: ‘ My God! I’m in heaven!’

Another short hour passed before she freed herself.

“We must go, Cyril. Kiss me once more!”

It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down.

28

Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where
he had read the Lessons, saw them in the distance, and com-
pressed his lips. Their long absence had vexed him. What
ought he to do? In the presence of Love’s young dream, he
felt strange and helpless. That night, when he opened the door
of his room, he saw Noel on the window-seat, in her dressing-
gown, with the moonlight streaming in on her.

“ Don’t light up, Daddy; I’ve got something to say.”

She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned
it over.

“Tm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week.”

It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs;
and at the sound he made she hurried on:

“You see, we must be; he may be going out any day.”

In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind
of reason in her words. But he said:

“My dear, you’re only a child. Marriage is the most serious
thing in life; you’ve only known him three weeks.”

“TI know all that, Daddy. *? her voice sounded so ridicu-
lously calm; “but we can’t afford to wait. He might never
come back, you see, and then I should have missed him.”

“But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only
be much worse for you.”

She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand,
pressing it against her heart. But still her voice was calm:

“No; much better, Daddy; you think I don’t know my own
feelings, but I do.”

The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.

“Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that,
time is wanted. Time to know that you feel and think the same,
and love the same things.”

“Yes, I know; but we do.”

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 499

“You can’t tell that, my dear; no one could in three
weeks,”

“But these aren’t ordinary times, are they? People have
to do things in a hurry. Oh, Daddy! Be an angel! Mother
would have understood, and let me, I know! ”

Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder
of his loss, from reminder of the poor substitute he was.

“Look, Nollie!” he said. “After all these years since she
left us, I’m as lonely as ever, because we were really one. If you
marry this young man without knowing more of your own
hearts than you can in such a little time, you may regret it
dreadfully; you may find it turn out, after all, nothing but a
little empty passion ; or again, if anything happens to him before
you’ve had any real married life together, you’ll have a much
greater grief and sense of loss to put up with than if you simply
stay engaged till after the war. Besides, my child, you’re much
too young.”

She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm,

ob, mous

He bit his lips, and said sharply: “You can’t, Nollie!”

She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone. With
the closing of the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took
its place. Poor child! What to do with this wayward chicken
just out of the egg, and wanting to be full-fledged at once? The
thought that she would be lying miserable, crying, perhaps, beset
him so that he went out into the passage and tapped on her door.
Getting no answer, he went in. It was dark but for a streak
of moonlight, and in that he saw her, lying on her bed, face
down; and stealing up laid his hand on her head. She did
not move; and, stroking her hair, he said gently:

“Nollie dear, I didn’t mean to be harsh. If I were your
mother, I should know how to make you see, but I’m only an old
bumble-daddy.”

She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on
the bed. He could see her eyes shining. But she did not speak ;
she seemed to know that in silence was her strength.

He said with a sort of despair:

“You must let me talk it over with your aunt. She has a
lot of good sense.”

« Yes”

He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.

“Good night, my dear; don’t cry. Promise me!”
''500 NOVELS OF LOVE

She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on
his forehead, and went away a little comforted.

But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the
night, to the emptiness and silence; each minute—so much lost
of the little, little time left, that she might have been with him.
''II

Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he
had thought himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.

After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him
more forcibly than the needlessness of his words: “ Don’t cry,
Nollie!” for he had realised with uneasiness that she had not
been near crying. No; there was in her some emotion very
different from the tearful. He kept seeing her cross-legged
figure on the bed in that dim light; tense, enigmatic, almost
Chinese; kept feeling the feverish touch of her lips. A good
girlish burst of tears would have done her good, and been a
guarantee. He had the uncomfortable conviction that his re-
fusal had passed her by, as if unspoken. And, since he could
not go and make music at that time of night, he had ended on his
knees, in a long search for guidance, which was not vouchsafed
him.

The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told
that for the last hour they had been sitting with their arms
round each other, watching the river flow by, talking but little,
through lips too busy. Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the
room where she did her flowers every morning. He watched
her for a minute dividing ramblers from pansies, cornflowers
from sweet peas, before he said:

“Tm very troubled, Thirza. Nollie came to me last night.
Imagine! They want to get married—those two!”

Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her
cheeks grew a little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder. She
took up a sprig of mignonette, and said placidly:

“Oh, my dear!”

“Think of it, Thirza—that child! Why, it’s only a year or
two since she used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with
her hair.”

Thirza went on arranging her flowers.

“ Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her
age. And real married life wouldn’t begin for them till after—
if it ever began.”

Pierson experienced a sort of shock. His sister-in-law’s words
seemed criminally light-hearted.

501
''502 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ But—but——” he stammered; “the union, Thirza! Who
can tell what will happen before they come together again! ”

She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:

“I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in
these days, of what Noel might do. I told you there’s a streak
of desperation in her.”

“Noel will obey me. ”

“I wonder! There are so many of these war marriages now.”

Pierson turned away.

“I think they’re dreadful. What do they mean—just a
momentary gratification of passion. They might just as well
not be.”

“They mean pensions, as a rule,” said Thirza calmly.

“Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn’t affect this case.
I can’t bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a
moment which may come to nothing, or may turn out the
beginning of an unhappy marriage. Who is this boy—what is
he? I know nothing of him. How can I give her to him—it’s
impossible! If they had been engaged some time and I knew
something of him—yes, perhaps; even at her age. But this
hasty passionateness—it isn’t right, it isn’t decent. I don’t
understand, I really don’t—how a child like that can want it.
The fact is, she doesn’t know what she’s asking, poor little
Nollie. She can’t know the nature of marriage, and she can’t
realise its sacredness. If only her mother were here! Talk to
her, Thirza; you can say things that I can’t!”

Thirza looked after the retreating figure. In spite of his
cloth, perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child
who had come to show her his sore finger. And, having finished
the arrangement of her flowers, she went out to find her niece.
She had not far to go; for Noel was standing in the hall,
quite evidently lying in wait. They went out together to the
avenue,

The girl began at once:

“Tt isn’t any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get
a license.”

“Oh! So you’ve made up your minds?”

& Ouites?

“Do you think that’s fair by me, Nollie? Should I have asked
him here if I’d thought this was going to happen?”

Noel only smiled.

“Have you the least idea what marriage means?”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 503

Noel nodded.

“ Really ?”

“Of course. Gratian is married. Besides, at school

“ Your father is dead against it. This is a sad thing for him.
He’s a perfect saint, and you oughtn’t to hurt him. Can’t you
wait, at least, till Cyril’s next leave? ”

“He might never have one, you see.”

The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might
also never have another leave, could not but be responsive to
those words. She looked at her niece, and a dim appreciation
of this revolt of life menaced by death, of youth threatened with
extinction, stirred in her. Noel’s teeth were clenched, her lips
drawn back, and she was staring in front of her.

“ Daddy oughtn’t to mind. Old people haven’t to fight, and
get killed; they oughtn’t to mind us taking what we can.
They’ve had their good time.”

It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered :

“Yes; perhaps he hasn’t quite realised that.”

“J want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I
can have with him while there’s the chance. I don’t think it’s
much to ask, when perhaps I’ll never have any more of him
again.”

Thirza slipped her hand through the girl’s arm.

“JT understand,” she said. ‘ Only, Nollie, suppose, when all
this is over, and we breathe and live naturally once more, you
found you'd made a mistake? ”

Noel shook her head. “I haven’t.”

“We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are
made by people who no more dream they’re making them than
you do now; and then it’s a very horrible business. It would
be especially horrible for you; your father believes heart and
soul in marriage being for ever.”

“Daddy’s a darling; but I don’t always believe what he
believes, you know. Besides, I’m not making a mistake, Auntie!
I love Cyril ever so.”

Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.

“You mustn’t make a mistake. We love you too much, Nollie.
I wish we had Gratian here.”

“Gratian would back me up,” said Noel; “she knows what
the war is. And you ought to, Auntie. If Rex or Harry wanted
to be married, I’m sure you’d never oppose them. And they’re
no older than Cyril. You must understand what it means to me,

3?

 
''504 NOVELS OF LOVE

Auntie dear, to feel that we belong to each other properly before
—hefore it all begins for him, and—and there may be no more.
Daddy doesn’t realise. I know he’s awfully good, but—he’s
forgotten.”

“My dear, I think he remembers only too well. He was des-
perately attached to your mother.”

Noel clenched her hands.

“Was he? Well, soam I to Cyril, and he tome. We wouldn’t
be unreasonable if it wasn’t—wasn’t necessary. Talk to Cyril,
Auntie; then you'll understand. There he is; only, don’t keep
him long, because I want him. Oh! Auntie, I want him so
badly!”

She turned, and slipped back into the house; and Thirza,
conscious of having been decoyed to this young man, who stood
there with his arms folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled
and said:

“Well, Cyril, so you’ve betrayed me! ”

Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous
change in this sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since
the day he arrived, three weeks ago, in their little wagonette.
He took her arm, just as Noel had, and made her sit down
beside him on the rustic bench, where he had evidently been
told to wait.

“You see, Mrs. Pierson,” he said, “it?s not as if Noel were
an ordinary girl in an ordinary time, is it? Noel is the sort of
girl one would knock one’s brains out for; and to send me out
there knowing that I could have been married to her and wasn’t,
will take all the heart out of me. Of course I mean to come
back, but chaps do get knocked over, and I think it’s cruel that
we can’t take what we can while we can. Besides, I’ve got
money; and that would be hers anyway. So, do be a darling,
won't you?” He put his arm round her waist, just as if he had
been her son, and her heart, which wanted her own boys so badly,
felt warmed within her.

“You see, I don’t know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully
gentle and jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn’t mind, I
know. We don’t mind risking our lives and all that, but we do
think we ought to have the run of them while we’re alive. Vl
give him my dying oath or anything, that I could never change
towards Noel, and she'll do the same. Oh! Mrs. Pierson, do be
a jolly brick, and put in a word for me, quick! We've got so
few days!”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 505

“But, my dear boy,” said Thirza feebly, “do you think it’s
fair to such a child as Noel?”

“Yes, I do. You don’t understand; she’s simply had to
grow up. She is grown-up—all in this week; she’s quite as old
as I am, really—and I’m twenty-two. And you know it’s going
to be—it’s got to be—a young world, from now on; people will
begin doing things much earlier. What’s the use of pretending
it’s like what it was, and being cautious, and all that? If ’m
going to be killed, I think we’ve got a right to be married first;
and if I’m not, then what does it matter?”

“You’ve known each other twenty-one days, Cyril.”

“No; twenty-one years! very day’s a year when Oh!
Mrs. Pierson, this isn’t like you, is it? You never go to meet
trouble, do you?”

At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand
which still clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.

“Well, my dear,” she said softly, “we must see what can
be done.”

Cyril Morland kissed her cheek. “I will bless you for ever,”
he said. “I haven’t got any people, you know, except my two
sisters. ”

And something like tears stared up on Thirza’s eyelashes.
They seemed to her like the babes in the wood—those two!

 
''IV
1 §

In the dining-room of her father’s house in that old London
Square between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor
garb of a nurse, was writing a telegram: ‘“ Reverend Edward
Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern, Monmouthshire. George terribly ill.
Please come if you can. Gratian.” Giving it to a maid, she
took off her long coat and sat down for a moment. She had
been travelling all night, after a full day’s work, and had only
just arrived, to find her husband between life and death. She
was very different from Noel; not quite so tall, but of a stronger
build; with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear hazel eyes, and a
broad brow. The expression of her face was earnest, with a
sort of constant spiritual enquiry, and a singularly truthful look.
She was just twenty; and of the year that she had been married,
had only spent six weeks with her husband; they had not even
a house of their own as yet. After resting five minutes, she
passed her hand vigorously over her face, threw back her head,
and walked up stairs to the room where he lay. He was not
conscious, and there was nothing to be done but sit and watch
him. ‘If he dies,’ she thought, ‘I shall hate God for His
cruelty. I have had six weeks with George; some people have
sixty years.’ She fixed her eyes on his face, short and broad,
with bumps of “ observation” on the brows. He had been sun-
burnt. The dark lashes of his closed eyes lay on deathly yellow
cheeks; his thick hair grew rather low on his broad forehead.
The lips were just open and showed strong white teeth. He had
a little clipped moustache, and hair had grown on his clean-cut
jaw. His pyjama jacket had fallen open. Gratian drew it close.
It was curiously still, for a London day, though the window
was wide open. Anything to break this heavy stupor, which was
not only George’s but her own, and the very world’s! The
cruelty of it—when she might be going to lose him for ever, in
a few hours or days! She thought of their last parting. It had
not been very loving, had come too soon after one of those
arguments they were inclined to have, in which they could not
as yet disagree with suavity. George had said there was no
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 507

future life for the individual; she had maintained there was.
They had grown hot and impatient. Even in the cab on the
way to his train they had pursued the wretched discussion, and
the last kiss had been from lips on lips yet warm from disa-
greement. Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been waver-
ing towards his point of view; and now, when he was perhaps
to solve the problem—find out for certain—she had come to feel
that if he died, she would never see him after. It was cruel
that such a blight should have come on her belief at this, of all
moments.

She laid her hand on his. It was warm, felt strong, although
so motionless and helpless. George was so vigorous, so alive,
and strong-willed ; it seemed impossible that life might be going
to play him false. She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-
bright eyes, his deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no
trace of self-consciousness or pretence. She slipped her hand
on to his heart, and began very slowly, gently rubbing it. He,
as doctor, and she, as nurse, had both seen so much of death
these last two years! Yet it seemed suddenly as if she had
never seen death, and that the young faces she had seen, empty
and white, in the hospital wards, had just been a show. Death
would appear to her for the first time, if this face which she
loved were to be drained for ever of light and colour and move-
ment and meaning.

A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed .
idly round the room. She caught her breath in a little sob... .

2 §

Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a
lonely walk after his talk with Thirza. Coming from Gratian
—so self-reliant—it meant the worst. He prepared at once
to catch the next train. Noel was out, no one knew where:
so with a sick feeling he wrote:

“ DEAREST CHILD,

“T am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill.
If it goes badly you should be with your sister. I will wire
to-morrow morning early. I leave you in your aunt’s hands,
my dear. Be reasonable and patient. God bless you.

“Your devoted
“ Davpy.”
''508 NOVELS OF LOVE

He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning
forward, watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was.
out of sight. Those old monks had lived in an age surely not
so sad as this. They must have had peaceful lives, remote down
here, in days when the Church was great and lovely, and men
laid down their lives for their belief in her, and built everlasting
fanes to the glory of God! What a change to this age of rush
and hurry, of science, trade, material profit, and this terrible
war! He tried to read his paper, but it was full of horrors and
hate. ‘ When will it end?’ he thought. And the train with its
rhythmic jolting seemed grinding out the answer: “ Never—
never! ”

At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a
very flushed face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in
disorder, and her lip bleeding, as if she had bitten it through.
The soldier, too, looked strained and desperate. They sat down,
far apart, on the seat opposite. Pierson, feeling that he was in
their way, tried to hide himself behind his paper; when he
looked again, the soldier had taken off his tunic and cap and
was leaning out of the window. The woman, on the seat’s edge,
sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with resentful eyes,
then, getting up, she pulled the man’s sleeve.

“ Sit dahn; don’t ’ang out o’ there.”

The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at
Pierson.

“The wife an’ me’s ’ad a bit of a row,” he said companion-
ably. “Gits on me nerves; I’m not used to it. She was in a
raid, and ’er nerves are all gone funny; ain’t they, old girl?
Makes me feel me ’ead. I’ve been wounded there, you know;
can’t stand much now. I might do somethin’ if she was to go
on like this for long.”

Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resent-
fully. The soldier held out a packet of cigarettes. “Take one,”
he said. Pierson took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted
him to speak, murmured: “ We all have these troubles with those
we're fond of; the fonder we are of people, the more we feel
them, don’t we? I had one with my daughter last night.”

“Ah!” said the soldier; “that’s right. The wife and me’ll
make it up. *Ere, come orf it, old girl.”

From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds.
of reconciliation—reproaches because someone had been offered
a drink, kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse. When
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 509

they got out at Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but
the woman still gave him her resentful stare, and he thought
dreamily: ‘The war! How it affects everyone!’ His carriage
was invaded by a swarm of soldiers, and the rest of the journey
was passed in making himself small. When at last he reached
home, Gratian met him in the hall.

“Just the same. The doctor says we shall know in a few
hours now. How sweet of you to come! You must be tired, in
this heat. It was dreadful to spoil your holiday.”

“My dear! As if May I go up and see him.”

George Laird was still lying in that stupor. And Pierson
stood gazing down at him compassionately. Like most parsons,
he had a wide acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one
remorseless fellowship with death. Death! The commonest
thing in the world, now—commoner than life! This young
doctor must have seen many die in these last two years, saved
many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to
save himself. Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong,
promising young couple they were! And putting his arm round
her, he led her away to the sofa, whence they could see the sick
man.

“ Tf he dies, Dad ” she whispered.

“He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as
ever our soldiers do.”

“TI know; but that’s no comfort. I’ve been watching here
all day; I’ve been thinking; men will be just as brutal after-
wards—more brutal. The world will go on the same.”

“We must hope not. Shall we pray, Gracie? ”

Gratian shook her head.

“Tf I could believe that the world—if I could believe any-
thing! I’ve lost the power, Dad; I don’t even believe in a
future life. If George dies, we shall never meet again.”

Pierson stared at her without a word.

Gratian went on: “ The last time we talked, I was angry with
George because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want
belief, I feel that he was right.”

Pierson said tremulously :

“No, no, my dear; it’s only that you’re overwrought. God
in His mercy will give you back belief.”

“There is no God, Dad.”

“My darling child, what are you saying?”

“No God who can help us; I feel it. If there were any God

 

 
''510 NOVELS OF LOVE

who could take part in our lives, alter anything without our will,
knew or cared what we did—He wouldn’t let the world go on
as it does.”

“ But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable. We dare not
say He should not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends
He is working.”

“Then He’s no good to us. It’s the same as if He didn’t
exist. Why should I pray for George’s life to One whose ends
are just His own? I know George oughtn’t to die. If there’s a
God who can help, it will be a wicked shame if George dies; if
there’s a God who can help, it’s a wicked shame when babies die,
and all these millions of poor boys. I would rather think there’s
no God than a helpless or a wicked God——”

Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears.
She moved closer, and put her arm round him.

“Dad dear, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a
dull voice:

“What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if
I had lost belief when your mother died? I have never lost
belief. Pray God I never shall!”

Gratian murmured :

“ George would not wish me to pretend I believe—he would
want me to be honest. If I’m not honest, I shan’t deserve that
he should live. I don’t believe, and I can’t pray.”

“My darling, you’re overtired.”

“No, Dad.” She raised her head from his shoulder and,
clasping her hands round her knees, looked straight before her.
“We can only help ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel.”

Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could
say would touch her just then. The sick man’s face was hardly
visible now in the twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed.
She stood looking down at him a long time.

“ Go and rest, Dad; the doctor’s coming again at eleven. Ill
call you if I want anything. I shall lie down a little, beside
him.”

Pierson kissed her, and went out. To lie there beside him
would be the greatest comfort she could get. He went to the
bare narrow little room he had occupied ever since his wife died ;
and, taking off his boots, walked up and down, with a feeling of
almost crushing loneliness. Both his daughters in such trouble,
and he of no use to them! It was as if Life were pushing him
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 511

utterly aside! He felt confused, helpless, bewildered. Surely
if Gratian loved George, she had not left God’s side, whatever
she might say. Then, conscious of the profound heresy of this
thought, he stood still at the open window.

Earthly love—heavenly love; was there any analogy between
them ?

From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves
answered ; and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly
tale of murder,

3 §

George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and
in the morning was pronounced out of danger. He had a splen-
did constitution, and—Scotsman on his father’s side—a fighting
character. He came back to life very weak, but avid of recovery;
and his first words were: “I’ve been hanging over the edge,
Gracie! ”

A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch,
the merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have
gone. Deuced rum sensation! But not so horrible as it would
have been in real life. With the slip of that last inch he felt
he would have passed at once into oblivion, without the long
horror of a fall. So this was what it was for all the poor fellows
he had seen slip in the past two years! Mercifully, at the end,
one was not alive enough to be conscious of what one was
leaving, not alive enough even to care. If he had been able to
take in the presence of his young wife, able to realise that he
was looking at her face, touching her for the last time—it would
have been hell; if he had been up to realising sunlight, moon-
light, the sound of the world’s life outside, the softness of the
bed he lay on—it would have meant the most poignant anguish
of defraudment. Life was a rare good thing, and to be squashed
out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake in Nature’s
arrangements, a wretched villainy on the part of Man—for his
own death, like all those other millions of premature deaths,
would have been due to the idiocy and brutality of men! He
could smile now, with Gratian looking down at him, but the
experience had heaped fuel on a fire which had always smoul-
dered in his doctor’s soul against that half-emancipated breed of
apes, the human race. Well, now he would get a few days off
from his death-carnival! And he lay, feasting his returning
''512 NOVELS OF LOVE

senses on his wife. She made a pretty nurse, and his practised
eye judged her a good one—firm and quiet.

George Laird was thirty. At the opening of the war he was
in an East-End practice, and had volunteered at once for service
with the Army. For the first nine months he had been right
up in the thick of it. A poisoned arm, rather than the authori-
ties, had sent him home. During that leave he married Gratian.
He had known the Piersons some time; and, made conscious of
the instability of life, had resolved to marry her at the first
chance he got. For his father-in-law he had respect and liking,
ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and not quite pity.
The blend of authority with humility, cleric with dreamer,
monk with artist, mystic with man of action, in Pierson, excited
in him an interested, but often irritated, wonder. He saw things
so differently himself, and had little of the humorous curiosity
which enjoys what is strange simply because it is strange. They
could never talk together without soon reaching a point when
he wanted to say: “If we’re not to trust our reason and our
senses for what they’re worth, sir—will you kindly tell me what
we are to trust? How can we exert them to the utmost in some
matters, and in others suddenly turn our backs on them?”
Once, in one of their discussions, which often bordered on acri-
mony, he had expounded himself at length.

“T grant,” he had said, “that there’s a great ultimate Mys-
tery, that we shall never know anything for certain about the
origin of life and the principle of the Universe ; but why should
we suddenly shut up our enquiring apparatus and deny all the
evidence of our reason—say, about the story of Christ, or the
question of a future life, or our moral code? If you want me
to enter a temple of little mysteries, leaving my reason and
senses behind—as a Mohammedan leaves his shoes—it won’t do
to say to me simply: ‘ There it is! Enter!’ You must show
me the door; and you can’t! And I’ll tell you why, sir. Because
in your brain there’s a little twist which is not in mine, or the
lack of a little twist which is in mine. Nothing more than that
divides us into the two main species of mankind, one of whom
worships, and one of whom doesn’t. Oh, yes! I know, you won’t
admit that, because it makes your religions natural instead of
what you call supernatural. But I assure you there’s nothing
more to it. Your eyes look up or they look down—they never
look straight before them. Well, mine do just the opposite.”

That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 518

meet this attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it. His
brain had stammered. He had turned a little away, leaning his
cheek on his hand, as if to cover that momentary break in his
defences. Some days later he had said:

“T am able now to answer your questions, George. I think
I can make you understand.”

Laird had answered: “ All right, sir; go ahead.”

“You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final
test of all things. What right have you to assume that? Sup-
pose you were an ant. You would take your ant’s reason as the
final test, wouldn’t you? Would that be the truth?” And a
smile had fixed itself on his lips above his little grave beard.

George Laird also had smiled.

“That seems a good point, sir,” he said, “ until you recognise
that I don’t take the human reason as final test in any absolute
sense. I only say it’s the highest test we can apply; and that,
behind that test all is quite dark and unknowable.”

“ Revelation, then, means nothing to you?”

“ Nothing, sir.”

“JT don’t think we can usefully go on, George.”

“ T don’t think we can, sir. In talking with you, I always feel
like fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back.”

“ And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was
blind from birth.”

For all that, they had often argued since; but never without
those peculiar smiles coming on their faces. Still, they respected
each other, and Pierson had not opposed his daughter’s marriage
to this heretic, whom he knew to be an honest and trustworthy
man. It had taken place before Laird’s arm was well, and the
two had snatched a month’s honeymoon before he went back to
France, and she to her hospital in Manchester. Since then,
just one February fortnight by the sea had been all their time
together. ...

In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk
a cup, said:

““T’ve got something to tell your father.”

But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian
answered :

“Tell me first, George.”

“Our last talk, Gracie; well—there’s notning on the other
side. I looked over; it’s as black as your hat.”

Gratian shivered.
''514 NOVELS OF LOVE

“I know. While you were lying here last night, I told
father.”

He squeezed her hand, and said: “I also want to tell him.”

“Dad will say the motive for life is gone.”

“T say it leaps out all the more, Gracie. What a mess we
make of it—we angel-apes! When shall we be men, I wonder?
You and I, Gracie, will fight for a decent life for everybody. No
hands-upping about that! Bend down! It’s good to touch you
again; everything’s good. I’m going to have a sleep. . . .”

oS

After the relief of the doctor’s report in the early morning
Pierson had gone through a hard struggle. What should he
wire to Noel? He longed to get her back home, away from
temptation to the burning indiscretion of this marriage. But
ought he to suppress reference to George’s progress? Would
that be honest? At last he sent this telegram: “George out of
danger but very weak. Come up.”

By the afternoon post, however, he received a letter from
Thirza:

“T have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril. It is im-
possible to budge them. And I really think, dear Edward, that
it will be a mistake to oppose it rigidly. He may not go out as
soon as we think. How would it be to consent to their having
banns published ?—that would mean another three weeks any-
way, and in absence from each other they might be influenced
to put if off. Pm afraid this is the only chance, for if you
simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get married some-
where at a registrar’s.”

Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden,
for painful cogitation. No man can hold a position of spiritual
authority for long years without developing the habit of judg-
ment. He judged Noel’s conduct to be headlong and undis-
ciplined, and the vein of stubbornness in his character fortified
the father and the priest within him. Thirza disappointed him;
she did not seem to see the irretrievable gravity of this hasty
marriage. She seemed to look on it as something much lighter
than it was, to consider that it might be left to Chance, and that
if Chance turned out unfavourable, there would still be a way
out. To him there would be no way out. He looked up at the
sky, as if for inspiration. It was such a beautiful day, and so
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 518

bitter to hurt his child, even for her good! What would her
mother have advised? Surely Agnes had felt at least as deeply
as himself the utter solemnity of marriage! And, sitting there
in the sunlight, he painfully hardened his heart. He must do
what he thought right, no matter what the consequences. So he
went in and wrote that he could not agree, and wished Noel
to come back home at once.
''y
1 §

But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was
sitting on the river-bank with her arms folded tight across her
chest, and by her side Cyril Morland, with despair in his face,
was twisting a telegram: “ Rejoin to-night. Regiment leaves
to-morrow.”

What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read
and sorrowed over these last two years! What comfort that the
sun was daily blotted dim for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy
of life poured out and sopped up by the sands of desolation!

“How long have we got, Cyril?”

“T’ve engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn’t leave till mid-
night. I’ve packed already, to have more time.”

“Let’s have it to ourselves, then. Let’s go off somewhere.
TP’ve got some chocolate.”

Morland answered miserably :

“T can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick
me up at the Inn, if you’ll say good-bye to them for me, after-
wards. We’ll walk down the line, then we shan’t meet anyone.”

And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each
side of a shining rail. About six they reached the Abbey.

“Let’s get a boat,” said Noel. ‘“ We can come back here
when it’s moonlight. I know a way of getting in, after the gate’s
shut.”

They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on
the stern seat, side by side under the trees where the water
was stained deep green by the high woods. If they talked, it
was but a word of love now and then, or to draw each other’s
attention to a fish, a bird, a dragon-fly. What use making plans
—for lovers the chief theme? Longing paralysed their brains.
They could do nothing but press close to each other, their hands
enlaced, their lips meeting now and then. On Noel’s face was
a strange fixed stillness, as if she were waiting—expecting!
They ate their chocolates. The sun set, dew began to fall; the
river changed, and grew whiter; the sky paled to the colour of
an amethyst; shadows lengthened, dissolved slowly. It was

516

 
''einen ene ae

SAINT’S PROGRESS 51?

past nine already; a water-rat came out, a white owl flew over
the river, towards the Abbey. The moon had come up, but shed
no light as yet. They saw no beauty in all this—too young, too
passionate, too unhappy.

Noel said: “ When she’s over those trees, Cyril, let’s go. It'll
be half dark.”

They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite
slowness up and up, brightening ever so little every minute.

“ Now!” said Noel. And Morland rowed across.

They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage,
to a shed with a roof sloping up to the Abbey’s low outer wall.

“We can get over here,” she whispered.

They clambered up, and over, to a piece of grassy courtyard,
and passed on to an inner court, under the black shadow of
the high walls.

“ What’s the time?” said Noel.

“ Half-past ten.”

“Already! Let’s sit here in the dark, and watch for the
moon.”

They sat down close together. Noel’s face still had on it that
strange look of waiting; and Morland sat obedient, with his
hand on her heart, and his own heart beating almost to suffo-
cation. They sat, still as mice, and the moon crept up. It laid
a first vague greyness on the high wall, which spread slowly
down, and brightened till the lichen and the grasses up there
were visible; then crept on, silvering the dark above their heads.
Noel pulled his sleeve, and whispered: “See!” There came
the white owl, soft as a snowflake, drifting across in that un-
earthly light, as if flying to the moon. And just then the top
of the moon itself looked over the wall, a shaving of silvery gold.
It grew, became a bright spread fan, then balanced there, full
and round, the colour of pale honey.

“Ours!” Noel whispered.

2 §

From the side of the road Noel listened till the sound of the
car was lost in the folds of the valley. She did not cry, but
passed her hands over her face, and began to walk home, keeping
to the shadow of the trees. How many years had been added
to her age in those six hours since the telegram came! Several
times in that mile and a half she stepped into a patch of brighter
''518 NOVELS OF LOVE

moonlight, to take out and kiss a little photograph, then slip
it back next her heart, heedless that so warm a place must
destroy any effigy. She felt not the faintest compunction for the
recklessness of her love—it was her only comfort against the
crushing loneliness of the night. It kept her up, made her
walk on with a sort of pride, as if she had got the best of Fate.
He was hers for ever now, in spite of anything that could be
done. She did not even think what she would say when she
got in. She came to the avenue, and passed up it still in a
sort of dream. Her uncle was standing before the porch; she
could hear his mutterings. She moved out of the shadow of
the trees, went straight up to him, and, looking in his perturbed
face, said calmly:

“Cyril asked me to say good-bye to you all, Uncle. Good
night!”

“ But, I say, Nollie—look here—you

She had passed on. She went up to her room. There, by the
door, her aunt was standing, and would have kissed her. She
drew back:

“No, Auntie. Not to-night!” And, slipping by, she locked
her door.

Bob and Thirza Pierson, meeting in their own room, looked
at each other askance. Relief at their niece’s safe return was
confused by other emotions. Bob Pierson expressed his first:

“Phew! I was beginning to think we should have to drag
the river. What girls are coming to!”

“It’s the war, Bob.”

“T didn’t like her face, old girl. I don’t know what it was,
but I didn’t like her face.”

Neither did Thirza, but she would not admit it, and encourage
Bob to take it to heart. He took things so hardly, and with
such a noise!

She only said: “ Poor young things! I suppose it will be a
relief to Edward!”

“T love Nolly!” said Bob Pierson suddenly. “ She’s an affec-
tionate creature. D n it, I’m sorry about this. It’s not so
bad for young Morland; he’s got the excitement—though I
shouldn’t like to be leaving Nollie, if I were young again.
Thank God, neither of our boys is engaged. By George! when
I think of them out there, and myself here, I feel as if the top
of my head would come off. And those politician chaps spouting
away in every country—how they can have the cheek!”

1»

 

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 519

Thirza looked at him anxiously.

“And no dinner!” he said suddenly. “ What d’you think
they’ve been doing with themselves ? ”

“ Holding each other’s hands, poor dears! D’you know what
time it is, Bob? Nearly one o’clock.”

“Well, all I can say is, ’ve had a wretched evening. Get to
bed, old girl. You'll be fit for nothing.”

He was soon asleep, but Thirza lay awake, not exactly worry-
ing, for that was not her nature, but seeing Noel’s face, pale,
languid, passionate, possessed by memory.
''VI
1§

Noet reached her father’s house next day late in the afternoon.
There was a letter in the hall for her. She tore it open, and
read :

“ My DARLING Love,

“T got back all right, and am posting this at once to tell
you we shall pass through London, and go from Charing Cross,
I expect about nine o’clock to-night. I shall look out for you,
there, in case you are up in time. Every minute I think of you,
and of last night. Oh! Noel!

“ Your devoted lover,
“ C 9

She looked at the wrist-watch, which, like every other little
patriot, she possessed. Past seven! If she waited, Gratian or
her father would seize on her.

“Take my things up, Dinah. I’ve got a headache from travel-
ling; I’m going to walk it off. Perhaps I shan’t be in till past
nine or so. Give my love to them all.”

“Oh, Miss Noel, you can’t Z

But Noel was gone. She walked towards Charing Cross; and,
to kill time, went into a restaurant and had that simple repast,
coffee and a bun, which those in love would always take if
Society did not forcibly feed them on other things. Food was
ridiculous to her. She sat there in the midst of a perfect hive
of creatures eating hideously. The place was shaped like a
modern prison, having tiers of gallery round an open space,
and in the air was the smell of viands and the clatter of plates
and the music of a band. Men in khaki everywhere, and Noel
glanced from form to form to see if by chance one might be that
which represented, for her, Life and the British Army. At half-
past eight she went out and made her way through the crowd,
still mechanically searching “ khaki” for what she wanted; and
it was perhaps fortunate that there was about her face and walk
something which touched people. At the station she went up

520

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 521

to an old porter, and, putting a shilling into his astonished hand,
asked him to find out for her whence Morland’s regiment would
start. He came back presently, and said:

“Come with me, miss.”

Noel went. He was rather lame, had grey whiskers, and a
ghostly thin resemblance to her uncle Bob, which perhaps had
been the reason why she had chosen him.

“Brother goin’ out, miss?”

Noel nodded.

“Ah! It’s a crool war. I shan’t be sorry when it’s over.
Goin’ out and comin’ in, we see some sad sights ’ere. Wonderful
spirit they’ve got, too. I never look at the clock now but what
I think: ‘ There you go, slow-coach! Id like to set you on to
the day the boys come back!’ When I puts a bag in: ‘ Another
for ’ell,’ I thinks. And so it is, miss, from all I can ’ear. I’ve
got a son out there meself. It’s ’ere they’ll come along. You
stand quiet and keep a lookout, and you'll get a few minutes
with him when he’s done with ’is men. I wouldn’t move, if I
were you; he'll come to you, all right—can’t miss you, there.”
And, looking at her face, he thought: ‘ Astonishin’ what a lot
o brothers go. Wot ho! Poor little missy! A little lady, too.
Wonderful collected she is. It’s ’ard? And trying to find
something consoling to say, he mumbled out: “ You couldn’t be
in a better place for seein’ ’im off. Good night, miss; anything
else I can do for you? ”

“No, thank you; you’re very kind.”

He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing
very still. He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up
empty milk-cans, far down the platform where a few civilians
in similar case were scattered. The trainway was empty as yet.
In the grey immensity of the station and the turmoil of its
noise, she felt neither lonely nor conscious of others waiting ;
too absorbed in the one thought of seeing him and touching him
again. The empty train began backing in, stopped, and tele-
scoped with a series of little clattering bangs, backed on again,
and subsided to rest. Noel turned her eyes towards the station
arch ways. Already she felt tremulous, as though the regiment
were sending before it the vibration of its march.

She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images
of brave array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset
her. Suddenly she saw a brown swirling mass down there at
the very edge, out of which a thin brown trickle emerged towards
''522 NOVELS OF LOVE

her; no sound of music, no waved flag. She had a longing to
rush down to the barrier, but remembering the words of the
porter, stayed where she was, with her hands tightly squeezed
together. The trickle became a stream, a flood, the head of
which began to reach her. With a turbulence of voices, sun-
burnt men, burdened up to the nose, passed, with rifles jutting
at all angles; she strained her eyes, staring into that stream as
one might into a walking wood, to isolate a single tree. Her
head reeled with the strain of it, and the effort to catch his voice
among the hubbub of all those cheery, common, happy-go-lucky
sounds. Some who saw her clucked their tongues, some went
by silent, others seemed to scan her as though she might be
what they were looking for. And ever the stream and the
hubbub melted into the train, and yet came pouring on. And
still she waited motionless, with an awful fear. How could
he ever find her, or she him? Then she saw that others of those
waiting had found their men. And the longing to rush up and
down the platform almost overcame her; but still she waited.
And suddenly she saw him with two other officer boys, close
to the carriages, coming slowly down towards her. She stood
with her eyes fixed on his face; they passed, and she nearly cried
out. Then he turned, broke away from the other two, and
came straight to her. He had seen her before she had seen
him. He was very flushed, had a little fixed frown between his
blue eyes and a set jaw. They stood looking at each other,
their hands hard gripped; all the emotion of last night welling
up within them, so that to speak would have been to break down.
The milk-cans formed a kind of shelter, and they stood so close
together that none could see their faces. Noel was the first to
master her power of speech; her words came out, dainty as ever,
through trembling lips:

“ Write to me as much as ever you can, Cyril. I’m going to
be a nurse at once. And the first leave you get, I shall come to
you—don’t forget.”

“Forget! Move a little back, darling; they can’t see us here.
Kiss me!” She moved back, thrust her face forward so that
he need not stoop, and put her lips up to his. Then, feeling
that she might swoon and fall over among the cans, she with-
drew her mouth, leaving her forehead against his lips. He
murmured :

“Was it all right when you got in last night?”

“Yes; I said good-bye for you.”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 523

“Oh! Noel—I’ve been afraid—I oughtn’t—I oughtn’t——”

“Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now.”

“You have got pluck. More than I.”

A long whistle sounded. Morland grasped her hands con-
vulsively :

“Good-bye, my little wife! Don’t fret. Good-bye! I must
go. God bless you, Noel!”

“T love you.”

They looked at each other, just another moment, then she
took her hands from his and stood back in the shadow of the
milk-cans, rigid, following him with her eyes till he was lost in
the train,

Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and
red-brown faces, hands were waving vaguely, voices calling
vaguely, here and there one cheered; someone leaning far out
started to sing: “If auld acquaintance ” But Noel stood
quite still in the shadow of the milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her
hands hard clenched in front of her; and young Morland at his
window gazed back at her... .

28

How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not
know. Tears had formed a mist between her and all that seeth-
ing, summer-evening crowd. Her eyes mechanically followed
the wandering search-lights, those new milky ways, quartering
the heavens and leading nowhere. All was wonderfully beau-
tiful, the sky a deep dark blue, the moonlight whitening the
spire of St. Martin’s, and everywhere endowing the great
blocked-out buildings with dream-life. Even the lions had come
to life, and stared out over this moonlit desert of little human
figures too small to be worth the stretching out of a paw. She
sat there, aching dreadfully, as if the longing of every bereaved
heart in all the town had settled in her. She felt it to-night
a thousand times worse; for last night she had been drugged
on the new sensation of love triumphantly fulfilled. Now she
felt as if life had placed her in the corner of a huge silent room,
blown out the flame of joy, and locked the door. A little dry
sob came from her. The hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt unbut-
toned at the neck, pitching hay and gazing at her while she
dabbled her fork in the thin leavings. The bright river, and
their boat grounded on the shallows, and the swallows flitting

 
''524 NOVELS OF LOVE

over them. And that long dance, with the feel of his hand
between her shoulder-blades! Memories so sweet and sharp
that she almost cried out. She saw again their dark grassy
courtyard in the Abbey, and the white owl flying over them.
The white owl! Flying there again to-night, with no lovers on
the grass below! She could only picture Cyril now as a brown
atom in that swirling brown flood of men, flowing to a huge
brown sea. Those cruel minutes on the platform, when she had
searched and searched the walking wood for her one tree, seemed
to have burned themselves into her eyes. Cyril was lost, she
could not single him out, all blurred among those thousand other
shapes. And suddenly she thought: ‘And I—I’m lost to him;
he’s never seen me at home, never seen me in London; he won’t
be able to imagine me. It’s all in the past, only the past—for
both of us. Is there anybody so unhappy?’ And the town’s
voices—wheels, and passing feet, whistles, talk, laughter—
seemed to answer callously: ‘ Not one.’ She looked at her wrist-
watch; like his, it had luminous hands. ‘ Half-past ten’ was
greenishly imprinted there. She got up in dismay. They
would think she was lost, or run over, or something silly!
She could not find an empty taxi, and began to walk, uncer-
tain of her way at night. At last she stopped a policeman,
and said:

“ Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please? I can’t find
a taxi.” The man looked at her, and took time to think it over;
then he said:

“They’re linin’ up for the theatres,” and looked at her again.
Something seemed to move in his mechanism:

“Tm goin’ that way, miss. If you like, you can step along
with me.” Noel stepped along.

“The streets aren’t what they ought to be,” the policeman
said. ‘ What with the darkness, and the war turning the girls’
heads—you’d be surprised the number of them that comes out.
It’s the soldiers, of course.”

Noel felt her cheeks burning.

“T dare say you wouldn’t have noticed it,” the policeman went
on: “but this war’s a funny thing. The streets are gayer and
more crowded at night than I’ve ever seen them; it’s a fair
picnic all the time. What we’re goin’ to settle down to when
peace comes, I don’t know. I suppose you find it quiet enough
up your way, miss?”

“Yes,” said Noel; “quite quiet.”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 525

“No soldiers up in Bloomsbury. You got anyone in the
Army, miss? ”

Noel nodded.

“Ah! It’s anxious times for ladies. What with the Zeps,
and their brothers and all in France, it’s ’arassin’. I’ve lost a
brother meself, and I’ve got a boy out there in the Garden of
Eden; his mother carries on dreadful about him. What we
shall think of it when it’s all over, I can’t tell. These Huns
are a wicked tough lot!”

Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with
one of those perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London
police.

“Tm sorry you’ve lost someone,” she said. “I haven’t lost
anyone very near, yet.”

“Well, let’s ope you won’t, miss. These times make you feel
for others, an that’s something. I’ve noticed a great change in
folks you’d never think would feel for anyone. And yet I’ve
seen some wicked things too; we do, in the police. Some of
these English wives of aliens, and ’armless little German bakers,
an’ Austrians, and what-not: they get a crool time. It’s their
misfortune, not their fault, that’s what I think; and the way
they get served—well, it makes you ashamed 0’ bein’ English
sometimes—it does straight. And the women are the worst.
I said to my wife only last night, I said: ‘They call them-
selves Christians,’ I said, ‘but for all the charity that’s in ’em
they might as well be Huns.’ She couldn’t see it—not she!
“Well, why do they drop bombs?’ she says. ‘What!’ I said,
“those English wives and bakers drop bombs? Don’t be silly,’ I
said. ‘They’re as innocent as we. It’s the innocent that gets
punished for the guilty. ‘But they’re all spies,’ she says.
‘Oh!’ T said, ‘old lady! Now really! At your time of life!’
But there it is; you can’t get a woman to see reason. It’s readin’
the papers. I often think they must be written by women—
beggin’ your pardon, miss—but reely, the *ysterics and the ’atred
—they’re a fair knock-out. D’you find much hatred in your
household, miss? ”

Noel shook her head. “No; my father’s a clergyman, you
see.”

“Ah!” said the policeman. And in the glance he bestowed
on her could be seen an added respect.

“Of course,” he went on, “ youw’re bound to have a sense of
justice against these Huns; some of their ways of goin’ on have’
''526 NOVELS OF LOVE

been above the limit. But what I always think is—of course I
don’t say these things—no use to make yourself unpopular—
but to meself I often think: Take °em man for man, and you’d
find ’em much the same as we are, I dare say. It’s the vicious
way they’re brought up, of actin’ in the mass, that’s made ’em
such a crool lot. I see a good bit of crowds in my profession,
and I’ve a very low opinion of them. Crowds are the most
blunderin’ blighted things that ever was. They’re like an angry
woman with a bandage over her eyes, an’ you can’t have any-
thing more dangerous than that. These Germans, it seems,
are always in a crowd. They get a state o’ mind read out to
them by Bill Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an’ they
never stop to think for themselves.”

““T suppose they’d be shot if they did,” said Noel.

“Well, there is that,” said the policeman reflectively.
“They've brought discipline to an ’igh pitch, no doubt. An’
if you ask me,”’—he lowered his voice till it was almost lost in
his chin-strap—* we'll be runnin’ ’em a good second ’ere, before
long. The things we ’ave to protect now are gettin’ beyond a
joke. There’s the City against lights, there’s the streets against
darkness, there’s the aliens, there’s the aliens’ shops, there’s the
Belgians, there’s the British wives, there’s the soldiers against
the women, there’s the women against the soldiers, there’s the
Peace Party, there’s *orses against croolty, there’s a Cabinet
Minister every now an’ then; and now we’ve got these Conchies.
And, mind you, they haven’t raised our pay; no war wages in
the police. So far as I can see, there’s only one good result of
the war—the burglaries are off. But there again, you wait a
bit and see if we don’t have a prize crop of ’m, or my name’s
not ’Arris.”

“You must have an awfully exciting life!” said Noel.

The policeman looked down at her sideways, without lowering
his face, as only a policeman can, and said indulgently:

“We're used to it, you see; there’s no excitement in what
you’re used to. They find that in the trenches, ’m told. Take
our seamen—there’s lots of *em been blown up over and over
again, and there they go and sign on again next day. That’s
where the Germans make their mistake! England in war-time!
I think a lot, you know, on my go; you can’t ’elp it—the mind
will work—an’ the more I think, the more I see the fightin’
spirit in the people. We don’t make a fuss about it like Bill
Kaser. But you watch a little shopman, one o’ those fellows
''|

SAINT’S PROGRESS 527

who’s had his house bombed ; you watch the way he looks at the
mess—sort of disgusted. You watch his face, and you see he’s
got his teeth into it. You watch one of our Tommies on ’is
crutches, with the sweat pourin’ off his forehead an’ ’is eyes all
strainy, stumpin’ along—that gives you an idea! I pity these
Peace fellows, reely I pity them; they don’t know what they’re
up against. I expect there’s times when you wish you was a
man, don’t you, miss? I’m sure there’s times when I feel I’d
like to go in the trenches. That’s the worst o’ my job; you can’t
be a human bein’—not in the full sense of the word. You
mustn’t let your passions rise, you mustn’t drink, you mustn’t
talk; it’s a narrow walk o’ life. Well, here you are, miss; your
Square’s the next turnin’ to the right. Good night and thank
you for your conversation.”

Noel held out her hand. “Good night!” she said.

The policeman took her hand with a queer, flattered embar-
rassment. “Good night, miss,’ he said again. “I see you’ve
got a trouble; and I’m sure I hope it?ll turn out for the best.”

Noel gave his huge hand a squeeze; her eyes had filled with
tears, and she turned quickly up towards the Square, where a
dark figure was coming towards her, in whom she recognised
her father. His face was worn and harassed; he walked irreso-
lutely, like a man who has lost something.

“Nollie!” he said. “Thank God!” In his voice was an
infinite relief. “My child, where have you been?”

“Tt’s all right, Daddy. Cyril has just gone to the front.
I’ve been seeing him off from Charing Cross.”

Pierson slipped his arm round her. They entered the house

without speaking... .
3 §

By the rail of his transport, as far—about two feet—as he
could get from anyone, Cyril Morland stood watching Calais, a
dream city, brighten out of the heat and grow solid. He could
hear the guns already, the voice of his new life—talking in the
distance. It came with its strange excitement into a being held
by soft and marvellous memories, by one long vision of Noel and
the moonlit grass, under the dark Abbey wall. This moment of
passage from wonder to wonder was quite too much for a boy
unused to introspection, and he stood staring stupidly at Calais,
while the thunder of his new life came rolling in on that pas-
sionate moonlit dream.
''vit

Arter the emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with
the feeling a ship must have when it makes landfall. Such re-
liefs are natural, and as a rule delusive; for events are as much
the parents of the future as they were the children of the past.
To be at home with both his girls, and resting—for his holiday
would not be over for ten days—was like old times. Now
George was going on so well Gratian would be herself again ; now
Cyril Morland was gone Noel would lose that sudden youthful
love fever. Perhaps in two or three days if George continued
to progress, one might go off with Noel somewhere for one’s
last week. In the meantime the old house, wherein was gathered
so much remembrance of happiness and pain, was just as restful
as anywhere else, and the companionship of his girls would be
as sweet as on any of their past rambling holidays in Wales or
Ireland. And that first morning of perfect idleness—for no
one knew he was back in London—pottering, and playing the
piano in the homely drawing-room where nothing to speak of
was changed since his wife’s day, was very pleasant. He had
not yet seen the girls, for Noel did not come down to breakfast,
and Gratian was with George.

Diseovery that there was still a barrier between him and
them came but slowly in the next two days. He would not
acknowledge it, yet it was there, in their voices, in their move-
ments—rather an absence of something old than the presence
of something new. It was as if each had said to him: “ We
love you, but you are not in our secrets—and you must not be,
for you would try to destroy them.” They showed no fear of
him, but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he
should restrain or alter what was very dear to them. They were
both fond of him, but their natures had set foot on definitely
diverging paths. The closer the affection, the more watchful
they were against interference by that affection. Noel had a
look on her face, half dazed, half proud, which touched, yet
vexed him. What had he done to forfeit her confidence—
surely she must see how natural and right his opposition had
been! He made one great effort to show the real sympathy
he felt for her. But she only said: “I can’t talk of Cyril,

' 528
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 529

Daddy; I simply can’t!” And he, who easily shrank into
his shell, could not but acquiesce in her reserve.

With Gratian it was different. He knew that an encounter
was before him; a struggle between him and her husband—for
characteristically he set the change in her, the defection of her
faith, down to George, not to spontaneous thought and feeling
in herself. He dreaded and yet looked forward to this encoun-
ter. It came on the third day, when Laird was up, lying on
that very sofa where Pierson had sat listening to Gratian’s con-
fession of disbelief. Except for putting in his head to say good
morning, he had not yet seen his son-in-law. The young doctor
could not look fragile, the build of his face, with that jaw and
those heavy cheekbones was too much against it, but there was
about him enough of the look of having come through a hard
fight to give Pierson’s heart a squeeze.

“Well, George,” he said, “you gave us a dreadful fright! I
thank God’s mercy.” With that half-mechanical phrase he had
flung an unconscious challenge. Laird looked up whimsically.

“So you really think God merciful, sir?”

“ Don’t let us argue, George; you’re not strong enough.”

“Oh! I’m pining for something to bite on.”

Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly:

“God’s mercy is infinite, and you know it is.”

Laird also looked at Gratian, before he answered:

“God’s mercy is surely the amount of mercy man has suc-
ceeded in arriving at. How much that is, this war tells you,
sir.”

Pierson flushed. “TI don’t follow you,” he said painfully.
“How can you say such things, when you yourself are only
just No; I refuse to argue, George; I refuse.”

Laird stretched out his hand to his wife, who came to him,
and stood clasping it with her own.

“Well, I’m going to argue,” he said; “I’m simply bursting
with it. I challenge you, sir, to show me where there’s any sign
of altruistic pity, except in man. Mother love doesn’t count—
mother and child are too much one.”

The curious smile had come already, on both their faces.

“My dear George, is not man the highest work of God, and
mercy the highest quality in man?”

“Not a bit. If geological time be taken as twenty-four hours,
man’s existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it;
after a few more seconds, when man has been frozen off the

 
''530 NOVELS OF LOVE

earth, geological time will stretch for as long again, before the
earth bumps into something, and becomes nebula once more.
God’s hands haven’t been particularly full, sir, have they—two
seconds out of twenty-four hours—if man is His pet concern?
And as to mercy being the highest quality in man, that’s only
a modern fashion of talking. Man’s highest quality is the sense
of proportion, for that’s what keeps him alive; and mercy,
logically pursued, would kill him off. It’s a sort of a luxury
or by-product.”

“George! You can have no music in your soul! Science is
such a little thing, if you could only see.”

“ Show me a bigger, sir.”

© Raith.”

“In what?”

**In what has been revealed to us.”

“Ah! There it is again! By whom—how?”

“By God Himself—through our Lord.”

A faint flush rose in Laird’s yellow face, and his eyes
brightened.

“Christ,” he said, “if He existed, which some people, as you
know, doubt, was a very beautiful character; there have been
others. But to ask us to believe in His supernaturalness or
divinity at this time of day is to ask us to walk through the
world blindfold. And that’s what you do, don’t you?”

Again Pierson looked at his daughter’s face. She was stand-
ing quite still, with her eyes fixed on her husband. Somehow
he was aware that all these words of the sick man’s were for
her benefit. Anger, and a sort of despair rose within him, and
he said painfully:

“T cannot explain. There are things that I can’t make clear,
because you are wilfully blind to all that I believe in. For what
do you imagine we are fighting this great war, if it is not to re-
establish the belief in love as the guiding principle of life?”

Laird shook his head. “We are fighting to redress a bal-
ance, which was in danger of being lost.”

“The balance of power?”

“ Heavens!—no! The balance of philosophy.”

Pierson smiled. “That sounds very clever, George; but again,
I don’t follow you.”

“The balance between the sayings: ‘Might is Right,’ and
‘Right is Might.” They’re both half-truths, but the first was
beating the other out of the field. All the rest of it is cant, you
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 531

know. And by the way, sir, your Church is solid for punishment
of the evil-doer. Where’s mercy there? Hither its God is not
merciful, or else it doesn’t believe in its God.”

“ Just punishment does not preclude mercy, George.”

“Tt does in Nature.”

“Ah! Nature, George—always Nature. God transcends
Nature.”

“Then why does He give it a free rein? A man too fond
of drink, or women—how much mercy does he get from Nature?
His overindulgence brings its exact equivalent of penalty; let
him pray to God as much as he likes—unless he alters his ways
he gets no mercy. If he does alter his ways, he gets no mercy
either ; he just gets Nature’s due reward. We English who have
neglected brain and education—how much mercy are we getting
in this war? Mercy’s a man-made ornament, disease, or luxury
—call it what you will. Except that, I’ve nothing to say against
it. On the contrary, I am all for it.”

Once more Pierson looked at his daughter. Something in her
face hurt him—the silent intensity with which she was hanging
on her husband’s words, the eager search of her eyes. And he
turned to the door, saying:

“This is bad for you, George.”

He saw Gratian put her hand on her husband’s forehead and
thought jealously: ‘How can I save my poor girl from this
infidelity? Are my twenty years of care to go for nothing,
against this modern spirit?’

Down in his study, the words went through his mind: “ Holy,
holy, holy, Merciful and Mighty!” And going to the little
piano in the corner, he opened it, and began playing the hymn.
He played it softly on the shabby keys of this thirty-year old
friend, which had been with him since College days; and sang
it softly in his worn voice. A sound made him look up. Gratian
had come in. She put her hand on his shoulder, and said:

“T know it hurts you, Dad. But we’ve got to find out for
ourselves, haven’t we? All the time you and George were talk-
ing, I felt that you didn’t see that it?s I who’ve changed. It’s
not what he thinks, but what I’ve come to think of my own
accord. I wish you’d understand that I’ve got a mind of my
own, Dad.”

Pierson looked up with amazement.

“ Of course you have a mind.”

Gratian shook her head. “No, you thought my mind was
''532 NOVELS OF LOVE

yours; and now you think it’s George’s. But it’s my own. When
you were my age weren’t you trying hard to find the truth your-
self, and differing from your father?”

Pierson did not answer. He could not remember. It was like
stirring a stick amongst a drift of last year’s leaves, to awaken
but a dry rustling, a vague sense of unsubstantiality. Searched?
No doubt he had searched, but the process had brought him
nothing. Knowledge was all smoke! Emotional faith alone was
truth—treality !

“ Ah, Gracie!” he said, “ search if you must, but where will
you find bottom? The well is too deep for us. You will come
back to God, my child, when you’re tired out; the only rest is
there.”

“T don’t want to rest. Some people search all their lives, and
die searching. Why shouldn’t 1?”

“You will be most unhappy, my child.”

“Tf I’m unhappy, Dad, itll be because the world’s unhappy.
I don’t believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts
its eyes.”

Pierson got up. “ You think I shut my eyes?”

Gratian nodded.

“Tf I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness.”

* Are you happy, Dad?”

“ As happy as my nature will let me be. I miss your mother.
If I lose you and Noel x

“Oh, but we won’t let you!”

Pierson smiled. ‘“ My dear,” he said, “I think I have!”

 
''VIII
1§

Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word “ Peace”
on three successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham
Palace.

It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms
from a very late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean
shaven lips into a sort of smile. He was one of those rolling-
stone Englishmen, whose early lives are spent in all parts of
the world, and in all kinds of physical conflict—a man like a
hickory stick, tall, thin, bolt-upright, knotty, hard as nails,
with a curved fighting back to his head and a straight fighting
front to his brown face. His was the type which becomes, in
a generation or so, typically Colonial or American; but no one
could possibly have taken Jimmy Fort for anything but an
Englishman. Though he was nearly forty, there was still some-
thing of the boy in his face, something frank and curly-headed,
gallant and full of steam, and his small steady grey eyes looked
out on life with a sort of combative humour. He was still in
uniform, though they had given him up as a bad job after keep-
ing him nine months trying to mend a wounded leg which would
never be sound again; and he was now in the War Office in
connection with horses, about which he knew. He did not like
it, having lived too long with all sorts and conditions of men
who were neither English nor official, a combination which he
found trying. His life indeed, just now, bored him to dis-
traction, and he would ten times rather have been back in
France. This was why he found the word “ Peace” so excep-
tionally tantalising.

Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff
regularity he still had a great aversion; and, pulling out a pipe,
filled it and sat down at his window.

Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping
badly—the seven million sleepers in their million homes. Sound
lingered on, never quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the
narrow street below, though a little wind was creeping about to
sweeten the air. ‘ Curse the war!’ he thought. ‘What wouldn’t

533
''534 NOVELS OF LOVE

T give to be sleeping out, instead of in this damned city!’ They
who slept in the open, neglecting morality, would certainly have
the best of it to-night, for no more dew was falling than fell
into Jimmy Fort’s heart to cool the fret of that ceaseless
thought: ‘The war! The cursed war!’ In the unending rows
of little grey houses, in huge caravanserais, and the mansions of
the great, in villas, and high slum tenements; in the govern-
ment offices, and factories, and railway stations where they
worked all night; in the long hospitals where they lay in rows;
in the camp prisons of the interned; in barracks, work-houses,
palaces—no head, sleeping or waking, would be free of that
thought: ‘The cursed war!’ A spire caught his eye, rising
ghostly over the roofs. Ah! churches alone, void of the human
soul, would be unconscious! But for the rest, even sleep would
not free them! Here a mother would be whispering the name
of her boy; there a merchant would snore and dream he was
drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife would be turning to
stretch out her arms to—no one; and a wounded soldier wake
out of a dream-trench with sweat on his brow; and a news-
vendor in his garret mutter hoarsely. By thousands the be-
reaved would be tossing, stifling their moans; by thousands the
ruined would be gazing into the dark future: and housewives
struggling with sums; and soldiers sleeping like logs—for to-
morrow they died; and children dreaming of them; and prosti-
tutes lying in stale wonder at the busyness of their lives; and
journalists sleeping the sleep of the just. And over them all,
in the moonlight that thought ‘The cursed war!’ flapped its
black wings, like an old crow! “If Christ were real,” he mused,
“ He’d reach that moon down, and go chalking ‘ Peace’ with it
on every door of every house, all over Europe. But Christ’s not
real, and Hindenburg and Harmsworth are!” As real they
were as two great bulls he had once seen in South Africa, fight-
ing. He seemed to hear again the stamp and snort and crash
of those thick skulls, to see the beasts recoiling and driving at
each other, and the little red eyes of them. And pulling a
letter out of his pocket, he read it again by the light of the
moon:
“15, Camelot Mansions,
“St. John’s Wood.

“ Dear Mr. Fort,

“T came across your Club address to-night, looking at some
old letters. Did you know that I was in London? I left Steen-
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 535

bok when my husband died, five years ago. I’ve had a simply
terrific time since. While the German South West campaign
was on I was nursing out there, but came back about a year ago
to lend a hand here. It would be awfully nice to meet you
again, if by any chance you are in England. I’m working in
a V. A. D. hospital in these parts, but my evenings are usually
free. Do you remember that moonlit night at grape harvest?
The nights here aren’t scented quite like that. Listerine! Oh!
This war!
“With all good remembrances,
“Leita Lynou.”

A terrific time! If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had
always had a terrific time. And he smiled, seeing again the
stoep of an old Dutch house at High Constantia, and a woman
sitting there under the white flowers of a sweet-scented creeper
—a pretty woman, with eyes which could put a spell on you, a
woman he would have got entangled with if he had not cut and
run for it! Ten years ago, and here she was again, refreshing
him out of the past. He sniffed the fragrance of the little letter.
How everybody always managed to work into a letter what they
were doing in the war! If he answered her he would be sure to
say: “Since I got lamed, I’ve been at the War Office, working
on remounts, and a dull job it is!” TLeila Lynch! Women
didn’t get younger, and he suspected her of being older than
himself. But he remembered agreeably her white shoulders and
that turn of her neck when she looked at you with those big
grey eyes of hers. Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they
had crowded much into it—as one did in a strange land. The
episode had been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those
bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set
foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least.
Well, there was none of that danger now. for her husband was
dead—poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal days, when
nobody spent any time whatever except in the service of the
country, to improve his powers of service by a few hours’ recrea-
tion in her society. ‘ What humbugs we are!’ he thought: ‘To
read the newspapers and the speeches you'd believe everybody
thought of nothing but how to get killed for the sake of the
future. Drunk on verbiage! What heads and mouths we shall
all have when we wake up some fine morning with Peace shining
in at the window! Ah! If only we could; and enjoy ourselves
''536 NOVELS OF LOVE

again!’ And he gazed at the moon. She was dipping already,
reeling away into the dawn. Water carts and street sweepers had
come out into the glimmer; sparrows twittered in the eaves.
The city was raising a strange unknown face to the grey light,
shuttered and deserted as Babylon. Jimmy Fort tapped out his
pipe, sighed, and got into bed.

28

Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided
to have her hour’s walk before she went home. She was in
charge of two wards, and as a rule took the day watches; but
some slight upset had given her this extra spell. She was,
therefore, at her worst, or perhaps at her best, after eighteen
hours in hospital. Her cheeks were pale, and about her eyes
were little lines, normally in hiding. There was in this face a
puzzling blend of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the rather full
lips, and pale cheeks, were naturally soft; but they were hardened
by the self-containment which grows on women who have to face
life for themselves, and, conscious of beauty, intend to keep it,
in spite of age. Her figure was contradictory, also; its soft
modelling a little too rigidified by stays. In this desert of the
dawn she let her long blue overcoat flap loose, and swung her
hat on a finger, so that her light-brown, touched-up hair took
the morning breeze with fluffy freedom. Though she could not
see herself, she appreciated her appearance, swaying along like
that, past lonely trees and houses. A pity there was no one
to see her in that round of Regent’s Park, which took her the
best part of an hour, walking in meditation, enjoying the colour
coming back into the world, as if especially for her.

There was character in Leila Lynch, and she had lived an
interesting life from a certain point of view. In her girlhood
she had fluttered the hearts of many besides Cousin Edward
Pierson, and at eighteen had made a passionate love match with
a good-looking young Indian civilian, named Fane. They had
loved each other to a standstill in twelve months. Then had
begun five years of petulance, boredom, and growing cynicism,
with increasing spells of Simla, and voyages home for her health
which was really harmed by the heat. All had culminated, of
course, in another passion for a rifleman called Lynch. Divorce
had followed, remarriage, and then the Boer War, in which he
had been badly wounded. She had gone out and nursed him
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 537

back to half his robust health, and, at twenty-eight, taken up life
with him on an up-country farm in Cape Colony. This middle
period had lasted ten years, between the lonely farm and an old
Dutch house at High Constantia. Lynch was not a bad fellow,
but, like most soldiers of the old Army, had been quite carefully
divested of an esthetic sense. And it was Leila’s misfortune to
have moments when esthetic sense seemed necessary. She had
struggled to overcome this weakness, and that other weakness
of hers—a liking for men’s admiration; but there had certainly
been intervals when she had not properly succeeded. Her
acquaintance with Jimmy Fort had occurred during one of these
intervals, and when he went back to England so abruptly, she
had been feeling very tenderly towards him. She still remem-
bered him with a certain pleasure. Before Lynch died, these
“intervals ” had been interruped by a spell of returning warmth
for the invalided man to whom she had joined her life under
the romantic conditions of divorce. He had failed, of course,
as a farmer, and his death left her with nothing but her own
settled income of a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Faced by
the prospect of having almost to make her living, at thirty-
eight, she felt but momentary dismay—for she had real pluck.
Like many who have played with amateur theatricals, she
fancied herself as an actress; but, after much effort, found that
only her voice and the perfect preservation of her legs were ap-
preciated by the discerning managers and public of South
Africa; and for three chequered years she made face against
fortune with the help of them, under an assumed name. What
she did—keeping a certain bloom of refinement, was far better
than the achievements of many more respectable ladies in her
shoes. At least she never bemoaned her “reduced circum-
stances,” and if her life was irregular and had at least three
episodes, it was very human. She bravely took the rough with
the smooth, never lost the power of enjoying herself, and grew
in sympathy with the hardships of others. But she became
deadly tired. When the war broke out, remembering that she
was a good nurse, she took her real name again and a change
of occupation. For one who liked to please men, and to be
pleased by them, there was a certain attraction about that life
in war-time; and after two years of it she could still appreciate
the way her Tommies turned their heads to look at her when she
passed their beds. But in a hard school she had learned per-
fect self-control: and though the sour and puritanical perceived
''538 NOVELS OF LOVE

her attraction, they knew her to be forty-three. Besides, the
soldiers liked her; and there was little trouble in her wards.
The war moved her in simple ways; for she was patriotic in the
direct fashion of her class. Her father had been a sailor, her
husband’s an official and a soldier; the issue for her was uncom-
plicated by any abstract meditation. The Country before every-
thing! And though she had tended during those two years so
many young wrecked bodies, she had taken it as all in fhe day’s
work, lavishing her sympathy on the individual, without much
general sense of pity and waste. Yes, she had worked really
hard, had “ done her bit”; but of late she had felt rising within
her the old vague craving for “ life,” for pleasure, for something
more than the mere negative admiration bestowed on her by her
“Tommies.” Those old letters—to look them through had been
-a sure sign of this vague craving—had sharpened to poignancy
the feeling that life was slipping away from her while she was
still comely. She had been long out of England, and so hard-
worked since she came back that there were not many threads
she could pick up suddenly. Two letters out of that little
budget of the past, with a far cry between them, had awakened
within her certain sentimental longings.

“Dear LaDy oF THE STarRY FLOWERS,

“ Exiturus (sic) te saluto! The tender carries you this mes-
sage of good-bye. Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa.
And of all my memories, the last will live the longest. Grape
harvest at Constantia, and you singing: ‘If I could be the fall-
ing dew.’ If ever you and your husband come to England, do
let me know, that I may try and repay a little the happiest five
days I’ve spent out here.

“ Your very faithful servant,
“Jimmy Fort.”

She remembered a very brown face, a tall slim figure, and
something gallant about the whole of him. What was he like
after ten years? Grizzled, married, with a large family? An
odious thing—Time! And Cousin Edward’s little yellow letter.
Good heavens! Twenty-six years ago—before he was a parson,
or married or anything! Such a good partner, really musical ;
a queer, dear fellow, devoted, absent-minded, easily shocked, yet
with flame burning in him somewhere.
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 539

“ DEAR LEILA,

“ After our last dance I went straight off—I couldn’t go in.
I went down to the river, and walked along the bank; it was
beautiful, all grey and hazy, and the trees whispered, and the
cows looked holy; and I walked along and thought of you. And
a farmer took me for a lunatic, in my dress clothes. Dear Leila,
you were so pretty last night, and I did love our dances. I hope
you are not tired, and that I shall see you soon again.

“Your affectionate cousin,
“ Epwarp Pierson.”

And then he had gone and become a parson, and married,
and been a widower fifteen years. She remembered the death
of his wife, just before she left for South Africa, at that period
of disgrace when she had so shocked her family by her divorce.
Poor Edward—quite the nicest of her cousins! The only one
she would care to see again. He would be very old and terribly
good and proper, by now!

Her wheel of Regent’s Park was coming full circle, and the
sun was up behind the houses, but still no sound of traffic stirred.
She stopped before a flower-bed where was some heliotrope, and
took a long, luxurious sniff. She could not resist plucking a
sprig, too, and holding it to her nose. A sudden want of love
had run through every nerve and fibre of her; she shivered,
standing there with her eyes half closed, above the pale violet
blossom. Then, noting by her wrist-watch that it was four
o’clock, she hurried on, to get to her bed, for she would have
to be on duty again at noon. Oh! the war! She was tired!
If only it were over, and one could live! ...

Somewhere by Twickenham the moon had floated down;
somewhere up from Kentish Town the sun came soaring ; wheels
rolled again, and the seven million sleepers in their million
houses woke from morning sleep to that same thought... .
''IX

Epwarp Prrrson, dreaming over an egg at breakfast, opened a
letter in a handwriting which he did not recognise.

VAD? Hospital,
“ Mulberry Road, St. John’s Wood N. W.
“ Dear Cousin Epwarp,

“Do you remember me, or have I gone too far into the shades
of night? I was Leila Pierson once upon a time, and I often
think of you and wonder what you are like now, and what your
girls are like. I have been here nearly a year, working for our
wounded, and for a year before that was nursing in South
Africa. My husband died five years ago out there. Though
we haven’t met for I dare not think how long. I should awfully
like to see you again. Would you care to come some day and
look over my hospital? I have two wards under me; our men
are rather dears.

“Your forgotten but still affectionate cousin

“Leta Lynon.”

“Pp. S. I came across a little letter you once wrote me; it

brought back old days.”

No! He had not forgotten. There was a reminder in the
house. And he looked up at Noel sitting opposite. How like
the eyes were! And he thought: ‘I wonder what Leila has
become. One mustn’t be uncharitable. That man is dead; she
has been nursing two years. She must be greatly changed;
I should certainly like to see her. I will go!’ Again he looked
at Noel. Only yesterday she had renewed her request to be
allowed to begin her training as a nurse.

“T’m going to see a hospital to-day, Nollie,” he said; “if you
like, T’ll make enquiries. I’m afraid it’ll mean you have to
begin by washing up.”

“T know; anything, so long as I do begin.”

“Very well; I’ll see about it.” And he went back to his egg.

Noel’s voice roused him. “ Do you feel the war much, Daddy?
Does it hurt you here?” She had put her hand on her heart.

540
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 541

“Perhaps it doesn’t, because you live half in the next world,
don’t you?”

The words: “God forbid,” sprang to Pierson’s lips; he did
not speak them, but put his egg-spoon down, hurt and _ be-
wildered. What did the child mean? Not feel the war!

“T hope I’m able to help people sometimes, Nollie?’ and was
conscious that he had answered his own thoughts, not her words.
He finished his breakfast quickly, and very soon went out. He
crossed the Square, and passed East, down two crowded streets to
his church. In the traffic of those streets, all slipshod and con-
fused, his black-clothed figure and grave face, with its Vandyk
beard, had a curious remote appearance, like a moving remnant
of a past civilisation. He went in by the side door. Only five
days he had been away, but they had been so full of emotion
that the empty familiar building seemed almost strange to him.
He had come there unconsciously, groping for anchorage and
guidance in this sudden change of relationship between him
and his daughters. He stood by the pale brazen eagle, staring
into the chancel. The choir were wanting new hymn-books—
he must not forget to order them! His eyes sought the stained-
glass window he had put in to the memory of his wife. The
sun, too high to slant, was burnishing its base, till it glowed of
a deep sherry colour. “In the next world!?? What strange
words of Noel’s! His eyes caught the glimmer of the organ-
pipes; and mounting to the loft, he began to play soft chords
wandering into each other. He finished, and stood gazing down.
This space within high walls, under high vaulted roof, where
light was toned to a perpetual twilight, broken here and there
by a little glow of colour from glass and flowers, metal, and
dark wood, was his home, his charge, his refuge. Nothing
moved down there, and yet—was not emptiness mysteriously
living, the closed-in air imprinted in strange sort, as though the
drone of music and voices in prayer and praise clung there still?
Had not sanctity a presence? Outside, a barrel-organ drove its
tune along; a wagon staggered on the paved street, and the
driver shouted to his horses; some distant guns boomed out in
practice, and the rolling of wheels on wheels formed a net of
sound. But those invading noises were transmuted to a mere
murmuring in here; only the silence and the twilight were real
to Pierson, standing there, a little black figure in a great empty
space,

When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to
''542 NOVELS OF LOVE

Leila’s hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he
called in at the house of a parishioner whose son had been killed
in France. He found her in her kitchen; an oldish woman who
lived by charing. She wiped a seat for the Vicar.

“T was just makin’ meself a cup o’ tea, sir.”

“ Ah! What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!” And he sat down,
so that she should feel “ at home.”

“Yes; it gives me ’eart-burn; I take eight or ten cups a day,
now. I take ’em strong, too. I don’t seem able to get on with-
out it. I ’ope the young ladies are well, sir?”

“ wery well, thank you. Miss Noel is going to begin nursing,
too.”

“Deary—me! She’s very young; but all the young gells are
doin’ something these days. I’ve got a niece in munitions—
makin’ a pretty penny she is. I’ve been meanin’ to tell you—I
don’t come to church now; since my son was killed, I don’t
seem to ’ave the ’eart to go anywhere—aven’t been to a picture-
palace these three months. Any excitement starts me eryin’.”

“T know; but you’d find rest in church.”

Mrs. Soles shook her head, and the small twisted bob of her
discoloured hair wobbled vaguely.

“T can’t take any recreation,” she said. “I’d rather sit ’ere,
or be at work. My son was a real son to me. This tea’s the
only thing that does me any good. I can make you a fresh cup
in a minute.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Soles, but I must be getting on. We must
all look forward to meeting our beloved again, in God’s mercy.
And one of these days soon I shall be seeing you in church,
shan’t 1?”

Mrs. Soles shifted her weight from one slippered foot to
the other.

“ Well, let’s ’ope so,” she said. “ But I dunno when I shall
*ave the spirit. Good day, sir, and thank you kindly for calling,
I’m sure.”

Pierson walked away with a very faint smile. Poor queer old
soul!—she was no older than himself, but he thought of her
as ancient—cut off from her son, like so many—so many; and
how good and patient! The melody of an anthem began run-
ning in his head. His fingers moved on the air beside him,
and he stood still, waiting for an omnibus to take him to St.
John’s Wood. A thousand people went by while he was wait-
ing, but he did not notice them, thinking of that anthem. of
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 543

his daughters, and the mercy of God; and on the top of his
*bus, when it came along, he looked lonely and apart, though
the man beside him was so fat that there was hardly any seat
left to sit on. Getting down at Lord’s Cricket-ground, he asked
his way of a lady in a nurse’s dress. _

“Tf you’ll come with me,” she said, “ ’m just going there.”

“Oh! Do you happen to know a Mrs. Lynch who nurses——”

“Tam Mrs. Lynch. Why, you’re Edward Pierson! ”

He looked into her face, which he had not yet observed,

“ Leila!” he said.

“Yes, Leila! How awfully nice of you to come, Edward!”

They continued to stand, searching each for the other’s youth,
till she murmured:

“In spite of your beard, I should have known you any-
where!” But she thought: ‘Poor Edward! He is old, and
monk-like! ’

And Pierson, in answer, murmured:

“You’re very little changed, Leila! We haven’t seen each
other since my youngest girl was born. She’s just a little like
you.” But he thought: ‘My Nollie! So much more dewy;
poor Leila!’

They walked on, talking of his daughters, till they reached
the hospital.

“Tf you'll wait here a minute, I’ll take you over my wards.”

She had left him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand
and touching his gold cross with the other; but she soon came
back, and a little warmth crept about his heart. How works of
mercy suited women! She looked so different, so much softer,
beneath the white coif, with a white apron over the bluish frock.

At the change in his face, a little warmth crept about Leila,
too, just where the bib of her apron stopped; and her eyes slid
round at him while they went towards what had once been a
billiard-room.

“My men are dears,” she said; “ they love to be talked to.”

Under a skylight six beds jutted out from a green dis-
tempered wall, opposite to six beds jutting out from another
green distempered wall, and from each bed a face was turned
towards them—young faces, with but little expression in them.
A nurse, at the far end, looked round, and went on with her
work. The sight of the ward was no more new to Pierson than
to anyone else in these days. It was so familiar, indeed, that it
had practically no significance. He stood by the first bed, and

 
''544 NOVELS OF LOVE

Leila stood alongside. The man smiled up when she spoke,
and did not smile when he spoke, and that again was familiar
to him. They passed from bed to bed, with exactly the same
result, till she was called away, and he sat down by a young
soldier with a long, very narrow head and face, and a heavily
bandaged shoulder. Touching the bandage reverently, Pierson
said:

“ Well, my dear fellow—still bad?”

“Ah!” replied the soldier. “Shrapnel wound. It’s cut the
flesh properly.”

“ But not the spirit, I can see!”

The young soldier gave him a quaint look, as much as to say:
“ Not ’arf bad!” and a gramophone close to the last bed began
to play: “God bless Daddy at the war! ”

“ Are you fond of music?”

“IT like it well enough. Passes the time.”

“Tm afraid the time hangs heavy in hospital.”

“Yes; it ’angs a bit ’eavy; it’s just ’orspital life. I’ve been
wounded before, you see. It’s better than bein’ out there. I
expect I'll lose the proper use o’ this arm. I don’t worry; V’ll
get my discharge.”

“You’ve got some good nurses here.”

“Yes; I like Mrs. Lynch; she’s the lady I like.”

“ My cousin.”

“TI see you come in together. I see everything ’ere. I think
a lot, too. Passes the time.”

“Do they let you smoke? ”

“Oh, yes! They let us smoke.”

“Have one of mine?”

The young soldier smiled for the first time. “Thank you;
I’ve got plenty.”

The nurse came by, and smiled at Pierson.

“He’s one of our blasé ones; been in before, haven’t you,
Simson?”

Pierson looked at the young man, whose long, narrow face,
where one sandy-lashed eyelid drooped just a little, seemed
armoured with a sort of limited omniscience. The gramophone
had whirred and grunted into “ Sidi Brahim.” The nurse passed
on.

“¢ Seedy Abraham,’ ” said the young soldier. “The Frenchies
sing it; they takes it up one after the other, ye know.”

“Ah!” murmured Pierson; “it’s pretty.” And his fingers
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 545

drummed on the counterpane, for the tune was new to him.
Something seemed to move in the young man’s face, as if a
blind had been drawn up a little.

“T don’t mind France,” he said abruptly; “I don’t mind the
shells and that; but I can’t stick the mud. There’s a lot 0’
wounded die in the mud; can’t get up—smothered.” His un-
wounded arm made a restless movement. “I was nearly smoth-
ered myself. Just managed to keep me nose up.”

Pierson shuddered. “Thank God you did!”

“Yes; I didn’t like that. I told Mrs. Lynch about that one
day when I had the fever. She’s a nice lady; she’s seen a lot
of us boys. That mud’s not right, you know.” And again his
unwounded arm made that restless movement, while the gramo-
phone struck up: “The boys in brown.” The movement of the
arm affected Pierson horribly; he rose and, touching the ban-
daged shoulder, said:

“ Good-bye; I hope you'll soon be quite recovered.”

The young soldier’s lips twisted in the semblance of a smile;
his drooped eyelid seemed to try and raise itself.

“ Good day, sir,” he said; “ and thank you.”

Pierson went back to the hall. The sunlight fell in a pool
just inside the open door, and an uncontrollable impulse made
him move into it, so that it warmed him up to the waist. The
mud! How ugly life was! Life and Death! Both ugly!
Poor boys! Poor boys!

A voice behind him said:

“Oh! There you are, Edward! Would you like to see the
other ward, or shall I show you our kitchen?”

Pierson took her hand impulsively. “ You’re doing a noble
work, Leila. I wanted to ask you: Could you arrange for Noel
to come and get trained here? She wants to begin at once.
a fact is, a boy she is attracted to has just gone out to the

ront.

“Ah!” murmured Leila, and her eyes looked very soft.
“Poor child! We shall be wanting an extra hand next week.
T’ll see if she could come now. I’ll speak to our Matron, and
Jet vou know to-night.” She squeezed his hand hard.

“Dear Edward, I’m so glad to see you again. ‘You’re the
first of our family I’ve seen for sixteen years. I wonder if
you’d bring Noel to have supper at my flat to-night—just noth-
ing to eat, you know! It’s a tiny place. There’s a Captain
Fort coming; a nice man.”
''546 NOVELS OF LOVE

Pierson accepted, and as he walked away he thought: ‘ Dear
Leila! I believe it was Providence. She wants sympathy. She
wants to feel the past is the past. How good women are!’

And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his

black figure and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland -

Place.
''xX

Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange
places and known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit,
become open to pictorial sensation. It was as a picture or series
of pictures that Jimmy Fort ever afterwards remembered his
first supper at Leila’s. He happened to have been all day in the
open, motoring about to horse farms under a hot sun; and Leila’s
hock cup possessed a bland aid subtle strength. The scenic
sense derived therefrom had a certain poignancy, the more so
because the tall child whom he met there did not drink it, and
her father seemed but to wet his lips, so that Leila and he had
all the rest. Rather a wonderful little scene it made in his mind,
very warm, glowing, yet with a strange dark sharpness to it,
which came perhaps from the black walls.

The flat had belonged to an artist who was at the war. It
was but a pocket dwelling on the third floor. The two windows
of the little square sitting-room looked out on some trees and a
church. But Leila, who hated dining by daylight, had soon
drawn curtains of a deep blue over them. The picture which
Fort remembered was this: A little four-square table of dark
wood, with a Chinese mat of vivid blue in the centre, whereon
stood a silver lustre bowl of clove carnations; some greenish
glasses with hock cup in them; on his left, Leila in a low lilac
frock, her neck and shoulders very white, her face a little
powdered, her eyes large, her lips smiling; opposite him a
black-clothed padre with a little gold cross, over whose thin
darkish face, with its grave pointed beard, passed little gentle
smiles, but whose deep sunk grey eyes were burnt and bright;
on his right, a girl in a high grey frock, almost white, just
hollowed at the neck, with full sleeves to the elbow, so that her
slim arms escaped; her short fair hair a little tumbled; her big
grey eyes grave; her full lips shaping with a strange daintiness
round every word—and they not many; brilliant red shades over
golden lights dotting the black walls; a blue divan; a little black
piano flush with the wall; a dark polished floor; four Japanese
prints; a white ceiling. He was conscious that his own khaki
spoiled something as curious and rare as some old Chinese tea-
chest. He even remembered what they ate; lobster; cold pigeon

547
''548 NOVELS OF LOVE

pie; asparagus; St. Ivel cheese; raspberries and cream. He did
not remember half so well what they talked of, except that he
himself told them stories of the Boer War, in which he had
served in the Yeomanry, and while he was telling them, the girl,
like a child listening to a fairy-tale, never moved her eyes from
his face. He remembered that after supper they all smoked
cigarettes, even the tall child, after the padre had said to her
mildly, “ My dear!” and she had answered: “I simply must,
Daddy, just one.” He remembered Leila brewing Turkish
coffee—very good, and how beautiful her white arms looked,
hovering about the cups. He remembered her making the padre
sit down at the piano, and play'to them. And she and the girl
on the divan together, side by side, a strange contrast; with
just as strange a likeness to each other. He always remem-
bered how fine and rare that music sounded in the little room,
flooding him with a dreamy beatitude. Then—he remembered
—Leila sang, the padre standing by; and the tall child on the
divan bending forward over her knees, with her chin on her
hands. He remembered rather vividly how Leila turned her
neck and looked up, now at the padre, now at himself; and, all
through, the delightful sense of colour and warmth, a sort of
glamour over all the evening; and the lingering pressure of
Leila’s hand when he said good-bye and they went away, for they
all went together. He remembered talking a great deal to
the padre in the cab, about the public school they had both been
at, and thinking: ‘It’s a good padre—this!? He remembered
how their taxi took them to an old Square which he did not
know, where the garden trees looked densely black in the star-
shine. He remembered that a man outside the house had en-
gaged the padre in earnest talk, while the tall child and himself
stood in the open doorway, where the hall beyond was dark.
Very exactly he remembered the little conversation which then
took place between them, while they waited for her father.

“Ts it very horrid in the trenches, Captain Fort?”

“Yes, Miss Pierson; it is very horrid, as a rule.”

“Ts it dangerous all the time?”

** Pretty well.”

“ Do officers run more risks than the men?”

“ Not unless there’s an attack.” °

“‘ Are there attacks very often?”

It had seemed to him so strangely primitive a little catechism,
that he had smiled. And, though it was so dark, she had seen

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 549

that smile, for her face went proud and close all of a sudden.
He had cursed himself, and said gently:

“Have you a brother out there? ”

She shook her head.

“But someone? ”

“ Yes.”

Someone! He had heard that answer with .a little shock.
This child—this fairy princess of a child already to have some-
one! He wondered if she went about asking everyone these
questions, with that someone in her thoughts. Poor child! And
quickly he said:

“After all, look at me! I was out there a year, and here I
am with only half a game leg; times were a lot worse, then, too.
I often wish I were back there. Anything’s better than London
and the War Office.” But just then he saw the padre coming,
and took her hand.

“Good night, Miss Pierson. Don’t worry. That does no
good, and there isn’t half the risk you think.”

Her hand stirred, squeezed his gratefully, as a child’s would
squeeze.

“Good night,” she murmured ; “ thank you awfully.”

And, in the dark cab again, he remembered thinking: ‘ Fancy
that child! A jolly lucky boy, out there! Too bad! Poor little
fairy princess!”
'' 
''PART IE
I

aS

To wash up is not an exciting operation. To wash up in August
became for Noel a process which taxed her strength and enthu-
siasm. She combined it with other forms of instruction in the
art of nursing, had very little leisure, and in the evenings at
home would often fall asleep curled up in a large chintz-covered
chair.

George and Gratian had long gone back to their respective
hospitals, and she and her father had the house to themselves.
She received many letters from Cyril which she carried about
with her and read on her way to and from the hospital; and
every other day she wrote to him. He was not yet in the firing
line; his letters were descriptive of his men, his food, or the
natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers descriptive of washing
up, or reminiscent of Kestrel. But in both there was always
some little word of the longing within them.

It was towards the end of August when she had the letter
which said that he had been moved up. From now on he would
be in hourly danger! That evening after dinner she did not
go to sleep in the chair, but sat under the open window, clench-
ing her hands, and reading “Pride and Prejudice” without
understanding a word. While she was so engaged her father
came up:

“Captain Fort, Nollie. Will you give him some coffee?
I have to go out.”

When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his
coffee. He had been out there, too, and he was alive; with only
a little limp. The visitor smiled and said:

“What were you thinking about when we came in?”

“ Only the war.”

“ Any news of him?”

Noel frowned.

“Yes! he’s gone to the Front. Won’t you have a cigarette?”

551
''552 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Thanks. Will you?”

“T want one awfully. I think sitting still and waiting is
more dreadful than anything in the world.”

“ Except knowing that others are waiting. When I was out
there I used to worry horribly over my mother. She was ill
at the time. The cruelest thing in war is the anxiety of people
about each other—nothing touches that.”

The words exactly summed up Noel’s hourly thought. He
said nice things, this man with the long legs and the thin brown
bumpy face!

“T wish I were a man,” she said, “ I think women have much
the worst time in the war. Is your mother old?” But of course
she was old—why he was old himself!

“ She died last Christmas.”

Oh} Punso- sorry! 7

“You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn’t
you ?”

“Yes. That’s her portrait.” At the end of the room, hanging
on a strip of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring,
as though faded, of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face,
dark eyes, and bent a little forward, as if questioning her painter.
Fort went up to it.

“It’s not a bit like you. But she must have been a very
sweet woman.’

“ Tt’s a sort : presence in the room. I wish I were like her!”

Fort turned. “No,” he said; “no. Better as you are. It
would only have spoiled a complete thing.”

“She was good.”

“ And aren’t you?”

“Oh! no. I get a devil.”

“You! Why, you’re out of a fairy-tale! ”

“Tt comes from Daddy—only he doesn’t know, because he’s
a perfect saint; but I know he’s had a devil somewhere, or he
couldn’t be the saint he is.”

“H’m!” said Fort. “'That’s very deep: and I believe it’s
true—the saints did have devils.”

“Poor Daddy’s devil has been dead ages. It’s been starved
out of him, I think.”

“Does your devil ever get away with you?”

Noel felt her cheeks growing red under his stare, and she
turned to the window:

“Yes. It’s a real devil.”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 553

Vividly there had come before her the dark Abbey, and the
moon balancing over the top of the crumbling wall, and the
white owl flying across. And, speaking to the air, she said:

“Tt makes you do things that you want to do.”

She wondered if he would laugh—it sounded so silly. But he
did not.

“And damn the consequences? I know. It’s rather a jolly
thing to have.”

Noel shook her head. “ Here’s Daddy coming back!”

Fort held out his hand.

“T won’t stay. Good night; and don’t worry too much,
will you?”

He kept her hand rather a long time, and gave it a hard
squeeze.

Don’t worry! What advice! Cyril!

2 §

In September, 1916, Saturday still came before Sunday, in
spite of the war. For Edward Pierson this Saturday had been
a strenuous day, and even now, at nearly midnight, he was still
conning his just-completed sermon.

A patriot, he had often a passionate longing to resign his
parish, and go like his curate for a chaplain at the Front. It
seemed to him that people must think his life idle and sheltered
and useless. Even in times of peace he had been sensitive enough
to feel the cold draughty blasts which the Church encounters in
a material age. He knew that nine people out of ten looked on
him as something of a parasite, with no real work in the world.
And since he was nothing if not conscientious, he worked him-
self to the bone.

To-day he had risen at half-past six, and after his bath and.
exercises, had sat down to his sermon—for, even now, he wrote
a new sermon once a month, though he had the fruits of twenty-
six years to choose from. True, these new sermons were rather
compiled than written, because, bereft of his curate, he had not
_time enough for fresh thought on old subjects. At eight he had
breakfasted with Noel, before she went off to her hospital,
whence she would return at eight in the evening. Nine to ten
was his hour for seeing parishioners who had troubles, or wanted
help or advice, and he had received three to-day who all wanted
help, which he had given. From ten to eleven he had gone back
''554 NOVELS OF LOVE

to his sermon, and had spent from eleven to one at his church,
attending to small matters, writing notices, fixing hymns, hold-
ing the daily half-hour Service instituted during war-time, to
which but few ever came. He had hurried back to lunch,
scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour of
forgetfulness. At three he had christened a very noisy baby,
and been detained by its parents who wished for information
on a variety of topics. At half-past four he had snatched a cup
of tea, reading the paper; and had spent from five to seven
visiting two Parish Clubs, and those whose war-pension matters
he had in hand, and filling up forms which would be kept in
official places till such time as the system should be changed and
a fresh set of forms issued. From seven to eight he was at home
again, in case his flock wanted to see him; to-day four sheep had
come, and gone away, he was afraid, but little the wiser. From
half-past eight to half-past nine he had spent in choir practice,
because the organist was on his holiday. Slowly in the cool of
the evening he had walked home, and fallen asleep in his chair
on getting in. At eleven he had woken with a start, and, hard-
ening his heart, had gone back to his sermon. And now, at
nearly midnight, it was still less than twenty minutes long. He
lighted one of his rare cigarettes, and let thought wander. How
beautiful those pale pink roses were in that old silver bowl—
like a little strange poem, or a piece of Debussy music, or a
Mathieu Maris picture—reminding him oddly of the word Leila.
Was he wrong in letting Noel see so much of Leila? But then
she was so improved—dear Leila! . . . The pink roses were just
going to fall! And yet how beautiful! ... It was quiet to-
night; he felt very drowsy. . . . Did Nollie still think of that
young man, or had it passed? She had never confided in him
since! After the war, it would be nice to take her to Italy, to
all the little towns. They would see the Assisi of St. Francis.
The Little Flowers of St. Francis. The Little Flowers! .
His hand dropped, the cigarette went out. He slept with his
face in shadow. Slowly into the silence of his sleep little sinister
sounds intruded. Short concussions, dragging him back out of
that deep slumber. He started up. Noel was standing at the
door, in a long coat. She said in her calm voice:

“Zeps, Daddy!”

“Yes, my dear. Where are the maids?”

An Irish voice answered from the hall: “ Here, sir, trustin’
in God; but ’tis better on the ground floor.”

 

y
a
4
Q
f
;

;
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 555

He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against
the stairs,

“Yes, yes, Bridgie; you’re safe down here.” Then he noticed
that Noel was gone. He followed her out into the Square, alive
with faces faintly luminous in the darkness, and found her
against the garden railings.

“You must come back in, Nollie.”

“Oh, no! Cyril has this every day.”

He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to
stir his blood. They stayed there for some minutes, straining
their eyes for sight of anything save the little zagged splashes
of bursting shrapnel, while voices buzzed, and muttered: “ Look!
There! There! There it is!”

But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson’s for he
saw nothing. He took her arm at last, and led her in. In the
hall she broke from him.

“ Let’s go up on the roof, Daddy!” and ran upstairs.

Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trap-door
on to the roof.

“Tt’s splendid up here!” she cried.

He could see her eyes blazing, and thought: ‘How my child
does love excitement—it’s almost terrible!’

Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling search-lights
were lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires
rose from among the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly. The
guns had ceased firing, as though puzzled. One distant bang
rumbled out.

“A bomb! Oh! If we could only get one of the Zeps!”

A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a
minute, then ceased as if by magic. They saw two search-lights
converge and meet right overhead.

“It’s above us!” murmured Noel.

_ Pierson put his arm round her waist. ‘She feels no fear!’
he thought. The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly,
from far away, came a confusion of weird sounds.

“What is it? They’re cheering. Oh! Daddy, look!” There
in the heavens, towards the east, hung a dull red thing, length-
ening as they gazed.

“They ve got it. It’s on fire! Hurrah!”

Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began
canting downward ; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy
of sound. And Pierson’s arm tightened on her waist.
''556 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Thank God!” he muttered.

The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down
below the level of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared,
as if some huge jug of crimson light had been flung out on them.
Something turned over in Pierson’s heart; he flung up his hand
to his eyes.

“The poor men in it!” he said. “ How terrible!”

Noel’s voice answered, hard and pitiless:

“They needn’t have come. They’re murderers!”

Yes, they were murderers—but how terrible! And he stood
quivering, with his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering
had died out into silence.

“ Let’s pray, Nollie!” he whispered. “O God, Who in Thy
great mercy hath delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping
the souls of these our enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before
our eyes; give us the power to pity them—men like ourselves.”

But even while he prayed he could see Noel’s face flame-white
in the darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt
once more the thrill of triumph.

They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after
sat up together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits
and drinking milk, which they warmed on an etna. It was
nearly two o’clock before they went to bed. Pierson fell asleep
at once, and never turned till awakened at half-past six by his
alarum. He had Holy Communion to administer at eight, and
he hurried to get early to his church and see that nothing
untoward had happened to it. There it stood in the sunlight;
tall, grey, unharmed, with bell gently ringing.

3 §

And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his
trench, tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for
the hundredth time, calculating exactly where he meant to put
foot and hand for the going over: ‘I absolutely mustn’t let
those chaps get in front of me,’ he thought. So many yards
before the first line of trenches, so many yards to the second
line, and there stop. So his rehearsals had gone; it was the
performance now! Another minute before the terrific racket of
the drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would ad-
vance before them. He ran his eye down the trench. The man
next him was licking his two first fingers, as if he might be
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 55?

doing to bowl at cricket. Further down, a man was feeling
his puttees. A voice said: ‘Wot price the orchestra nah!”
He saw teeth gleam in faces burnt almost black. Then he
looked up; the sky was blue beyond the brownish film of dust
raised by the striking shells. Noel! Noel! Noel... . He dug
his fingers deep into the left side of his tunic till he could feel
the outline of her photograph between his dispatch-case and his
heart. His heart fluttered just as it used when he was stretched
out with hand touching the ground, before the start of the
“hundred yards” at school. Out of the corner of his eye he
caught the flash of a man’s “ briquet ” lighting a cigarette. All

* right for those chaps, but not for him; he wanted all his breath
—this rifle, and kit were handicap enough! Two days ago he
had been reading in some paper how men felt just before an
attack. And now he knew. He just felt nervous. If only the
moment would come, and get itself over! For all the thought
he gave to the enemy there might have been none—nothing but
shells and bullets, with lives of their own. He heard the whistle ;
his foot was on the spot he had marked down; his hand where
he had seen it; he called out: “ Now, boys!” His head was
over the top, his body over; he was conscious of someone falling,
and two men neck and neck beside him. Not to try and run,
not to break out of a walk; to go steady, and yet keep ahead!
D——n these holes! A bullet tore through his sleeve, grazing
his arm—a red-hot sensation, like the touch of an iron.
British shell from close over his head burst sixty yards ahead;
he stumbled, fell flat, picked himself up. Three ahead of him
now! He walked faster, and drew alongside. Two of them fell.
‘What luck!’ he thought; and gripping his rifle harder, pitched
headlong into a declivity. Dead bodies lay there! The first
German trench line, and nothing alive in it, nothing to clean up,
nothing of it left! He stopped, getting his wind; watching
the men panting and stumbling in. The roar of the guns was
louder than ever again, barraging the second line. So far, good!
And here was his captain!

“ Ready, boys? On, then!”

This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all
holes and hummocks. Half consciously he took cover all he
could. The air was alive with the whistle from machine-gun
fire storming across zigzag fashion—alive it was with bullets,
dust, and smoke. ‘ How shall I tell her?’ he thought. There
would be nothing to tell but just a sort of jagged brown sen-
''558 NOVELS OF LOVE

sation. He kept his eyes steadily before him, not wanting to
see the men falling, not wanting anything to divert him from
getting there. He felt the faint fanning of the passing bullets.
The second line must be close now. Why didn’t that barrage
lift? Was this new dodge of firing till the last second going
to do them in? Another hundred yards and he would be bang
into it. He flung himself flat and waited; looking at his wrist-
watch he noted that his arm was soaked with blood. He
thought: ‘A wound! Now I shall go home. Thank God! Oh,
Noel!’ The passing bullets whirled above him; he could hear
them even through the screech and thunder of the shell-fire.
‘The beastly things!’ he thought. A voice beside him gaspede
out:

“147s lifted, sir.”

He called: “ Come on, boys!” and went forward, stooping.
A bullet struck his rifle. The shock made him stagger and sent
an electric shock spinning up his arm. ‘ Luck again!’ he
thought. ‘Now for it! I haven’t seen a German yet!’ He
leaped forward, spun round, flung up his arms, and fell on his
back, shot through and through....

1 2

4 §

The position was consolidated, as they say, and in the dark-
‘ness stretcher-bearers were out over the half-mile. Like will-
.o’-the-wisps, with their shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after
hour, slowly quartering the black honeycomb which lay behind
the new British line. Now and then in the light of some star- -
‘shell their figures were disclosed, bending and raising the forms
of the wounded, or wielding pick and shovel.

“ Officer.”

“ Dead ? ”

ce Sure.”’

“ Search.”

From the shaded lantern, lowered to just above the body, a
‘yellowish glare fell on face and breast. The hands of the
searcher moved in that little pool of light. The bearer who was
itaking motes bent down.

“ Another boy,” he said. “That all he has?”

The searcher raised himself.

‘“ Just those, and a photo.”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 559

“Dispatch-case; pound loose; cigarette-case; wrist-watch ;
photo. Let’s see it.”

The searcher placed the photo in the pool of light. The tiny
face of a girl stared up at them, unmoved, from its short hair.

“ Noel,” said the searcher, reading.

“H’m! Take care of it. Stick it in his case. Come on!”

The pool of light dissolved, and darkness for ever covered
Cyril Morland.
''II
1 §

Wuewn those four took their seats in the Grand Circle at Queen’s
Hall the programme was already at the second number, which,
in spite of all the efforts of patriotism, was of German origin
—a Brandenburg concerto by Bach. More curious still, it was
encored. Pierson did not applaud, he was too far gone in
pleasure, and sat with a rapt smile on his face, oblivious of his
surroundings. He remained this removed from mortal joys and
sorrows till the last applause had died away, and Leila’s voice
said in his ear:

“Tsgn’t it a wonderful audience, Edward? Look at all that
khaki. Who'd have thought those young men cared for music—
good music—German music, too?”

Pierson looked down at the patient mass of standing figures
in straw hats and military caps, with faces turned all one way,
and sighed. .

“TJ wish I could get an audience like that in my church.”

A smile crept out at the corner of Leila’s lips. She was think-
ing: ‘Ah! Your Church is out of date, my dear, and so are
you! Your Church, with its smell of mould and incense, its
stained-glass, and narrowed length and droning organ. Poor
Edward, so out of the world!’ But she only pressed his arm,
and whispered:

“ Look at Noel!”

The girl was talking to Jimmy Fort. Her cheeks were flushed,
and she looked prettier than Pierson had seen her look for a
long time now, ever since Kestrel, indeed. He heard Leila
sigh.

“Does she get news of her boys? Do you remember that
May Week, Edward? We were very young then; even you were
young. That was such a pretty little letter you wrote me. I
can see you still—wandering in your dress clothes along the
river, among the ‘ holy’ cows.”

But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour
and the girl. A violinist had begun to play the César Franck
Sonata. It was Pierson’s favourite piece of music, bringing him,

560
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 561

as it were, a view of heaven, of devotional blue air where devout
stars were shining in a sunlit noon, above ecstatic trees and
waters where ecstatic swans were swimming.

“Queer world, Mr. Pierson! Fancy those boys having to go
back to barrack life after listening to that! What’s your feel-
ing? Are we moving back to the apes? Did we touch top note
with that Sonata?”

Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.

“No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to
the apes; if we ever came from them. Those boys have the
souls of heroes! ”

“T know that, sir, perhaps better than you do.”

“Ah! yes,” said Pierson humbly, “I forgot, of course.” But
he still looked at his neighbour doubtfully. This Captain Fort,
who was a friend of Leila’s, and who had twice been to see them,.
puzzled him. He had a frank face, a frank voice, but queer
opinions, or so it seemed to Pierson—little bits of Moslemism,
little bits of the backwoods, and the veldt; queer unexpected
cynicisms, all sorts of side views on England had lodged in him,
and he did not hide them. They came from him like bullets, in
that frank voice, and drilled little holes in the listener. Those
critical sayings flew so much more poignantly from one who
had been through the same educational mill as himself, than
if they had merely come from some rough diamond, some artist,
some foreigner, even from a doctor like George. And they al-
ways made him uncomfortable, like the touch of a prickly leaf ;
they did not amuse him. Certainly Edward Pierson shrank from
the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy. After all, it was
but natural that he should.

He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting
from the other two at the door. He slipped his hand through her
arm; and, following out those thoughts of his in the concert-
hall, asked.

“Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?”

“Yes; he’s a nice man.”

“He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but
strange views, I’m afraid.”

“He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he
says that a good many of us are bullies too.”

“ Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean.”

* But are we, Daddy?”

“ Surely not.”
''562 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ A policeman I talked to once said the same. Captain Fort
says that very few men can stand having power put into their
hands without being spoiled. He told me some dreadful stories.
He says we have no imagination, so that we often do things
without seeing how brutal they are.”

“We're not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we’re a
kind people.”

Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:

“Kind people often think others are kind too, when they
really aren’t. Captain Fort doesn’t made that mistake.”

“T think he’s a little cynical, and a little dangerous.”

“Are all people dangerous who don’t think like others,
Daddy?”

Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing
when he was being mocked. He looked at his daughter with a
smile.

“Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly
subversive. I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides
of life.”

“T'like him the better for that.”

“Well, well,” Pierson answered absently. He had work to
do in preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study
on getting in.

Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk. The cur-
tains were not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in.
Without lighting up, she set the etna going, and stood looking
at the moon—full for the second time since she and Cyril had
waited for it in the Abbey. And pressing her hands to her
breast, she shivered. If only she could summon him from the
moonlight out there; if only she were a witch—could see him,
know where he was, what doing! For a fortnight now she had
received no letter. Every day since he had left she had read
the casualty lists, with the superstitious feeling that to do so
would keep him out of them. She took up the Times. There
was just enough light, and she read the roll of honour—till the
moon shone in on her, lying on the floor, with the dropped
journal... .

But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on
that night after he left her, she had taken love. No sign be-
trayed to the house her disaster ; the journal on the floor, and the
smell of the burnt milk which had boiled over, revealed nothing.
After all, she was but one of a thousand hearts which spent that

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 563

moonlit night in agony. Each night, year in, year out, a thou-
sand faces were buried in pillows to smother that first awful
sense of desolation, and grope for the secret spirit-place where
bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of healing from
knowledge of each other’s trouble. .

In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat
her breakfast, and went off to her hospital. There she washed
up plates and dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.

2 §

The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at
lunch time. He read it with a dreadful aching. Poor, poor
little Nollie! What an awful trouble for her! And he, too, went
about his work with the nightmare thought that he had to
break the news to her that evening. Never had he felt more
lonely, more dreadfully in want of the mother of his children.
She would have known how to soothe, how to comfort. On her
heart the child could have sobbed away grief. And all that
hour, from seven to eight, when he was usually in readiness to
fulfil the functions of God’s substitute to his parishioners, he
spent in prayer of his own, for guidance how to inflict and
heal this blow. When, at last, Noel came, he opened the door to
her himself, and, putting back the hair from her forehead, said:

“Come in here a moment, my darling! ”

Noel followed him into the study, and sat down.

“T know already, Daddy.”

Pierson was more dismayed by this stoicism than he would
have been by any natural outburst. He stood, timidly stroking
her hair, murmuring to her what he had said to Gratian, and
to so many others in these days: “ There is no death; look for-
ward to seeing him again; God is merciful.” And he marvelled
at the calmness of that pale face—so young.

“You are very brave, my child!” he said.

“ There’s nothing else to be, is there?”

“Tsn’t there anything I can do for you, Nollie?”

* No, Daddy.7

“ When did you see it?”

Last night.”

: She had already known for twenty-four hours without telling

im!

“ Have you prayed, my darling?”
''564 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ (Nig?

“Try, Nollie!”

ce IN'O?*

“ Ah, try! 29

“Tt would be ridiculous, Daddy ; you don’t know.”

Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from
her, and said:

“You look dreadfully tired. Would you like a hot bath, and

our dinner in bed?”

“‘T’d like some tea; that’s all’ And she went out.

When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went
out; and, moved by a longing for woman’s help, took a cab to
Leila’s flat.
''III
1§

On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a
taxi; a vehicle which, at night, in wartime, has certain advan-
tages for those who desire to become better acquainted. Vibra-
tion, sufficient noise, darkness, are guaranteed; and all that is
lacking for the furtherance of emotion is the scent of honey-
suckle and roses, or even of the white flowering creeper which on
the stoep at High Constantia had smelled so much sweeter than
petrol.

When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to
which she had been looking forward, she was overcome by an
access of nervous silence. She had been passing through a
strange time for weeks past. Every night she examined her
sensations without quite understanding them as yet. When a
woman comes to her age, the world-force is liable to take posses-
sion, saying:

“You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty,
you are not, cannot be, old. Cling to youth, cling to beauty;
take all you can get, before your face gets lines and your hair
grey; it is impossible that you have been loved for the last
time.”

To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had
brought this emotion to a head. She was not of a grudging
nature, and could genuinely admire Noel, but the idea that
Jimmy Fort might also admire disturbed her greatly. He must
not; it was not fair; he was too old—besides, the girl had her
boy; and she had taken care that he should know it. So, lean-
ing towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady sang, she
had whispered: “ Penny?” And he had whispered back: “ Tell
you afterwards.”

That had comforted her. She would make him take her home.
It was time she showed her heart.

And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in
sudden shyness she found it very difficult. Love, to which for
quite three years she had been a stranger, was come to life within
her. The knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing,

565
''5e6 : NOVELS OF LOVE

that she sat with face averted, unable to turn the precious min-
utes to account. They arrived at the flat without having done
more than agree that the streets were dark, and the moon bright.
She got out with a sense of bewilderment, and said rather des-
perately :

“You must come up and have a cigarette. It’s quite early,
etl”?

He went up.

“ Wait just a minute,” said Leila.

Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at
some sunflowers in a bowl—Famille Rose—and waited just ten;
smiling a little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the
dainty way her lips shaped the words she spoke. If she had not
had that lucky young devil of a soldier boy, one would have
wanted to buckle her shoes, lay one’s coat in the mud for her, or
whatever they did in fairy-tales. One would have wanted—ah!
what would one not have wanted! Hang that soldier boy! Leila
said he was twenty-two. By George! how old it made a man feel
who was rising forty, and tender on the off-fore! No fairy
princesses for him! Then a whiff of perfume came to his nos-
trils; and, looking up, he saw Leila standing before him, in a
long garment of dark silk, whence her white arms peeped out.

“Another penny? Do you remember these things, Jimmy?
The Malay women used to wear them in Cape Town. You can’t
think what a relief it is to get out of my slave’s dress. Oh!
I’m so sick of nursing! Jimmy, I want to live again a little!”

The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gar-
denia, just where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no
whiter than her skin. He wondered whimsically whether it had
dropped to her out of the dark!

“Live?” he said. “Why! Don’t you always?”

She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell back from the
whole length of those white arms.

“T haven’t lived for two years. Oh, Jimmy! Help me to
live a little! Life’s so short, now.”

Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of
her arms; the scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his
cheeks growing warm, and looked down.

She slipped suddenly forward onto her knees at his feet, took
his hand, pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:

“Love me a little! What else is there? Oh! Jimmy, what
else is there? ”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 567

And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands,
stirring his senses, Fort thought: ‘Ah, what else is there, in
these forsaken days?’

28

To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some
sort a philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom
failed to seem amusing. But when he walked away from Leila’s
he was pensive. She was a good sort, a pretty creature, a sports-
woman, an enchantress; but—she was decidedly mature. And
here he was—involved in helping her to “live”; involved al-
most alarmingly, for there had been no mistaking the fact that
she had really fallen in love with him. .

This was flattering and sweet. Times were sad, and pleasure
scarce, but ! The roving instinct which had kept him, from
his youth up, rolling about the world, shied instinctively at
bonds, however pleasant, the strength and thickness of which he
could not gauge; or, was it that perhaps for the first time in his
life he had been peeping into fairyland of late, and this affair
with Leila was by no means fairyland? He had another reason,
more unconscious, for uneasiness. His heart, for all his wander-
ings, was soft, he had always found it difficult to hurt anyone,
especially anyone who did him the honour to love him. A sort
of presentiment weighed on him while he walked the moonlit
streets at this most empty hour, when even the late taxis had
ceased to run. Would she want him to marry her? Would it be
his duty, if she did? And then he found himself thinking of
the concert, and that girl’s face, listening to the tales he was
telling her. ‘ Deuced queer world, he thought, ‘the way things
go! I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew—and that
good padre! Phew!’

He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in
his leg, and having to spend the night on a door-step, that he
had plenty of time for rumination; but since it brought him no
confidence whatever, he began at last to feel: ‘ Well, it might be
a lot worse. Take the goods the gods send you and don’t fuss!’
And suddenly he remembered with extreme vividness that night
on the stoep at High Constantia, and thought with dismay:
“I could have plunged in over head and ears then; and now—I
can’t! That’s life all over! Poor Leila! Me miserum, too, per-
haps—who knows!”

 
''IV

WuEN Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were
smiling, and her lips were soft. She seemed to smile and be soft .
all over, and she took both his hands. Everything was a pleasure
to her that day, even the sight of this sad face. She was in love
and was loved again; had a present and a future once more, not
only her own full past; and she must finish with Edward in half
an hour, for Jimmy was coming. She sat down on the divan,
took his hand in 2 sisterly way, and said:

“Tell me, Edward; I can see you’re in trouble. What is it?” '

“Noel. The boy she was fond of has been killed.”

She dropped his hand.

“Oh, no! Poor child! It’s too truel!” Tears started up in
her grey eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief.
“ Poor, poor little Noel! Was she very fond of him?”

“A very sudden, short engagement; but I’m afraid she takes
it desperately to heart. I don’t know how to comfort her; only a
woman could. I came to ask you: Do you think she ought
to go on with her work? What do you think, Leila? I feel
lost! ”

Leila, gazing at him, thought: ‘ Lost? Yes, you look lost, my
poor Edward!’

“T should let her go on,” she said: “it helps; it’s the only
thing that does help. Ill see if I can get them to let her come
into the wards. She ought to be in touch with suffering and the
men; that kitchen work will try her awfully just now. Was he
very young?”

“Yes. They wanted to get married. I was opposed to it.”

Leila’s lips curled ever so little. ‘ You would be!’ she thought.

“T couldn’t bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like
that; they had not known each other three weeks. It was very
hard for me, Leila. And then suddenly he was sent to the
front.”

Resentment welled up in Leila. The kill-joys! As if life
didn’t kill joy fast enough! Her cousin’s face at that moment
was almost abhorrent to her, its gentle perplexed goodness dark-
ened and warped by that monkish look. She turned away,
glanced at the clock over the hearth, and thought: ‘ Yes, and he

568
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 569

would stop Jimmy and me! He would say: “Oh, no! dear
Leila—you mustn’t love—it’s sin!” How I hate that word!’

“T think the most dreadful thing in life,” she said abruptly,
“is the way people suppress their natural instincts; what they
suppress in themselves they make other people suppress too, if
they can; and that’s the cause of half the misery in this world.”

Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose
cause he could not know, she added hastily: “I hope Noel will
get over it quickly, and find someone else.”

“Yes. If they had been married—how much worse it would
have been. Thank God, they weren’t!”

“T don’t know. They would have had an hour of bliss. Even
an hour of bliss is worth something in these days.”

“To those who only believe in this life—perhaps.”

‘Ten minutes more!’ she thought: ‘Oh, why doesn’t he go??
But at that very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went
out to him again.

“Tm so sorry, Edward. If I can help in any way—I’ll try
my best with Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you
feel inclined.”

She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down
again, she yet could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a
little rush of pitying warmth in the pressure of her hand.

Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for
him.

“ Good-bye, Leila; you’re very good and kind to me. Good-
bye.”

Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and—she let
him out.

Running upstairs again she thought: ‘I’ve just time. What
shall I put on? Poor Edward, poor Noel! What colour does
Jimmy like? Oh! Why didn’t I keep him those ten years ago
—what utter waste!? And, feverishly adorning herself, she
came back to the window, and stood there in the dark to watch,
while some jasmine which grew below sent up its scent to her.
‘Would I marry him?’ she thought, ‘if he asked me? But he
won't ask me—why should he now? Besides, I couldn’t bear
him to feel I wanted position or money from him. I only want
love—love—love!’ The silent repetition of that word gave
her a wonderful sense of solidity and comfort. So long as she
only wanted love, surely he would give it.

A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her,
''570 NOVELS OF LOVE

It was he! And suddenly she bethought herself. She went
to the little black piano, sat down, and began to sing the song
she had sung to him ten years ago: “If I could be the falling
dew and fall on thee all day!” She did not even look round
when he came in, but continued to croon out the words, con-
scious of him just behind her shoulder in the dark. But when
she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round him,
strained him to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder; think-
ing of Noel and that dead boy, thinking of the millions of other
boys, thinking of her own happiness, thinking of those ten years
wasted, of how short was life, and love; thinking—hardly know-
ing what she thought ! And Ji immy Fort, very moved by this
emotion which he only half understood, pressed her tightly in
his arms, and kissed her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm
in the darkness,
''Vv
18

Noet went on with her work for a month, and then, one morn-
ing, fainted over a pile of dishes. The noise attracted attention,
and Mrs. Lynch was summoned,

The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila’s
nerves severely. But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent
for. Leila went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot
Mansions. Why take her home in this state, why not save the
jolting, and let her recover properly? They went upstairs arm
in arm. Leila made her lie down on the divan, and put a hot-
water bottle to her feet. Noel was still so passive and pale that
even to speak to her seemed a cruelty. And, going to her little
sideboard, Leila stealthily extracted a pint bottle of some cham-
pagne which Jimmy Fort had sent in, and took it with two
glasses and a corkscrew into her bedroom. She drank a little
herself, and came out bearing a glass to the girl. Noel shook
her head, and her eyes seemed to say: “Do you really think
I’m so easily mended?” But Leila had been through too much
in her time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it to the
girl’s lips until she drank. It was excellent champagne, and,
since Noel had never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous
effect. Her eyes brightened; little red spots came up in her
cheeks. And suddenly she rolled over and buried her face deep
in a cushion. With her short hair, she looked so like a child
lying there, and Leila knelt down, stroking her head, and saying:
“There, there; my love! There, there!”

At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, mask-like
despair of the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and
her face had a wild look. She withdrew herself from Leila’s
touch, and, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, said:

“T can’t bear it; I can’t sleep. I want him back; I hate life—
I hate the world. We hadn’t done anything—only just loved
each other. God likes punishing; just because we loved each
other ; we had only one day to love each other—only one day—
only one!”

Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms

571
''572 NOVELS OF LOVE

straining and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch
it. The voice, uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the
words and face, went on:

“T won’t—I don’t want to live. If there’s another life, I
shall go to him. And if there isn’t—it’s just sleep.”

Leila put out her hand to ward off these wild wanderings.
Like most women who live simply the life of their senses and
emotions, she was orthodox, or rather never speculated on such
things.

“Tell me about yourself and him,” she said.

Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin. “ We loved each
other; and children are born, aren’t they, after you’ve loved?
But mine won’t be!” From the look on her face rather than
from her words, the full reality of her meaning came to Leila,
vanished, came again. Nonsense! But—what an awful thing,
if true! That which had always seemed to her such an exag-
gerated occurrence in the common walks of life—why! now, it
was a tragedy! Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms
round the girl.

“ My poor dear!” she said; “you’re fancying things! ”

The colour had faded out of Noel’s face, and, with her head
thrown back and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scorn-
ful young ghost.

“If it is—I shan’t live. I don’t mean to—it’s easy to die. I
don’t mean Daddy to know.”

“Oh! my dear, my dear!” was all Leila could stammer.

“Was it wrong, Leila?”

“Wrong? I don’t know—wrong? If it really is so—it was—
unfortunate. But surely, surely—you’re mistaken?”

Noel shook her head. “I did it so that we should belong to
each other. Nothing could have taken him from me.”

Leila caught at the girl’s words.

“Then, my dear—he hasn’t quite gone from you, you
see?”

Noel’s lips formed a “No” which was inaudible. “But
Daddy!” she whispered.

Edward’s face came before Leila so vividly that she could
hardly see the girl for the tortured shape of it. Then the
hedonist in her revolted against that ascetic vision. Her worldly
judgment condemned and deplored this calamity, her instinct
could not help applauding that hour of life and love, snatched
out of the jaws of death. “Need he ever know?” she said.

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 573

“T could never lie to Daddy. But it doesn’t matter. Why
should one go on living, when life is rotten? ”

Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late
October. Leila got up from her knees. She stood at the window
thinking hard.

“ My dear,” she said at last, “you mustn’t get morbid. Look
at me! I’ve had two husbands, and—and—well, a pretty stormy
up and down time of it; and I dare say I’ve got lots of trouble
before me. But I’m not going to cave in. Nor must you. The
Piersons have plenty of pluck; you mustn’t be a traitor to your
blood. That’s the last thing. Your boy would have told you to
stick it. These are your ‘trenches, and you’re not going to be
downed, are you?”

After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel
said:

“Give me a cigarette, Leila.”

Leila produced the little flat case she carried.

“That’s brave,” she said. “ Nothing’s incurable at your age.
Only one thing’s incurable—getting old.”

Noel laughed. “ That’s curable too, isn’t it?”

“Not without surrender.”

Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two
cigarettes fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling. Then Noel
got up from the divan, and went over to the piano. She was
still in her hospital dress of lilac-coloured linen, and while she
stood there touching the keys, playing a chord now and then,
Leila’s heart felt hollow from compassion; she was so happy
herself just now, and this child so very wretched!

“ Play to me,” she said; “no—don’t; V’ll play to you.” And
sitting down, she began to play and sing a little French song,
whose first line ran: “ Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous.’ It was
soft, gay, charming. If the girl cried, so much the better. But
Noel did not cry. She seemed suddenly to have recovered all her
self-possession. She spoke calmly, answered Leila’s questions
without emotion, and said she would go home. Leila went out
with her, and walked some way in the direction of her home;
distressed, but frankly at a loss. At the bottom of Portland
Place Noel stopped and said: “I’m quite all right now, Leila;
thank you awfully. I shall just go home and lie down. And I
shall come to-morrow, the same as usual. Good-bye!” Leila
could only grasp the girl’s hand, and say: “My dear, that’s
splendid. There’s many a slip—besides, it’s war-time.”
''574 NOVELS OF LOVE

With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the
girl moving slowly away; and turned back herself towards her
hospital, with a disturbed and compassionate heart.

2 §

But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street.
She had received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied
by her experienced cousin’s vitality, and the new thoughts sug-
gested by those words: “He hasn’t quite gone from you, has
he?” “ Besides, it’s war-time.” Leila had spoken freely, too,
and the physical ignorance in which the girl had been groping
these last weeks was now removed. Like most proud natures,
she did not naturally think much about the opinion of other
people; besides, she knew nothing of the world, its feelings and
judgments. Her nightmare was the thought of her father’s
horror and grief. She tried to lessen that nightmare by re-
membering his opposition to her marriage, and the resentment
she had felt. He had never realised, never understood, how she
and Cyril loved. Now, if she were really going to have a child,
it would be Cyril’s—Cyril’s son—Cyril over again. The instinct
stronger than reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which
had pushed her on in such haste to make sure of union—the
irrepressible pulse of life faced with annihilation—seemed to
revive within her, and make her terrible secret almost precious.
She had read about “ War babies” in the papers, read with a
dull curiosity; but now the atmosphere, as it were, of those
writings was illumined for her. These babies were wrong, were
a “problem,” and yet, behind all that, she seemed now to know
that people were glad of them; they made up, they filled the gaps.
Perhaps, when she had one, she would be proud, secretly proud,
in spite of everyone, in spite of her father! They had tried to
kill Cyril—God and everyone; but they hadn’t been able, he
was alive within her! A glow came into her face, walking
among the busy shopping crowd, and people turned to look at
her; she had that appearance of seeing no one, nothing, which
is strange and attractive to those who have a moment to spare
from contemplation of their own affairs. Fully two hours she
watidered thus, before going in, and only lost that exalted feel-
ing when, in her own little room, she had taken up his photo-
graph, and was sitting on her bed gazing at it. She had a bad
breakdown then. Locked in there, she lay on her bed, crying,
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 5%5

dreadfully lonely, till she fell asleep exhausted, with the tear-
stained photograph clutched in her twitching fingers. She
woke with a start. It was dark, and someone was knocking on
her door.

“Miss Noel!”

Childish perversity kept her silent. Why couldn’t they leave
her alone? They would leave her alone if they knew. Then
she heard another kind of knocking, and her father’s voice:

“Nollie! Nollie!”

She scrambled up, and opened. He looked scared, and her
heart smote her.

“ Tt’s all right, Daddy; I was asleep.”

“My dear, I’m sorry, but dinner’s ready.”

“T don’t want any dinner; I think I’ll go to bed.”

The frown between his brows deepened.

“You shouldn’t lock your door, Nollie. I was quite fright-
ened. I went round to the hospital to bring you home, and they
told me about your fainting. I want you to see a doctor.”

Noel shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no! It’s nothing

“Nothing? To faint like that? Come, my child. To please
me.” He took her face in his hands. Noel shrank away.

“No, Daddy. I won’t see a doctor. Extravagance in war-
time! I won’t. It’s no good trying to make me. I'll come
down if you like; I shall be all right to-morrow.”

With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening,
she saw him looking at her anxiously. And when she went up,
he came out of his study, followed to her room, and insisted
on lighting her fire. Kissing her at the door, he said very
quietly :

“T wish I could be a mother to you, my child!”

For a moment it flashed through Noel: ‘He knows!’ then,
by the puzzled look on his face, she knew that he did not. If
only he did know; what a weight it would be off her mind!
But she answered quietly too: “Good night, Daddy dear!”
kissed him, and shut the door.

She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands
out to it; all was so cold and wintry in her heart. And the
firelight flickered on her face, where shadows lay thick under her
eyes, for all the roundness of her cheeks, and on her slim pale
hands, and the supple grace of her young body. And out in
the night, clouds raced over the moon, which had come full
once more.

}
''VI
1§

PreRsoN went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian,

“Tf you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at
home. I am troubled about Nollie. Ever since that disaster
happened to her she has been getting paler; and to-day she
fainted. She won’t see a doctor, but perhaps you could get her
to see George. If you come up, he will surely be able to run up
to us for a day or two. If not, you must take her down to him
at the sea. I have just seen the news of your second cousin
Charlie Pierson’s death; he was killed in one of the last attacks
on the Somme; he was nephew of my cousin Leila whom, as
you know, Noel sees every day at her hospital. Bertram has the
D. 8. 0. I have been less hard-pressed lately ; Lauder has been
home on leave and has taken some Services for me. And now
the colder weather has come, I am feeling much fresher. Try
your best to come. I am seriously concerned for our beloved
child.

“ Your affectionate father,
“ EpwarD Prerson.”

Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would
come on Friday. He met her at the station, and they drove
thence straight to the hospital, to pick up Noel. Leila came to
them in the waiting-room, and Pierson, thinking they would talk
more freely about Noel’s health if he left them alone, went into
the recreation room, and stood watching a game of bagatelle be-
tween two convalescents. When he returned to the little sitting-
room they were still standing by the hearth, talking in low
voices. Gratian must surely have been stooping over the fire,
for her face was red, almost swollen, and her eyes looked as if she
had scorched them.

Leila said lightly:

“Well, Edward, aren’t the men delightful? When are we go-
ing to another concert together? ”

She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.

576
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 57?

“Ah! If we could do the things we want to.”

“'That’s very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know—for
a tonic.” He shook his head and smiled.

“You’re a temptress, Leila. Will you let Nollie know, please,
that we can take her back with us? Can you let her off to-
morrow? ”

“ For as long as you like; she wants a rest. I’ve been talking
to Gratian. We oughtn’t to have let her go on after a shock
like that—my fault, I’m afraid. I thought that work might be
best.”

Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the
room. He held out his hand to Leila, and followed. A small
noise occurred behind him such as a woman makes when she has
put a foot through her own skirt, or has other powerful cause
for dismay. Then he saw Noel in the hall, and was vaguely
aware of being the centre of a triangle of women whose eyes
were playing catch-glance. His daughters kissed each other; and ,
he became seated between them in the taxi. The most unob-
servant of men, he parted from them in the hall without having
perceived anything except that they were rather silent; and, go-
ing to his study, he took up a Life of Sir Thomas More. There
was a passage therein which he itched to show George Laird,
who was coming up that evening.

Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set,
and eyes averted; both were very pale. When they reached the
door of Gratian’s room—the room which had been their mother’s
—Noel was for passing on, but Gratian caught her by the arm,
and said: “Come in.” The fire was burning brightly in there,
and the two sisters stood in front of it, one on each side, their
hands clutching the mantelshelf, staring at the flames. At
last Noel put one hand in front of her eyes, and said:

“T asked her to tell you.”

Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two
strong emotions, and longs to surrender to one or to the other.

* It’s too horrible,” was all she said.

Noel turned towards the door.

“ Stop, Nollie! ”

Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob. “I don’t want
to be forgiven and sympathised with. I just want to be let
alone.”

“ How can you be let alone?”

The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out pas-
''578 NOVELS OF LOVE

sionately: “I hate sympathy from people who can’t understand.
I don’t want anyone’s. I can always go away, and lose myself.”

The words “ can’t understand ” gave Gratian a shock.

“T can understand,” she said.

“You can’t; you never saw him. You never saw ” her
lips quivered so that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back
a rush ot tears. “ Besides you would never have done it your-
self.”

Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the
bed. It was true. She would never have done it herself; it was
just that which, for all her longing to help her sister, iced her
love and sympathy. How terrible, wretched, humiliating! Her
own sister, her only sister, in the position of all those poor,
badly brought up girls, who forgot themselves! And her father
—their father! Tull that moment she had hardly thought of
him, too preoccupied by the shock to her own pride. The word:
“Dad!” was forced from her.

Noel shuddered.

“That boy!” said Gratian suddenly; “I can’t forgive him.
If you didn’t know—he did. It was—it was ” She stopped
at the sight of Noel’s face.

“T did know,” she said. “It was I. He was my husband, as
much as yours is. If you say a word against him, [ll never
speak to you again. I’m glad, and you would be, if you were
going to have one. What’s the difference, except that you’ve had
luck, and I—haven’t.” Her lips quivered again, and she was
silent.

Gratian stared up at her. She had a longing for George—to
know what he thought and felt.

“Do you mind if I tell George?” she said.

Noel shook her head. “No; not now. Tell anybody.” And
suddenly the misery behind the mask of her face went straight
to Gratian’s heart. She got up and put her arms round her
sister.

“ Nollie dear, don’t look like that! ”

Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was
over, went to her own room.

Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious.
Her pride was deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry
with herself. Why couldn’t she have been more sympathetic?
And yet, now that Noel was no longer there, she again con-
demned the dead. What he had done was unpardonable. Nollie

 

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 579

was such a child! He had committed sacrilege. If only George
would come, and she could talk it all out with him! She, who
had married for love and known passion, had insight enough
to feel that Noel’s love had been deep—so far as anything, of
course, could be deep in such a child. Gratian was at the
mature age of twenty. But to have forgotten herself like that!
And this boy! If she had known him, that feeling might have
been mitigated by the personal element, so important to all
human judgment; but never having seen him, she thought of
his conduct as “caddish.” And she knew that this was, and
would be, the trouble between her and her sister. However she
might disguise it, Noel would feel that judgment underneath.

She stripped off her nurse’s garb, put on an evening frock,
and fidgeted about the room. Anything rather than go down
and see her father again before she must. This, which had hap-
pened, was beyond words terrible for him; she dreaded the talk
with him about Noel’s health which would have to come. She
could say nothing, of course, until Noel wished ; and, very truth-
ful by nature, the idea of having to act a lie distressed her.

She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-
room already; Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire
with her chin on her hand, while her father was reading out the
war news from the evening paper. At sight of that cool, dainty,
girlish figure brooding over the fire, and of her father’s worn
face, the tragedy of this business thrust itself on her with re-
doubled force. Poor Dad! Poor Nollie! Awful! Then Noel
turned, and gave a little shake of her head, and her eyes said,
almost as plainly as lips could have said it: ‘ Silence!” Gratian
nodded, and came forward to the fire. And so began one of those
calm, domestic evenings, which cover sometimes such depths of
heartache.

2§

Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs
at once. She had evidently determined that they should not
talk about her. Gratian sat on alone, waiting for her husband!
It was nearly midnight when he came, and she did not tell him
the family news till next morning. He received it with a curi-
ous little grunt. Gratian saw his eyes contract, as they might
have, perhaps, looking at some bad and complicated wound, and
then stare steadily at the ceiling. Though they had been mar-
ried over a year, she did not yet know what he thought about
''580 NOVELS OF LOVE

many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at her heart.
This skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his affection
for herself, a test of the quality of the man she had married.
He did not speak for a little, and her anxiety grew. Then his
hand sought hers, and gave it a hard squeeze.

“Poor little Nollie! This is a case for Mark Tapleyism. But
cheer up, Gracie! We'll get her through somehow.”

“But father! It’s impossible to keep it from him, and im-
possible to tell him! Oh George! I never knew what family
pride was till now. It’s incredible. That wretched boy!”

“* De mortuis.’ Come, Gracie! In the midst of death we are
in life! Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it’s the war—the
war! Your father must get used to it; it’s a rare chance for his
Christianity.”

“Dad will be as sweet as anything—that’s what makes it so
horrible! ”

George Laird redoubled his squeeze. “Quite right! The old-
fashioned father could let himself go. But need he know? We
can get her away from London, and later on, we must manage
somehow. If he does hear, we must make him feel that Nollie
was ‘ doing her bit.’ ”

Gratian withdrew her hand. “Don’t!” she said in a muffled
voice.

George Laird turned and looked at her. He was greatly upset
himself, realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the
violence of this disaster ; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how
deeply she was stirred and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, con-
fronting life always in the experimental spirit, he was impatient
of the: “ How awful!” attitude. And this streak of her father’s
ascetic traditionalism in Gratian always roused in him a wish
to break it up. If she had not been his wife he would have ad-
mitted at once that he might just as well try and alter the bone-
formation of her head, as break down such a fundamental trait
of character, but, being his wife, he naturally considered altera-
tion as possible as putting a new staircase in a house, or throw-
ing two rooms into one. And, taking her in his arms, he said:
“I know; but it’ll all come right, if we put a good face on it.
Shall I talk to Nollie?”

Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her
father: “ George is seeing her!” and so stay the need for a dis-
cussion. But the whole thing seemed to her more and more a
calamity which nothing could lessen or smooth away.
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 581

George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men
who have to inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not
like his mission “a little bit” as he would have said; and he
proposed a walk because he dreaded a scene. Noel accepted for
the same reason. She liked George, and with the disinterested
detachment of a sister-in-law, and the shrewdness of extreme
youth, knew him perhaps better than did his wife. She was sure,
at all events, of being neither condemned nor sympathised
with.

They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose
to make for the City. Such deep decisions are subconscious.
They sought, no doubt, a dry, unemotional region; or perhaps
one where George, who was in uniform, might rest his arm from
the automatic-toy game which the military play. They had
reached Cheapside before he was conscious to the full of the
bizarre nature of this walk with his pretty young sister-in-law
among all the bustling, black-coated mob of money-makers. ‘I
wish the devil we hadn’t come out!’ he thought; ‘it would have
been easier indoors, after all.’

He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently,
began: “ Gratian’s told me, Nollie. The great thing is to keep
your spirit up, and not worry.”

“T suppose you couldn’t cure me.”

The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely stag-
gered George; but he said quickly:

“Out of the question, Nollie; impossible! What are you
thinking of ?”

“ Daddy.”

The words: “ D——n Daddy!” rose to his teeth; but he bit
them off, and said: “ Bless him! We shall have to see to all that.
Do you really want to keep it from him? It must be one way
or the other; no use concealing it, if it’s to come out later.”

“ee No.”?

He stole a look at her. She was gazing straight before her,
How damnably young she was, how pretty! A lump came up
in his throat.

“TI shouldn’t do anything yet,” he said, “too early. Later
on, if you'd like me to tell him. But that’s entirely up to you,
my dear; he need never know.”

ce IN O72

He could not follow her thought. Then she said:

“Gratian condemns Cyril. Don’t let her. I won’t have him
''582 NOVELS OF LOVE

badly thought of. It was my doing. I wanted to make sure of
him.”

George answered stoutly :

“ Gracie’s upset, of course, but she’ll soon be all right. You
mustn’t let it come between you. The thing you’ve got to keep
steadily before you is that life’s a huge, wide, adaptable thing.
Look at all these people! There’s hardly one of them who
hasn’t got now, or hasn’t had, some personal difficulty or trouble
before them as big as yours almost; bigger perhaps. And here
they are as lively as fleas. That’s what makes the fascination
of life—the jolly irony of it all. It would do you good to have
a turn in France, and see yourself in proportion to the whole.”
He felt her fingers suddenly slip under his arm, and went on
with greater confidence.

“ Tafe’s going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie;
not comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and
pressure to the square inch. Do you twig? All the old hard-
and-fast traditions and drags on life are in the melting-pot.
Death’s boiling their bones, and they'll make excellent stock
for the new soup. When you prune and dock things, the sap
flows quicker. Regrets and repinings and repressions are going
out of fashion; we shall have no time or use for them in the
future. You’re going to make life—well, that’s something to be
thankful for, anyway. You’ve kept Cyril Morland alive. And—
well, you know, we’ve all been born; some of us properly, and
some improperly, and there isn’t a ha’porth of difference in the
value of the article, or the trouble of bringing it into the world.
The cheerier you are the better your child will be, and that’s all
you’ve got to think about. You needn’t begin to trouble at all
for another couple of months, at least; after that, just let us
know where you'd like to go, and I’ll arrange it somehow.”

She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brood-
ing gaze he had the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having
spoken like a charlatan. Had he really touched the heart of the
matter? What good were his generalities to this young, fastidi-
ously nurtured girl, brought up to tell the truth, by a father so
old-fashioned and devoted, whom she loved? It was George’s
nature, too, to despise words; and the conditions of his life these
last two years had given him a sort of horror of those who act by
talking. He felt inclined to say: ‘ Don’t pay the slightest atten-
tion to me; it’s all humbug; what will be will be, and there’s an
end of it.’
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 583

Then she said quietly:

“ Shall I tell Daddy or not?”

He wanted to say: “No,” but somehow couldn’t. After all,
the straightforward course was probably the best. For this would
have to be a lifelong concealment. It was impossible to conceal
a thing for ever; sooner or later he would find out. But the.
doctor rose up in him, and he said: :

“Don’t go to meet trouble, Nollie; it’ll be time enough in
two months. Then tell him, or let me.”

She shook her head. “No; I will, if it is to be done.”

He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a
squeeze.

“ What shall I do till then?” she asked.

“Take a week’s complete rest, and then go on where you
are.”

Noel was silent a minute, then said: “ Yes; I will.”

They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted him-
self to talk about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon,
the British soldier. But just before they reached home he
said :

“Look here, Nollie! If you’re not ashamed of yourself, no
one will be ashamed of you. If you put ashes on your own head,
your fellow-beings will assist you; for of such is their charity.”

And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left
her with the thought: ‘ A lonely child!’
''VII

Noeu went back to her hospital after a week’s rest. George had
‘done more for her than he suspected, for his saying: “ Life’s a
huge wide adaptable thing!” had stuck in her mind. Did it
matter what happened to her? And she used to look into the
faces of the people she met, and wonder what was absorbing
them. What secret griefs and joys were they carrying about with
‘them? The loneliness of her own life now forced her to this
‘speculation concerning others, for she was extraordinarily lonely ;
‘Gratian and George were back at work, her father must be kept
at bay; with Leila she felt ill at ease, for the confession had hurt
her pride; and family friends and acquaintances of all sorts she
shunned like the plague. The only person she did not succeed in
avoiding was Jimmy Fort, who came in one evening after dinner,
bringing her a large bunch of hothouse violets. But then, he
did not seem to matter—too new an acquaintance, too detached.
Something he said made her aware that he had heard of her
loss, and that the violets were a token of sympathy. He seemed
awfully kind that evening, telling her “tales of Araby,” and
saying nothing which would shock her father. It was wonderful
to be a man and roll about the world as he had, and see all life,
and queer places, and people—Chinamen, and Gauchos, and
Boers, and Mexicans. It gave her a kind of thirst. And she
liked to watch his brown, humorous face, which seemed made of
dried leather. It gave her the feeling that life and experience
were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it made her
own trouble seem smaller, less important. She squeezed his hand
when she said good night. “Thank you for my violets and for
coming; it was awfully kind of you! I wish I could have ad-
ventures!” And he answered: “ You will, my dear fairy prin-
cess!” He said it queerly and very kindly.

Fairy Princess! What a funny thing to call her! If he had
only known!

There were not many adventures to be had in those regions
where she washed up. Not much “wide and adaptable life ” to
take her thoughts off herself. But on her journeys to and from
the hospital she had more than one odd little experience. One
morning she noticed a poorly dressed woman with a red and

584
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 585.

swollen face, flapping along Regent Street like a wounded bird,
and biting strangely at her hand. Hearing her groan, Noel
asked her what the matter was. The woman held out the hand.
“Oh!” she moaned, “I was scrubbin’ the floor and I got this
great needle stuck through my ’and, and it’s broke off, and I
can’t get it out. Oh! Oh!” She bit at the needle-end, not
quite visible, but almost within reach of teeth, and suddenly went
very white. In dismay, Noel put an arm round her, and turned
her into a fine chemist’s shop. Several ladies were in there,
buying perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at this dis-
ordered dirty female entering among them. Noel went up to a
man behind the counter. “ Please give me something quick, for
this poor woman, I think she’s going to faint. She’s run a needle
through her hand, and can’t get it out.” The man gave her
“something quick,” and Noel pushed past two of the dames
back to where the woman was sitting. She was still obstinately
biting at her hand, and suddenly her chin flew up, and there,
between her teeth, was the needle. She took it from them with
her other hand, stuck it proudly in the front of her dress, and out
tumbled the words: “ Oh! there—I’ve got it!”

When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her,
bewildered, and said:

“Thank you kindly, miss!” and shuffled out. Noel paid for
the draught, and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop
seemed to exhale a perfumed breath of relief.

“ You can’t go back to work,” she said to the woman. “ Where
do you live?”

“?Ornsey, miss.”

“You must take a *bus and go straight home, and put your
hand at once into weak Condy’s fluid and water. It’s swelling.
Here’s five shillings.”

“ Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I’m sure. It’s very kind of you.
It does ache cruel.”

“Tf it’s not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor.
Promise!”

“Oh, dear, yes. *Ere’s my ’bus. Thank you kindly, miss.”

Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen
hand. She walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman,
and hate for the ladies in the chemist’s shop, and forgot her own
trouble till she had almost reached the hospital.

Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked
to Hyde Park. The plane-trees were just at the height of their
''586 NOVELS OF LOVE

spotted beauty. Few—very few—yellow leaves still hung; and
the slender pretty trees seemed rejoicing in their freedom from
summer foliage. All their delicate boughs and twigs were shak-
ing and dancing in the wind; and their rain-washed leopard-
like bodies had a lithe un-English gaiety. Noel passed down
their line, and seated herself on a bench. Close by, an artist
was painting. His easel was only some three yards away from
her, and she could see the picture; a vista of the Park Lane
houses through the gay plane-tree screen. He was a tall man,
about forty, evidently foreign, with a thin, long, oval beardless
face, high brow, large grey eyes which looked as if he suffered
from headaches and lived much within himself. He cast many
glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest in “life” she
watched him discreetly; a little startled however, when, taking
off his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken accent:

“ Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you
so very kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there?
I work very quick. I beg you will let me. I am Belgian, and
have no manners, you see.” And he smiled.

“Tf you like,” said Noel.

“T thank you very much.”

He shifted his easel, and began to draw. She felt flattered,
and a little fluttered. He was so pale, and had a curious, half-
fed look, which moved her.

“Have you been long in England?” she said presently.

“Ever since the first months of the war.”

“Do you like it? ”

“T was very homesick at first. But I live in my pictures;
there are wonderful things in London.”

“Why did you want to sketch me?”

The painter smiled again. ‘ Mademoiselle, youth is so mys-
terious. Those young trees I have been painting mean so much
more than the old big trees. Your eyes are seeing things that
have not yet happened. There is Fate in them, and a look of
defending us others from seeing it. We have not such faces in
my country; we are simpler; we do not defend our expressions.
The English are very mysterious. We are like children to them.
Yet in some ways you are like children to us. You are not
people of the world at all. You English have been good to us,
but you do not like us.”

“ And I suppose you do not like us, either?”

He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 587

“Well, not very much. The English do things from duty,
but their hearts they keep to themselves. And their Art—well,
that is really amusing! ”

“TJ don’t know much about Art,” Noel murmured.

“Tt is the world to me,” said the painter, and was silent,
drawing with increased pace and passion.

“ Tt is so difficult to get subjects,” he remarked abruptly. “I
cannot afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me paint-
ing out of doors. If I had always a subject like you! You—
you have a grief, have you not?”

At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.

“ Everybody has, now.”

The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become
tragical.

“Yes,” he said, “ everybody. Tragedy is daily bread. I have
lost my family; they are in Belgium. How they live I do not
know.”

“T’m sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren’t nice to you, here.
We ought to be.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “ What would you have? We
are different. That is unpardonable. An artist is always lonely,
too; he has a skin fewer than other people, and he sees things
that they do not. People do not like you to be different. If
ever in your life you act differently from others, you will find
it so, mademoiselle.”

Noel felt herself flushing. Was he reading her secret? His
eyes had such a peculiar, second-sighted look.

“* Have you nearly finished?” she asked,

“No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not
wish to keep you. It is cold for you, sitting there.”

Noel got up. “ May I look?”

“ Certainly.”

She did not quite recognise herself—who does?—but she saw
a face which affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something
which was, and yet was not, in front of her.

“My name is Lavendie,” the painter said; “my wife and I
live here,” and he gave her a card.

Noel could not help answering: “ My name is Noel Pierson;
I live with my father; here’s the address”—she found her
case, and fished out a card. “My father is a clergyman;
would you care to come and see him? He loves music and
painting.”
''588 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Tt would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be al-
lowed to paint you. Alas! I have no studio.”

Noel drew back. “I’m afraid that I work in a hospital all
day, and—and I don’t want to be painted, thank you. But,
Daddy would like to meet you, ’m sure.”

The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.

“Of course I can see that you’re a very fine painter,” she said
quickly ; “ only—only—I don’t want to, you see. Perhaps you’d
like to paint Daddy; he’s got a most interesting face.”

The painter smiled. “ He is your father, mademoiselle? May
I ask you one question? Why do you not want to be painted?”

** Because—because I don’t, I’m afraid.” She held out her
hand. The painter bowed over it. “Au revoir, mademoiselle.”’

“Thank you,” said Noel; “it was awfully interesting.” And
she walked away. The sky had become full of clouds round the
westerly sun; and the foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree
branches against that French-gray, golden-edged mass, was
very lovely. Beauty, and the troubles of others, soothed her.
She felt sorry for the painter, but his eyes saw too much! And
his words: “ If ever you act differently from others,” made her
feel him uncanny. Was it true that people always disliked
and condemned those who acted differently? If her old school-
fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat
her? In her father’s study hung a little reproduction of a tiny
picture in the Louvre, a “Rape of Europa,” by an unknown
painter—a humorous delicate thing, of an enraptured, fair-
haired girl mounted on a prancing white bull, crossing a shallow
stream, while on the bank all her white girl-companions were
gathered, turning half-sour, half-envious faces away from that
too-fearful spectacle, while one of them tried with timid despera-
tion to mount astride of a sitting cow, and follow. The face of
the girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her
own. She thought of this picture now, and saw her school fel-
lows—a throng of shocked and wondering girls. Suppose one
of them had been in her position! ‘Should I have been turning
my face away, like the rest? I wouldn’t—no, I wouldn’t, she
thought; ‘I should have understood!’ But she knew there was
a kind of false emphasis in her thought. Instinctively she felt
the painter right. One who acted differently from others, was
lost.

She told her father of the encounter, adding:

“T expect he’ll come, Daddy.”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 589

Pierson answered dreamily: “ Poor fellow, I shall be glad to
see him if he does.”

“And you'll sit to him, won’t you?”

“ My dear—I?”

“He’s lonely, you know, and people aren’t nice to him. Isn’t
it hateful that people should hurt others, because they’re foreign
or different ? ”

She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: “I
know you think people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren’t, of
course.”

“ That’s not exactly charitable, Nollie.”

“You know they’re not. I think sin often just means doing
things differently. It’s not real sin when it only hurts yourself ;
but that doesn’t prevent people condemning you, does it?”

* T don’t know what you mean, Nollie.”

Noel bit her lips, and murmured: “ Are you sure we’re really
Christians, Daddy? ”

The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that
Pierson took refuge in an attempt at wit. “I should like
notice of that question, Nollie, as they say in Parliament.”

“That means you don’t.”

Pierson flushed. “ We’re fallible enough; but, don’t get such
ideas into your head, my child. There’s a lot of rebellious talk
and writing in these days.”

Noel clasped her hands behind her head. “TI think,” she said,
looking straight before her, and speaking to the air, “ that Chris-
tianity is what you do, not.what you think or say. And I don’t
believe people can be Christians when they act like others—I
mean, when they join together to judge and hurt people.”

Pierson rose and paced the room. “ You have not seen enough
of life to talk like that,” he said. But Noel went on:

“One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treat-
ment of conscientious objectors—it was horrible. Why do they
treat them like that, just because they disagree? Captain Fort
says it’s fear which makes people bullies. But how can it be
fear when they’re hundreds to one? He says man has domesti-
cated his animals but has never succeeded in domesticating him-
self. Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world couldn’t
be so awfully brutal. I don’t see much difference between being
brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones.”

Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile. There was
something fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one
''590 NOVELS OF LOVE

whom he had watched grow up from a tiny thing. Out of the
mouths of babes and sucklings—sometimes! But then the young
generation was always something of a sealed book to him; his
sensitive shyness, and, still more, his cloth, placed a sort of in-
visible barrier between him and the hearts of others, especially
the young. There were so many things of which he was com-
pelled to disapprove, or which at least he couldn’t discuss. And
they knew it too well. Until these last few months he had never
realised that his own daughters had remained as undiscovered by
him as the interior of Brazil. And now that he perceived this,
he was bewildered, yet could not imagine how to get on terms
with them.

And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting
nothing of the hard fact which was altering her—vaguely jeal-
ous, anxious, pained. And when she had gone up to bed, he
roamed up and down the room a long time, thinking. He longed
for a friend to confide in, and consult; but he knew no one. He
shrank from them all, as too downright, bluff, and active; too
worldly and unesthetic; or too stiff and narrow. Amongst the
younger men in his profession he was often aware of faces which
attracted him, but one could not confide deep personal questions
to men half one’s age. But of his own generation, or his elders,
he knew not one to whom he could have gone.
''VIII
18

Lriza was deep in her new draught of life. When she fell in
love it had always been over head and ears, and so far her pas-
sion had always burnt itself out before that of her partner. This
had been, of course, a great advantage to her. Not that Leila
had ever expected her passions to burn themselves out. When
she fell in love she had always thought it was for always. This
time she was sure it was, surer that she had ever been. Jimmy
Fort seemed to her the man she had been looking for all her life.
He was not so good-looking as either Fane or Lynch, but beside
him these others seemed to her now almost ridiculous. Indeed
they did not figure at all, they shrank, they withered, they were
husks, together with the others for whom she had known passing
weaknesses. There was only one man in the world for her now,
and would be for evermore. She did not idealise him either, it
was more serious than that; she was thrilled by his voice, and
his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him when he was
not with her. She worried, too, for she was perfectly aware that
he was not half as fond of her as she was of him. Such a new
experience puzzled her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert.
It was perhaps just this uncertainty about his affection which
made him see more precious than any of the others. But there
was ever the other reason, too—consciousness that Time was
after her, and this her last grand passion. She watched him as a
mother-cat watches her kitten, without seeming to, of course,
for she had much experience. She had begun to have a curious
secret jealousy of Noel! though why—she could not have said.
It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or sprang from that
vague resemblance between her and one who outrivalled even
what she had been as a girl; or from the occasional allusions Fort
made to what he called “ that little fairy princess.” Something
intangible, instinctive, gave her that jealousy. Until the death
of her young cousin’s lover she had felt safe, for she knew that
Jimmy Fort would not hanker after another man’s property;
had he not proved that in old days, with herself, by running away
from her? And she had often regretted having told him of CyriJ
591
''592 NOVELS OF LOVE

Morland’s death. One day she determined to repair that error.
It was at the Zoo, where they often went on Sunday afternoons.
They were standing before a creature called the meercat, which
reminded them both of old days on the veldt. Without turning
her head she said, as if to the little animal: “ Do you know that
your fairy princess, as you call her, is going to have what is
known as a war-baby?”

The sound of his “ What!” gave her quite a stab. It was so
utterly horrified.

She said stubbornly: “ She came and told me all about it. The
boy is dead, as you know. Yes, terrible, isn’t it?” And she
looked at him. His face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with
incredulity.

“That lovely child! But it’s impossible! ”

“The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy.”

“T refuse to believe it.”

“T tell you it is so,” she said angrily.

“ What a ghastly shame!”

“Tt was her own doing; she said so, herself.”

“ And her father—the padre! My God!”

Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt. She had
thought it would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency
to romanticise that child; and now she perceived that it was
rousing in him, instead, a dangerous compassion. She could
have bitten her tongue out for having spoken. When he got
on the high horse of some championship, he was not to be trusted,
she had found that out; was even finding it out bitterly in
her own relations with him, constantly aware that half her hold
on him, at least, lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew
her lurking dread of being flung on the beach, by age. Only ten
minutes ago he had uttered a tirade before the cage of a monkey
which seemed unhappy. And now she had roused that danger-
ous side of him in favour of Noel. What an idiot she had been!

“ Don’t look like that, Jimmy. I’m sorry I told you!”

His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he mut-
tered:

. fs Well, I do think that’s the limit. What’s to be done for
er?”

Leila answered softly: “ Nothing, I’m afraid. Do you love
me?” And she pressed his hand hard.

“ Of course.”

But Leila thought: ‘If I were that meercat he’d have taken
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 593

more notice of my paw!’ Her heart began suddenly to ache,
and she walked on to the next cage with head up, and her mouth
hard set.

2§

Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that eve-
ning in extreme discomfort of mind. Leila had been so queer
that he had taken leave immediately after supper. She had
refused to talk about Noel; had even seemed angry when he had
tried to. How extraordinary some women were! Did they
think that a man could hear a thing like that about such a dainty
young creature without being upset! It was the most perfectly
damnable news! What on earth would she do—poor little fairy
princess! Down had come her house of cards with a vengeance!
The whole of her life—the whole of her life! With her bring-
ing-up and her father and all—it seemed inconceivable that she
could ever survive it. And Leila had been almost callous about
the monstrous business. Women were hard to each other! Bad
enough, these things, when it was a simple working girl, but this
dainty, sheltered, beautiful child! No, it was altogether too
strong—too painful! And following an impulse which he could
not resist, he made his way to the old Square. But having
reached the house, he nearly went away again. While he stood
hesitating with his hand on the bell, a girl and a soldier passed,
appearing as if by magic out of the moonlit November mist,
blurred and solid shapes embraced, then vanished into it again,
leaving the sound of footsteps. Fort jerked the bell. He was
shown into what seemed, to one coming out of that mist, to be
a brilliant, crowded room, though in truth there were but two
lamps and five people in it. They were sitting round the fire,
talking, and paused when he came in. When he had shaken
hands with Pierson and been introduced to “my daughter Gra-
tian” and a man in khaki—“ my son-in-law George Laird,” to
a tall, thin-faced, foreign-looking man in a black stock and
seemingly no collar, he went up to Noel, who had risen from a
chair before the fire. ‘No!’ he thought, ‘I’ve dreamed it, or
Leila has lied!’ She was so perfectly the self-possessed, dainty
maiden he remembered. Even the feel of her hand was the
same—warm and confident; and sinking into a chair, he said:
“Please go on, and let me chip in.”

“We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort,”
said the man in khaki; “delighted to have your help. I was
''594 NOVELS OF LOVE

just saying that this particular world has no particular im-
portance, no more than a newspaper-seller would accord to it if
it were completely destroyed to-morrow—‘’Orrible catastrophe,
total destruction of the world—six o’clock edition—pyper!’ I
say that it will become again the nebula out of which it was
formed, and by friction with other nebula re-form into a fresh
shape and so on ad infinitum—but I can’t explain why. My
wife wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind—but
she can’t explain what the human mind is. My father-in-law
thinks that it is God’s hobby—but he can’t explain who or what
God is. Nollie is silent. And Monsieur Lavendie hasn’t yet told
us what he thinks. What do you think, monsieur?” The thin-
faced, big-eyed man put up his hand to his high, veined brow as
if he had a headache, reddened, and began to speak in French,
which Fort followed with difficulty.

“For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monstewr, who
from all time and to all time is ever expressing himself in differ-
ing forms—always trying to make a masterpiece, and generally
failing. For me this world, and all the worlds, are—like our-
selves, and the flowers and trees—little separate works of art,
more or less perfect, whose little lives run their course, and are
spilled or powdered back into this Creative Artist, whence issue
ever fresh attempts at art. I agree with Monsieur Laird, if I
understand him right; but I agree also with Madame Laird, if I
understand her. You see, I think mind and matter are one, or
perhaps there is no such thing as either mind or matter, only
growth and decay and growth again, for ever and ever; but al-
ways conscious growth—an artist expressing himself in millions
of ever-changing forms; decay and death as we call them, being
but rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide, which must ever come
between two rising tides, or the night which comes between two
days. But the next day is never the same as the day before, nor
the tide as the last tide; so the little shapes of the world and
of ourselves, these works of art by the Eternal Artist, are never
renewed in the same form, are never twice alike, but always
fresh—fresh worlds, fresh individuals, fresh flowers, fresh every-
thing. I do not see anything depressing in that. To me it
would be depressing to think that I would go on living after
death, or live again in a new body, myself yet not myself. How
stale that would be! When I finish a picture it is inconceivable
to me that this picture should ever become another picture, or
that one can divide the expression from the mind-stuff it has
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 595

expressed. The Great Artist who is the whole of Everything, is
ever in fresh effort to achieve new things. He is as a fountain
who throws up new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back
into the water, flow into the pipe, and so are thrown up again in
fresh-shaped drops. But I cannot explain why there should be
this Eternal Energy, ever expressing itself in fresh individual
shapes, this Eternal Working Artist, instead of nothing at all—
just empty dark for always; except indeed that it must be one
thing or the other, either all or nothing, and it happens to be
this, and not that, the all and not the nothing.”

He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed them-
selves on Fort’s face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him
at all, but to rest on something beyond. The man in khaki who
had risen and was standing with his hand on his wife’s shoulder,
said:

“Bravo, monsieur; jolly well put from the artist’s point of
view. The idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an
idea at all? Things are; and we have just to take them.” Fort
had the impression of something dark and writhing; the thin
black form of his host, who had risen and come close to the fire.

“T cannot admit,” he was saying, “ the identity of the Creator
with the created. God exists outside ourselves. Nor can I
admit that there is no definite purpose and fulfilment. All is
shaped to His great ends. I think we are too given to spiritual
pride. The world has lost reverence; I regret it, I bitterly
regret it.”

“T rejoice at it,” said the man in khaki. “ Now, Captain Fort,
your turn to bat!”

Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and
said: “I think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting.
I suspect the Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of
conquests and defeats. Conquests leading to defeats, defeats
to conquests. I want to win while I’m alive, and because I
want to win, I want to live on after death. Death is a defeat.
I don’t want to admit it. While I have that instinct, I don’t
think I shall really die; when I lose it, I think I shall.” He was -
conscious of Noel’s face turning towards him, but had the feel-
ing that she wasn’t really listening. “I suspect that what we
call spirit is just the fighting instinct; that what we call matter
is the mood of lying down. Whether, as Mr. Pierson says, God
is outside us, or, as monsieur thinks, we are all part of God,
I don’t know, I’m sure.” ies
''596 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Ah! There we are!” said the man in khaki. “We all
speak after our temperaments, and none of us know. The
religions of the world are just the poetic expressions of certain
strongly marked temperaments. Monsieur was a poet just now,
and his is the only temperament which has never yet been
rammed down the world’s throat in the form of religion. Go out
and proclaim your views from the housetops, monsieur, and see
what happens.” .

The painter shook his head with a smile which seemed to Fort
very bright on the surface, and very sad underneath.

“ Non, monsieur,’ he said; “ the artist does not wish to im-
pose his temperament. Difference of temperament is the very
essence of his joy, and his belief in life. Without difference
there would be no life for him. ‘ Tout casse, tout lasse,’ but
change goes on for ever. We artists reverence change, monstieur ;
we reverence the newness of each morning, of each night, of each
person, of each expression of energy. Nothing is final for us;
we are eager for all and always for more. We are in love, you
see, even with—death.”

There was a silence; then Fort heard Pierson murmur:

“That is beautiful, monsieur; but oh! how wrong!”

“And what do you think, Nollie?” said the man in khaki
suddenly. The girl had been sitting very still in her low chair,
with her hands crossed in her lap, her eyes on the fire, and the
lamplight shining down on her fair hair; she looked up, startled,
and her eyes met Fort’s.

“T don’t know; I wasn’t listening.” Something moved in
him, a kind of burning pity, a rage of protection. He said
quickly :

“These are times of action. Philosophy seems to mean noth-
ing nowadays. The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty,
and protect everything that’s weak and lonely. It’s all that’s
left to make life worth living, when all the packs of all the
world are out for blood.”

Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: “ Why!
Even we who started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught
the pack feeling—so that it’s hunting all over the country, on
every sort of scent. It’s a most infectious thing.”

“T cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort.”

“T’m afraid we are, Mr. Pierson. The great majority of
people are always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure’s
great just now; the pack spirit’s in the air.”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 597

Pierson shook his head. “ No, I cannot see it,” he repeated ;
“it seems to me that we are all more brotherly, and more
tolerant.”

“Ah! monsieur le curé,;’ Fort heard the painter say very
gently, “it is difficult for a good man to see the evil round him.
There are those whom the world’s march leaves apart, and reality
cannot touch. They walk with God, and the bestialities of us
animals are fantastic to them. The spirit of the pack, as mon-
sieur says, is in the air. I see all human nature now, running
with gaping mouths and red tongues lolling out, their breath
and their cries spouting thick before them. On whom they will
fall next—one never knows; the innocent with the guilty. Per-
haps if you were to see some one dear to you devoured before
your eyes, monsieur le curé, you would feel it too; and yet—I
do not know.”

Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expres-
sion at that moment was very strange, searching, half fright-
ened. No! Leila had not lied, and he had not dreamed! That
thing was true!

When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the
Square, he could see nothing but her face and form before him
in the moonlight: its soft outline, fair colouring, slender deli-
cacy, and the brooding of the big grey eyes. He had already
crossed New Oxford Street and was some way down towards the
Strand, when a voice behind him murmured: “ Ah/ c’est vous,
monsteur!” and the painter loomed up at his elbow.

“Are you going my way?” said Fort. “I go slowly, I’m
afraid.”

“The slower the better, monsieur. London is so beautiful in
the dark. It is the despair of the painter—these moonlit nights.
There are moments when one feels that reality does not exist.
All is in dreams—like the face of that young lady.”

Fort stared sharply round at him. “Oh! She strikes you
like that, does she? ”

“Ah! What a charming figure! What an atmosphere of the
past and future round her! And she will not let me paint her!
Well, perhaps only Mathieu Maris ” He raised his broad.
Bohemian hat, and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Yes,” said Fort, “she’d make a wonderful picture. I’m
not a judge of Art, but I can see that.”

The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:

“She has youth and age all at once—that is rare. Her father

 
''598 NOVELS OF LOVE

is an interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very
difficult. He sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a
man whose soul has gone before him somewhere, like that of
his Church, escaped from this age of machines, leaving its body
behind—is it not? He is so kind; a saint, I think. The other
clergymen I see passing in the street are not at all like him;
they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces of men who might
be schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers—men of this world.
Do you know this, monsieur—it is ironical, but it is true, I
think—a man cannot be a successful priest unless he is a man
of this world. I do not see any with that look of Monsieur
Pierson, a little tortured within, and not quite present. He is
half an artist, really a lover of music, that man. I am painting
him at the piano; when he is playing his face is alive, but even
then, so far away. To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a beauti-
ful church which knows it is being deserted. I find him pathetic.
Je suis socialiste, but I have always an esthetic admiration for
that old Church, which held its children by simple emotion.
The times have changed; it can no longer hold them so; it
stands in the dusk, with its spire to a heaven which exists no
more, its bells, still beautiful but out of tune with the music
of the streets. It is something of that which I wish to get into
my picture of Monsieur Pierson; and sapristt! it is difficult!”
Fort grunted assent. So far as he could make out the painter’s
words, it seemed to him a large order.

“To do it, you see,” went on the painter, “one should have
the proper background—these currents of modern life and
modern types, passing him and leaving him untouched. There
is no illusion, and no dreaming, in modern life. Look at this
street. La la!”

In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and
girls were streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-
jovial vulgarity. The motor-cabs and "buses pushed along re-
morselessly ; newspaper-sellers muttered their ceaseless invita-
tions. Again the painter made his gesture of despair: “ How
am I to get into my picture this modern life, which washes round
him as round that church, there, standing in the middle of the
street? See how the currents sweep round it, as if to wash it
away; yet it stands, seeming not to see them. If I were a
phantasist, it would be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is
too simple for me—those romantic gentlemen bring what they
like from anywhere, to serve their ends. Mot, je suts réaliste.
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 599

And so, monsieur, I have invented an idea. I am painting over
his head while he sits there at the piano a picture hanging on
the wall—of one of these young town girls who have no mys-
teriousness at all, no youth; nothing but a cheap knowledge and
defiance, and good humour. He is looking up at it, but he does
not see it. I will make the face of that girl the face of modern
life, and he shall sit staring at it, seeing nothing. What do
you think of my idea?”

But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which
the man of action so soon experiences when he listens to an_
artist talking.

“Tt sounds all right,” he said abruptly; “all the same, mon-
sieur, all my sympathy is with modern life. Take these young
girls, and these Tommies. For all their feather-pated vulgarity
—and they are damned vulgar, I must say—they’re marvellous
people; they do take the rough with the smooth; they’re all
* doing their bit, you know, and facing this particularly beastly
world. dsthetically, I daresay, they’re deplorable, but can you
say that on the whole their philosophy isn’t an advance on any-
thing we’ve had up till now? They worship nothing, it’s true;
but they keep their ends up marvellously.”

The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his
ideas, shrugged his shoulders.

“Tam not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I
see; better or worse, I do not know. But look at this!” ‘And
he pointed down the darkened and moonlit street. It was all
jewelled and enamelled with little spots and splashes of subdued
red and green-blue light, and the downward orange glow of the
high lamps—like an enchanted dream-street peopled by countless
moving shapes, which only came to earth-reality when seen close
to. The painter drew his breath in with a hiss.

“Ah!” he said, “what beauty! And they don’t see it—
not one in a thousand! Pity, isn’t it? Beauty is the holy
thing! ”

Fort, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders. “ Every man to
his vision!” he said. “ My leg’s beginning to bother me; I’m
afraid I must take a cab. Here’s my address; any time you
like to come. I’m often in about seven. I can’t take you any-
where, I suppose?”

“ A thousand thanks, monsieur; but I go north. I loved your
words about the pack. I often wake at night and hear the
howling of all the packs of the world. Those who are by nature
''600 NOVELS OF LOVE

gentle nowadays feel they are strangers in a far land. Good
night, monsieur! ”

He took off his queer hat, bowed low, and crossed out into
the Strand, like one who had come in a dream, and faded out
with the waking. Fort hailed a cab, and went home, still seeing
Noel’s face. There was one, if you liked, waiting to be thrown
to the wolves, waiting for the world’s pack to begin howling
round her—that lovely child; and the first, the loudest of all
the pack, perhaps, must be her own father, the lean, dark figure
with the gentle face, and the burnt bright eyes. What a ghastly
business! His dreams that night were not such as Leila would
have approved.
''IX

Wuen in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton,
carefully kept from the sight of a single member of the family,
the position of that member is liable to become lonely. But
Pierson, who had been lonely fifteen years, did not feel it so
much, perhaps, as most men would have. In his dreamy nature
there was a curious self-sufficiency, which only violent shocks
disturbed, and he went on with his routine of duty, which had
become for him as set as the pavements he trod on his way to
and from it. It was not exactly true, as the painter had said,
that this routine did not bring him into touch with life. After
all he saw people when they were born, when they married,
when they died. He helped them when they wanted money,
and when they were ill; he told their children Bible stories on
Sunday afternoons; he served those who were in need with soup
and bread from his soup kitchen. He never spared himself in
any way, and his ears were always at the service of their woes.
And yet he did not understand them, and they knew that. It
was as though he, or they, were colour-blind. The values were
all different. He was seeing one set of objects, they another.
One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare,
and formed a little part of the new hunting-ground of women,
who, chased forth from their usual haunts by the Authorities
under pressure of the country’s danger, now pursued their call-
ing in the dark. This particular evil had always been a sort of
nightmare to Pierson. The starvation which ruled his own
existence inclined him to a particularly severe view and severity
was not his strong point. In consequence there was ever within
him a sort of very personal and poignant struggle going on be-
neath that seeming attitude of rigid disapproval. He joined
the hunters, as it were, because he was afraid—not, of course,
of his own instincts, for he was fastidious, a gentleman, and a
priest, but of being lenient to a sin, to something which God
abhorred. He was, as it were, bound to take a professional view
of this particular offence. When in his walks abroad he passed
one of these women, he would unconsciously purse his lips, and
frown. The darkness of the streets seemed to lend them such
power, such unholy sovereignty over the night. They were such
601
''602 NOVELS OF LOVE

a danger to the soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such
a danger to the lambs of his flock. Domestic disasters in his
parish came to his ears from time to time; cases of young girls
whose heads were turned by soldiers, so that they were about
to become mothers. They seemed to him pitiful indeed; but he
could not forgive them for their giddiness, for putting tempta-
tion in the way of brave young men, fighting, or about to fight.
The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not excuse enough.
When the babies were born, and came to his notice, he consulted
a Committee he had formed, of three married and two maiden
ladies, who visited the mothers, and if necessary took the babies
into a créche; for those babies had a new value to the country,
and were not—poor little things!—to be held responsible for
their mothers’ faults. He himself saw little of the young
mothers ; shy of them, secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being cen-
sorious enough. But once in a way Life set him face to face
with one.

On New Year’s Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at
that hour which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a
Mrs. Mitchett was announced, a small book-seller’s wife, whom
he knew for an occasional Communicant. She came in, accom-
panied by a young dark-eyed girl in a loose mouse-coloured coat.
At his invitation they sat down in front of the long bookcase on
the two green leather chairs which had grown worn in the
service of the parish; and, screwed round in his chair at the
bureau, with his long musician’s fingers pressed together, he
looked at them and waited. The woman had taken out her hand-
kerchief, and was wiping her eyes; but the girl sat quiet, as the
mouse she somewhat resembled in that coat.

“Yes, Mrs. Mitchett?” he said gently, at last.

The woman put away her handkerchief, sniffed resolutely,
and began:

“It’s “Ilda, sir. Such a thing Mitchett and me never could
ave expected, comin’ on us so sudden. I thought it best to
bring ’er round, poor girl. Of course, it’s all the war. I’ve
warned ’er a dozen times; but there it is, comin’ next month,
and the man in France.” Pierson instinctively averted his gaze
from the girl, who had not moved her eyes from his face, which
she scanned with a seeming absence of interest, as if she had
long given up thinking over her lot, and left it now to others.

“That is sad,” he said; “ very, very sad.”

“ Yes,”” murmured Mrs. Mitchett; “that’s what I tell *Ilda.”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 603

The girl’s glance, lowered for a second, resumed its impersonal
scrutiny of Pierson’s face.

“What is the man’s name and regiment? Perhaps we can
get leave for him to come home and marry Hilda at once.”

Mrs. Mitchett sniffed. “She won’t give it, sir. Now, “Ida,
give it to Mr. Pierson.” And her voice had a real note of en-
treaty. The girl shook her head. Mrs. Mitchett murmured
dolefully: ‘That’s ’ow she is, sir; not a word will she say.
And as I tell her, we can only think there must ’ave been more
than one. And that does put us to shame so!”

But still the girl made no sign.

“You speak to her, sir; I’m really at my wit’s end.”

“Why won’t you tell us?” said Pierson. “The man will
want to do the right thing, I’m sure.”

The girl shook her head, and spoke for the first time.

“TJ don’t know his name.”

Mrs. Mitchett’s face twitched.

“Oh, dear!” she said: “Think of that! She’s never said
as much to us.”

“Not know his name?” Pierson murmured. “ But how—
how could you ” he stopped, but his face had darkened.
“ Surely you would never have done such a thing without affec-
tion? Come, tell me!”

“T don’t know it,” the girl repeated.

“Tt’s these Parks,” said Mrs. Mitchett, from behind her
handkerchief. “And to think that this'll be our first grand-
child and all! “Ilda is difficult; as quiet, as quiet; but that
stubborn %

Pierson looked at the girl, who seemed, if anything, less inter-
ested than ever. This impenetrability and something mulish in
her attitude annoyed him. “TI can’t think,” he said, “ how you
could so have forgotten yourself. It’s truly grievous.”

Mrs. Mitchett murmured: “ Yes, sir; the girls gets it into
their heads that there’s going to be no young men for them.”

“That’s right,” said the girl sullenly.

Pierson’s lips grew tighter. “ Well, what can I do for you,
Mrs. Mitchett?” he said. “Does your daughter come to
church? ”

Mrs. Mitchett shook her head mournfully. “ Never since she
had her byke.”

Pierson rose from his chair. The old story! Control and
discipline undermined, and these bitter apples the result!

 

 
''604 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Well,” he said, “if you need our créche, you have only to
come to me,” and he turned to the girl. “ And you—won’t you
let this dreadful experience move your heart? My dear girl, we
must all master ourselves, our passions, and our foolish wilful-
ness, especially in these times when our country needs us strong,
and self-disciplined, not thinking of ourselves. I’m sure you’re
a good girl at heart.”

The girl’s dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a
spasm of nervous irritation. “Your soul is in great danger,
and you’re very unhappy, I can see. Turn to God for help,
and in His mercy everything will be made so different for you
—so very different! Come!”

The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: “I don’t
want the baby!”

The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a
hideous oath.

“Ilda was in munitions,” said her mother in an explanatory
voice: “earnin’ a matter of four pounds a week. Oh! dear,
it is a waste an’ all!” A queer, rather terrible little smile
curled Pierson’s lips.

“A judgment!” he said. “Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett.
Good evening, Hilda. If you want me when the time comes,
send for me.”

They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was sud-
denly aware that the door was open, and Noel standing there.
He had heard no sound; and how long she had been, there he
could not tell. There was a singular fixity in her face and
attitude. She was staring at the girl, who, as she passed, lifted
her face, so that the dark eyes and the grey eyes met. The
door was shut, and Noel stood there alone with him.

“ Aren’t you early, my child?” said Pierson. “You came
in very quietly.”

“Yes: Dheard,”

A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice;
her face had that possessed look which he always dreaded.
“What did you hear?” he said.

“T heard you say: ‘ A judgment!’ You'll say the same to me,
won’t you? Only, IZ do want my baby.”

She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark
curtain hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff,
her eyes very large. With one hand she plucked at her blouse,
just over her heart.
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 605

Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he
had been sitting in. A lifetime of repression served him in
the half-realised horror of that moment. He stammered out
the single word: “ Nollie!”

“Tt’s quite true,” she said, turned round, and went out.

Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have
fallen down. Nollie! He slid round and sank into his chair,
and by some horrible cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to
feel Noel on his knee, as, when a little girl, she had been wont
to sit, with her fair hair fluffing against his cheek. He seemed
to feel that hair tickling his skin; it used to be the greatest
comfort he had known:since her mother died. At that moment
his pride shrivelled like a flower held to a flame; all that abun-
dant secret pride of a father who loves and admires, who wor-
ships still a dead wife in the children she has left him; who,
humble by nature, yet never knows how proud he is till the
bitter thing happens; all the long pride of the priest who, by
dint of exhortation and remonstrance has coated himself in a
superiority he hardly suspects—all this pride shrivelled in him.
Then something writhed and cried within, as a tortured beast
cries, at loss to know why it is being tortured. How many
times has not a man used those words: “My God! My God!
Why hast Thou forsaken me!” He sprang up and tried to
pace his way out of this cage of confusion. His thoughts and
feelings made the strangest medley, spiritual and worldly—
Social ostracism—her soul in peril—a trial sent by God! The
future! Imagination failed him. He went to his little piano,
opened it, closed it again; took his hat, and stole out. He
walked fast, without knowing where. It was very cold—a clear,
bitter evening. Silent rapid motion in the frosty air was some
relief. As Noel had fled from him, having uttered her news, so
did he fly from her. The afflicted walk fast. He was soon down
by the river, and turned West along its wall. The moon was up,
bright and nearly full, and the steel-like shimmer of its light
burnished the ebbing water. A cruel night! He came to the
Obelisk, and leaned against it, overcome by a spasm of realisa-
tion. He seemed to see his dead wife’s face staring at him out
of the past, like an accusation. “ How have you cared for Nollie,
that she should have come to this?” It became the face of the
moonlit sphinx, staring straight at him, the broad dark face
with wide nostrils, cruel lips, full eyes blank of pupils, all
livened and whitened by the moonlight—an embodiment of the
''606 NOVELS OF LOVE

marvellous unseeing energy of Life, twisting and turning hearts
without mercy. He gazed into those eyes with a sort of scared
defiance. The great clawed paws of the beast, the strength and
remorseless serenity of that crouching creature with human
head, made living by his imagination and the moonlight, seemed
to him like a temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human
virtue.

“Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where
he could see its flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the
ribs and the great muscles, and the tail with tip coiled over
the haunch, like the head of a serpent. It was weirdly living,
fine and cruel, that great man-made thing. It expressed some-
thing in the soul of man, pitiless and remote from love—or
rather, the remorselessness which man had seen lurking within
man’s fate. Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his march
along the Embankment, almost deserted in the bitter cold. He
came to where, in the opening of the Underground railway, he
could see the little forms of people moving, little orange and red
lights growing. The sight arrested him by its warmth and
motion. Was it not alla dream? That woman and her daugh-
ter, had they really come? Had not Noel been but an appari-
tion, her words a trick which his nerves had played him? Then,
too vividly again, he saw her face against the dark stuff of the
curtain, the curve of her hand plucking at her blouse, heard the
sound of his own horrified: “ Nollie!” No illusion, no decep-
tion! The edifice of his life was in the dust. And a queer and
ghastly company of faces came about him; faces he had thought
friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that
moment did not know, all gathered round Noel, with fingers
pointing at her. He staggered back from that vision, could not
bear it, could not recognise this calamity. With a sort of com-
fort, yet an aching sense of unreality, his mind flew to all those
summer holidays spent in Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales,
by mountain and lake, with his two girls; what sunsets, and
turning leaves, birds, beasts, and insects they had watched to-
gether! From their youthful companionship, their eagerness,
their confidence in him, he had known so much warmth and
pleasure. If all those memories were true, surely this could
not be true. He felt suddenly that he must hurry back, go
straight to Noel, tell her that she had been cruel to him, or
assure himself that, for the moment, she had been insane. His
temper rose suddenly, took fire. He felt anger against her,
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 607

against every one he knew, against life itself. Thrusting his
hands deep into the pockets of his thin black overcoat, he plunged
into that narrow glowing tunnel of the station booking-ollice,
which led back to the crowded streets. But by the time he
reached home his anger had evaporated; he felt nothing but
utter lassitude. It was nine o’clock, and the maids had cleared
the dining-table, in despair. Noel had gone up to her room.
He had no courage left, and sat down supperless at his little
piano, letting his fingers find soft painful harmonies, so that
Noel perhaps heard the faint far thrumming of that music
through uneasy dreams. And there he stayed, till it became
time for him to go forth to the Old Year’s Midnight Service.

When he returned, Pierson wrapped himself in a rug and
lay down on the old sofa in his study. The maid, coming in
next morning to “do” the grate, found him still asleep. She
stood contemplating him in awe; a broad-faced, kindly, fresh-
coloured girl. He lay with his face resting on his hand, his
dark, just grizzled hair unruffled, as if he had not stirred all
night; his other hand clutched the rug to his chest, and his
booted feet protruded beyond it. To her young eyes he looked
rather appallingly neglected. She gazed with interest at the
hollows in his cheeks, and the furrows in his brow, and the lips,
dark-moustached and bearded, so tightly compressed, even in
sleep. Being holy didn’t make a man happy, it seemed! What
fascinated her were the cindery eyelashes resting on the cheeks,
the faint movement of face and body as he breathed, the gentle
hiss of breath escaping through the twitching nostrils. She
moved nearer, bending down over him, with the childlike notion
of counting those lashes. Her lips parted in readiness to say:
“Oh!” if he waked. Something in his face, and the little
twitches which passed over it, made her feel “that sorry” for
him. He was a gentleman, had money, preached to her every
Sunday, and was not so very old—what more could a man want?
And yet—he looked so tired, with those cheeks. She pitied him;
helpless and lonely he seemed to her, asleep there instead of going
to bed properly. And sighing, she tiptoed towards the door,

“Ts that you, Bessie?”

The girl turned: “Yes, sir. I’m sorry I woke you, sir.
’Appy New Year, sir!”

“ Ah, yes. A Happy New Year, Bessie.”

She saw his usual smile, saw it die, and a fixed look come on
his face; it scared her, and she hurried away. Pierson had
''608 NOVELS OF LOVE

remembered. For full five minutes he lay there staring at
nothing. Then he rose, folded the rug mechanically, and looked
at the clock. Eight! He went upstairs, knocked on Noel’s door,
and entered.

The blinds were drawn up, but she was still in bed. He stood
looking down at her. “A Happy New Year, my child!” he
said ; and he trembled all over, shivering visibly. She looked so
young and innocent, so round-faced and fresh, after her night’s
sleep, that the thought sprang up in him again: ‘It must have
been a dream!’ She did not move, but a slow flush came up in
her cheeks. No dream—no dream! He said tremulously: “I
can’t realise. I—I hoped I had heard wrong. Didn’t I, Nollie?
Didn*t I?”

She just shook her head.

“Tell me everything,” he said; “for God’s sake!”

He saw her lips moving, and caught the murmur: “ There’s
nothing more. Gratian and George know, and Leila. It can’t
be undone, Daddy. Perhaps I wouldn’t have wanted to make
sure, if you hadn’t tried to stop Cyril and me—and I’m glad
sometimes, because I shall have something of his ” She
looked up at him. “ After all, it’s the same, really; only, there’s
no ring. It’s no good talking to me now, as if I hadn’t been
thinking of this for ages. I’m used to anything you can say;
Pve said it to myself, you see. There’s nothing but to make
the best of it.”

Her hot hand came out from under the bedclothes, and
clutched his very tight. Her flush had deepened, and her eyes
seemed to him to glitter.

“Oh, Daddy! You do look tired! Haven’t you been to bed?
Poor Daddy!”

That hot clutch, and the words: “ Poor Daddy!” brought
tears into his eyes. They rolled slowly down to his beard, and
he covered his face with the other hand. Her grip tightened
convulsively ; suddenly she dragged it to her lips, kissed it, and
let it drop.

“ Don’t!” she said, and turned away her face.

Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly:

“ Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere? ”

Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish
child whose hair gets in its eyes and mouth.

“Oh! I don’t know; what does it matter?”

“ Kestrel; would you like to go there? Your aunt—I could

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 609

write to her.” Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed
going on within her. |

“ Yes,” she said, “I would. Only, not Uncle Bob.”

“ Perhaps your uncle would come up here, and keep me
company.”

She turned her face away, and that tossing movement of the
limbs beneath the clothes began again. “I don’t care,” she
said; “ anywhere—it doesn’t matter.”

Pierson put his chilly hand on her forehead. “ Gently!” he
said, and knelt down by the bed. “ Merciful Father,’ he mur-
mured, “ give us strength to bear this dreadful trial. Keep my
beloved child safe, and bring her peace; and give me to under-
stand how I have done wrong, how I have failed towards Thee,
and her. In all things chasten and strengthen her, my child,
and me.”

His thoughts moved on in the confused, inarticulate sus-
pense of prayer, till he heard her say: “ You haven't failed;
why do you talk of failing—it isn’t true; and don’t pray for
me, Daddy.”

Pierson raised himself, and moved back from the bed. Her
words confounded him, yet he was afraid to answer. She pushed
her head deep into the pillow, and lay looking up at the ceil-
ing.

- “T shall have a son; Cyril won’t quite have died. And I
don’t want to be forgiven.”

He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and
feeling had gone on in her to produce this hardened state of
mind, which to him seemed almost blasphemous. And in the
very midst of this turmoil in his heart, he could not help think-
ing how lovely her face looked, lying back so that the curye of
her throat was bared, with the short tendrils of hair coiling
about it. That flung-back head, moving restlessly from side
to side in the heat of the soft pillow, had such a passion of pro-
testing life in it! And he kept silence.

“JT want you to know it was all me. But I can’t pretend.
Of course I'll try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly
can. I’m sorry for you, poor Daddy; oh! I’m sorry for you!”
With a movement incredibly lithe and swift, she turned and
pressed her face down in the pillow, so that all he could see was
her tumbled hair and the bedclothing trembling above her
shoulders. He tried to stroke that hair, but she shook her head
free, and he stole out.
''610 NOVELS OF LOVE

She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched
meal was over, the mechanism of his professional life caught
him again at once. New Year’s Day! He had much to do. He
had, before all, to be of a cheerful countenance before his flock,
to greet all and any with an air of hope and courage.
''xy
1 §

Trza Prerson, seeing her brother-in-law’s handwriting, natu-
rally said: “ Here’s a letter from Ted.”

Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally
responded :

“‘ What does he say?”

In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one
of the most difficult tasks ever set her. Its news moved and
disturbed her deeply. Under her wing this disaster had hap-
pened! Down here had been wrought this most deplorable
miracle, fraught with such dislocation of lives! Noel’s face,
absorbed and passionate, outside the door of her room on the
night when Cyril Morland went away—her instinct had been
right!

“ He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob.”

“Why not both of us?”

“ He wants Nollie to come down to me; she’s not well.”

“ Not well? What’s the matter?”

To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him,
disloyalty to her husband. A simple consideration of fact and
not of principle, decided her. He would certainly say in a
moment: ‘Here! Pitch it over!’ and she would have to. She
said tranquilly:

“You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away,
and Noel behaved so strangely. Well, my dear, she is going to
have a child at the beginning of April. The poor boy is dead,
Bob,—he died for the Country.”

She saw the red tide flow up into his face.

yan)”

“ Poor Edward is dreadfully upset. We must do what we can.
I blame myself.” By instinct she used those words.

“Blame yourself? Stuff! That young 1? He stopped.

Thirza said quietly: “No, Bob; of the two, I’m sure it was
Noel; she was desperate that day. Don’t you remember her

611

 
''612 NOVELS OF LOVE

face? Oh! this war! It’s turned the whole world upside down.
That’s the only comfort; nothing’s normal.”

Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happi-
ness, for he was always absorbed in the moment, to the point of
unsel{-consciousness. Hating an egg, cutting down a tree,
sitting on a Tribunal, making up his accounts, planting potatoes,
looking at the moon, riding his cob, reading the Lessons—no
part of him stood aside to see how he was doing it, or wonder
why he was doing it, or not doing it better. He grew like a cork-
tree, and acted like a sturdy and well-natured dog. His griefs,
angers, and enjoyments were simple as a child’s, or as his some-
what noisy slumbers. They were notably well-suited, for Thirza
had the same secret of happiness, though her absorption in the
moment did not—as became a woman—preyent her being con-
scious of others; indeed, such formed the chief subject of her
absorptions. One might say that they neither of them had
philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one could meet
on this earth of the self-conscious. Daily life to these two was
still of simple savour. To be absorbed in life—the queer endless
tissue of moments and things felt and done and said and made,
the odd inspiriting conjunctions of countless people—was natu-
ral to them; but they never thought whether they were absorbed
or not, or had any particular attitude to Life or Death—a great
blessing at the epoch in which they were living.

Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay
and concern, that he was almost happy.

“ By Jove!” he said, “what a ghastly thing! Nollie, of all
people! I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched beyond
words.” But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and
Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.

“Your coffee’s getting cold!” she said.

“What do you advise? Shall I go up, heh?”

“TI think youll be a godsend to poor Ted; you'll keep his
spirits up. Eve won’t get any leave till Easter; and I can be
quite alone, and see to Nollie here. The servants can have a
holiday; Nurse and I will run the house together. I shall
enjoy it.”

“You’re a good woman, Thirza!” Taking his wife’s hand,
he put it to his lips. “There isn’t another woman like you in
the world.”

Thirza’s eyes smiled. “ Pass me your cup; I’ll give you some
fresh coffee.”
''— ie

SAINT’S PROGRESS 613

It was decided to put the plan into operation at mid-month,
and she bent all her wits to instilling into her husband the
thought that a baby more or less was no great matter in a world
which already contained twelve hundred million people. With
a man’s keener sense of family propriety, he could not see that
this baby would be the same as any other baby. “ By heaven! ”
he would say, “I simply can’t get used to it; in our
family! And Ted a parson! What the devil shall we do with
igi?

“Tf Nollie will let us, why shouldn’t we adopt it? It’ll be
something to take my thoughts off the boys.”

“That’s an idea! But Ted’s a funny fellow. He'll have
some doctrine of atonement, or other in his bonnet.”

“Oh, bother! ” said Thirza with asperity.

The thought of sojourning in town for a spell was not un-
pleasant to Bob Pierson. His Tribunal work was over, his early
potatoes in, and he had visions of working for the Country, of
being a special constable, and dining at his Club. The nearer
he was to the front, and the more he could talk about the war,
the greater the service he felt he would be doing. He would ask
for a job where his brains would be of use. He regretted keenly
that Thirza wouldn’t be with him; a long separation like this
would be a great trial. And he would sigh and run his fingers
through his whiskers. Still for the Country, and for Nollie,
one must put up with it!

When Thirza finally saw him into the train, tears stood in the
eyes of both, for they were honestly attached, and knew well
enough that this job, once taken in hand, would have to be seen
through; a three months’ separation at least.

“T shall write every day.”

“Se shall J. Bop.

“You won't fret, old girl?”

“ Only if you do.”

“T shall be up at 5.5, and she’ll be down at 4.50. Give us a
kiss—damn the porters. God bless you! I suppose she’d mind
if I were to come down now and then?”

“Ym afraid she would. It’s—it’s—well, you know.”

“Yes, yes; I do.” And he really did; for underneath, he had
true delicacy.

Her last words: “ You’re very sweet, Bob,” remained in his
ears all the way to Severn Junction.

She went back to the house, emptied of her husband, daughter,
''614 NOVELS OF LOVE

boys, and maids; only the dogs left and the old nurse whom she
had taken into confidence. Even in that sheltered, wooded valley
it was very cold this winter. The birds hid themselves, not one
flower bloomed, and the red-brown river was full and swift. The
sound of trees being felled for trench props, in the wood above
the house resounded all day long in the frosty air. She meant
to do the cooking herself; and for the rest of the morning and
early afternoon she concocted nice things, and thought out how
she herself would feel if she were Noel and Noel she, so as to
smooth out of the way anything which would hurt the girl. In
the afternoon she went down to the station in the village car,
the same which had borne Cyril Morland away that July night,
for their coachman had been taken for the army, and the horses
were turned out.

Noel looked tired and white, but calm—too calm. Her face
seemed to Thirza to have fined down, and with those brooding
eyes, to be more beautiful. In the car she possessed herself of
the girl’s hand, and squeezed it hard; their only allusion to the
situation, except Noel’s formal:

“Thank you so much, Auntie, for having me; it’s most
awfully sweet of you and Uncle Bob.”

“There’s no one in the house, my dear, except old Nurse.
It’ll be very dull for you; but I thought I’d teach you to cook;
it’s rather useful.”

The smile which slipped on to Noel’s face gave Thirza quite a
turn.

She had assigned the girl a different room, and had made it
extraordinarily cheerful with a log fire, chrysanthemums, bright
copper candlesticks, warming-pans, and such like.

She went up with her at bedtime, and standing before the
fire, said:

“You know, Nollie, I absolutely refuse to regard this as any
sort of tragedy. To bring life into the world in these days, no
matter how, ought to make anyone happy. I only wish I could
do it again, then I should feel some use. Good night, dear; and
if you want anything, knock on the wall. I’m next door. Bless
you!” She saw that the girl was greatly moved, underneath
her pale mask; and went out astonished at her niece’s powers
of self-control.

But she did not sleep at all well; for in imagination, she kept
on seeing Noel turning from side to side in the big bed, and
those great eyes of hers staring at the dark.
'' 

SAINT’S PROGRESS 615

2 §

The meeting of the brothers Pierson took place at the dinner-
hour, and was characterised by a truly English lack of display.
They were so extremely different, and had been together so little
since early days in their old Buckinghamshire home, that they
were practically strangers, with just the potent link of far-
distant memories in common. It was of these they talked, and
about the war. On this subject they agreed in the large, and
differed in the narrow. For instance, both thought they knew
about Germany and other countries, and neither of course had
any real knowledge of any country outside their own; for,
though both had passed through considerable tracts of foreign
ground at one time or another, they had never remarked any-
thing except its surface, its churches, and its sunsets. Again,
both assumed that they were democrats, but neither knew the
meaning of the word, nor felt that the working man could be
really trusted; and both revered Church and King. Both dis-
liked conscription, but considered it necessary. Both favoured
Home Rule for Ireland, but neither thought it possible to grant
it. Both wished for the war to end, but were for prosecut-
ing it to Victory, and neither knew what they meant by that
word. So much for the large. On the narrower issues, such as
strategy, and the personality of their country’s leaders, they were
opposed. Edward was a Westerner, Robert an Hasterner, as was
natural in one who had lived twenty-five years in Ceylon.
Edward favoured the fallen government, Robert the risen.
Neither had any particular reasons for their partisanship except
what he had read in the journals. After all—what other reasons
could they have had? Edward disliked the Harmsworth Press ;
Robert thought it was doing good. Robert was explosive, and
rather vague; Edward dreamy, and a little didactic. Robert
thought poor Ted looking like a ghost; Edward thought poor
Bob looking like the setting sun. Their faces were indeed as
curiously contrasted as their views and voices; the pale-dark,
hollowed, narrow face of Edward, with its short, pointed beard,
and the red-skinned, broad, full, whiskered face of Robert. They
parted for the night with an affectionate hand-clasp.

So began a queer partnership which consisted, as the days
went on, of half an hour’s companionship at breakfast, each
reading the paper; and of dinner together perhaps three times
a week. Hach thought his brother very odd, but continued to
''616 NOVELS OF LOVE

hold the highest opinion of him. And, behind it all, the deep
tribal sense that they stood together in trouble, grew. But of
that trouble they never spoke, though not seldom Robert would
lower his journal, and above the glasses perched on his well-
shaped nose, contemplate his brother, and a little frown of
sympathy would ridge his forehead between his bushy eyebrows.
And once in a way he would catch Edward’s eyes coming off
duty from his journal, to look, not at his brother, but at—the
skeleton; when that happened, Robert would adjust his glasses
hastily, damn the newspaper type, and apologise to Edward for
swearing. And he would think: ‘ Poor Ted! He ought to drink
port, and—and enjoy himself, and forget it. What a pity he’s a
parson! ”

In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward’s asceticism.
“He eats nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable
cigarette once in a blue moon. He’s as lonely as a coot; it’s a
thousand pities he ever lost his wife. I expect to see his wings
sprout any day; but—dash it all!—I don’t believe he’s got the
flesh to grow them on. Send him up some clotted cream; I’ll
see if I can get him to eat it.” When the cream came, he got
Edward to eat some the first morning, and at tea time found
that he had finished it himself. “We never talk about Nollie,”
he wrote, “I’m always meaning to have it out with him and
tell him to buck up, but when it comes to the point I dry up;
because, after all, I feel it too; it sticks in my gizzard horribly.
We Piersons are pretty old, and we’ve always been respectable,
ever since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot chap came
over and founded us. The only black sheep I ever heard of is
Cousin Leila. By the way, I saw her the other day; she came
round here to see Ted. I remember going to stay with her and
her first husband, young Fane, at Simla, when I was coming
home, just before we were married. Phew! That was a queer
ménage; all the young chaps fluttering round her, and young
Fane looking like a cynical ghost. Even now she can’t help
setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole; thinks
her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital
and all that. Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that
ever was.”

“We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end,”
he wrote a little later; “I don’t like her so well as Nollie; too
serious and downright for me. Her husband seems a sensible
fellow, though; but the devil of a free-thinker. He and poor
''SAINT’S PROGRESS — 617

Ted are like cat and dog. We had Leila in to dinner again on
Saturday, and a man called Fort came too. She’s sweet on him,
I could see with half an eye, but poor old Ted can’t. The doctor
and Ted talked up hill and down dale. The doctor said a thing
which struck me. ‘What divides us from the beasts? Will
power: nothing else. What’s this war, really, but a death car-
nival of proof that man’s will is invincible?’ I stuck it down to
tell you, when I got upstairs. He’s a clever fellow. I believe
in God, as you know, but I must say when it comes to an argu-
ment, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his: ‘ We’re told
this,’ and ‘ We’re told that.’ Nobody mentioned Nollie. I must
have the whole thing out with Ted; we must know how to act
when it’s all over.”

But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been
sitting opposite each other at meals for two months, was the
subject broached between them, and then not by Robert. Ed-
ward, standing by the hearth after dinner, in his familiar
attitude, one foot on the fender, one hand grasping the mantel-
shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames, said: “I’ve never asked
your forgiveness, Bob.”

Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started,
looked at Edward’s back in its parson’s coat, and answered:

“My dear old chap! ”

“It has been very difficult to speak of this.”

“Of course, of course!” And there was a silence, while
Robert’s eyes travelled round the walls for inspiration. They
encountered only the effigies of past Piersons—very oily works,
and fell back on the dining-table. Edward went on speaking
to the fire:

“It still seems to me incredible. Day and night I think of
what it’s my duty to do.”

“Nothing!” ejaculated Robert. “Leave the baby with
Thirza; we'll take care of it, and when Nollie’s fit, let her go
back to work in a hospital again. She'll soon get over it.”
He saw his brother shake his head, and thought: ‘ Ah! yes; now
there’s going to be some d d conscientious complication.”

Edward turned round on him: “That is very sweet of you
both, but it would be wrong and cowardly for me to allow it.”

The resentment which springs up in fathers when other
fathers dispose of young lives, rose in Robert.

“Dash it all, my dear Ted, that’s for Nollie to say. She’s
a woman now, remember.” ‘

 
''618 NOVELS OF LOVE

A smile went straying about in the shadows of his brother’s
face. “A woman? Little Nollie! Bob, I’ve made a terrible
mess of it with my girls.” He hid his lips with his hand, and
turned again to the flames. Robert felt a lump in his throat.
“Oh! Hang it, old boy, I don’t think that. What else could
you have done? You take too much on yourself. After all,
they’re fine girls. I’m sure Nollie’s a darling. It’s these
modern notions, and this war. Cheer up! Itll all dry straight.”
He went up to his brother and put a hand on his shoulder.
Edward seemed to stiffen under that touch.

“ Nothing comes straight,’ he said, “unless it’s faced; you
know that, Bob.”

Robert’s face was a study at that moment. His cheeks filled
and collapsed again like a dog’s when it has been rebuked. His
colour deepened, and he rattled some money in a trouser pocket.

“ Something in that, of course,” he said gruffly. “All the
same, the decision’s with Nollie. We'll see what Thirza says.
Anyway, there’s no hurry. It’s a thousand pities you’re a par-
son; the trouble’s enough without that.”

Edward shook his head. “ My position is nothing; it’s the
thought of my child, my wife’s child. It’s sheer pride; and I
can’t subdue it. I can’t fight it down. God forgive me, I
rebel.”

And Robert thought: ‘By George, he does take it to heart!
Well, so should I! I do, as it is!’ He took out his pipe, and
filled it, pushing the tobacco down and down.

“T’m not a man of the world,” he heard his brother say;
“T’m out of touch with many things. It’s almost unbearable
to me to feel that I’m joining with the world to condemn my
own daughter; not for their reasons, perhaps—I don’t know;
I hope not, but still, I’m against her.”

Robert lit his pipe.

“Steady, old man!” he said. “It’s a misfortune. But if
I were you I should feel: ‘ She’s done a wild, silly thing, but
hang it, if anybody says a word against her, I’ll wring his neck.’
And what’s more, you’ll feel much the same, when it comes to
the point.” He emitted a huge puff of smake, which obscured
his brother’s face, and the blood, buzzing in his temples, seemed
to thicken the sound of Edward’s voice.

“T don’t know; I’ve tried to see clearly. I have prayed to
be shown what her duty is, and mine. It seems to me there can
be no peace for her until she has atoned, by open suffering;
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 619

that the world’s judgment is her cross, and she must bear it;
especially in these days, when all the world is facing suffering
so nobly. And then it seems so hard—so bitter; my poor little
Nollie! ”

There was a silence, broken only by the gurling of Robert’s
pipe, till he said abruptly:

“T don’t follow you, Ted; no, I don’t. J think a man should
screen his children all he can. Talk to her as you like, but don’t
let the world do it. Dash it, the world’s a rotten gambling place.
I call myself a man of the world, but when it comes to private
matters—well, then I draw the line. It seems to me—it seems
to me inhuman. What does George Laird think about it?
He’s a knowing chap. I suppose you’ve—no, I suppose you
haven’t ” For a peculiar smile had come on Edward’s face.

“No,” he said, “ I should hardly ask George Laird’s opinion.”

And Robert realised suddenly the stubborn loneliness of that
thin black figure, whose fingers were playing with a little gold
cross. ‘ By Jove!’ he thought, ‘I believe old Ted’s like one of
those Eastern chaps who go into lonely places. He’s got himself
surrounded by visions of things that aren’t there. He lives in
unreality—something we can’t understand. I shouldn’t be sur-
prised if he heard voices, like—who was it? Tt, tt! What a
pity!’ Ted was deceptive. He was gentle and all that, a gen-
tleman of course, and that disguised him; but underneath, what
was there—a regular ascetic, a fakir! And a sense of bewilder-
ment, of dealing with something which he could not grasp, beset
Bob Pierson, so that he went back to the table, and sat down
again beside his port. .

“Tt seems to me,” he said rather gruffly, “that the chicken
had better be hatched before we count it.” And then, sorry for
his brusqueness, emptied his glass. As the fluid passed over his
palate, he thought: ‘ Poor old Ted! He doesn’t even drink—
hasn’t a pleasure in life, so far as I can see, except doing his
duty, and doesn’t even seem to know what that is. There aren’t
many like him—luckily! And yet I love him—pathetic chap!’

The “pathetic chap” was still staring at the flames.

3 §

And at this very hour, when the brothers were talking—for
thought and feeling do pass mysteriously over the invisible wires
of space—Cyril Morland’s son was being born to Noel, a little
before his time.

 
'' 
''a a

BAR Ti EL.
I

xi

Down by the River Wye, among plum-trees in blossom, Noel
had laid her baby in a hammock, and stood reading a letter:

“ My pearest NoLuiE,

“Now that you are strong again, I feel that I must put before
you my feeling as to your duty in this crisis of your life. Your
aunt and uncle have made the most kind and generous offer to -
adopt your little boy. I have known that this was in their minds
for some time, and have thought it over day and night for
weeks. In the worldly sense it would be the best thing, no doubt.
But this is a spiritual matter. The future of our souls depends
on how we meet the consequences of our conduct. And painful,
dreadful, indeed, as they must be, I am driven to feel that you
can only reach true peace by facing them in a spirit of brave
humility. I want you to think and think—till you arrive at
a certainty which satisfies your conscience. If you decide, as I
trust you will, to come back to me here with your boy, I shall do
all in my power to make you happy while we face the future
together. To do as your aunt and uncle in their kindness wish,
would, I am sore afraid, end in depriving you of the inner
strength and happiness which God only gives to those who do
their duty and try courageously to repair their errors. I have,
confidence in you, my dear child.

“Ever your most loving father,
“EDWARD PrERsoNn.”

She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby.
Daddy seemed to think that she might be willing to part from
this wonderful creature! Sunlight fell through the plum blos-
som, in an extra patchwork quilt over the bundle lying there,
touched the baby’s nose and mouth, so that he sneezed. Noel
laughed, and put her lips close to his face. ‘Give you up!’

621
''622 NOVELS OF LOVE

she thought: ‘Oh, no! And I’m going to be happy too. They
shan’t stop me.’

In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming
up; and a week later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and
aunt. The old nurse went too. Everything had hitherto been
so carefully watched and guarded against by Thirza, that Noel
did not really come face to face with her position till she reached
home.

Gratian, transferred to a London Hospital, was now living
at home. She had provided the house with new maids against
her sister’s return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet
her old familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid
curiosity of new faces. That morning before she left Kestrel,
her aunt had come into her room while she was dressing, taken
her left hand and slipped a little gold band on to its third finger.

“To please me, Nollie, now that you’re going, just for the
- foolish, who know nothing about you.”

Noel had suffered it with the thought: ‘It’s all very silly!’
But now, when the new maid was pouring out her hot water,
she was suddenly aware of the girl’s round blue eyes wandering,
as it were, mechanically to her hand. This little hoop of gold,
then, had an awful power! A rush of disgust came over her.
All life seemed suddenly a thing of forms and sham. Everybody
then would look at that little ring; and she was a coward, saving
herself from them! When she was alone again, she slipped it
off, and laid it on the washstand, where the sunlight fell. Only
this little shining band of metal, this little yellow ring, stood
between her and the world’s hostile scorn! Her lips trembled.
She took up the ring, and went to the open window, to throw it
out. But she did not, uncertain and unhappy—half realising
the cruelty of life. A knock at the door sent her flying back to
the wash-stand. The visitor was Gratian.

“T’ve been looking at him,” she said softly; “he’s like you,
Nollie, except for his nose.”

“He’s hardly got one yet. But aren’t his eyes intelligent?
I think they’re wonderful.” She held up the ring: “ What
shall I do about this, Gratian?”

Gratian flushed. “ Wear it. I don’t see why outsiders should
know. For the sake of Dad I think you ought. There’s the
parish.”

Noel slipped the ring- back on to her finger. “ Would you?”

“JT can’t tell. I think I would.”
''a

SAINT’S PROGRESS 623

Noel laughed suddenly. “I’m going to get cynical; I can
feel it in my bones. How is Daddy looking? ”

“Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a
bit, and taking some of the work now.”

“Do I hurt him very much still? ”

“ He’s awfully pleased that you’ve come. He’s as sweet as he
can be about you.”

“Yes,” murmured Noel, “that’s what’s dreadful. I’m glad
he wasn’t in when I came. Has he told anyone?”

Gratian shook her head. “I don’t think anybody knows; un-
less—perhaps Captain Fort. He came in again the other night,
and somehow

Noel flushed. “ Leila!” she said enigmatically. “ Have
you seen her?”

“T went to her flat last week with Dad—he likes her.”

“Delilah is her real name, you know. All men like her. And
Captain Fort is her lover.”

Gratian gasped. Noel would say things sometimes which
made her feel the younger of the two.

“Of course he is,” went on Noel in a hard voice. “She has
no men friends; her sort never have, only lovers. Why do you
think he knows about me?”

“When he asked after you he looked

“Yes; I’ve seen him look like that when he’s sorry for any-
thing. I don’t care. Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?”

“Yes; he looks awfully unhappy.”

“His wife drugs.”

“Oh, Nollie! How do you know?”

“T saw her once; I’m sure she does; there was a smell; and
she’s got wandering eyes that go all glassy. He can paint me
now, if he likes. I wouldn’t let him before. Does he know?”

“Of course not.”

“He knows there was something; he’s got second sight, I
think. But I mind him less than anybody. Is his picture of
Daddy good? ”

“ Powerful, but it hurts, somehow.”

“ Let’s go down and see it.”

The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense
modernity made that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and
strange. The black figure, with long pale fingers touching the
paler piano keys, had a frightening actuality. The face, three-
quarters full, was raised as if for inspiration, and the eyes

 

 
''624 NOVELS OF LOVE

rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the face of a girl painted and
hung on a background of wall above the piano.

“It’s the face of that girl,’ said Gratian, when they had
looked at the picture for some time in silence.

“No,” said Noel, “it’s the look in his eyes.”

“But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl? Isn’t
she fearfully alive, though? She looks as if she were saying:
* Cheerio!?”

“ She is; it’s awfully pathetic, I think. Poor Daddy!”

“It’s a libel,” said Gratian stubbornly.

“No. That's what hurts. He isn’t quite—quite all there.
_ Will he be coming in soon?”

Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard. “ Would you like
me at dinner or not; I can easily be out?”

Noel shook her head. “It’s no good to funk it. He wanted
me, and now he’s got me. Oh! why did he? Ill be awful for
him.”

Gratian sighed. “I’ve tried my best, but he always said:
‘T’ve thought so long about it all that I can’t think any longer.
I can only feel the braver course is the best. When things are
bravely and humbly met, there will be charity and forgiveness.’ ”

“There won't,” said Noel, “ Daddy’s a saint, and he doesn’t
see.”

“Yes, he is a saint. But one must think for oneself—one
simply must. I can’t believe as he does, any more; can you,
Nollie?”

“JT don’t know. When I was going through it, I prayed; but
I don’t know whether I really believed. I don’t think I mind
much about that, one way or the other.”

“T mind terribly,” said Gratian, “I want the truth.”

“JT don’t know what I want,” said Noel slowly, “ except that
sometimes I want—life; awfully.”

And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a
sort of wonder.

28

Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that
evening, and at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste,
which had belonged to her mother. When she had finished
dressing she went into the nursery and stood by the baby’s cot.
The old nurse who was sitting there beside him, got up at once
and said:
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 625

“ He’s sleeping beautiful—the lamb. T’ll go down and get a
cup o’ tea, and come up, ma’am, when the gong goes.” In the
way peculiar to those who have never to initiate, but only to
support positions in which they are placed by others, she had
adopted for herself the theory that Noel was a real war-widow.
She knew the truth perfectly ; for she had watched that hurried
little romance at Kestrel, but by dint of charity and blurred
meditations it was easy for her to imagine the marriage cere-
mony which would and should have taken place; and she was
zealous that other people should imagine it too. It was so much
more regular and natural like that, and “her” baby invested
with his proper dignity. She went downstairs to get a “cup 0”
tea,” thinking: ‘A picture they make—that they do, bless
his little heart; and his pretty little mother—no more than a
child, all said and done.’

Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing
light, absorbed in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her
eyes, she saw in a mirror the reflection of her father’s dark
figure by the door. She could hear him breathing as if the
ascent of the stairs had tired him; and moving to the head of
the cot, she rested her hand on it, and turned her face towards
him. He came up and stood beside her, looking silently down
at the baby. She saw him make the sign of the Cross above it,
and the movement of his lips in prayer. Love for her father,
and rebellion against this intercession for her perfect baby
fought so hard in the girl’s heart that she felt suffocated, and
glad of the dark, so that he could not see her eyes. Then he
took her hand and put it to his lips, but still without a word;
and for the life of her she could not speak either. In silence,
he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden
passion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby.
She put her finger down and touched one of his hands. The tiny
sleeping fingers uncurled and, like some little sea anemone,
clutched round it. She heard her father draw his breath in;
saw him turn away quickly, silently, and go out. And she
stayed, hardly breathing, with the hand of her baby squeezing
her finger.
''II
1 §

WHEN Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit
nursery, he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees
beside his bed, absorbed in the vision he had seen. That young
figure in Madonna blue, with the halo of bright hair; the
sleeping babe in the fine dusk; the silence, the adoration in
that white room! He saw, too, a vision of the past, when Noel
herself had been the sleeping babe within her mother’s arm, and
he had stood beside them, wondering and giving praise. It
passed with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which
belongs to beauty, passed and left the tormenting realism of
life. Ah! to live with only the inner meaning, spiritual and
beautified, in a rare wonderment such as he had experienced
just now!

His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish
little room—ticked the evening hour away into darkness. And
still he knelt, dreading to come back into it all, to face the
world’s eyes, and the sound of the world’s tongue, and the
touch of the rough, the gross, the unseemly. How could he
guard his child? How preserve that vision in her life, in her
spirit, about to enter such cold, rough waters? But the gong
sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.

But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was
relieved, as dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected
appearance of the Belgian painter. He had a general invitation,
of which he often availed himself; but he was so silent, and his
thin, beardless face, which seemed all eyes and brow, so mourn-
ful, that all three felt in the presence of a sorrow deeper even
than their own family grief. During the meal he gazed silently
at Noel. Once he said: “ You will let me paint you now,
mademoiselle, I hope?” and his face brightened a little when
she nodded. There was never much talk when he came, for any
depth of discussion, even of art, brought out at once too wide a
difference. And Pierson could never avoid a vague irritation
with one who clearly had spirituality, but of a sort which he
could not understand. After dinner he excused himself, and

626
''a

SAINT’S PROGRESS 627

went off to his study. Monsieur would be happier alone with
the two girls! Gratian, too, got up. She had remembered
Noel’s words: “I mind him less than anybody.” It was a
chance for Nollie to break the ice.

28

“T have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle,”’ said the
painter, when they were alone.

Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawingroom hearth,
with her arms stretched out as if there had been a fire
there.

“T’ve been away. How are you going to paint me, monsieur? ”

“In that dress, mademoiselle; just as you are now, warming
yourself at the fire of life.”

“ But it isn’t there.”

“Yes, fires soon go out. Mademoiselle, will you come and
see my wife? She is ill.”

“Now?” asked Noel, startled.

“Yes, now. She is really ill, and J have no one there. That
is what I came to ask of your sister; but now you are here, it’s
even better. She likes you.”

Noel got up. “Wait one minute!” she said, and ran up-
stairs. Her baby was asleep, and the old nurse dozing. Putting
on a cloak and cap of grey rabbit’s fur, she ran down again to
the hall where the painter was waiting; and they went out
together.

“I do not know if I am to blame,” he said, “my wife has been
no real wife to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no
real husband to her.”

Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer smile.

“Yes,” he went on, “from that has come her tragedy. But
she should have known before I married her. Nothing was con-
cealed. Bon Dieu! she should have known! Why cannot a
woman see things as they are? My mistress, mademoiselle,
is not a thing of flesh. It is my art. It has always been first
with me, and always will. She has never accepted that—she
is incapable of accepting it. I am sorry for her. But what
would you? I was a fool to marry her. Chére mademoiselle,
no troubles are anything beside the trouble which goes on day
and night, meal after meal, year after year, between two people
who should never have married, because one loves too much
''628 NOVELS OF LOVE

and requires all, and the other loves not at all—no, not at all,
now, it is long dead—and can give but little.”

“Can’t you separate?” asked Noel, wondering.

“Tt is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she
craves her drugs—yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle. It
is impossible for one who has any compassion in his soul. Be-
sides, what would she do? We live from hand to mouth, in a
strange land. She has no friends here, not one. How could I
leave her while this war lasts? As well could two persons
on a desert island separate. She is killing herself, too, with
these drugs, and I cannot stop her.”

“Poor madame!” murmured Noel. “ Poor monsieur!”

The painter drew his hand across his eyes.

“T cannot change my nature,” he said in a stifled voice, “ nor
she hers. So we goon. But life will stop suddenly some day for
one of us. After all, it is much worse for her than for me.
Enter, mademoiselle. Do not tell her I am going to paint you;
she likes you, because you refused to let me.”

Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once
before, and remembered that sickly scent of drugs. On the
third floor they entered a small sitting-room whose walls were
covered with paintings and drawings; from one corner a tri-
angular stack of canvases jutted out. There was little furniture
save an old red sofa, and on this was seated a stoutish man in
the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his elbows on his knees and
his bearded cheeks resting on his doubled fists. Beside him
on the sofa, nursing a doll, was a little girl, who looked up at
Noel. She had a most strange, attractive, pale little face, with
pointed chin and large eyes, which never moved from this
apparition in grey rabbits’ skins.

“ Ah, Barra! You here!” said the painter: “ Mademoiselle,
this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the front; and
this is our landlady’s little girl. A little refugee, too, aren’t you,
Chica?”

The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her
grave scrutiny of the visitor. The soldier, who had risen
heavily, offered Noel one of his podgy hands, with a sad and
heavy giggle.

« Sit down, mademoiselle,’ said Lavendie, placing a chair for
her: “I will bring my wife in,” and he went out through some
double doors.

Noel sat down. The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 629

the little girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still
watched the visitor. Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no
attempt to talk. And presently through the double doors the
painter and his wife came in. She was a thin woman in a red
wrapper, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones, and hungry eyes;
her dark hair hung loose, and one hand played restlessly with a
fold of her gown. She took Noel’s hand; and her uplifted eyes
seemed to dig into the girl’s face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.

“ How do you do?” she said in English. “So Pierre brought
you to see me again. I remember you so well. You would not
let him paint you. Ah/ que c’est dréle! You are so pretty too.
Hein, Monsieur Barra, is not mademoiselle pretty?”

The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny
of the floor.

“ Henriette,” said Lavendie, “sit down beside Chica—you
must not stand. Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg.”

“ Tm so sorry you’re not well,” said Noel, and sat down again,

The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked
up at his tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger,
and a sort of cunning.

“A great painter, my husband, is he not?” she said to Noel.
“You would not imagine what that man can do. And how he
paints—all day long; and all night in his head. And so you
would not let him paint you, after all?”

Lavendie said impatiently: “Voyons, Henriette, causez
@autre chose.”

His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and
gave him the look of a dog that has been rebuked.

“Tam a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house.
Here I live day after day—my husband is always painting. Who
would go out alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds
of the war in every face? I prefer to keep my room. My hus-
band goes painting ; every face he sees interests him, except that
which he sees every day. But I ama prisoner. Monsieur Barra
is our first visitor for a long time.”

The soldier raised his face from his fists. “ Prisonnier,
madame! What would you say if you were out there?” And
he gave his thick giggle. “We are the prisoners, we others.
What would you say to imprisonment by explosion day and night,
never a minute free. Bom! Bom! Bom! Ah/ les tranchées!
It’s not so free as all that, there.”

“Every one has his own prison,” said Lavendie bitterly.
''630 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ Mademoiselle even, has her prison—and little Chica, and her
doll. Every one has his prison, Barra. Monsieur Barra is also
a painter, mademoiselle.”

“Moi!” said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand. “I paint
puddles, star-bombs, horses’ ribs—I paint holes and holes and
holes, wire and wire and wire, and water—long white ugly water.
I paint splinters, and men’s souls naked, and men’s bodies dead,
and nightmare—nightmare—all day and all night—I paint them
in my head.” He suddenly ceased speaking and relapsed into
contemplation of the carpet, with his bearded cheeks resting on
his fists. “And their souls as white as snow, les camarades,”’
he added suddenly and loudly, “millions of Belgians, English,
French, even the Boches, with white souls. I paint those souls ic

A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly
at Lavendie.

“ Barra,” he said, as if the soldier were not there, “is a great
painter, but the Front has turned his head a little. What he says
is true, though. There is no hatred out there. It is here that
we are prisoners of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds—they
are poison!”

His wife put out her hand and touched the child’s shoulder.

“Why should we not hate?” she said. “ Who killed Chica’s
father, and blew her home to rags? Who threw her out into
this horrible England—pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible.
Ah! les Boches! If my hatred could destroy them there would
not be one left. Even my husband was not so mad about his
painting when we lived at home. But here !” Her eyes
darted at his face again, and then sank as if rebuked. Noel saw
the painter’s lips move. The sick woman’s whole figure writhed.

“Tt is mania, your painting!” She looked at Noel with a
smile. “Will you have some tea, mademoiselle? Monsieur
Barra, some tea?”

The soldier said thickly: “No, madame; in the trenches we
have tea enough. It consoles us. But when we get away—give
us wine, le bon vin; le bon petit vin!”

“Get some wine, Pierre!”

Noel saw from the painter’s face that there was no wine,
and perhaps no money to get any; but he went quickly out.
She rose and said:

“T must be going, madame.”

Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist.
“ Wait a little, mademoiselle. We shall have some wine, and

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 631

Pierre shall take you back presently. You cannot go home alone
—you are too pretty. Is she not, Monsieur Barra?”

The soldier looked up: “ What would you say,” he said, “to
bottles of wine bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting
white, all day long, all night long? Great steel bottles, large as
Chica: bits of bottles, carrying off men’s heads? Bsum,
garra-a-a, and a house comes down, and little bits of people ever
so small, ever so small, tiny bits in the air and all over the
ground. Great souls out there, madame. But I will tell you a
secret,” and again he gave his heavy giggle, “all a little, little
mad; nothing to speak of—just a little bit mad; like a watch,
you know, that you can wind for ever. That is the
discovery of this war, mademoiselle,” he said, addressing Noel
for the first time, “you cannot gain a great soul till you
are a little mad.” And lowering his piggy grey eyes at once,
he resumed his former attitude. “It is that madness I shall
paint some day,” he announced to the carpet; “lurking in one
tiny corner of each soul of all those millions, as it creeps, as it
peeps, ever so sudden, ever so little, when we all think it has
been put to bed, here—there, now—then, when you least think;
in and out like a mouse with bright eyes. Millions of men with
white souls, all a little mad. A great subject, I think,” he added
heavily. Involuntarily Noel put her hand to her heart, which
was beating fast. She felt quite sick.

“ How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?”

“Two years, mademoiselle. Time to go home and paint, is it
not? But art !” he shrugged his heavy round shoulders,
his whole bear-like body. “A little mad,” he muttered once
more. “I will tell you a story. Once in winter after I had
rested a fortnight, I go back to the trenches at night, and I
want some earth to fill up a hole in the ground where I was
sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes particular.
Well, I scratch it from my parapet, and I come to something
funny. I strike my briquet, and there is a Boche’s face all
frozen and earthy and dead and greeny-white in the flame from
my briquet.”

+t mot

“Oh! but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here. Very useful
in the parapet—dead Boche. Once a man like me. But in the
morning I could not stand him; we dug him out and buried
him, and filled the hole up with other things. But there I stood
in the night, and my face as close to his as this ””—and he held

 
''632 NOVELS OF LOVE

his thick hand a foot before his face. “ We talked of our homes;
he had a soul, that man. I1 me disait des choses, how he had
suffered; and I, too, told him my sufferings. Dear God, we
know all; we shall never know more than we know out there,
we others, for we are mad—nothing to speak of, but just a little,
little mad. When you see us, mademoiselle, walking the streets,
remember that.” And he dropped his face on to his fists again.

A silence had fallen in the room—very queer and complete.
The little girl nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor,
the woman’s mouth moved stealthily, and in Noel the thought
rushed. continually to the verge of action: ‘ Couldn’t I get up
and run downstairs?’ But she sat on, hypnotised by that si-
lence, till Lavendie reappeared with a bottle and four glasses.

“To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle,”’ he
said.

Noel raised the glass he had given her. “I wish you all happi-
ness.”

“And you, mademoiselle,’ the two men murmured.

She drank a little, and rose.

“And now, mademoiselle,’ said Lavendie, “if you must go,
I will see you home.”

Noel took Madame Lavendie’s hand; it was cold, and returned
no pressure; her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered.
The soldier had put his empty glass down on the floor, and was
regarding it unconscious of her. Noel turned quickly to the
door ; the last thing she saw was the little girl nursing her doll.

In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French.

“JT ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle ; I did
not know our friend Barra was there. Besides, my wife is not
fit to receive a lady; vous voyez qu'il y a de la mame dans cette
pauvre téte. I should not have asked you; but I was so miser-
able.”

“Oh!” murmured Noel, “ I know.”

“In our home over there she had interests. In this great
town she can only nurse her grief against me. Ah! this war!
It seems to me we are all in the stomach of a great coiling
serpent. We lie there, being digested. In a way it is better
out there in the trenches; they are beyond hate, they have at-
tained a height that we have not. It is wonderful how they
still can be for going on till they have beaten the Boche; that is
curious and it is very great. Did Barra tell you how, when they
come back—all these fighters—they are going to rule, and man-
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 633

age the future of the world? But it will not be so. They will
mix in with life, separate—be scattered, and they will be ruled
as they were before. The tongue and the pen will rule them:
those who have not seen the war will rule them.”

“Oh!” cried Noel, “surely they will be the bravest and
strongest in the future.”

The painter smiled.

“ War makes men simple,” he said, “ elemental; life in peace
is neither simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing
environments, to which man must adapt himself; the cunning,
the astute, the adaptable, will ever rule in times of peace. It is
pathetic, the belief of those brave soldiers that the future is
theirs.”

“ He said a strange thing,” murmured Noel; “that they were
all a little mad.” u

“He is a man of queer genius—Barra; you should see some
of his earlier pictures. Mad is not quite the word, but some-
thing is loosened, is rattling round in them, they have lost pro-
portion, they are being forced in one direction. I tell you,
mademoiselle, this war is one great forcing-house; every living
plant is being made to grow too fast, each quality, each passion ;
hate and love, intolerance and lust and avarice, courage and
energy; yes, and self-sacrifice—all are being forced and forced
beyond their strength, beyond the natural flow of the sap, forced
till there has come a great wild luxuriant crop, and then—
Psum! Presto! The change comes, and these plants will wither
and rot and stink. But we who see Life in forms of Art are the
only ones who feel that; and we are so few. The natural shape
of things is lost. There is a mist of blood before all eyes. Men
are afraid of being fair. See how we all hate not only our
enemies, but those who differ from us. Look at the streets too
—see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in
this forcing-house. Is it not natural that Youth about to
die should yearn for pleasure, for love, for union, before
death ? ”

Noel stared up at him. ‘ Now!’ she thought: ‘I will.’

“Yes,” she said, “I know that’s true, because I rushed, my-
self. I’d like you to know. We couldn’t be married—there
wasn’t time. And he was killed. But his son is alive. That’s
why I’ve been away so long. I want every one to know.” She
spoke very calmly, but her cheeks felt burning hot.

The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as
''634 NOVELS OF LOVE

if they had been jerked by an electric current, then he said
quite quietly:

“ My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy.
And your father?”

“Tt?s awful for him.”

The painter said gently: “ Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so
sure. Perhaps he does not suffer so greatly. Perhaps not even
your trouble can hurt him very much. He lives in a world apart.
That, I think, is his true tragedy—to be alive, and yet not living
enough to feel reality. Do you know Anatole France’s descrip-
tion of an old woman: ‘ Elle vivait, mais si peu.’ Would that
not be well said of the Church in these days: ‘ Elle vivait, mais
st peu.’ I see him always like a rather beautiful dark spire in
the night-time when you cannot see how it is attached to the
earth. He does not know, he never will know, Life.”

Noel looked round at him. “What do you mean by Life,
monsieur? I’m always reading about Life, and people talk of
seeing Life! What is it—where is it? I never see anything that
you could call Life.”

The painter smiled.

“To ‘see life’!” he said. “Ah! that is different. To enjoy
yourself! Well, it is my experience that when people are “ see-
ing life’ as they call it, they are not enjoying themselves. You
know when one is very thirsty one drinks and drinks, but the
thirst remains all the same. There are places where one can
see life as it is called, but the only persons you will see enjoying
themselves at such places are a few humdrums like myself, who
go there for a talk over a cup of coffee. Perhaps at your age,
though, it is different.”

Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in
the gloom. “I want music and dancing and light, and beautiful
things and faces; but I never get them.”

“No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a
place which will give you that. Fox-trots and ragtime and paint
and powder and glare and half-drunken young men, and women
with red lips—you can get them in plenty. But rhythm and
beauty and charm—never. In Brussels when I was younger I
saw much ‘life’ as they call it, but not one lovely thing an-
spoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth. Ah! you may smile,
but I know what I am talking of. Happiness never comes when
you are looking for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature and
in real art, never in these false silly make-believes. There is a
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 635

place just here where we Belgians go; would you like to see how
true my words are?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Trés-bien! Let us go in?”

They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass com-
partments which shot them out into a shining corridor. At
the end of this the painter looked at Noel and seemed to hesi-
tate, then he turned off from the room they were about to enter
into a room on the right. It was large, full of gilt and plush
and marble tables, where couples were seated; young men in
khaki and older men in plain clothes, together or with young
women. At these last Noel looked, face after face, while they
were passing down a long way to an empty table. She saw that
some were pretty, and some only trying to be, that nearly all
were powdered and had their eyes darkened and their lips red-
dened, till she felt her own face to be dreadfully ungarnished.
Up in a gallery a small band was playing an attractive jingling
hollow little tune; and the buzz of talk and laughter was almost
deafening.

“What will you have, mademoiselle?” said the painter. “ It
is just nine o’clock; we must order quickly.”

“May I have one of those green things? ”

“Deua crémes de menthe,’ said Lavendie to the waiter.

Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile
hovering about his face. She was busy looking at the faces of
women whose eyes, furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on
her; and at the faces of men with eyes that were furtively warm
and wondering.

“TI wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?” she said,
putting the glass of green stuff to her lips. “Is it nice? It
smells of peppermint.”

“A beautiful colour. Good luck, mademoiselle!’’ and he
chinked his glass with hers,

Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.

“Tt’s nice; but awfully sticky. May I have a cigarette? ”

“ Des cigarettes,” said Lavendie to the waiter, “ et deus cafés
notrs. Now, mademoiselle,’” he murmured when they were
brought, “if we imagine that we have drunk a bottle of wine
each, we shall have exhausted all the preliminaries of what is
called Vice. Amusing, isn’t it?” He shrugged his shoulders.

His face struck Noel suddenly as tarnished and almost sullen.

“Don’t be angry, monsteur, it’s all new to me, you see.”
''636 NOVELS OF LOVE

The painter smiled, his bright, skin-deep smile.

“Pardon! I forget myself. Only, it hurts me to see beauty
in a place like this. It does not go well with that tune, and
these voices, and these faces. Enjoy yourself, mademoiselle;
drink it all in! See the way these people look at each other;
what love shines in their eyes! A pity, too, we cannot hear
what they are saying. Believe me, their talk is most subtle,
trés-spirituel. These young women are ‘doing their bit, as
you call it; bringing /e plaisir to all these who are serving their
country. Hat, drink, love, for to-morrow we die. Who cares for
the world simple or the world beautiful, in days like these?
The house of the spirit is empty.”

He was looking at her sidelong as if he would enter her very
soul.

Noel got up. “I’m ready to go, monsieur.”

He put her cloak on her shoulders, paid the bill, and they
went out, threading again through the little tables, through the
buzz of talk and laughter and the fumes of tobacco, while an-
other hollow little tune jingled away behind them.

“Through there,” said the painter, pointing to another door,
“they dance. So it goes. London in war-time! Well, after all,
it is never very different; no great town is. Did you enjoy your
sight of ‘ life,” mademoiselle?”

“T think one must dance, to be happy. Is that where your
friends go?”

“Oh, no! To a room much rougher, and play dominoes, and
drink coffee and beer, and talk. They have no money to throw
away.”

“Why didn’t you show me?”

“ Mademoiselle, in that room you might see someone perhaps
whom one day you would meet again; in the place we visited
you were safe enough—at least I hope so.”

Noel shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now, what I
do.”

And a rush of emotion caught at her throat—a wave from
the past—the moonlit night, the dark old Abbey, the woods and
the river. T'wo tears rolled down her cheeks.

“TJ was thinking of something,” she said in a muffled voice.
“Ite all right.’

“Chere mademoiselle!” Lavendie murmured; and all the
way home he was timid and distressed. Shaking his hand at the
door, she murmured:
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 637

“T’m sorry I was such a fool; and thank you awfully, mon-
steur. Good night.”

“Good night; and better dreams. There is a good time com-
ing—Peace and Happiness once more in the world. It will not
always be this Forcing-house. Good night, chére mademotselle!”

Noel went up to the nursery, and stole in. A night-light was
burning. Nurse and baby were fast asleep. She tiptoed through
into her own room. Once there, she felt suddenly so tired that
she could hardly undress; and yet curiously rested, as if with
that rushed of emotion, Cyril and the past had slipped from her
for ever.
''III
1 §

Noeu’s first encounter with Opinion took place the following
day. The baby had just come in from its airing; she had seen
it comfortably snoozing, and was on her way downstairs, when ¢
voice from the hall said:

“How do you do?” and she saw the khaki-clad figure of
Adrian Lauder, her father’s curate! Hesitating just a moment,
she finished her descent, and put her fingers in his. He was a
rather heavy, dough-coloured young man of nearly thirty, un-
suited by khaki, with a round white collar buttoned behind;
but his aspiring eyes redeemed him, proclaiming the best inten-
tions in the world, and an inclination towards sentiment in the
presence of beauty.

“T haven’t seen you for ages,” he said rather fatuously, fol-
lowing her into her father’s study.

“No,” said Noel. “ How do you like being at the Front?”

“Ah!” he said, “they’re wonderful!” And his eyes shone.
“It’s so nice to see you again.”

aera?

He seemed puzzled by that answer; stammered, and said:

“T didn’t know your sister had a baby. A jolly baby.”

“She hasn’t.”

Lauder’s mouth opened. ‘A silly mouth, she thought.

“Oh!” he said. “Is it a protégé—Belgian or something?”

“No, it’s mine; my own.” And, turning round, she slipped
the little ring off her finger. When she turned back to him, his
face had not recovered from her words. It had a hapless look,
as if one to whom such a thing ought not to have happened.

“Don’t look like that,” said Noel. “ Didn’t you understand ?
It’s mine—mine.” She put out her left hand. “Look! There’s
no ring.”

He stammered: “I say, you oughtn’t to—you oughtn’t
! 2?

“ What?”
“ Joke about—about such things; ought you?”
638

to

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 639

“ One doesn’t joke if one’s had a baby without being married,
you know.”

Lauder went suddenly slack. A shell might have burst a few
paces from him. And then, just as one would in such a case,
he made an effort, braced himself, and said in a curious voice,
both stiff and heavy: “I can’t—one doesn’t—it’s not a

“Tt is,” said Noel. “If you don’t believe me, ask Daddy.”

He put his hand up to his round collar; and with the wild
thought that he was going to tear it off, she cried: “Don’t!”

“You!” he said. “You! But——’

Noel turned away from him to the window. She stood look-
ing out, but saw nothing whatever.

“T don’t want it hidden,” she said without turning round,
““T want every one to know. It’s stupid as it is—stupid!” and
she stamped her foot. “Can’t you see how stupid it is—every-
body’s mouth falling open!”

He uttered a little sound which had pain in it, and she felt
a real pang of compunction. He had gripped the back of a
chair; his face had lost its heaviness. A dull flush coloured his
cheeks. Noel had a feeling, as if she had been convicted of
treachery. It was his silence, the curious look of an impersonal
pain beyond power of words; she felt in him something much
deeper than mere disapproval—something which echoed within
herself. She walked quickly past him and escaped. She ran
upstairs and threw herself on her bed. He was nothing: it was
not that! It was in herself, the awful feeling, for the first time
developed and poignant, that she had betrayed her caste, for-
feited the right to be thought a lady, betrayed her secret reserve
and refinement, repaid with black ingratitude the love lavished
on her upbringing, by behaving like any uncared-for common
girl. She had never felt this before—not even when Gratian
first heard of it, and they had stood one at each end of the
hearth, unable to speak. Then she still had her passion, and her
evief for the dead. That was gone now as if it had never been;
and she had no defence, nothing between her and this crushing
humiliation and chagrin. She had been mad! She must have
been mad! The Belgian Barra was right: “ All a little mad”
in this “ forcing-house” of a war! She buried her face deep in
the pillow, till it almost stopped her power of breathing; her
head and cheeks and ears seemed to be on fire. If only he had
shown disgust, done something which roused her temper, her
sense of justice, her feeling that Fate had been too cruel to her;

 
''640 NOVELS OF LOVE

but he had just stood there, bewilderment incarnate, like a crea-
ture with some very deep illusion shattered. It was horrible!
Then, feeling that she could not stay still, must walk, run, get
away somehow from this feeling of treachery and betrayal, she
sprang up. All was quiet below, and she slipped downstairs and
out, speeding along with no knowledge of direction, taking the
way she had taken day after day to her hospital. It was the
last of April, trees and shrubs were luscious with blossom and
leaf; the dogs ran gaily; people had almost happy faces in the
sunshine. ‘If I could get away from myself, I wouldn’t care,’
she thought. Easy to get away from people, from London, even
from England perhaps; but from oneself—impossible! She
passed her hospital, and looked at it dully, at the Red Cross
flag against its stucco wall, and a soldier in his blue slops and
ted tie, coming out. She had spent many miserable hours there,
but none quite so miserable as this. She passed the church
opposite to the flats where Leila lived, and running suddenly
into a tall man coming round the corner, saw Fort. She bent
her head, and tried to hurry past. But his hand was held out,
she could not help putting hers into it; and looking up hardily,
she said:

“You know about me, don’t you?”

His face, naturally so frank, seemed to clench up, as if he
were riding at a fence. ‘ He'll tell a lie, she thought bitterly.
But he did not.

“Yes, Leila told me.”

And she thought: ‘I suppose he’ll try and pretend that I’ve
not been a beast!’

“ ¥ admire your pluck,” he said.

“T haven’t any.”

“We never know ourselves, do we? I suppose you wouldn’t
walk my pace a minute or two, would you? I’m going the same
way.”

“T don’t know which way I’m going.”

“That is my case, too.”

They walked on in silence.

“JT wish to God I were back in France,” said Fort abruptly.
“ One doesn’t feel clean here.”

Noel’s heart applauded.

Ah! to get away—away from oneself! But at the thought
of her baby, her heart fell again. “Is your leg quite hopeless?”
she said.
''a te

SAINT’S PROGRESS 641

“ Quite.”

“ That must be horrid.”

“Hundreds of thousands would look on it as splendid luck;
and so it is if you count it better to be alive than dead, which
I do, in spite of the blues.”

“ How is Cousin Leila?”

“ Very well. She goes on pegging away at the hospital; she’s
a brick.” But he did not look at her, and again there was silence,
till he stopped by Lord’s Cricket-ground.

“T mustn’t keep you crawling along at this pace.”

“ Oh, I don’t mind!”

“T only wanted to say that if I can be of any service to you
at any time in any way whatever, please command me.”

He gave her hand a squeeze, took his hat off; and Noel walked
slowly on. The little interview, with its suppressions, and its
implications, had but exasperated her restlessness, and yet, in a
way, it had soothed the soreness of her heart. Captain Fort at
all events did not despise her; and he was in trouble like herself.
She felt that somehow by the look of his face, and the tone of his
voice when he spoke of Leila. She quickened her pace. George’s
words came back to her: “If you’re not ashamed of yourself,
no one will be of you!” How easy to say! The old days, her
school, the little half grown-up dances she used to go to, when
everything was happy. Gone! All gone!

But her meetings with Opinion were not over for the day,
for turning again at last into the home Square, tired out by
her three hours’ ramble, she met an old lady whom she and
Gratian had known from babyhood—a handsome dame, the
widow of an official, who spent her days, which showed no
symptom of declining, in admirable works. Her daughter, the
widow of an officer killed at the Marne, was with her, and the
two greeted Noel with a shower of cordial questions: So she
was back from the country, and was she quite well again? And
working at her hospital? And how was her dear father? They
had thought him looking very thin and worn. But now Gratian
was at home How dreadfully the war kept husbands and
wives apart! And whose was the dear little baby they had
in the house ?

“ Mine,” said Noel, walking straight past them with her head
up. In every fibre of her being she could feel the hurt, startled,
utterly bewildered looks of those firm friendly persons left there
on the pavement behind her; could feel the way they would

 
''642 NOVELS OF LOVE

gather themselves together, and walk on, perhaps witheut a
word, and then round the corner begin: “ What has come to
Noel? What did she mean?” And taking the little gold hoop
out of her pocket, she flung it with all her might into the Square
Garden. The action saved her from a breakdown; and she went
in calmly. Lunch was long over, but her father had not gone
out, for he met her in the hall and drew her into the dining-
room.

“You must eat, my child,’ he said. And while she was
swallowing down what he had caused to be kept back for her,
he stood by the hearth in that favourite attitude of his, one foot
on the fender, and one hand gripping the mantel-shelf.

“You’ve got your wish, Daddy,” she said dully: “Every-
body knows now. I’ve told Mr. Lauder, and Monsieur, and the
Dinnafords.”

She saw his fingers uncrisp, then grip the shelf again. “I’m
glad,” he said.

“Aunt Thirza gave me a ring to wear, but I’ve thrown it
away.”

““My dearest child,” he began, but could not go on, for the
quivering of his lips.

“T wanted to say once more, Daddy, that I’m fearfully sorry
about you. And I am ashamed of myself; I thought I wasn’t,
but I am—only, I think it was cruel, and I’m not penitent to
God; and it’s no good trying to make me.”

Pierson turned and looked at her. For a long time after, she
could not get that look out of her memory.

2 §

Jimmy Fort had turned away from Noel feeling particularly
wretched. ver since the day when Leila had told him of the
girl’s misfortune he had been aware that his liaison had no
decent foundation, save a sort of pity. One day, in a queer
access of compunction, he had made Leila an offer of marriage.
She had refused ; and he had respected her the more, realising by
the quiver in her voice and the look in her eyes that she refused
him, not because she did not love him well enough, but because
she was afraid of losing any of his affection. She was a woman
of great experience.

To-day he had taken advantage of the luncheon interval to
bring her some flowers, with a note to say that he could not come
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 643

that evening. Letting himself in with his latch-key, he had
carefully put those Japanese azaleas in the bowl “ Famille Rose,”
taking water from her bedroom. Then he had sat down on the
divan with his head in his hands.

Though he had rolled so much about the world, he had never
had much to do with women. And there was nothing in him of
the Frenchman, who takes what life puts in his way as so much
enjoyment on the credit side, and accepts the ends of such
affairs as they naturally and rather rapidly arrive. It had been
a pleasure, and was no longer a pleasure; but this apparently did
not dissolve it, or absolve him. He felt himself bound by an
obscure but deep instinct to go on pretending that he was not
tired of her, so long as she was not tired of him. And he sat
there trying to remember any sign, however small, of such a
consummation, quite without success. On the contrary, he had
even the wretched feeling that if only he had loved her, she
would have been much more likely to have tired of him by now.
For her he was still the unconquered, in spite of his loyal en-
deavour to seem conquered. He had made a fatal mistake, that
evening after the concert at Queen’s Hall, to let himself go, on
a mixed tide of desire and pity!

His folly came to him with increased poignancy after he had
parted from Noel. How could he have been such a base fool,
as to have committed himself to Leila on an evening when he
had actually been in the company of that child? Was it the
vague, unseizable likeness between them which had pushed him
over the edge? ‘I’ve been an ass,’ he thought; ‘a horrible ass.
I would always have given every hour I’ve ever spent with Leila,
for one real smile from that girl.’

This sudden sight of Noel after months during which he had
tried loyally to forget her existence, and not succeeded at all,
made him realise as he never had yet that he was in love with
her; so very much in love with her that the thought of Leila
was become nauseating. And yet the instincts of a gentleman
seemed to forbid him to betray that secret to either of them.
It was an accursed coil! He hailed a cab, for he was late; and
all the way back to the War Office he continued to see the girl’s
figure and her face with its short hair. And a fearful tempta-
tion rose within him. Was it not she who was now the real
object for chivalry and pity? Had he not the right to consecrate
himself to championship of one in such a deplorable position?
Leila had lived her life; but this child’s life—pretty well
''644 NOVELS OF LOVE

wrecked—was all before her. And then he grinned from sheer
disgust. For he knew that this was Jesuitry. Not chivalry
was moving him, but love! Love! Love of the unattainable!
And with a heavy heart, indeed, he entered the great building,
where, in a small room, companioned by the telephone, and sur-
rounded by sheets of paper covered with figures, he passed his
days. The war made everything seem dreary, hopeless. No
wonder he had caught at any distraction which came along—
caught at it, till it had caught him!
''IV
1 §

To find out the worst is, for human nature, only a question of
time. But where the “ worst ” is attached to a family haloed, as
it were, by the authority and reputation of an institution like
the Church, the process of discovery has to break through many
a little hedge. Sheer unlikelihood, genuine respect, the defen-
sive instinct in those identified with an institution, who will
themselves feel weaker if its strength be diminished, the feeling
that the scandal is too good to be true—all these little hedges,
and more, had to be broken through. To the Dinnafords, the
unholy importance of what Noel had said to them would have
continued to keep them dumb, out of self-protection; but its
monstrosity had given them the feeling that there must be some
mistake, that the girl had been overtaken by a wild desire to
“ pull their legs ” as dear Charlie would say. With the hope of
getting this view confirmed, they lay in wait for the old nurse
who took the baby out, and obtained the information, shortly
imparted: “Oh, yes; Miss Noel’s. Her ’usband was killed—
poor lamb!” And they felt rewarded. They had been sure
there was some mistake. The relief of hearing that word
“?ysband ” was intense. One of these hasty war marriages, of
which the dear Vicar had not approved, and so it had been kept
dark. Quite intelligible, but so sad! Enough misgiving however
remained in their minds, to prevent their going to condole with
the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their roundly con-
tradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears.
And then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too
positively: ‘Well, she doesn’t wear a wedding-ring, that Pll
swear, because I took very good care to look!” they determined
to ask Mr. Lauder. He would—indeed must—know; and, of
course, would not tell a story. When they asked him it was so
manifest that he did know, that they almost withdrew the ques-
tion. The poor young man had gone the colour of a tomato.

“I prefer not to answer,” he said. The rest of a very short
interview was passed in exquisite discomfort. Indeed discor-
fort, exquisite and otherwise, within a few weeks of Noel’s re-

645
''646 NOVELS OF LOVE

turn, had begun to pervade all the habitual congregation of
Pierson’s church. It was noticed that neither of the two sisters
attended Service now. Certain people who went in the sincere
hope of seeing Noel, only fell off again when she did not appear.
After all, she would not have the face! And Gratian was too
ashamed, no doubt. It was constantly remarked that the Vicar
looked very grave and thin, even for him. As the rumours
hardened into certainty, the feeling towards him became a curi-
ous medley of sympathy and condemnation. There was about
the whole business that which English people especially resent.
By the very fact of his presence before them every Sunday, and
his public ministrations, he was exhibiting to them, as it were,
the seamed and blushing face of his daughter’s private life,
besides affording one long and glaring demonstration of the
failure of the Church to guide its flock. If a man could not
keep his own daughter in the straight path—whom could he?
Resign! The word began to be thought about, but not yet
spoken. He had been there so long; he had spent so much
money on the church and the parish; his gentle dreamy manner
was greatly liked. He was a gentleman, and had helped many
people; and, though his love of music and vestments had always
caused heart-burnings, yet it had given a certain cachet to the
church. The women, at any rate, were always glad to know
that the church they went to was capable of drawing their fellow
women away from other churches. Besides, it was war-time, and
moral delinquency which in time of peace would have bulked
too large to neglect, was now less insistently dwelt on, by minds
preoccupied by food and air-raids. Things, of course, could not
go on as they were; but as yet they did go on.

2 §

The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and noth-
ing concrete or tangible came Pierson’s way. He went about his’
usual routine without seeming change. And yet there was a
change, secret and creeping. Wounded almost to death himself,
he felt as though surrounded by one great wound in others;
but it was some weeks before anything occurred to rouse within
him the weapon of anger or the protective impulse.

And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the
very soul. He was coming home from a long parish round, and
had turned into the Square, when a low voice behind him said:
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 647

“ Wot price the little barstard? ”

A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped,
and spun round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away.
With swift and stealthy passion he sprang after them, and put-
ting his hands on their two neighbouring shoulders, wrenched
them round so that they faced him, with mouths fallen open in
alarm. Shaking them with all his force, he said:

“How dare you—how dare you use that word?” His face
and voice must have been rather terrible, for the scare in their
faces brought him to sudden consciousness of his own violence,
and he dropped his hands. In two seconds they were at the
corner. They stopped there for a second; one of them shouted
“Gran’pa”; then they vanished. He was left with lips and
hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not known for years
—the weak white empty feeling one has after yielding utterly to
sudden murderous rage. He crossed over, and stood leaning
against the Garden railings, with the thought: ‘God forgive
me! I could have killed them—lI could have killed them!’
There had been a devil in him. If he had had something in his
hand, he might now have been a murderer. How awful! Only
one had spoken, but he could have killed them both! And the
word was true, and was in all mouths—all low common mouths,
day after day, of his own daughter’s child! The ghastliness of
this thought, brought home so utterly, made him writhe, and
grasp the railings as if he would have bent them.

From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of
men, never left him; the sense of identification with Noel and
her tiny outcast became ever more poignant, more real; the de-
sire to protect them ever more passionate; and the feeling that
round about there were whispering voices, pointing fingers, and
a growing malevolence was ever more sickening. He was begin-
ning too to realise the deep and hidden truth: How easily the
breath of scandal destroys the influence and sanctity of those
endowed therewith by vocation; how invaluable it is to feel un-
tarnished, and how difficult to feel that when others think you
tarnished.

He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the
evenings they sometimes went walks together, without ever talk-
ing of what was always in their minds. Between six and eight
the girl was giving sittings to Lavendie in the drawing-room,
and sometimes Pierson would come there and play to them. He
was always possessed now by a sense of the danger Noel ran from
''648 NOVELS OF LOVE

companionship with any man. On three occasions, Jimmy Fort
made his appearance after dinner. He had so little to say that
it was difficult to understand why he came; but, sharpened by
this new dread for his daughter, Pierson noticed his eyes always
following her. ‘He admires her, he thought; and often he
would try his utmost to grasp the character of this man, who
had lived such a roving life. ‘Is he—can he be the sort of man
I would trust Nollie to?’ he would think. ‘Oh, that I should
have to hope like this that some good man would marry her—
my little Nollie, a child only the other day!’

In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of some-
thing like refuge in Leila’s sitting-room, and he would go there
often for half an hour when she was back from her hospital. That
little black-walled room with its Japanese prints and its flowers,
soothed him. And Leila soothed him, innocent as he was of
any knowledge of her latest aberration, and perhaps conscious
that she herself was not too happy. To watch her arranging
flowers, singing her little French songs, or to find her beside him,
listening to his confidences, was the only real pleasure he knew
im these days. And Leila, in turn, would watch him and think:
‘Poor Edward! He has never lived; and never will, now!’
But sometimes the thought would shoot through her: ‘ Perhaps
he’s to be envied. He doesn’t feel what I feel, anyway. Why
did I fall in love again?’

They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she
expressed her views roundly.

“Tt was a great mistake to make Noel come back, Edward.
It was Quixotic. You'll be lucky if real mischief doesn’t come
of it. She’s not a patient character; one day she’ll do something
rash. And, mind you, she’ll be much more likely to break out
if she sees the world treating you badly than if it happens to
herself. I should send her back to the country, before she makes
bad worse.”

“T can’t do that, Leila. We must live it down together.”

“Wrong, Edward. You should take things as they are.”

With a heavy sigh Pierson answered :

“IT wish I could see her future. She’s so attractive. And
her defences are gone. She’s lost faith and belief in all that a
good woman should be. The day after she came back she told
me she was ashamed of herself. But since—she’s not given a
sign. She’s so proud—my poor little Nollie. I see how men
admire her, too. Our Belgian friend is painting her. He’s
''1

SAINT’S PROGRESS 649

a good man; but he finds her beautiful, and who can wonder.
And your friend Captain Fort. Fathers are supposed to be
blind, but they see very clear sometimes.”

Leila rose and drew down a blind.

“This sun,” she said. “Does Jimmy Fort come to you
often?”

“Oh! no; very seldom. But still—I can see.”

‘You bat—you blunderer!’ thought Leila: ‘See! You can’t
even see this beside you!”

“ T expect he’s sorry for her,” she said in a queer voice.

“Why should he be sorry? He doesn’t know.”

“Oh, yes! He knows; I told him.”

“You told him!”

“Yes,” Leila repeated stubbornly; “and he’s sorry for her.”

And even then “ this monk” beside her did not see, and went
blundering on.

“No, no; it’s not merely that he’s sorry. By the way he looks
at her, I know I’m not mistaken. I’ve wondered—what do you
think, Leila? He’s too old for her; but he seems an honourable,
kind man.”

“Oh! a most honourable, kind man.” But only by pressing
her hand against her lips had she smothered a burst of bitter
laughter. He, who saw nothing, could yet notice Fort’s eyes
when he looked at Noel, and be positive that he was in love with
her! How plainly those eyes must speak! Her control gave
way.
“ All this is very interesting,” she said, spurning her words
like Noel, “ considering that he’s more than my friend, Edward.”
It gave her a sort of pleasure to see him wince. ‘ These
blind bats!’ she thought, terribly stung that he should so
clearly assume her out of the running. Then she was sorry,
his face had become so still and wistful. And turning away,
she said:

“Oh! I shan’t break my heart; I’m a good loser. And I’m
a good fighter, too; perhaps I shan’t lose.” And snapping off a
sprig of geranium, she pressed it to her lips.

“ Forgive me,” said Pierson slowly; “I didn’t know. T’m
stupid. I thought your love for your poor soldiers had left no
room for other feelings.”

Leila uttered a shrill laugh. “ What have they to do with
each other? Did you never hear of passion, Edward? Oh!
Don’t look at me like that. Do you think a woman can’t feel
''650 NOVELS OF LOVE

passion at my age? As much as ever, more than ever, because
it’s all slipping away.”

She took her hand from her lips, but a geranium petal was
left clinging there, like a bloodstain. “What has your life been
all these years,” she went on vehemently—“ suppression of pas-
sion, nothing else! You monks twist Nature up with holy
words, and try to disguise what the veriest simpleton can see,
Well, I haven’t suppressed passion, Edward. That’s all.”

“And are you happier for that?”

“T was; and I shall be again.”

A little smile curled Pierson’s lips. “Shall be?” he said.
“T hope so. It’s just two ways of looking at things, Leila.”

“Oh, Edward! Don’t be so gentle! I suppose you don’t
think a person like me can ever really love? ”

He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense
that, naive and bat-like as he was, there was something in him
she could not reach or understand, made her cry out:

“T’ve not been nice to you. Forgive me, Edward! I’m so
unhappy.”

“There was a Greek who used to say: ‘God is the helping
of man by man.’ It isn’t true, but it’s beautiful. Good-bye,
dear Leila, and don’t be sorrowful.”

She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.

She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in
the sunshine, and pass round the corner by the railings of the
church. He walked quickly, very upright; there was something
unseeing even about that back view of him; or was it that he
saw—another world? She had never lost the mental habits of
her orthodox girlhood, and in spite of all impatience, recog-
nised his sanctity. When he had disappeared she went into her
bedroom. What he had said, indeed, was no discovery. She
had known. Oh! She had known. ‘Why didn’t I accept
Jimmy’s offer? Why didn’t I marry him? Is it too late?’ she
thought. ‘Could I? Would he—even now?’ But then she
started away from her own thought. Marry him! knowing his
heart was with this girl?

She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a
fearful interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath
their light coating of powder. She examined the cunning
touches of colouring matter here and there in her front hair.
Were they cunning enough? Did they deceive?’ They seemed
to her suddenly to stare out. She fingered and smoothed the
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 6BL

slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin. She
stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole
form, searching as it were for slackness, or thickness. And she
had the bitter thought: ‘I’m all out. I’m doing all I can.’
The lines of a little poem Fort had showed her went thrumming
through her head:
“Time, you old gipsy man,
Will you not stay—

Put up your caravan
Just for a day?”

What more could she do? He did not like to see her lips red-
dened. She had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his
mouth after a kiss, when he thought she couldn’t see him. ‘I
need not!’ she thought. ‘Noel’s lips are no redder, really.
What has she better than I? Youth—dew on the grass!’ That
didn’t last long! But long enough to “do her in” as her sol-
dier-men would say. And, suddenly she revolted against herself,
against Fort, against this chilled and foggy country; felt a fierce
nostalgia for African sun, and the African flowers; the happy-
go-lucky, hand-to-mouth existence of those five years before the
war began. High Constantia at grape harvest! How many
years ago—ten years, eleven years! Ah! To have before her
those ten years, with him! Ten years in the sun! He would
have loved her then, and gone on loving her! And she would
not have tired of him, as she had tired of those others. ‘In
half an hour,’ she thought, ‘he’ll be here, sit opposite me; I
shall see him struggling forcing himself to seem affectionate!
It’s too humbling! But I don’t care; I want him!’

She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of
colour, novelty of any sort, to help her. But she had tried them
all—those little tricks—was bankrupt. And such a discouraged,
heavy mood came on her, that she did not even “ change,” but
went back in her nurse’s dress and lay down on the divan, pre-
tending to sleep, while the maid set out the supper. She lay
there moody and motionless, trying to summon courage, feeling
that if she showed herself beaten she was beaten; knowing that
she only held him by pity. But when she heard his footstep on
the stairs she swiftly passed her hands over her cheeks, as if to
press the blood out of them, and lay absolutely still. She hoped
that she was white, and indeed she was, with finger-marks under
the eyes, for she had suffered greatly this last hour. Through her
''652 NOVELS OF LOVE

lashes she saw him halt, and look at her in surprise. Asleep, or
—ill, which? She did not move. She wanted to watch him.
He tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at her.
There was a furrow between his eyes. ‘Ah!’ she thought, ‘ it
would suit you, if I were dead, my kind friend.’ He bent a
little towards her; and she wondered suddenly whether she
looked graceful lying there, sorry now that she had not changed
her dress. She saw him shrug his shoulders ever so faintly
with a puzzled little movement. He had not seen that she was
shamming. How nice his face was—not mean, secret, callous!
She opened her eyes, which against her will had in them the
despair she was feeling. He went on his knees, and lifting her
hand to his lips, hid them with it.

“ Jimmy,” she said gently, “I’m an awful bore to you. Poor
Jimmy! No! Don’t pretend! I know what I know!” ‘Oh,
God! What am I saying?’ she thought. ‘It’s fatal—fatal. I
ought never !? And drawing his head to her, she put it
to her heart. Then, instinctively aware that this moment had
been pressed to its uttermost, she scrambled up, kissed his fore-
head, stretched herself, and laughed.

“T was asleep, dreaming ;/dreaming you loved me. Wasn’t it
funny? Come along. There are oysters, for the last time this
season.”

All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over
a precipice, they seemed to be treading warily, desperately
anxious not to rouse emotion in each other, or touch on things
which must bring a scene. And Leila talked incessantly of
Africa.

“Don’t you long for the sun, Jimmy? Couldn’t we—couldn’t
you go? Oh! why doesn’t this wretched war end? All that
we've got here at home—every scrap of wealth and comfort, and
age, and art, and music, I’d give it all for the light and the sun
out there. Wouldn’t you?”

And Fort said he would; knowing well of one thing which he
would not give. And she knew that, as well as he.

They were both gayer than they had been for a long time;
so that when he had gone, she fell back once more on to the
divan, and burying her face in a cushion, wept bitterly.

 
''v
1§

Ir was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he
walked away. Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila’s re-
generation. It was more an acute discomfort, an increasing
loneliness. A soft and restful spot was now denied him; a cer-
tain warmth and allurement had gone out of his life. He had
not even the feeling that it was his duty to try and save Leila
by persuading her to marry Fort. He had always been too
sensitive, too much as it were of a gentleman, for the robuster
sorts of evangelism. Such delicacy had been a stumbling-block
to him all through professional life. In the eight years when
his wife was with him, all had been more certain, more direct
and simple, with the help of her sympathy, judgment, and
companionship. At her death a sort of mist had gathered in
his soul. No one had ever spoken plainly to him. To a clergy-
man, who does? No one had told him in so many words that
he should have married again—that to stay unmarried was bad
for him, physically and spiritually, fogging and perverting life;
not driving him, indeed, as it drove many, to intolerance and
cruelty, but to that half-living dreaminess, and the vague un-
happy yearnings which so constantly beset him. All these
celibate years he had really only been happy in his music, or
in far-away country places, taking strong exercise, and losing
himself in the beauties of Nature; and since the war began he
had only once, for those three days at Kestrel, been out of
London.

He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all
the evidence he had of Fort’s feeling for Noel. How many
times had he been to them since she came back? Only three
times—three evening visits! And he had not been alone with
her a single minute! Before this calamity befell his daughter,
he would never have observed anything in Fort’s demeanour;
but, in his new watchfulness, he had seen the almost reverential
way he looked at her, noticed the extra softness of his voice
when he spoke to her, and once a look of sudden pain, a sort
of dulling of his whole self, when Noel had got up and gone

653
''654 NOVELS OF LOVE

out of the room. And the girl herself? Twice he had sur-
prised her gazing at Fort when he was not looking, with a sort of
brooding interest. He remembered how, as a little girl, she
would watch a grown-up, and then suddenly one day attach
herself to him, and be quite devoted. Yes, he must warn her,
before she could possibly become entangled. In his fastidious
chastity, the opinion he had held of Fort was suddenly lowered.
He, already a free-thinker, was now revealed as a free-liver.
Poor little Nollie! Endangered again already! Every man a
kind of wolf waiting to pounce on her!

He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing
before the portrait which was nearing completion. He looked
at it for a long minute, and turned away.

“ Don’t you think it’s like me, Daddy?”

“It’s like you; but it hurts me. I can’t tell why.”

He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised
come on Lavendie’s face.

“Tt is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, mon-
Sieur?”

“ No, no; deeper. The expression; what is she waiting for?”

The defensive smile died on Lavendie’s lips.

“Tt is as I see her, monsieur le curé.”

Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his
eyes. “She looks ‘ fey,” he said, and went out of the room.

Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture. “Fey?
What does that mean, mademoiselle? ”

“ Possessed, or something.”

And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:

“T think there is still a little too much light on that ear.”

2§

The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.

“Nollie, I want you to know something. In all but the
name, Captain Fort is a married man.”

fie saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.

She said calmly: “I know; to Leila.”

“ Do you mean she has told you? ”

Noel shook her head.

“Then how? ”

“T guessed. Daddy, don’t treat me as a child any more.
What’s the use, now?”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 655

He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his
face with his hands. By the quivering of those hands, and the
movement of his shoulders, she could tell that he was,stifling
emotion, perhaps even crying; and sinking down on his knees
she pressed his hands and face to her, murmuring: “ Oh, Daddy
dear! Oh, Daddy dear!”

He put his arms around her, and they sat a long time with
their cheeks pressed together, not speaking a word.
''VI
18

Tue day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-
room was a Sunday. And, obeying the longing awakened over-
night to be as good as she could to her father, Noel said to him:

“Would you like me to come to Church? ”

“ Of course, Nollie.”

How could he have answered otherwise? To him Church was
the home of comfort and absolution, where people must bring
their sins and troubles—a haven of sinners, the fount of charity,
of forgiveness, and love. Not to have believed that, after all
these years, would have been to deny all his usefulness in life,
and to cast a slur on the House of God.

And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone
down to George, for the week-end. She slipped quietly up the
side aisle to their empty pew, under the pulpit. Never turning
her eyes from the chancel, she remained unconscious of the stir
her presence made, during that hour and twenty minutes. Be-
hind her, the dumb currents of wonder, disapproval, and resent-
ment ran a stealthy course. On her all eyes were fixed sooner or
later, and every mind became the playground of judgments.
From every soul, kneeling, standing, or sitting, while the voice
of the Service droned, sang, or spoke, a kind of glare radiated
on to that one small devoted head, which seemed so ludicrously
devout. She disturbed their devotions, this girl who had be-
trayed her father, her faith, her class. She ought to repent, of
course, and Church was the right place; yet there was something
brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she was too
palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church’s authority, too
visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure focussed
all the uneasy amazement and heart-searchings of these last
weeks. Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daugh-
ters could see her; wives with the idea that their husbands were
seeing her. Men experienced sensations varying from condemna-
tion to a sort of covetousness. Young folk wondered, and ‘felt
inclined to giggle. Old maids could hardly bear to look. Here
and there a man or woman who had seen life face to face, was

656
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 657

simply sorry! The consciousness of all who knew her personally
was at stretch how to behave if they came within reach of her in
going out. For, though only half a dozen would actually rub
shoulders with her, all knew that they might be, and many felt
it their duty to be, of that half-dozen, so as to establish their
attitude once for all. It was, in fact, too severe a test for human
nature and the feelings which Church ought to arouse. The
stillness of that young figure, the impossibility of seeing her
face and judging her state of mind thereby; finally, a faint lurk-
ing shame that they should be so intrigued and disturbed by
something which had to do with sex, in this House of Worship—
all combined to produce in every mind that herd-feeling of
defence, which so soon becomes offensive. And, half uncon-
scious, half aware of it all, Noel stood, and sat, and knelt. Once
or twice she saw her father’s eyes fixed on her; and, still in the
glow of last night’s pity and remorse, felt a kind of worship for
his thin grave face. But for the most part, her own wore the
expression Lavendie had translated to his canvas—the look of
one ever waiting for the extreme moments of life, for those few
and fleeting poignancies which existence holds for the human
heart. A look neither hungry nor dissatisfied, but dreamy and
expectant, which might blaze into warmth and depth at any
moment, and then go back to its dream.

When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to
sit very still, without looking round. There was no second
Service, and the congregation melted out behind her, and had
dispersed into the streets and squares long before she came forth.
After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door, she
turned away and walked home alone.

It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably
clinched the business. The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe
for the feelings, is always dangerous. They felt cheated. If
Noel had come out amongst all those whose devotions her pres-
ence had disturbed, if in that exit, some had shown the others
had witnessed one knows not what of a manifested ostracism,
the outraged sense of social decency might have been appeased
and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we soon get used to things;
and, after all, the war took precedence in every mind even over
social decency. But none of this had occurred, and a sense that
Sunday after Sunday the same little outrage would happen to
them, moved more than a dozen quite unrelated persons, and
caused the posting that evening of as many letters, signed and
''658 NOVELS OF LOVE

unsigned, to a certain quarter. London is no place for parish
conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would have
provoked meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution,
could perhaps only thus be dealt with. Besides, in certain folk
there is ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter—such
missives satisfy some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrol-
lable longing to get even with those who have hurt or disturbed
them, without affording the offenders chance for further hurt or
disturbance.
Letters which are posted often reach their destination.

2§

On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at
the hour devoted to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid
announced, “ Canon Rushbourne, sir,” and he saw before him an
old College friend whom he had met but seldom in recent years.
His visitor was a short, grey-haired man of rather portly figure,
whose round, rosy, good-humoured face had a look of sober
goodness, and whose light-blue eyes shone a little. He grasped
Pierson’s hand, and said in a voice to whose natural heavy
resonance professional duty had added a certain unction:

“My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met! Do
you remember dear old Blakeway? I saw him only yesterday.
He’s just the same. I’m delighted to see you again,” and he
laughed a little soft nervous laugh. Then for a few moments he
talked of the war and old College days, and Pierson looked at
him and thought: ‘ What has he come for?’

“’You’ve something to say to me, Alec,” he said, at last.

Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered
with evident effort: ‘“ Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with
you, Edward. I hope you won’t mind. I do hope you won’t.”

“Why should I mind?”

Canon Rushbourne’s eyes shone more than ever, there was real
friendliness in his face.

“T know you’ve every right to say to me: ‘ Mind your own
business.’ But I made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping
to save you from—er ” he stammered, and began again. “I
think you ought to know of the feeling in your parish that—er—
that—er—your position is very delicate. Without breach of
confidence I may tell you that letters have been sent to head-
quarters; you can imagine perhaps what I mean. Do believe,

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 659

my dear friend, that I’m actuated by my old affection for you;
nothing else, I do assure you.”

In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a
little touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his
thick black knees, his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness.
The sun shone brightly on those two black figures, so very dif-
ferent, and drew out of their well-worn garments the faint latent
green mossiness which underlies the clothes of clergymen.

At last Pierson said: “Thank you, Alec; I understand.”

The Canon uttered a resounding sigh. “ You didn’t realise
how very easily people misinterpret her being here with you; it
seems to them a kind—a kind of challenge. They were bound,
I think, to feel that; and I’m afraid, in consequence——” He
stopped, moved by the fact that Pierson had closed his eyes.

“T am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my
parish ? ”

The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt
the edge of that clear question.

“ My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can’t say at all.
But there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you
to know. You haven’t quite seen, I think, that——”

Pierson raised his hand. “I can’t talk of this.”

The Canon rose. “ Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply.
I felt I had to warn you.” He held out his hand. “ Good-bye,
my dear friend, do forgive me”; and he went out. In the hall
an adventure befell him so plump, and awkward, that he could
barely recite it to Mrs. Rushbourne that night.

“Coming out from my poor friend,” he said, “I ran into a
baby’s perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember
as a little thing ”—he held his hand at the level of his thigh—
“arranging it for going out. It startled me; and I fear I asked
quite foolishly: ‘Is it a boy?’ The poor young thing looked
up at me. She has very large eyes, quite beautiful, strange eyes.
‘ Have you been speaking to Daddy about me?’ ‘ My dear young
lady, I said, ‘I’m such an old friend, you see. You must for-
give me.’ And then she said: ‘ Are they going to ask him to
resign?’ ‘That depends on you,’ I said. Why do I say these
things, Charlotte? I ought simply to have held my tongue.
Poor young thing; so very young! And the little baby! ”

ee has brought it on herself, Alec,” Mrs. Rushbourne re-
plied.
''VII
1§

THE moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and
down the study, with anger rising in his heart. His daughter
or his parish! The old saw, “ An Englishman’s house is his
castle!” was being attacked within him. Must he not then
harbour his own daughter, and help her by candid atonement to
regain her inward strength and peace? Was he not thereby
acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest course he and she
could pursue? ‘To go back on that decision and imperil his
daughter’s spirit, or else resign his parish—the alternatives were
brutal! This was the centre of his world, the only spot where
so lonely a man could hope to feel even the semblance of home;
a thousand little threads tethered him to his church, his parish-
ioners, and this house—for, to live on here if he gave up his
church was out of the question. But his chief feeling was a
bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his duty,
he should be attacked by his parishioners.

A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt
—these parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for
whom he had worked so long—beset him now, and he went out.
But the absurdity of his quest struck him before he had gone
the length of the Square. One could not go to people and say:
“ Stand and deliver me your inmost judgments.” And suddenly
he was aware of how far away he really was from them. Through
all his ministrations had he ever come to know their hearts?
And now, in this dire necessity for knowledge, there seemed no
way of getting it. He went at random into a stationer’s shop;
the shopman sang bass in his choir. They had met Sunday after
Sunday for the last seven years. But when, with this itch for
intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind the counter,
it was as if he were looking on him for the first time. The Rus-
sian proverb, “The heart of another is a dark forest,” flashed
into his mind, while he said:

“ Well, Hodson, what news of your son?”

“Nothing more, Mr. Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more
at present.”

660
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 661

And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man’s face clothed
in a short, grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must
be thinking: ‘ Ah! sir, but what news of your daughter?’ No
one would ever tell him to his face what he was thinking. And
buying two pencils, he went out. On the other side of the road
was a bird-fancier’s shop, kept by a woman whose husband had
been taken for the Army. She was not friendly towards him,
for it was known to her that he had expostulated with her hus-
band for keeping larks, and other wild birds. And quite de-
liberately he crossed the road, and stood looking in at the win-
dow, with the morbid hope that from this unfriendly one he
might hear the truth. She was in her shop, and came to the
door,

“ Have you any news of your husband, Mrs. Cherry?”

“ No, Mr. Pierson, I ’ave not; not this week.”

“He hasn’t gone out yet?”

“No, Mr. Pierson; ’e ’as not.”

There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was—
Pierson had a mad longing to say: ‘ For God’s sake, woman,
speak out what’s in your mind; tell me what you think of me
and my daughter! Never mind my cloth!’ But he could no
more say it than the woman could tell him what was in her mind.
And with a “ Good morning” he passed on. No man or woman
would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were drunk. He
came to a public house, and for a moment even hesitated before
it, but the thought of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and he
passed that too. And then reality made itself known to him.
Though he had come out to hear what they were thinking, he
did not really want to hear it, could not endure it if he did. He
had been too long immune from criticism, too long in the posi-
tion of one who may tell others what he thinks of them. And
standing there in the crowded street, he was attacked by that
longing for the country which had always come on him when he
was hard pressed. He looked at his memoranda. By stupendous
luck it was almost a blank day. An omnibus passed close by
which would take him far out. He climbed on to it, and tra-
velled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set forth on foot.
It was bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam. He
walked fast along the perfectly straight road till he came to
the top of Elstree Hill. There for a few moments he stood
gazing at the school chapel, the cricket-field, the wide land be-
yond. All was very quiet, for it was lunch-time. A horse was
''662 NOVELS OF LOVE

tethered there, and a strolling cat, as though struck by the tall
black incongruity of his figure, paused in her progress, then,
slithering under the wicket gate, arched her back and rubbed
herself against his leg, crinkling and waving the tip of her tail.
Pierson bent down and stroked the creature’s head; but uttering
a faint miaou, the cat stepped daintily across the road, Pierson
too stepped on, past the village, and down over the stile, into a
field path. At the edge of the young clover, under a bank of
hawthorn, he lay down on his back, with his hat beside him and
his arms crossed over his chest, like the effigy of some crusader
one may see carved on an old tomb. Though he lay quiet as
that old knight, his eyes were not closed, but fixed on the blue,
where a lark was singing. Its song refreshed his spirit; its
passionate light-heartedness stirred all the love of beauty in him,
awoke revolt against a world so murderous and uncharitable.
Oh! to pass up with that song into a land of bright spirits, where
was nothing ugly, hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the
Saviour radiated everlasting love! The scent of the mayflowers,
borne down by the sunshine, drenched his senses; he closed his
eyes, and, at once, as if resenting that momentary escape, his
mind resumed debate with startling intensity. This matter went
to the very well-springs, had a terrible and secret significance.
If to act as conscience bade him rendered him unfit to keep his
parish, all was built on sand, had no deep reality, was but rooted
in convention. Charity, and the forgiveness of sins honestly.
atoned for—what became of them? Either he was wrong to have
espoused straightforward confession and atonement for her, or
they were wrong chasing him from that espousal. There could
be no making those extremes to meet. But if he were wrong,
having done the hardest thing already—where could he turn?
His Church stood bankrupt of ideals. He felt as if pushed over
the edge of the world, with feet on space, and head in some bind-
ing cloud. ‘I cannot have been wrong,’ he thought; ‘any other
course was so much easier. I sacrificed my pride, and my poor
girl’s pride; I would have loved to let her run away. If for this
we are to be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in
the religion I have loved; what does it all come to? Have I
served asham? I cannot and will not believe it. Something is
wrong with me, something is wrong—but where—what?’ He
rolled over, lay on his face, and prayed. He praved for guidance
and deliverance from the gusts of anger which kept sweeping
over him: even more for relief from the feeling of personal out-
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 663

rage, and the unfairness of this thing. He had striven to be
loyal to what he thought the right, had sacrificed all his sensi-
tiveness, all his secret fastidious pride in his child and himself.
For that he was to be thrown out! Whether through prayer, or
in the scent and feel of the clover, he found presently a certain
rest. Away in the distance he could see the spire of Harrow
Church. The Church! No! She was not, could not be, at
fault. The fault was in himself. ‘I am unpractical, he thought.
‘It is so, I know. Agnes used to say so, Bob and Thirza think
so. They all think me unpractical and dreamy. Is it a sin—I
wonder?’ There were lambs in the next field; he watched their
gambollings, and his heart relaxed; brushing the clover dust
off his black clothes, he began to retrace his steps. The boys
were playing cricket now, and he stood a few minutes watching
them. He had not seen cricket played since the war began; it
seemed almost other-worldly, with the click of the bats, and the
shrill young voices, under the distant drone of that sky- -hornet
threshing along to Hendon. A boy made a good leg hit. “Well
played!” he called. Then, suddenly conscious of his own in-
congruity and strangeness in that green spot, he turned away on
the road back to London. To resign; to await events; to send
Noel away—ot those three courses, the last alone seemed impos-
sible. ‘Am I really so far from them, he thought, ‘ that they
can wish me to go, for this? If so, I had better go. It will be
just another failure. But I won’t believe it yet; I can’t believe
be

The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at
last he reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cool-
ing his hot face. He did not reach home till six, having eaten
nothing since breakfast. Intending to have a bath and lie down
till dinner, he went upstairs.

Unwonted silence reigned. He tapped on the nursery door.
It was deserted; he passed through to Noel’s room; but that too
was empty. ‘The wardrobe stood open as if it had been hastily
ransacked, and her dressing-table was bare. In alarm he went
to the bell and pulled it sharply. The old-fashioned ring of it
jingled far below. The parlour-maid came up.

“Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?”

“T didn’t know you were in, sir. "Miss Noel left me this note
to give you. They—J-——”

Pierson stopped her with his hand. “Thank you, Susan;
get me some tea, please.” With the note unopened in his hand.
''664 NOVELS OF LOVE

he waited till she was gone. His head was going round, and he
sat down on the side of Noel’s bed to read:

“ Dartine Dappy,

“The man who came this morning told me of what is going
to happen. I simply won’t have it. I’m sending Nurse and baby
down to Kestrel at once, and going to Leila’s for the night, until
I’ve made up my mind what to do. I knew it was a mistake my
coming back. I don’t care what happens to me, but I won’t have
you hurt. I think it’s hateful of people to try and injure you
for my fault. ve had to borrow money from Susan—six
pounds. Oh! Daddy Dear, forgive me.

“Your loving
“ NOLLIE.”

He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew
where she was—poor, wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew
where she was, and could get at her. After his bath and some
tea, he would go to Leila’s and bring her back. Poor little
Nollie, thinking that by just leaving his house she could settle
this deep matter! He did not hurry, feeling decidedly ex-
hausted, and it was nearly eight before he set out, leaving a
message for Gratian, who did. not as a rule come in from her
hospital till past nine.

The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his
refreshed senses soaked up its beauty. ‘God has so made this
world, he thought ‘ that, no matter what our struggles and suf-
ferings, it’s ever a joy to live when the sun shines, or the moon
is bright, or the night starry. Even we can’t spoil it.’ In Re-
gent’s Park the lilacs and laburnums were still in bloom though
June had come, and he gazed at them in passing, as a lover
might at his lady. His conscience pricked him suddenly. Mrs.
Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had brought to him on New
Year’s Eve, the very night he had learned of his own daughter’s
tragedy—had he ever thought of them since? How had that
poor girl fared? He had been too impatient of her impenetrable
mood. What did he know of the hearts of others, when he did
not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of anger and
revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of
safety! And Leila! Had he not been too censorious in thought?
How powerful, how strange was this instinct of sex, which hoy-
ered and swooped on lives, seized them, bore them away, then
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 665)

dropped them exhausted and defenceless! Some munition-
wagons, painted a dull grey, lumbered past, driven by sunburned
youths in drab. Life-force, Death-force—was it all one; the
great unknowable momentum from which there was but the one
escape, in the arms of their Heavenly Father? Blake’s little old
stanzas came into his mind:

“And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

“For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice! ”

Learned the heat to bear! Those lambs he had watched in a
field that afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their
funny quivering wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts
—what little miracles of careless joy among the meadows flow-
ers! Lambs, and flowers, and sunlight! Famine, lust, and the
great grey guns! A maze, a wilderness; and but for faith, what
issue, what path for man to take which did not keep him wan-
dering hopeless, in its thicket? ‘God preserve our faith in love,
in charity, and the life to come!’ he thought. And a blind man
with a dog, to whose neck was tied a little deep dish for pennies,
ground a hurdy-gurdy as he passed. Pierson put a shilling in
the dish. The man stopped playing, his whitish eyes looked up.
“Thank you kindly, sir, ’ll go home now. Come on, Dick! ”
He tapped his way round the corner, with his dog straining in
front. A blackbird hidden among the blossoms of an acacia,
burst into evening song, and another great grey munition-wagon
rumbled out through the Park gate.

2§

The Church-clock was striking nine when he reached Leila’s
flat, went up, and knocked. Sounds from a piano ceased; the
door was opened by Noel. She recoiled when she saw who it was,
and said:

“Why did you come, Daddy? It was much better not.”

“ Are you alone here? ”
''666 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Yes; Leila gave me her key. She has to be at the hospital
till ten to-night.”

“You must come home with me, my dear.”

Noel closed the piano, and sat down on the divan. Her face
had the same expression as when he had +old her that she could
not marry Cyril Morland.

“Come, Nollie,” he said; “don’t be unreasonable. We must
see this through together.”

(T4 Noe:

“ My dear, that’s childish. Do you think the mere accident of
your being or not being at home can affect my decision as to
what my duty is?”

“Yes; it’s my being there that matters. Those people don’t
care, so long as it isn’t an open scandal.”

*“ Nollie! ”

“But it is so, Daddy. Of course it’s so, and you know it. If
I’m away they'll just pity you for having a bad daughter. And
quite right too. I am a bad daughter.”

Pierson smiled. “ Just like when you were a tiny.”

“T wish I were a tiny again, or ten years older. It’s this half
age But ’m not coming back with you, Daddy; so it’s no
good.”

Pierson sat down beside her.

*“ Tve been thinking this over all day,” he said quietly. “ Per-
haps in my pride I made a mistake when I first knew of your
trouble. Perhaps I ought to have accepted the consequences of
my failure, then, and have given up, and taken you away at once.
After all, if a man is not fit to have the care of souls, he should
have the grace to know it.”

“ But you are fit,” cried Noel passionately; “ Daddy, you are
tet

“T’m afraid not. There is something wanting in me, I don’t
know exactly what; but something very wanting.”

“There isn’t. It’s only that you’re too good—that’s why!”

Pierson shook his head. “ Don’t, Nollie!”

“ T will,” cried Noel. “ You’re too gentle, and you’re too good.
You’re charitable, and you’re simple, and you believe in another
world; that’s what’s the matter with you, Daddy. Do you think
they do, these people who want to chase us out? They don’t
even begin to believe, whatever they say or think. I hate them,
and sometimes I hate the Church; either it’s hard and narrow,
or else it’s worldly.” She stopped at the expression on her

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 667

father’s face, the most strange look of pain, and horror, as if
an unspoken treachery of his own had been dragged forth for
his inspection.

“ You’re talking wildly,” he said, but his lips were trembling.
“You mustn’t say things like that; they’re blasphemous and
wicked.”

Noel bit her lips, sitting very stiff and still, against a high
blue cushion. Then she burst out again:

“You’ve slaved for those people years and years, and you’ve
had no pleasure and you’ve had no love; and they wouldn’t care
that if you broke your heart. They don’t care for anything, so
long as it all seems proper. Daddy, if you let them hurt you, I
won’t forgive you!”

* And what if you hurt me now, Nollie?”

Noel pressed his hand against her warm cheek.

“Oh, no! Oh,no! I don’t—I won’t. Not again. [ve done
that already.””’

“Very well, my dear! then come home with me, and we'll
see what’s best to be done. It can’t be settled by running away.”

Noel dropped his hand. “No. Twice I’ve done what you
wanted, and it’s been a mistake. If I hadn’t gone to Church
on Sunday to please you, perhaps it would never have come to
this. You don’t see things, Daddy. I could tell, though I was
sitting right in front. I knew what their faces were like, and
what they were thinking.”

“One must do right, Nollie, and not mind.”

“Yes, but what is right? It’s not right for me to hurt you,
and I’m not going to.”

Pierson understood all at once that it was useless to try and
move her.

“ What are you going to do, then?”

“T suppose I shall go to Kestrel to-morrow. Auntie will have
me, I know; I shall talk to Leila.”

“Whatever you do, promise to let me know.”

Noel nodded.

“ Daddy, you look awfully, awfully tired. I’m going to give
you some medicine.” She went to a little three-cornered cup-
board, and bent down. Medicine! The medicine he wanted was
not for the body; knowledge of what his duty was—that alone
could heal him!

The loud popping of a cork roused him. “ What are you do-
ing, Nollie?”
''668 NOVELS OF LOVE

Noel rose with a flushed face, holding in one hand a glass of
champagne, in the other a biscuit.

“You're to take this; and I’m going to have some myself.”

“My dear,” said Pierson bewildered; “it’s not yours.”

“ Drink it, Daddy! Don’t you know that Leila would never
forgive me if I let you go home looking like that. Besides, she
told me I was to eat. Drink it. You can send her a nice present.
Drink it!” And she stamped her foot.

Pierson took the glass, and sat there nibbling and sipping. It
was nice, very! He had not quite realised how much he needed
food and drink. Noel returned from the cupboard a second
time ; she too had a glass and a biscuit.

“There, you look better already. Now you’re to go home at
once, in a cab if you can get one; and tell Gratian to make you
feed up, or you won’t have a body at all; you can’t do your duty
if you haven’t one, you know.”

Pierson smiled, and finished the champagne.

Noel took the glass from him. “You’re my child to-night,
and I’m going to send you to bed. Don’t worry, Daddy; it’ll all
come right.” And, taking his arm, she went downstairs with
him, and blew him a kiss from the doorway.

He walked away in a sort of dream. Daylight was not quite
gone, but the moon was up, just past its full, and the search-
lights had begun their nightly wanderings. It was a sky of
ghosts and shadows, fitting to the thought which came to him.
The finger of Providence was in all this, perhaps! Why should
he not go out to France! At last; why not? Some better man,
who understood men’s hearts, who knew the world, would take
his place; and he could go where death made all things simple,
and he could not fail. He walked faster and faster, full of an
intoxicating relief. Thirza and Gratian would take care of
Nollie far better than he. Yes, surely it was ordained! Moon-
light had the town now; and all was steel-blue, the very air
steel-blue; a dream-city of marvellous beauty, through which he
passed, exalted. Soon he would be where that poor boy, and a
million others, had given their lives ; with the mud and the shells
and the scarred grey ground, and the jagged trees, where Christ
was daily crucified—there where he had so often longed to be
these three years past. It was ordained!

And two women whom he met looked at each other when he
had gone by, and those words ‘ the blighted crow’ which they had
been about to speak, died on their lips.
''Vill

Noet felt light-hearted too, as if she had won a victory. She
found some potted meat, spread it on another biscuit, ate it
greedily, and finished the pint bottle of champagne. Then she
hunted for the cigarettes, and sat down at the piano. She played
old tunes—“ There is a Tavern in the Town,” “ Once I Loved a
Maiden Fair,” “Mowing the Barley,’ “ Clementine,’ “ Low-
lands,” and sang to them such words as she remembered. There
was a delicious running in her veins, and once she got up and
danced. She was kneeling at the window, looking out, when she
heard the door open, and without getting up, cried out:

“Isn’t it a gorgeous night! I’ve had Daddy here. I gave
him some of your champagne, and drank the rest ” then was
conscious of a figure far too tall for Leila, and a man’s voice
saying:

“Tm awfully sorry. It’s only I, Jimmy Fort.”

Noel scrambled up. “ Leila isn’t in; but she will be directly
—it’s past ten.”

He was standing stock-still in the middle of the room.

“ Won’t you sit down? Oh! and won’t you have a cigarette?”

“ Thanks.”

By the flash of his briquette she saw his face clearly; the look

on it filled her with a sort of malicious glee,
. “Pm going now,” she said. ‘ Would you mind telling Leila
that I found I couldn’t stop?” She made towards the divan
to get her hat. When she had put it on, she found him standing
just in front of her.

“ Noel—if you don’t mind me calling you that?”

© Nota bit.”

“Don’t go; ’m going myself.”

“Oh, no! Not for worlds.” She tried to slip past, but he took
hold of her wrist.

“ Please; just one minute! ”

Noel stayed motionless, looking at him, while his hand still
held her wrist. He said quietly :

“Do you mind telling me why you came here?”

“Oh, just to see Leila.”

“Things have come to a head at home, haven’t they?”

669

 
''670 NOVELS OF LOVE

Noel shrugged her shoulders,

“ You came for refuge, didn’t you?”

* From whom?”

“ Don’t be angry; from the need of hurting your father.”

She nodded.

“T knew it would come to that. What are you going to do?”

“ Enjoy myself.” She was saying something fatuous, yet she
meant it.

“'That’s absurd. Don’t be angry! You’re quite right. Only,
you must begin at the right end, mustn’t you? Sit down!”

Noel tried to free her wrist.

“No; sit down, please.”

Noel sat down; but as he loosed her wrist, she laughed. This
was where he sat with Leila, where they would sit when she was
gone. “It’s awfully funny, isn’t it?” she said.

“Funny?” he muttered savagely. “ Most things are, in this
funny world.”

The sound of a taxi stopping not far off had come to her
ears, and she gathered her feet under her, planting them firmly.
If she sprang up, could she slip by him before he caught her
arm again, and get that taxi?

“Tf I go now,” he said, “will you promise me to stop till
you’ve seen Leila?”

ce INO?

“That’s foolish. Come, promise

Noel shook her head. She felt a perverse pleasure at his em-
barrassment.

“ Leila’s lucky, isn’t she? No children, no husband, no father,
no anything. Lovely!”

She saw his arm go up as if to ward off a blow. “ Poor
Leila!” he said.

“ Why are you sorry for her? She has freedom! And she has
you!”

She knew it would hurt; but she wanted to hurt him.

“You needn’t envy her for that.”

He had just spoken, when Noel saw a figure over by the door.

She jumped up, and said breathlessly:

“Oh, here you are, Leila! Father’s been here, and we’ve had
some of your champagne! ”

“Capital! You are in the dark!”

Noel felt the blood rush into her cheeks. The light leaped up,
and Leila came forward. She looked extremely pale, calm, and

1
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 671

self-contained, in her nurse’s dress; her full lips were tightly
pressed. together, but Noel could see her breast heaving violently.
A turmoil of shame and wounded pride began raging in the girl.
Why had she not flown long ago? Why had she let herself be
trapped like this? Leila would think she had been making up
to him! Horrible! Disgusting! What didn’t hemi? didn’t
some one, speak? Then Leila said:

“T didn’t expect you, Jimmy; I’m glad you haven’t heer dull.
Noel is staying here to-night. Give me a cigarette. Sit down,
both of you. I’m awfully tired!”

She sank into a chair, leaning back, with her knees crossed;
and at that moment Noel admired her. She had said it beauti-
fully; she looked so calm. Fort was lighting her cigarette; his
hand was shaking, his face all sorry and mortified.

“Give Noel one, too, and draw the curtains, Jimmy. Quick!
Not that it makes any difference; it’s as light as day. Sit down,
dear.”

But Noel remained standing.

“ What have you been talking of ? Love and Chinese lanterns,
or only me?”

At those words Fort, who was drawing the last curtain, turned
round; his tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his
face, unsuited to diplomacy, had a look of flesh being beaten. If
weals had started up across it, Noel would not have been sur-
prised.

He said with painful slowness:

“T don’t exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?”

“The night is young,” said Leila. “Go on while I just take
off my things.”

She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the
inner room. In passing, she gave Noel a look. What there was
in that look, the girl could never make clear even to herself.
Perhaps a creature shot would gaze like that, with a sort of
profound and distant questioning, reproach, and anger, with a
sort of pride, and the quiver of death. As the door closed, Fort
came right across the room.

“Go to her,” cried Noel; “she wants you. Can’t you see, she
wants you?”

And before he could move, she was at the door. She flew
downstairs, and out into the moonlight. The taxi, a little way
off, was just beginning to move away ; she ran towards it, calling
out:
''672 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ Anywhere! Piccadilly!” and jumping in, blotted herself
against the cushions in the far corner.

She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes,
and then feeling she could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and
got out. Where was she? Bond Street! She began, idly, wan-
dering down its narrow length; the fullest street by day, the
emptiest by night. Oh! it had been horrible! Nothing said by
any of them—nothing, and yet everything dragged out—of him,
of Leila, of herself! She seemed to have no pride or decency
left, as if she had been caught stealing. All her happy ex-
hilaration was gone, leaving a miserable recklessness. Nothing
she did was right, nothing turned out well, so what did it all
matter? The moonlight flooding down between the tall houses
gave her a peculiar heady feeling. “ Fey” her father had called
her. She laughed. ‘But I’m not going home, she thought.
Bored with the street’s length, she turned off, and was suddenly
in Hanover Square. There was the Church, grey-white, where
she had been bridesmaid to a second cousin, when she was fif-
teen. She seemed to see it all again—her frock, the lilies in her
hand, the surplices of the choir, the bride’s dress, all moonlight-
coloured, and unreal. ‘I wonder what’s become of her!’ she
thought. ‘ He’s dead, I expect, like Cyril!” She saw her father’s
face as he was marrying them, heard his voice: “ For better,
for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till
death do you part.” And the moonlight on the Church seemed
to shift and quiver—some pigeons perhaps had been disturbed up
there. Then instead of that wedding vision, she saw Monsieur
Bara, sitting on his chair, gazing at the floor, and Chica nursing
her doll. “All mad, mademotselle, a little mad. Millions of
men with white souls, but all a little tiny bit mad, you know.”
Then Leila’s face came before her, with that look in her eyes.
She felt again the hot clasp of Fort’s fingers on her wrist, and
walked on, rubbing it with the other hand. She turned into
Regent Street. The wide curve of the Quadrant swept into a
sky of unreal blue, and the orange-shaded lamps merely added
to the unreality. ‘Love and Chinese lanterns! I should like
some coffee,’ she thought suddenly. She was quite close to the
place where Lavendie had taken her. Should she go in there ?
Why not? She must go somewhere. She turned into the re-
volving cage of glass. But no sooner was she imprisoned there
than in a flash Lavendie’s face of disgust; and the red-lipped
women, the green stuff that smelled of peppermint came back,
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 673

filling her with a rush of dismay. She made the full circle in
the revolving cage, and came out into the street again with a
laugh. A tall young man in khaki stood there. “ Hallo!” he
said. “Come in and dance!” She started, recoiled from him
and began to walk away as fast as ever she could. She passed a
woman whose eyes seemed to scorch her. A woman like a swift
vision of ruin with those eyes, and thickly powdered cheeks, and
loose red mouth. Noel shuddered and fled along, feeling that
her only safety lay in speed. But she could not walk about all
night. There would be no train for Kestrel till the morning.
—and did she really want to go there, and eat her heart out?
Suddenly she thought of George. Why should she not go down
to him? He would know what was best for her to do. At the
foot of the steps below the Waterloo Column she stood still. All
was quiet there and empty, the great buildings whitened, the
trees blurred and blue; and sweeter air was coming across their
flowering tops. The queer “fey” moony sensations was still
with her; so that she felt small and light, as if she could have
floated through a ring. Faint rims of light showed round the
windows of the Admiralty. The war! However lovely the night,
however sweet the lilac smelt—that never stopped! She turned
away and passed out under the arch, making for the station.
The train of the wounded had just come in, and she stood in
the cheering crowd watching the ambulances run out. Tears of
excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled down. Steady,
smooth, grey, one after the other they came gliding, with a little
burst of cheers greeting each one. All were gone now, and she
could pass in. She went to the buffet and got a large cup of
coffee, and a bun. Then, having noted the time of her early
morning train, she sought the ladies’ waiting-room, and sitting
down in a corner, took out her purse and counted her money.
Two pounds fifteen—enough to go to the hotel, if she liked. But,
without luggage—it was so conspicuous, and she could sleep in
this corner, all right, if she wanted. What did girls do who had
no money, and no friends to go to? Tucked away in the corner
of that empty, heavy, varnished room, she seemed to see the
cruelty and hardness of life as she had never before seen it,
not even when facing her confinement. How lucky she had been,
and was! Everyone was good to her. She had no real want or
dangers, to face. But, for women—yes, and men too—who had
ne one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and health
and luck, it must be awful. That girl whose eyes had scorched
''674 NOVELS OF LOVE

her—perhaps she had no one—nothing. And people who were
born ill, and the millions of poor women, like those whom she
had gone visiting with Gratian sometimes in the poorer streets
of her father’s parish—for the first time she seemed to really
know and feel the sorts of lives they led. And then, Leila’s face
came back to her once more—Leila whom she had robbed. And
the worst of it was, that, alongside her remorseful sympathy, she
felt a sort of satisfaction. She could not help his not loving
Leila, she could not help it if he loved herself! And he did—
she knew it! To feel that anyone loved her was so comforting.
But it was all awful! And she—the cause of it! And yet—she
had never done or said anything to attract him. No! She could
not have helped it.

She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes. And
gradually there came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were
leaning up against someone with her head tucked in against his
shoulder, as she had so often leaned as a child against her father,
coming back from some long darkening drive in Wales or Scot-
land. She seemed even to feel the wet soft Westerly air on her
face and eyelids, and to sniff the scent of a frieze coat; to hear
the jog of hoofs and the rolling of the wheels; to feel the closing
in of the darkness. Then, so dimly and drowsily, she seemed to
know that it was not her father, but someone—someone—then
no more, no more at all.
''IX

Sue was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked
around her amazed. Her neck had fallen sideways while she
slept, and felt horridly stiff; her head ached, and she was shiver-
ing. She saw by the clock that it was past five. ‘If only I could
get some tea!’ she thought. ‘Anyway I won’t stay here any
longer!’ When she had washed, and rubbed some of the stiffness
out of her neck, the tea renewed her sense of adventure wonder-
fully. Her train did not start for an hour; she had time for a
walk, to warm herself, and went down to the river. There was
an early haze, and all looked a little mysterious; but people were
already passing on their way to work. She walked along, look-
ing at the water flowing up under the bright mist to which the
gulls gave a sort of hovering life. She went as fas as Blackfriars
Bridge, and turning back, sat down on a bench under a plane-
tree, just as the sun broke through. A little pasty woman with
a pinched yellowish face was already sitting there, so still, and
seeming to see so little, that Noel wondered of what she could be
thinking. While she watched, the woman’s face began pucker-
ing, and tears rolled slowly down, trickling from pucker to
pucker, till, summoning up her courage, Noel sidled nearer, and
said :

“Oh! What’s the matter?”

The tears seemed to stop from sheer surprise; little grey eyes
gazed round, patient little eyes from above an almost bridge-
less nose.

“T ’ad a baby. It’s dead... its father’s dead in France
... 1 was goin’ in the water, but I didn’t like the look of it,
and now I never will.”

That “ Now I never will,” moved Noel terribly. She slid her
arm along the back of the bench, and clasped the skinniest of
shoulders.

“Don’t ery!”

“Tt was my first. I’m thirty-eight. I'll never ’ave another.
Oh! Why didn’t I go in the water?”

The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears ran down.
“Of course she must cry, thought Noel; ‘ cry and cry till it feels

675
''676 NOVELS OF LOVE

better.’ And she stroked the shoulder of the little woman, whose
emotion was disengaging the scent of o!d clothes.

“The father of my baby was killed in France, too,” she said
at last. The little sad grey eyes looked curiously round.

“Was ’e? ’Ave you got your baby still?”

‘Yes, oh, yea!”

“T’m glad of that. It?’urts so bad, it does. I’d rather lose me
*usband than me baby, any day.” The sun was shining now
on a cheek of that terribly patient face; its brightness seemed
cruel perching there.

“Can I do anything to help you? ” Noel murmured.

“No, thank you, miss. I’m goin’ ’ome now. I don’t live far.
Thank you kindly.” And raising her eyes for one more of those
half-bewildered looks, she moved away along the Embankment
wall. When she was out of sight, Noel walked back to the sta-
tion. The train was in, and she took her seat. She had three
fellow passengers, all in khaki; very silent and moody, as men
are when they have to get up early. One was tall, dark, and
perhaps thirty-five; the second small, and about fifty, with
cropped, scanty grey hair; the third was of medium height and
quite sixty-five, with a long row of little coloured patches on his
tunic, and a bald, narrow, well-shaped head, grey hair brushed
back at the sides, and the thin, collected features and drooping
moustache of the old school. It was at him that Noel looked.
When he glanced out of the window, or otherwise retired within
himself, she liked his face; but when he turned to the ticket-
collector or spoke to the others, she did not like it half so much.
It was as if the old fellow had two selves, one of which he
used when alone, the other in which he dressed every morning to
meet the world. They had begun to talk about some Tribunal
on which they had to sit. Noel did not listen, but a word or
two carried to her now and then.

“How many to-day?” she heard the old fellow ask, and the
little cropped man answering: ‘‘ Hundred and fourteen.”

Fresh from the sight of the poor little shabby woman and her
grief, she could not help a sort of shrinking from that trim old
soldier, with his thin, regular face, who held the fate of a
“Hundred and fourteen” in his firm, narrow grasp, perhaps
every day. Would he understand their troubles or wants?. Of
course he wouldn’t! Then she saw him looking at her critically
with his keen eyes. If he had known her secret, he would be
thinking: ‘A lady and act like that! Oh, no! Quite—quite
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 677

out of the question!’ And she felt as if she could sink under
the seat with shame. But no doubt he was only thinking:
‘Very young to be travelling by herself at this hour of the morn-
ing. Pretty too!’ If he knew the real truth of her—how he
would stare! But why should this utter stranger, this old dis-
ciplinarian, by a casual glance, by the mere form of his face,
make her feel more guilty and ashamed than she had yet felt?
That puzzled her. He was, must be, a narrow, conventional old
man; but he had this power to make her feel ashamed, because
she felt that he had faith in his gods, and was true to them;
because she knew he would die sooner than depart from his
creed of conduct. She turned to the window, biting her lips—
angry and despairing. She would never—never get used to her
position; it was no good! And again she had the longing of
her dream, to tuck her face away into that coat, smell the scent
of the frieze, snuggle in, be protected, and forget. ‘If I had been
that poor lonely little woman,’ she thought, ‘and had lost every-
thing, I should have gone into the water. I should have rushed
and jumped. It’s only luck that I’m alive. I won't look at
that old man again: then I shan’t feel so bad.”

She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it,
gazing steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first
of the buttercups and cowslips. The three soldiers were talking
now in carefully lowered voices. The words: “ women,” “ under
control,” “perfect plague,” came to her, making her ears burn.
In the hypersensitive mood caused by the strain of yesterday,
her broken night, and the emotional meeting with the little
woman, she felt as if they were including her among those
“women.” ‘If we stop, Vl get out, she thought. But when
the train did stop it was they who got out. She felt the old
General’s keen veiled glance sum her up for the last time, and
looked full at him just for a moment. He touched his cap, and
said: “ Will you have the window up or down?” and lingered
to draw it half-way up. His punctiliousness made her feel worse
than ever. When the train had started again she roamed up and
down her empty carriage; there was no more a way out of her
position than out of this rolling cushioned carriage! And then
she seemed to hear Fort’s voice saying: ‘ Sit down please!’ and
to feel his fingers clasp her wrist. Oh! he, was nice and com-
forting; he would never reproach or remind her! And now,
probably, she would never see him again.

The train drew up at last. She did not know where George
''678 NOVELS OF LOVE

lodged, and would have to go to his hospital. She planned to
get there at half past nine, and having eaten a sort of breakfast
at the station, went forth into the town. The seaside was still
wrapped in the early glamour which haunts chalk of a bright
morning. But the streets were very much alive. Here was real
business of the war. She passed houses which had been wrecked.
Trucks clanged and shunted, great lorries rambled smoothly by.
Sea- and Air-planes were moving like great birds far up in the
bright haze, and khaki was everywhere. But it was the sea Noel
wanted. She made her way westward to a little beach; and,
sitting down on a stone, opened her arms to catch the sun on
her face and chest. The tide was nearly up, with the wavelets
of a blue bright sea. The great fact, the greatest fact in the
world, except the sun; vast and free, making everything human
seem small and transitory! It did her good, like a tranquillising
friend. The sea might be cruel and terrible, awful things it
could do, and awful things were being done on it; but its wide
level line, its never-ending song, its sane savour, were the
best medicine she could possibly have taken. She rubbed the
shelly sand between her fingers in absurd ecstasy; took off her
shoes and stockings, paddled, and sat drying her legs in
the sun.

When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said
to her:

“Your troubles are very little. There’s the sun, the sea, the
air; enjoy them. They can’t take those from you.’

At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare
room before George came.

“Nollie! Splendid. D’ve got an hour. Let’s get out of this
cemetery. We'll have time for a good stretch on the tops. Jolly
of you to have come to me. Tell us all about it.”

When she had finished, he squeezed her arm. “I knew it
wouldn’t do. Your Dad forgot that he’s a public figure, and
must expect to be damned accordingly. But though you’ve cut
and run, he’ll resign all the same, Nollie.”

“Oh, no!” cried Noel.

George shook his head.

“Yes, he’ll resign, you'll see, he’s got no worldly sense; not
a grain.”

“Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if—oh, no!”

““ Let’s sit down here. I must be back at eleven.”

They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 679

before them, over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very
blue.

“Why should he resign,” cried Noel again, “now that I’ve
gone? He’ll be lost without it all.”

George smiled.

“Found, my dear. He’ll be where he ought to be, Nollie,
where the Church is, and the Churchmen are not—in the air! ”

“Don’t!” cried Noel passionately.

“No, no, ’m not chaffing. There’s no room on earth for
saints in authority. There’s use for a saintly symbol, even if
one doesn’t hold with it, but there’s no mortal use for those who
try to have things both ways—to be saints and seers of visions,
and yet to come the practical and worldly and rule ordinary
men’s lives. Saintly example—yes; but not saintly governance.
You’ve been his deliverance, Nollie.’

“ But Daddy loves his Church.”

George frowned. “Of course, it7ll be a wrench. A man’s
bound to have a cosey feeling about a place where he’s been
boss so long; and there is something about a Church—the drone,
the scent, the half darkness; there’s beauty in it, it’s a pleasant
drug. But he’s not being asked to give up the drug habit; only
to stop administering drugs to others. Don’t worry, Nollie; I
don’t believe that’s ever suited him, it wants a thicker skin than
he’s got.”

“ But all the people he helps?”

“No reason he shouldn’t go on helping people, is there? ”

“But to go on living there, without Mother died there,
you know!”

George grunted. “ Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past
and the future, of what people are and what he can do with
them. I never see him without a skirmish, as you know, and
yet ’m fond of him. But I should be twice as fond, and half
as likely to skirmish, if he’d drop the habits of authority. Then
I believe he’d have some real influence over me; there’s some-
thing beautiful about him, I know that quite well.”

“Yes,” murmured Noel fervently.

“He’s such a queer mixture,” mused George. “Clean out
of his age; chalks above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense
and chalks below most of them in the worldly. And yet I be-
lieve he’s in the right of it. The Church ought to be a forlorn
hope, Nollie; then we should believe in it. Instead of that, it’s
a sort of business that no one can take too seriously. You see,

 
''680 NOVELS OF LOVE

the Church spiritual can’t make good in this age—has no chance
of making good, and so in the main it’s given it up for vested
interests and social influence. Your father is a symbol of what
the Church is not. But what about you, my dear? There’s a
room at my boarding-house, and only one old lady besides myself,
who knits all the time. If Grace can get shifted we'll find a
house, and you can have the baby. They’ll send your luggage
on from Paddington if you write; and in the meantime Gracie’s
got some things here that you can have.”

“Tl have to send a wire to Daddy.”

“Tl do that. You come to my diggings at half past one,
and I'll settle you in. Until then, you’d better stay up here.”

When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on
the short grass, where the chalk broke through in patches. She
could hear a distant rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass,
the long mutter of the Flanders guns. ‘I wonder if it’s as
beautiful a day there, she thought. ‘How dreadful to see no
green, no butterflies, no flowers—not even sky—for the dust
of the shells. Oh! won’t it ever, ever end?’ And a sort of
passion for the earth welled up in her, the warm grassy earth
along which she lay, pressed so close that she could feel it with
every inch of her body, and the soft spikes of the grass against
her nose and lips. An aching sweetness tortured her, she wanted
the earth to close its arms about her, she wanted the answer to
her embrace of it. She was alive, and wanted love. Not death
—not loneliness—not death! And out there, where the guns
muttered, millions of men would be thinking that same thought!
''x

Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of
his past, the records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short
married life. The idea which had possessed him walking home
in the moonlight sustained him in that melancholy task of
docketing and destruction. There was not nearly so much to
do as one would have supposed, for, with all his dreaminess,
he had been oddly neat and business-like in all parish matters.
But a hundred times that night he stopped, overcome by memo-
ries. Every corner, drawer, photograph, paper was a thread in
the long-spun web of his life in this house. Some phase of his
work, some vision of his wife or daughters started forth from
each bit of furniture, picture, doorway. Noiseless, in his slip-
pers, he stole up and down between the study, dining-room,
drawing-room, and anyone seeing him at his work in the dim
light which visited the staircase from above the front door and
the upper-passage window, would have thought: ‘A ghost, a
ghost gone into mourning for the condition of the world” He
had to make this reckoning to-night, while the exaltation of his
new idea was on him; had to rummage out the very depths of old
association, so that once for all he might know whether he had
strength to close the door on the past. Five o’clock struck before
he had finished, and, almost dropping from fatigue, sat down
at his little piano in bright daylight. The last memory to beset
him was the first of all; his honeymoon, before they came back
to live in this house, already chosen, furnished, and waiting for
them. They had spent it in Germany—the first days in Baden-
baden, and each morning had been awakened by a Chorale
played down in the gardens of the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful
tune, to remind them that they were in heaven. And softly, so
softly that the tunes seemed to be but dreams he began playing
those old Chorales, one after another, so that the stilly sounds
floated out, through the opened window, puzzling the early birds
and cats and those few humans who were abroad as yet. . . .

He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the
same day, just as he was about to set out for Leila’s to get news
of her; and close on the top of it came Lavendie. He found
the painter standing disconsolate in front of his picture.

681
''682 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ Mademoiselle has deserted me?”

“Tm afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur.”’

“You are going?”

“Yes, I am leaving here. I hope to go to France.”

“ And mademoiselle? ”

“ She is at the sea with my son-in-law.”

The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them
half-way, as if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.

“Mon dieu!” he said. “Is this not a calamity for you,
monsieur le curé?” But his sense of the calamity was so pa-
tiently limited to his unfinished picture that Pierson could not
help a smile.

“Ah, monsieur!’’ said the painter, on whom nothing was
lost. “Comme je suis egoiste! I show my feelings; it is de-
plorable. My disappointment must seem a bagatelle to you,
who will be so distressed at leaving your old home. This must
be a time of great trouble. Believe me, I understand. But to
sympathise with a grief which is not shown would be an im-
pertinence, would it not? You English gentlefolk do not let
us share your griefs; you keep them to yourselves.”

Pierson stared. “ True,” he said. “ Quite true! ”

“T am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists.
the doors of the human heart stand open, our own and others.
I suppose we have no pride—c’est trés-indelicat. Tell me, mon-
steur, you would not think it worthy of you to speak to me of
your troubles, would you, as I have spoken of mine?”

Pierson bowed his head, abashed.

“You preach of universal charity and love,” went on Laven-
die; “but how can there be that when you teach also secretly
the keeping of your troubles to yourselves? Man responds to
example, not to teaching; you set the example of the stranger,
not the brother. You expect from others what you do not give.
Frankly, monsiewr, do you not feel that with every revelation
of your soul and feelings, virtue goes out of you? And I will
- tell you why, if you will not think it an offence. In opening
your hearts you feel that you lose authority. You are officers,
and must never forget that. Is it not so?”

Pierson grew red. “I hope there is another feeling too. I
think we feel that to speak of our sufferings or deeper feelings
is to obtrude oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when
we might be concerned with others.”

“ Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self. To seem
''Q

SAINT’S PROGRESS 683

selfless is but your particular way of cultivating the perfection
of self. You admit that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect
yourself. Hh bien! What is that but a deeper concern with
self? To be free of this, there is no way but to forget all about
oneself in what one is doing, as I forget everything when I am
painting. But,” he added with a sudden smile, “ you would not
wish to forget the perfecting of self—it would not be right in
your profession. So I must take away this picture, must I not?
It is one of my best works. I regret much not to have finished
He?

“ Some day, perhaps

“Some day! The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle
will not. She will rush at something, and behold! this face will
be gone. No; I prefer to keep it as it is. It has truth now.”
And lifting down the canvas, he stood it against the wall and ©
folded up the easel. “ Bon soir, monsiewr, you have been very
good to me.” He wrung Pierson’s hand; and his face for a
moment seemed all eyes and spirit. “ Adieu!”

“ Good-bye,” Pierson murmured. “God bless you! ”

“TI don’t know if I have great confidence in Him,” replied
Lavendie, “but I shall ever remember that so good a man as
you has wished it. To mademoiselle my distinguished saluta-
tions, if you please. If you will permit me, I will come back
for my other things to-morrow.” And carrying easel and canvas,
he departed.

Pierson stayed in the old drawing-room, waiting for Gratian
to come in, and thinking over the painter’s words. Had his
education and position really made it impossible for him to be
brotherly? Was this the secret of the impotence which he some-
times felt; the reason why charity and love were not more alive
in the hearts of his congregation? ‘God knows I’ve no con-
sciousness of having felt myself superior,” he thought; ‘and
yet I would be truly ashamed to tell people of my troubles
and of my struggles. Can it be that Christ, if he were on earth,
would count us Pharisees, believing ourselves not as other men?
But surely it is not as Christians but rather as gentlemen that
we keep ourselves to ourselves. Officers, he called us. I fear
—I fear it is true.” Ah, well! There would not be many more
days now. He would learn out there how to open the hearts
of others, and his own. Suffering and death levelled all bar-
riers, made all men brothers. He was still sitting there when
Gratian came in; and taking her hand, he said:

3?

 
''684 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get trans-
ferred and go to them, Gracie. I’m giving up the parish and
asking for a chaplaincy.”

“Giving up? After all this time? Is it because of Nollie?”

“No, I think not; I think the time has come. I feel my
work here is barren.”

“Oh, no! And even if it is, it’s only because——”

Pierson smiled. ‘‘ Because of what, Gracie?”

“ Dad, it’s what I’ve felt in myself. We want to think and
decide things for ourselves, we want to own our consciences,
we can’t take things at second-hand any longer.”

Pierson’s face darkened. ‘“ Ah!” he said, “to have lost faith
is a grievous thing.”

“ We're gaining charity,” cried Gratian.

“The two things are not opposed, my dear.”

“* Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are. Oh,
Dad! you look so tired. Have you really made up your mind?
Won’t you feel lost?”

“ For a little. I shall find myself, out there.”

But the look on his face was too much for Gratian’s com-
posure, and she turned away.

Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resigna-
tion. Sitting before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to
the full how strongly he had resented the public condemnation
passed on his own flesh and blood, how much his action was the
expression of a purely mundane championship of his daugh-
ter; of a mundane mortification. ‘Pride, he thought.
‘Ought I to stay and conquer it?’ Twice he set his pen down,
twice took it up again. He could not conquer it. To stay
where he was not wanted, on a sort of sufferance—never!
And while he sat before that empty sheet of paper he tried to
do the hardest thing a man can do—to see himself as others see
him; and met with such success as one might expect—harking
at once to the verdicts, not of others at all, but of his own con-
science; and coming soon to that perpetual gnawing sense which
had possessed him ever since the war began, that it was his duty
to be dead. This feeling that to be alive was unworthy of him
when so many of his flock had made the last sacrifice, was re-
inforeced by his domestic tragedy and the bitter disillusionment
it had brought. A sense of having lost caste weighed on him,
while he sat there with his past receding from him, dusty and
unreal. He had the queerest feeling of his old life falling from
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 685

him, dropping round his feet like the outworn scales of a serpent,
rung after rung of tasks and duties performed day after day,
year after year. Had they ever been quite real? Well, he had
shed them now, and was to move out into life illumined by
the great reality—death! And taking up his pen, he wrote his
resignation.
''XI

13

Tue last Sunday, sunny and bright! Though he did not ask
her to go, Gratian went to every Service that day. And the
sight of her, after this long interval, in their old pew, where
once he had been wont to see his wife’s face, and draw refresh-
ment therefrom, affected Pierson more than anything else. He
had told no one of his coming departure, shrinking from the
falsity and suppression which must underlie every allusion and
expression of regret. In the last minute of his last sermon he
would tell them! He went through the day in a sort of dream.
Truly proud and sensitive, under this social blight, he shrank
from all alike, made no attempt to single out supporters or
adherents from those who had fallen away. He knew there
would be some, perhaps many, seriously grieved that he was
going; but to try and realise who they were, to weigh them in
the scales against the rest and so forth, was quite against his
nature. It was all or nothing. But when for the last time of
all those hundreds, he mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he
showed no trace of finality, did not perhaps even feel it yet.
For so beautiful a summer evening the congregation was large.
In spite of all reticence, rumour was busy and curiosity still
rife. The writers of the letters, anonymous and otherwise, had
spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming what they had done,
but in justifying to themselves the secret fact that they had
done it. And this was best achieved by speaking to their neigh-
bours of the serious and awkward situation of the poor Vicar.
The result was visible in a better attendance than had been seen
since summer-time began, :

Pierson had never been a great preacher, his voice lacked
resonance and pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and
he was not free from the sing-song which mars the utterance
of many who have to speak professionally. But he always made
an impression of goodness and sincerity. On this last Sunday
evening he preached again the first sermon he had ever preached
from that pulpit, fresh from the honeymoon with his young wife.
“Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

686
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 687

It lacked now the happy fervour of that most happy of all his
days, yet gained poignancy, coming from so worn a face and
voice. Gratian, who knew that he was going to end with his
farewell, was in a choke of emotion long before he came to it.
She sat winking away her tears, and not till he paused, for so
long that she thought his strength had failed, did she look up.
He was leaning a little forward, seeming to see nothing; but his
hands, grasping the pulpit’s edge, were quivering. There was
deep silence in the Church, for the look of his face and figure
was strange, even to Gratian. When his lips parted again to
speak, a mist covered her eyes, and she lost sight of him.
“Friends, I am leaving you; these are the last words I shall
ever speak in this place. I go to other work. You have been
very good to me. God has been very good to me. I pray with
my whole heart that He may bless you all. Amen! Amen!”
The mist cleared into tears, and she could see him again gazing
down at her. Was it at her? He was surely seeing something
—some vision sweeter than reality, something he loved more
dearly. She fell on her knees, and buried her face in her hand.
All through the hymn she knelt, and through his clear slow
Benediction: “The peace of God, which passeth all under-
standing, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love
of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing
of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be
amongst you and remain with you always.” And still she knelt
on, till she was alone in the Church. Then she rose and stole
home. He did not come in; she did not expect him. ‘ It’s over,’
she kept thinking; ‘all over. My beloved Daddy! Now he has
no home; Nollie and I have pulled him down. And yet I
couldn’t help it, and perhaps she couldn’t. Poor Nollie! .. /

2 §

Pierson had stayed in the vestry, talking with his choir and
wardens; there was no hitch, for his resignation had been ae-
cepted, and he had arranged with a friend to carry on till the
new Vicar was appointed. When they were gone he went back
into the empty Church, and mounted to the organ-loft. A little
window up there was open, and he stood leaning against the
stone, looking out, resting his whole being. Only now that it
was over did he know what stress he had been through. Spar-
rows were chirping, but sound of traffic had almost ceased, in
''688 NOVELS OF LOVE

that quiet Sunday hour of the evening meal. Finished! In-
credible that he would never come up here again, never see those
roof-lines, that corner of Square Garden, and hear this familiar
chirping of the sparrows. He sat down at the organ and began
to play. The last time the sound would roll out and echo round
the emptied House of God. For a long time he played, while
the building darkened slowly down there below him. Of all
that he would leave, he would miss this most—the right to come
and play here in the darkening Church, to release emotional
sound in this dim empty space growing ever more beautiful.
From chord to chord he let himself go deeper and deeper into
the surge and swell of those sound waves, losing all sense of.
actuality, till the music and the whole dark building were fused
in one rapturous solemnity. Away down there the darkness
crept over the Church, till the pews, the altar—all was invisible,
save the columns, and the walls. He began playing his favourite
slow movement from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony—kept to
the end, for the visions it ever brought him. And a cat, which
had been stalking the sparrows, crept in through the little win-
dow, and crouched, startled, staring at him with her green eyes.
He closed the organ, went quickly down, and locked up his
Church for the last time. It was warmer outside than in, and
lighter, for daylight was not quite gone. He moved away a few
yards, and stood looking up. Walls, buttresses, and spire were
clothed in milky shadowy grey. The top of the spire seemed to
touch a star. ‘Good-bye, my Church!’ he thought. ‘ Good-bye,
good-bye!’ He felt his face quiver; clenched his teeth, and
turned away.

 
''XII

1 §

Wuewn Noel fled, Fort had started forward to stop her; then,
realising that with his lameness he could never catch her, he
went back-and entered Leila’s bedroom.

She had taken off her dress, and was standing in front of her
glass, with the cigarette still in her mouth; and the only move-
ment was the curling of its blue smoke. He could see her face
reflected, pale, with a little spot of red in each cheek, and burn-
ing red ears. She had not seemed to hear him coming in, but
he saw her eyes change when they caught his reflection in the
mirror. From lost and blank, they became alive and smoulder-
ing.
“ Noel’s gone!” he said.

She answered, as if to his reflection in the glass:

“And you haven’t gone too? Ah, no! Of course—your leg!
She fled, I suppose? It was rather a jar, my coming in, I’m
afraid.”

“No; it was my coming in that was the jar.”

Leila turned round. “Jimmy! I wonder you could discuss
me. The rest ” She shrugged her shoulders— “ But
that Le

“T was not discussing you. I merely said you were not to be
envied for having me. Are you?”

The moment he had spoken, he was sorry. The anger in her
eyes changed instantly, first to searching, then to misery. She
cried out:

“T was to be envied. Oh! Jimmy; I was!” and flung herself
face down on the bed.

Through Fort’s mind went the thought: ‘ Atrocious!’? How
could he soothe—make her feel—that he loved her, when he
didn’t—that he wanted her, when he wanted Noel. He went
up to the bedside and touched her timidly:

“Leila, what is it? You’re overtired. Whats the matter?
I couldn’t help the child’s being here. Why do you let it upset
you? She’s gone. It’s all right. Things are just as they
were.”

 

 

689
''690 NOVELS OF LOVE

“Yes!” came the strangled echo; “ just!”

He knelt down and stroked her arm. It shivered under the
touch, seemed to stop shivering and wait for the next touch, as
if hoping it might be warmer; shivered again.

“ Look at me!” he said. “ What is it you want? I’m ready to
do anything.”

She turned and drew herself up on the bed, screwing herself
back against the pillow as if for support, with her knees drawn
under her. He was astonished at the strength of her face and
figure, thus entrenched.

“My dear Jimmy!” she said, “I want you to do nothing but
get me another cigarette. At my age one expects no more than
one gets.” She held out her thumb and finger: “Do you
mind?”

Fort turned away to get the cigarette. With what bitter re-
straint and curious little smile she had said that! But no
sooner was he out of the room and hunting blindly for the
cigarettes, than his mind was filled with an aching concern for
Noel, fleeing like that, reckless and hurt, with nowhere to go.
He found the polished birchwood box which held the cigarettes,
and made a desperate effort to dismiss the image of the girl be-
fore he again reached Leila. She was still sitting there, with
her arms crossed, in the stillness of one whose every nerve and,
fibre was stretched taut.

“Have one yourself,” she said. “The pipe of peace.”

Fort lit the cigarettes, and sat down on the edge of the bed;
and his mind at once went back to Noel.

“Yes,” she said suddenly; “ I wonder where she’s gone. Can
you see her? She might do something reckless a second time.
Poor Jimmy! It would be a pity. And so that monk’s been
here, and drunk champagne. Good idea! Get me some,
Jimmy!”

Again Fort went, and with him the image of the girl. When
he came back the second time, she had put on that dark silk
garment in which she had appeared suddenly radiant the fatal
night after the Queen’s Hall concert. She took the wineglass,
and passed him, going into the sitting-room.

“Come and sit down,” she said. “Is your leg hurting
you?”

“ Not more than usual,” and he sat down beside her.

* Won’t you have some? ‘In vino veritas,’ my friend.”

He shook his head, and said humbly: “I admire you, Leila.”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 691

“That’s lucky. I don’t know anyone else who would.” And
she drank her champagne at a draught.

“Don’t you wish,” she said suddenly, “that I had been one
of those wonderful New Women, all brain and good works.
How I should have talked the Universe up and down, and the
war, and Causes, drinking tea, and never boring you to try and
love me. What a pity!”

But to Fort there had come Noel’s words: “It’s awfully
funny, isn’t it?”

“ Leila,” he said suddenly, “something’s got to be done. So
long as you don’t wish me to, I’ll promise never to see that
child again.”

“My dear boy, she’s not a child. She’s ripe for love; and—
I’m too ripe for love. That’s what’s the matter, and I’ve got
to lump it.” She wrenched her hand out of his and, dropping
the empty glass, covered her face. The awful sensation which
visits the true Englishman when a scene stares him in the face
spun in Fort’s brain. Should he seize her hands, drag them
down, and kiss her? Should he get up and leave her alone?
Speak, or keep silent; try to console; try to pretend? And he
did absolutely nothing. So far as a man can understand that
moment in a woman’s life when she accepts the defeat of Youth
and Beauty, he understood perhaps; but it was only a glimmer-
ing. He understood much better how she was recognising once
for all that she loved where she was not loved.

“And I can’t help that, he thought dumbly; ‘simply can’t
help that!’ Nothing he could say or do would alter it. No
words can convince a woman when kisses have lost reality.
Then, to his infinite relief, she took her hands from her face,
and said:

“This is very dull. I think you’d better go, Jimmy.”

He made an effort to speak, but was too afraid of falsity in
his voice.

“Very nearly a scene!” said Leila. “My God! How men
hate them! So doI. I’ve had too many in my time; nothing
comes of them but a headache next morning. I’ve spared you
that, Jimmy. Give me a kiss for it.”

He bent down and put his lips to hers. With all his heart
he tried to answer the passion in her kiss. She pushed him away
suddenly, and said faintly:

“Thank you; you did try!”

Fort dashed his hand across his eyes. The sight of her face
''692 NOVELS OF LOVE

just then moved him horribly. What a brute he felt! He took
her limp hand, put it to his lips, and murmured:

“T shall come in to-morrow. We'll go to the theatre, shall
we? Good night, Leila!”

But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring
at him, evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a
frightened look. They went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his
heart a squeeze.

She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling.
Without knowing what his own lips answered, he went out. He
could not make up his mind to go away, but, crossing to the
railings, stood leaning against them, looking up at her windows.
She had been very good to him. He felt like a man who has
won at cards, and sneaked away without giving the loser his
revenge. If only she hadn’t loved him; and it had been a soul-
less companionship, a quite sordid business. Anything rather
than this! English to the backbone, he could not divest himself
of a sense of guilt. To see no way of making up to her, of
straightening it out, made him feel intensely mean. ‘Shall I
go up again?’ he thought. The window-curtain moved. Then
the shreds of light up there vanished. ‘She’s gone to bed,’ he
thought. ‘I should only upset her worse. Where is Noel, now,
I wonder? I shall never see her again, I suppose. Altogether
a bad business. My God, yes! A bad—bad business!’

And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.

2 §

Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no
less real, poignant, and important to those outside morality’s
ring fence than to those within. Her feelings were, indeed,
probably even more real and poignant, just as a wild fruit’s
flavour is sharper than that of the tame product. Opinion—
she knew—would say, that having wilfully chosen a position
outside morality she had not half the case for broken-heartedness
she would have had if Fort had been her husband. Opinion—
she knew—would say she had no claim on him, and the sooner
an illegal tie was broken, the better! But she felt fully as
wretched as if she had been married. She had not wanted to
be outside morality; never in her life wanted to be that. She
was like those who by confession shed their sins and start again
with a clear conscience. She never meant to sin, only to love,
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 693

and when she was in love, nothing else mattered for the mo-
ment. But, though a gambler, she had always so far paid up.
Only, this time the stakes were the heaviest a woman can put
down. It was her last throw; and she knew it. So long as a
woman believed in her attraction, there was hope, even when
the curtain fell on a love-affair! But for Leila the lamp of
belief had suddenly gone out, and when this next curtain
dropped she felt that she must sit in the dark until old age
made her indifferent. And between forty-four and real old age
a gulf is fixed. This was the first time a man had tired of her.
Why! he had been tired before he began, or so she felt. In
one swift moment as of a drowning person, she saw again all
the passages of their companionship, knew with certainty that
it had never been a genuine flame. Shame ran, consuming, in
her veins. She buried her face in the cushions. This girl had
possessed his real heart all the time. With a laugh she thought:
“I put my money on the wrong horse; I ought to have backed
Edward. I could have turned that poor monk’s head. If only
I had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his letter up, I
could have made poor Edward love me!’ Ifs! What folly!
Things happened as they must! And, starting up, she began
to roam the little room. Without Jimmy she would be wretched,
with him she would be wretched too! ‘I can’t bear to see his
face, she thought; ‘and I can’t live here without him! It’s
really funny!” The thought of her hospital filled her with
loathing. To go there day after day with this despair eating
at her heart—she simply could not. She went over her re-
sources. She had more money than she thought; Jimmy had
given her a Christmas present of five hundred pounds. She
had wanted to tear up the cheque, or force him to take it back;
but the realities of the previous five years had prevailed with
her, and she had banked it. She was glad now. She had not
to consider money. Her mind sought to escape in the past.
She thought of her first husband, Ronny Fane; of their mos-
quito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras heat. Poor
Ronny! What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under
that name. She thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact
solidity. She had loved them both—for a time. She thought
of the veldt, of Constantia, and the loom of Table Mountain
under the stars; and—the first sight of Jimmy, his straight look,
the curve of his crisp head, the kind, fighting-schoolboy frank-
ness of his face. Even now, after all those months of their
''694 NOVELS OF LOVE

companionship, that long-ago evening at grape harvest, when she
sang to him under the scented creepers, was the memory of him
most charged with real feeling. That one evening at any rate
he had longed for her, eleven years ago, when she was in her
prime. She could have held her own then; Noel would have
come in vain. To think that this girl had still fifteen years
before she would be even in her prime. Fifteen years of
witchery; and then another ten before she was on the shelf.
Why! if Noel married Jimmy, he would be an old man doting
on her still, by the time she had reached this fatal age of forty-
four. She felt as if she must scream, and, stuffing her handker-
chief into her mouth, turned out the light. Darkness cooled her,
a little. She pulled aside the curtains, and let in the moon-
light. Jimmy and that girl were out in it somewhere, seeking
each other, if not in body, then in thought. And soon, some-
how, somewhere, they would come together—come together be-
cause Fate meant them to! Fate which had given her young
cousin a likeness te herself; placed her, too, in just such a hope-
less position as appealed to Jimmy, and gave him a chance
against younger men. She saw it with bitter surety. Good
gamblers cut their losses! Yes, and proud women did not
keep unwilling lovers! If she had even an outside chance, she
would trail her pride, drag it through the mud, through thorns!
But she had not. And she clenched her fist, and struck out at
the night, as though at the face of that Fate which one could
never reach—impalpable, remorseless, surrounding Fate with its
faint mocking smile, devoid of all human warmth. Nothing
could set back the clock, and give her what this girl had. Time
had “done her in,” as it “did in” every woman, one by one.
And she saw herself going down the years, powdering a little
more, painting a little more, touching up her hair, till it was all
artifice, holding on by every little device—and all, to what end?
To see his face get colder and colder, hear his voice more and
more constrained to gentleness ; and know that underneath, aver-
sion was growing with the thought: ‘ You are keeping me from
life, and love!’ till one evening, in sheer nerve-break, she would
say or do some fearful thing, and he would come no more. ‘ No,
Jimmy!’ she thought; ‘find her, and stay with her. You're
not worth all that!’ And pulling-to the curtains, as though
with that gesture she could shut out her creeping fate, she
turned up the light and sat down at her writing-table. She
stayed some minutes motionless, her chin resting on her hands.
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 695

the dark silk fallen down from her arms. A little mirror, framed
in curiously carved ivory, picked up by her in an Indian bazaar
twenty-five years ago, hung on a level with her face and gave that
face back to her. ‘ I’m not ugly,’ she thought passionately, ‘ ’m
not. I still have some looks left. If only that girl hadn’t come.
And it was all my doing. Oh, what made me write to both of
them, Edward and Jimmy?’ She turned the mirror aside, and
took up a pen.

“ My DEAR JIMMY,” she wrote:

“Tt will be better for us both if you take a holiday from here.
Don’t come again till I write for you. I’m sorry I made you so
much disturbance to-night. Have a good time, and a good rest;
and don’t worry.

“Your t

 

So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she
had to tear it up and begin again. This time she wrote to the
end—* Your Leila.” ‘I must post it now,’ she thought, ‘ or he
may not get it before to-morrow evening. I couldn’t go through
with this again.’ She hurried out with it and slipped it in a
pillar box. The night smelled of flowers; and, hastening back,
she lay down, and stayed awake for hours, tossing, and staring
at the dark.
''XIII

13

Leiia had pluck, but little patience. Her one thought was to
get away and she at once began settling up her affairs and getting
a permit to return to South Africa. The excitements of pur-
chase and preparation were as good an anodyne as she could have
taken. The perils of the sea were at full just then, and the
prospect of danger gave her a sort of pleasure. ‘If I go down,’
she thought, ‘all the better; brisk, instead of long and dreary.’
But when she had the permit and her cabin was booked, the
irrevocability of her step came to her with full force. Should she
see him again or no? Her boat started in three days, and she
must decided. If in compunction he were to be affectionate, she
knew she would never keep to her decision, and then the horror
would begin again, till again she was forced to this same action.
She let the hours go and go till the very day before, when the
ache to see him and the dread of it had become so unbearable that
she could not keep quiet. Late that afternoon—everything, to
the last label, ready—she went out, still undecided. An itch to
turn the dagger in her wounds, to know what had become of
Noel, took her to Edward’s house. Almost unconsciously she had
put on her prettiest frock, and spent an hour before the glass.
A feverishness of soul, more than of body, which had hung about
her ever since that night, gave her colour. She looked her
prettiest; and she bought a gardenia at a shop in Baker Street
and fastened it in her dress. Reaching the old Square, she was
astonished to see a board up with the words: “ To let,” though
the house still looked inhabited. She rang, and was shown into
the drawing-room. She had only twice been in this house before ;
and for some reason, perhaps because of her own unhappiness,
the old, rather shabby room struck her as pathetic, as if inhabited
by the past. ‘I wonder what his wife was like, she thought.
And then she saw, hanging against a strip of black velvet on the
wall, that faded colour sketch of the slender young woman lean-
‘ing forward, with her hands crossed in her lap. The colouring
was lavender and old ivory. with faint touches of rose. The
eyes, so living, were a little like Gratian’s; the whole face deli-
696
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 697

cate, eager, good. ‘ Yes,’ she thought, ‘he must have loved you
very much. To say good-bye must have been hard.” She was
still standing before it when Pierson came in.

“ That’s a dear face, Edward. I’ve come to say good-bye. I’m
leaving for South Africa to-morrow.” And, as her hand touched
his, she thought: ‘I must have been mad to think I could ever
have made him love me.’

“ Are you—are you leaving him?”

Leila nodded.

“ That’s very brave, and wonderful.”

“Oh! no. Needs must when the devil drives—that’s all. I
don’t give up happiness of my own accord. That’s not within
a hundred miles of the truth. What I shall become, I don’t
know, but nothing better, you may be sure. I give up because
I can’t keep, and you know why. Where is Noel?”

“ Down at the sea, with George and Gratian.”

He was looking at her in wonder; and the pained, puzzled ex-
pression on his face angered her.

“T see the house is to let. Who’d have thought a child like
that could root up two fossils like us? Never mind, Edward,
there’s the same blood in us. We'll keep our ends up in our
own ways. Where are you going?”

“'They’ll give me a chaplaincy in the East, I think.”

For a wild moment Leila thought: ‘Shall I offer to go with
him—the two lost dogs together ?’

“What would have happened, Edward, if you had proposed
to me that May week, when we were—a little bit in love? Which
would it have been worst for, you or me?”

“ You wouldn’t have taken me, Leila.”

“Oh, one never knows. But you’d never have been a priest
then, and you’d never have become a saint.”

“Don’t use that silly word. If you knew. ?

“T do; I can see that you’ve been half burned alive; half
burned and half buried! Well, you have your reward, whatever
it is, and I mine. Good-bye, Edward!” She took his hand.
“ You might give me your blessing ; I want it.”

Pierson put his other hand on her shoulder and, bending for-
ward, kissed her forehead.

The tears rushed up in Leila’s eyes. “Ah me!” she said,
“it’s a sad world!” And wiping the quivering off her lips with
the back of her gloved hand, she went quickly past him to the
door. She looked back from there. He had not stirred, but

2

 
''698 NOVELS OF LOVE

his lips were moving. ‘ He’s praying for me!’ she thought.
‘How funny!’
2 §

The moment she was outside, she forgot him; the dreadful
ache for Fort seemed to have been whipped up within her, as
if that figure of lifelong repression had infuriated the love of
life and pleasure in her. She must and would see Jimmy again,
if she had to wait and seek for him all night! It was nearly
seven, he would surely have finished at the War Office; he might
be at his Club or at his rooms. She made for the latter.

The little street near Buckingham Gate, where no wag had
chalked “ Peace” on the doors for nearly a year now, had an
arid look after a hot day’s sun. The hair-dresser’s shop below
his rooms was still open, and the private door ajar. ‘I won’t
ring, she thought; ‘ I’ll go straight up.’ While she was mount-
ing the two flights of stairs, she stopped twice, breathless, from
a pain in her side. She often had that pain now, as if the
longing in her heart strained it physically. On the modest
landing at the top, outside his rooms, she waited, leaning against
the wall, which was covered with a red paper. A window at the
back was open and the confused sound of singing came in—a
chorus: “ Vivé-la, vivé-la, vivé-la vé. Vivé la compagnie.” So
it came to her. ‘O God!’ she thought: ‘ Let him be in, let
him be nice to me. It’s the last time.’ And, sick from anxiety,
she opened the door. He was in—lying on a wicker-couch
against the wall in the far corner, with his arms crossed behind
his head, and a pipe in his mouth; his eyes were closed, and he
neither moved, nor opened them, perhaps supposing her to be
the servant. Noiseless as a cat, Leila crossed the room till she
stood above him. And waiting for him to come out of that
defiant lethargy, she took her fill of this thin, bony face, healthy
and’ hollow at the same time. With teeth clenched on the pipe
it had a look of hard resistance, as of a man with his head back,
his arms pinioned to his sides, stiffened against some creature,
clining and climbing and trying to drag him down. The pipe
was alive, and dribbled smoke; and his leg, the injured one,
wriggled restlessly, as if worrying him; but the rest of him was
as utterly and obstinately still as though he were asleep. His
hair grew thick and crisp, not a thread of grey in it, the teeth
which held the pipe glinted white and strong. His face was
young; so much younger than hers. Why did she love it—
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 699

the face of a man who couldn’t love her? For a second she felt
as if she could seize the cushion which had slipped down off
the couch, and smother him as he lay there, refusing, so it
seemed to her, to come to consciousness. Love despised! Hu-
miliation! She nearly turned and stole away. Then through
the door, left open, behind her, the sound of that chorus: “ Vivé-
la, vivé-la, vivé-la vé!” came in and jolted her nerves unbear-
ably. Tearing the gardenia from her breast, she flung it on his
upturned face.

“ Jimmy!”

Fort struggled up, and stared at her. His face was comic
from bewilderment, and she broke into a little nervous laugh.

“You weren’t dreaming of me, dear Jimmy, that’s certain.
In what garden were you wandering? ”

“Leila! You! How—how jolly!”

“ How—how jolly! I wanted to see you, so I came. And I
have seen you, as you are, when you aren’t with me. I shall re-
member it; it was good for me—awfully good for me.”

“T didn’t hear you.”

“Far, far away, my dear. Put my gardenia in your button-
hole. Stop, I’ll pin it in. Have you had a good rest all this
week? Do you like my dress? It’s new. You wouldn’t have
noticed it, would you?”

“T should have noticed. I think it’s charming.”

“ Jimmy, I believe that nothing—nothing will ever shake
your chivalry.”

“ Chivalry? I have none.”

“T am going to shut the door, do you mind?” But he went
to the door himself, shut it, and came back to her. Leila looked
up at him.

“ Jimmy, if ever you loved me a little bit, be nice to me to-day.
And if I say things—if I’m bitter—don’t mind; don’t notice it.
Promise!”

“J promise.”

She took off her hat and sat leaning against him on the couch,
so that she could not see his face. And with his arm round her,
she let herself go, deep into the waters of illusion ; down—down,
trying to forget there was a surface to which she must return;
like a little girl she played that game of make-believe. ‘He
loves me—he loves me—he loves me!’ To lose herself like that
for just an hour, only an hour; she felt that she would give the
rest of the time vouchsafed to her; give it all and willingly. Her
''700 NOVELS OF LOVE

hand clasped his against her heart, she turned her face back-
ward, up to his, closing her eyes so as still not to see his face;
the scent of the gardenia in his coat hurt her, so sweet and
strong it was.

3 §

When with her hat on she stood ready to go, it was getting
dark. She had come out of her dream now, was playing at
make-believe no more. And she stood with a stony smile, in
the half-dark, looking between her lashes at the mortified ex-
pression on his unconscious face.

“Poor Jimmy!” she said; “I’m not going to keep you from
dinner any longer. No, don’t come with me. I’m going alone;
and don’t light up, for heaven’s sake.”

She put her hand on the lapel of his coat. “That flower’s
gone brown at the edges. Throw it away; I can’t bear faded
flowers. Nor can you. Get yourself a fresh one to-morrow.”

She pulled the flower from his buttonhole and, crushing it
in her hand, held her face up.

“ Well, kiss me once more; it won’t hurt you.”

For one moment her lips clung to his with all their might.
She wrenched them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened
the door, and, shutting it in his face, went slowly, swaying a
little, down the stairs. She trailed a gloved hand along the
wall, as if its solidity could help her. At the last half-landing,
where a curtain hung, dividing off back premises, she stopped
and listened. There wasn’t a sound. ‘If I stand here behind
this curtain,’ she thought, ‘I shall see him again.’ She slipped
behind the curtain, close drawn but for a little chink. It was so
dark there that she could not see her own hand. She heard the
door open, and his slow footsteps coming down the stairs. His
feet, knees, whole figure came into sight, his face just a dim
blur. He passed, smoking a cigarette. She crammed her hand
against her mouth to stop herself from speaking and the crushed
gardenia filled her nostrils with its cold, fragrant velvet. He
was gone, the door below was shut. A wild, half-stupid longing
came on her to go up again, wait till he came in, throw herself
upon him, tell him she was going, beg him to keep her with him.
Ah! and he would! He would look at her with that haggard
pity she could not bear, and say, “ Of course, Leila, of course.”
No! By God, no! “I am going quietly home,” she muttered ;
“just quietly home! Come along, be brave; don’t be a fool!
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 701

Come along!” And she went down into the street. At the
entrance to the Park she saw him, fifty yards in front, dawdling
along. And, as if she had been his shadow lengthened out to
that far distance, she moved behind him. Slowly, always at
that distance, she followed him under the plane-trees, along the
Park railings, past St. James’s Palace, into Pall Mall. He
went up some steps, and vanished into his Club. It was the
end. She looked up at the building; a monstrous granite tomb,
all dark. An emptied cab was just moving from the door. She
got in. “Camelot Mansions, St. John’s Wood.” And braced
against the cushions, panting, and clenching her hands, she
thought: ‘ Well, I’ve seen him again. Hard crust’s better than
no bread. Oh, God! All finished—not a crumb, not a crumb!
Vivé-la, vivé-la, vweé-la vé. Vivé-la compagnie!’
''XIV

Fort had been lying there about an hour, sleeping and awake,
before that visit. He had dreamed a curious and wonderful
emotionalising dream. A long grey line, in a dim light, neither
of night nor morning, the whole length of the battle-front in
France, charging in short drives, which carried the line a little
forward, with just a tiny pause and suck-back; then on again
irresistibly, on and on; and at each rush, every voice, his own
among them, shouted: “ Hooray! the English! Hooray! the
English!” ‘The sensation of that advancing tide of dim figures
in grey light, the throb and roar, the wonderful, rhythmic steady
drive of it, no more to be stopped than the waves of an incoming
tide, was gloriously fascinating ; life was nothing, death nothing.
“Hooray, the English!” In that dream, he was his country,
he was every one of that long charging line, driving forward in
those great heaving pulsations, irresistible, on and on. Out of
the very centre of this intoxicating dream he had been dragged
by some street noise, and had closed his eyes again, in the vain
hope that he might dream it on to its end. But it came no
more; and lighting his pipe, he lay there wondering at its
fervid, fantastic realism. Death was nothing, if his country
lived and won. In waking hours he never had quite that single-
hearted knowledge of himself. And what marvellously real
touches got mixed into the fantastic stuff of dreams, as if some-
thing were at work to convince the dreamer in spite of himself
—* Hooray!*? not “Hurrah!” Just common “Hooray!”
And “the English,” not the literary “ British.’ And then the
soft flower had struck his forehead, and Leila’s voice cried:
“ Jimmy!”

When she left him, his thought was just a tired: ‘ Well, so
it’s begun again!’ What did it matter, since common loyalty
and compassion cut him off from what his heart desired; and
that desire was absurd, as little likely of attainment as the
moon. What did it matter? If it gave her any pleasure to love
him, let it goon! Yet, all the time that he was walking across
under the plane-trees, Noel seemed to walk in front of him, just
out of reach, so that he ached with the thought that he would
never catch her up, and walk beside her.

702
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 703

Two days later, on reaching his rooms in the evening, he
found this letter on ship’s note-paper, with the Plymouth post-

mark:
“Fare thee well, and if for ever,
Then for ever fare thee well!
“ LEILA.”

He read it with a really horrible feeling, for all the world as
if he had been accused of a crime and did not know whether he
had committed it or not. And, trying to collect his thoughts,
he took a cab and drove to her flat. It was closed, but her ad-
dress was given him; a bank in Cape Town. He had received
his release. In his remorse and relief, so confusing and so
poignant, he heard the driver of the cab asking where he wanted
to go now. “Oh, back again!” But before they had gone a
mile he corrected the address, in an impulse of which next mo-
ment he felt thoroughly ashamed. What he was doing indeed,
was as indecent as if he were driving from the funeral of his
wife to the boudoir of another woman. When he reached the old
Square, and the words “ To let” stared him in the face, he felt
a curious relief, though it meant that he would not see her
whom to see for ten minutes he felt he would give a year of
life. Dismissing his cab, he stood debating whether to ring
the bell. The sight of a maid’s face at the window decided him.
Mr. Pierson was out, and the young ladies were away. He
asked for Mrs. Laird’s address, and turned away, almost into
the arms of Pierson himself. The greeting was stiff and strange.
“Does he know that Leila’s gone?’ he thought. ‘If so, he must
think me the most awful skunk. AndamI? AmI??’

When he reached home, he sat down to write to Leila. But
having stared at the paper for an hour and written these three
lines:

“My pear Lerna,
“T cannot express to you the feelings with which I received
your letter .

 

he tore it up. Nothing would be adequate, nothing would be
decent. Let the dead past bury its dead—the dead past which
in his heart had never been alive! Why pretend? He had done
his best to keep his end up. Why pretend?
'' 
''PART IV
I

In the bcarding-house, whence the Lairds had not yet removed,
the old lady who knitted, sat by the fireplace, and light from
the setting sun threw her shadow on the wall, moving spidery
and grey, over the yellowish distemper, in time to the tune of
her needles. She was a very old lady—the oldest lady in the
world, Noel thought—and she knitted without stopping, without
breathing, so that the girl felt inclined to scream. In the eve-
ning when George and Gratian were not in, Noel would often sit
watching the needles, brooding over her as yet undecided future.
And now and again the old lady would look up above her spec-
tacles; move the corners of her lips ever so slightly, and drop
her gaze again. She had pitted herself against Fate; so long
as she knitted, the war could not stop—such was the conclusion
Noel had come to. This old lady knitted the epic of acquiescence
to the tune of her needles; it was she who kept the war going
—such a thin old lady! ‘If I were to hold her elbows from
behind,’ the girl used to think, ‘I believe she’d die. I expect I
ought to; then the war would stop. And if the war stopped,
there’d be love and life again.’ Then the little silvery tune
would click itself once more into her brain, and stop her think-
ing. In her lap this evening lay a letter from her father.

“ My prarest NOLLIE,

“Tam glad to say I have my chaplaincy, and am to start for
Egypt very soon. I should have wished to go to France, but
must take what I can get, in view of my age, for they really
don’t want us who are getting on, I fear. It is a great comfort
to me to think that Gratian is with you, and no doubt you will
all soon be in a house where my little grandson can join you. I
have excellent accounts of him in a letter from your aunt, just
received. My child, you must never again think that my resigna-
tion has been due to you. It is not so. You know, or perhaps
you don’t, that ever since the war broke out, I have chafed over
staying at home, my heart has been with our boys out there,

705
''706 NOVELS OF LOVE

and sooner or later it must have come to this, apart from any-
thing else. Monsieur Lavendie has been round in the evening,
twice; he is a nice man, I like him very much, in spite of our
differences of view. He wanted to give me the sketch he made
of you in the Park, but what can I do with it now? And to
tell you the truth, I like it no better than the oil painting. It
is not a likeness, as I know you. I hope I didn’t hurt his feel-
ings, the feelings of an artist are so very easily wounded. There
is one thing I must tell you. Leila has gone back to South
Africa; she came round one evening about ten days ago, to say
good-bye. She was very brave, for I fear it means a great wrench
for her. I hope and pray she may find comfort and tranquillity
out there. And now, my dear, I want you to promise me not to
see Captain Fort. I know that he admires you. But, apart
from the question of his conduct in regard to Leila, he made
the saddest impression on me by coming to our house the very
day after her departure. There is something about that which
makes me feel he cannot be the sort of man in whom I could feel
any confidence. I don’t suppose for a moment that he is in your
thoughts, and yet before going so far from you, I feel I must
warn you. I should rejoice to see you married to a good man;
but, though I don’t wish to think hardly of anyone, I cannot
believe Captain Fort is that.

“TI shall come down to you before I start, which may be in
quite a short time now. My dear, love to you and Gracie, and
best wishes to George.

“Your ever loving father,
“ EDWARD PIERSON.”

Across this letter lying on her knees, Noel gazed at the spidery
movement on the wall. Was it acquiescence that the old lady
knitted, or was it resistance—a challenge to death itself, a chal-
lenge dancing to the tune of the needles like the grey ghost of
human resistance to Fate! She wouldn’t give in, this oldest
lady in the world, she meant to knit till she fell into the grave.
And so Leila had gone! It hurt her to know that; and yet it
pleased her. Acquiescence—resistance! Why did Daddy always
want to choose the way she should go? So gentle he was, yet
he always wanted to! And why did he always make her feel
that she must go the other way? The sunlight ceased to stream
in, the old lady’s shadow faded off the wall, but the needles still
sang their little tune. And the girl said:
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 707

* Do you enjoy knitting, Mrs, Adam?”

The old lady looked at her above the spectacles.

“ Knjoy, my dear? It passes the time.”

“ But do you want the time to pass? ”

There was no answer for a moment, and Noel thought: ‘ How
dreadful of me to have said that!’

* Eh?” said the old lady.

“TI said: Isn’t it very tiring? ”

“ Not when I don’t think about it, my dear.”

“What do you think about?”

The old lady cackled gently.

“ Oh—well! ” she said.

And Noel thought: ‘It must be dreadful to grow old, and
pass the time! ’

She took up her father’s letter, and bent it meditatively against
her chin. He wanted her to pass the time—not to live, not to
enjoy! ‘To pass the time. What else had he been doing him-
self, all these years, ever since she could remember, ever since
her mother died, but just passing the time? Passing the time
because he did not believe in this life; not living at all, just
preparing for the life he did believe in. Denying himself
everything that was exciting and nice, so that when he died he
might pass pure and saintly to his other world. He could not
believe Captain Fort a good man, because he had not passed
the time, and resisted Leila; and Leila was gone! And now it
was a sin for him to love someone else; he must pass the time
again. “Daddy doesn’t believe in life,” she thought; ‘it?s mon-
steur’s picture. Daddy’s a saint; but I don’t want to be a saint,
and pass the time. He doesn’t mind making people unhappy,
because the more they’re repressed, the saintlier they’ll be. But
I can’t bear to be unhappy, or to see others unhappy. I wonder
if I could bear to be unhappy to save someone else—as Leila is?
I admire her! Oh! I admire her! She’s not doing it because
she thinks it good for her soul; only because she can’t bear
making him unhappy. She must love him very much. Poor
Leila! And she’s done it all by herself, of her own accord.’
It was like what George said of the soldiers; they didn’t know
why they were heroes, it was not because they’d been told to be,
or because they believed in a future life. They just had to be,
from inside somewhere, to save others. ‘And they love life as
much as I do, she thought. ‘What a beast it makes one feel!?
Those needles! Resistance—acquiescence? Both perhaps. The
''708 NOVELS OF LOVE

oldest lady in the world, with her lips moving at the corners,
keeping things in, had lived her life, and knew it. How dread-
ful to live on when you were of no more interest to anyone, but
must just “ pass the time” and die. But how much more dread-

ful to “pass the time ” when you were strong, and life and love
were yours for the taking! ‘I shan’t answer Daddy,’ she
thought.
''II

‘THE maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy
Fort, had never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit
in the ceaseless procession which pass through the boarding-
houses of places subject to air-raids. Placing him in a sitting-
room, she said she would find Miss "Allow. There he waited,
turning the leaves of an illustrated journal, wherein Society
beauties, starving Servians, actresses with pretty legs, prize dogs,
sinking ships, Royalties, shells bursting, and padres reading
funeral services, testified to the catholicity of the public taste,
but did not assuage his nerves. What if their address were not
known here? Why, in his fear of putting things to the test, had
he let this month go by? An old lady was sitting by the hearth,
knitting, the click of whose needles blended with the buzzing
of a large bee on the window-pane. ‘She may know,’ he thought,
“she looks as if she’d been here for ever.’ And approaching her,
he said:

“TI can assure you those socks are very much appreciated,
ma’am.”

The old lady bridled over her spectacles.

“Tt passes the time,” she said.

“Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma’am.”

The old lady’s lips moved at the corners; she did not answer.
* Deaf!’ he thought.

“May I ask if you knew my friends, Doctor and Mrs. Laird,
and Miss Pierson ?”

The old lady cackled gently.

“Oh, yes! A pretty young girl; as pretty as life. She used
to sit with me. Quite a pleasure to watch her; such large eyes
she had.”

“Where have they gone? Can you tell me?”

“Oh, I don’t know at all.”

It was a little cold douche on his heart. He longed to say :
“Stop knitting a minute, please. It’s my life, to know. But
the tune of the needles answered: ‘It’s my life to knit” And
he turned away to the window.

“She used to sit just there; quite still, quite still.”

709
''710 NOVELS OF LOVE

Fort looked down at the window-seat. So, she used to sit just
here, quite still.

“What a dreadful war this is!” said the old lady. “Have
you been at the front? ”

ce Yes.”

“To think of the poor young girls who'll never have husbands!
I’m sure I think it’s dreadful.”

“Yes,” said Fort; “it’s dreadful.” And then a voice from
the doorway said:

“Did you want Doctor and Mrs. Laird, sir? East Bungalow
their address is; it’s a little way out on the North Road. Any-
one will tell you.”

With a sigh of relief Fort looked gratefully at the old
lady who had called Noel as pretty as life. “Good afternoon,
ma’am.”

“Good afternoon.” The needles clicked, and little move-
ments occurred at the corners of her mouth. Fort went out.
He could not find a vehicle, and was a long time walking. The
Bungalow was ugly, of yellow brick pointed with red. It lay
about two-thirds up between the main road and cliffs, and had
a rock-garden and a glaring brand-new look, in the afternoon
sunlight. He opened the gate, uttering one of those prayers
which come so glibly from unbelievers when they want anything.
A baby’s crying answered it, and he thought with ecstasy :
“Heaven, she is here!’ Passing the rock-garden he could see
a lawn at the back of the house and a perambulator out there
under a helm-oak tree, and Noel—surely Noel herself! Harden-
ing his heart, he went forward. In a lilac sunbonnet she was
bending over the perambulator. He trod softly on the grass,
and was quite close before she heard him. He had prepared no
words, but just held out his hand. The baby, interested in the
shadow falling across its pram, ceased crying. Noel took his
hand. Under the sunbonnet, which hid her hair, she seemed
older and paler, as if she felt the heat. He had no feeling that
she was glad to see him.

“How do you do? Have you seen Gratian ; she ought to be in.”

“I didn’t come to see her; I came to see you.”

Noel turned to the baby.

“ Here he is.”

Fort stood at the end of the perambulator, and looked at that
other fellow’s baby. In the shade of the hood, with the frilly
clothes, it seemed to him lying with its head down-hill. It had
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 711

scratched its snub nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up
at its mother with blue eyes, which seemed to have no underlids
so fat were its cheeks.

“T wonder what they think about,” he said.

Noel put her finger into the baby’s fist.

“They only think when they want something.”

“That’s a deep saying: but his eyes are awfully interested
in you.”

Noel smiled; and very slowly the baby’s curly mouth unclosed,
and discovered his toothlessness.

“ He’s a darling,” she said in a whisper.

‘ And so are you,’ he thought, ‘if only I dared say it!’

“Daddy is here,” she said suddenly, without looking up.
“ He’s sailing for Egypt the day after to-morrow. He doesn’t
like you.”

Fort’s heart gave a jump. Why did she tell him that, unless
—unless he was just a little on his side?

“T expected that,” he said. “I’m a sinner, as you know.”

Noel looked up at him. “Sin!” she said, and bent again
over her baby. The word, the tone in which she said it, crouch-
ing over her baby, gave him the thought: ‘If it weren’t for
that little creature, I shouldn’t have a dog’s chance.’ He said,
“Tl go and see your father. Is he in?”

fol. thinkcao:y,

“ May I come to-morrow?”

“Tt?s Sunday; and Daddy’s last day.”

“Ah! Of course.” He did not dare look back, to see if her
gaze was following him, but he thought: ‘Chance or no chance, ©
I’m going to fight for her tooth and nail.’

In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sit-
ting on a sofa reading. The sight of that figure in khaki dis-
concerted Fort, who had not realised that there would be this
metamorphosis. The narrow face, clean-shaven now, with its
deep-set eyes and compressed lips, looked more priestly than
ever, in spite of this brown garb. He felt his hope suddenly to
be very forlorn indeed. And rushing at the fence, he began
abruptly :

“ve come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry
Noel, if she will have me.”

He had thought Pierson’s face gentle; it was not gentle now.
“ Did you know I was here, then, Captain Fort?”

“T saw Noel in the garden. I’ve said nothing to her, of
''712 NOVELS OF LOVE

course. But she told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt,
so I shall have no other chance.” i

“T am sorry you have come. It is not for me to judge, but I
don’t think you will make Noel happy.”

“ May I ask you why, sir?”

“Captain Fort, the world’s judgment of these things is not
mine; but since you ask me, I will tell you frankly. My cousin
Leila has a claim on you. It is her you should ask to marry
you.”

““T did ask her; she refused.”

“I know. She would not refuse you again if you went out
to her.”

“T am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse.
She knows I don’t love her, and never have.”

“ Never have? ”

ce No

“Then wh a

“Because I’m a man, I suppose, and a fool.”

“Tf it was simply, ‘because you are a man’ as you call it,
it is clear that no principle or faith governs you. And yet you
ask me to give you Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and
protection not of a ‘man’ but of a good man. No, Captain
Port, nol”?

Fort bit his lips. “T’m clearly not a good man in your sense
of the word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her. I
‘don’t in the least know whether she’ll have me. I don’t expect
her to, naturally. But I warn you that I mean to ask her, and
to wait for her. I’m so much in love that I can do nothing
else.”

“The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one
he loves.” Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school
again, confronting his head-master. “That’s true,” he said.
“And I shall never trade on her position. If she can’t feel
anything for me now or in the future, I shan’t trouble her, you
may be sure of that. But if by some wonderful chance she
should, I know I can make her happy, sir.”

“She is a child.”

“ No, she’s not a child,” said Fort stubbornly.

Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic. “Captain Fort,
I am going far away from her, and leaving her without protec-
tion. I trust to your chivalry not to ask her, till I come back.”

Fort threw back his head. “No, no, I won’t accept that posi-

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 713

tion. With or without your presence the facts will be the same.
Hither she can love me, or she can’t. If she can, she'll be
happier with me. If she can’t, there’s an end of it.”

Pierson came slowly up to him. “In my view,” he said,
“you are as bound to Leila as if you were married to her.”

“You can’t expect me to take the priest’s view, sir.”

Pierson’s lips trembled.

“You call it a priest’s view; I think it is only the view of a
man of honour.”

Fort reddened. ‘“ That’s for my conscience,” he said stub-
bornly. “I can’t tell you, and I’m not going to, how things
began. I was a fool. But I did my best, and I know that Leila
doesn’t think I’m bound. If she had, she would never have
gone. When there’s no feeling—there never was real feeling on
my side—and when there’s this terribly real feeling for Noel,
which I never sought, which I tried to keep down, which I ran
away from i

“Did you?”

“Yes. To go on with the other was foul. I should have
thought you might have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it.
It was Leila who made an end.”

“ Leila behaved nobly, I think.”

“ She was splendid; but that doesn’t make me a brute.”

Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.

“Tt is repugnant to me,” he said. “Is there never to be
any purity in her life?”

“Ts there never to be any life for her? At your rate, sir,
there will be none. I’m no worse than other men, and I love
her more than they could.”

For fully a minute Pierson stood silent, before he said:
“ Forgive me if I’ve spoken harshly. I didn’t mean to. I love
her intensely; I wish for nothing but her good. But all my
life I have believed that for a man there is only one woman—
for a woman only one man.”

“Then, sir,” Fort burst out, “ you wish her

Pierson had put his hand up, as if to ward off a blow; and,
angry though he was, Fort stopped.

“We are all made of flesh and blood,” he continued coldly,
“and it seems to me that you think we aren’t.”

“ We have spirits too, Captain Fort.” The voice was suddenly
so gentle that Fort’s anger evaporated.

“T have a great respect for you, sir; but a greater love for

 

99

 
''714 NOVELS OF LOVE

Noel, and nothing in this world will prevent me trying to give
my life to her.”

A smile quivered over Pierson’s face. “If you try, then I
can but pray that you will fail.”

Fort did not answer, and went out.

He walked slowly away from the bungalow, with his head
down, sore, angry, and yet—relieved. He knew where he stood;
nor did he feel that he had been worsted—those strictures had
not touched him. Convicted of immorality, he remained con-
scious of private justifications, in a way that human beings have.
Only one little corner of memory, unseen and uncriticised by his
opponent, troubled him. He pardoned himself the rest; the
one thing he did not pardon was the fact that he had known
Noel before his liaison with Leila commenced; had even let
Leila sweep him away on an evening when he had been in Noel’s
company. For that he felt a real disgust with himself. And
all the way back to the station he kept thinking: ‘ How could
I? I deserve to lose her! Still, I shall try; but not now—not
yet!’ And, wearily enough, he took the train back to town.
''III

Boru girls rose early that last day, and went with their father
to Communion. As Gratian had said to George: “It’s nothing
to me now, but it will mean a lot to him out there, as a memory
of us. So I must go.” And he had answered: “Quite right,
my dear. Let him have all he can get of you both to-day. I’ll
keep out of the way, and be back the last thing at night.” Their
father’s smile when he saw them waiting for him went straight
to both their hearts. It was a delicious day, and the early fresh-
ness had not yet dried out of the air, when they were walking
home to breakfast. Each girl had slipped a hand under his arm.
‘It’s like Moses or was it Aaron?’ Noel thought absurdly.
Memory had complete hold of her. All the old days! Nursery
hours on Sundays after tea, stories out of the huge Bible bound
in mother-o’-pearl, with photogravures of the Holy Land—
palms, and hills, and goats, ,and little Eastern figures, and
funny boats on the Sea of Galilee, and camels—always camels.
The book would be on his knee, and they one on each arm of his
chair, waiting eagerly for the pages to be turned so that a new
picture came. And there would be the feel of his cheek, prickly
against theirs; and the old names with the old glamour—to
Gratian, Joshua, Daniel, Mordecai, Peter; to Noel Absalom
because of his hair, and Haman because she liked the sound,
and Ruth because she was pretty and John because he leaned
on Jesus’ breast. Neither of them cared for Job or David, and
Elijah and Elisha they detested because they hated the name
Eliza. And later days by firelight in the drawing-room, roast-
ing chestnuts just before evening church, and telling ghost
stories, and trying to make Daddy eat his share. And hours
beside him at the piano, each eager for her special hymns—for
Gratian, “ Onward, Christian Soldiers,” “ Lead, Kindly Light,”
and “O God Our Help”; for Noel, “ Nearer, My God to Thee,”
the one with “The Hosts of Midian ” in it, and “ For Those in
Peril on the Sea.” And carols! Ah! And Choristers! Noel
had loved one deeply—the word “ chorister ” was so enchanting ;
and because of his whiteness, and hair which had no grease on
it, but stood up all bright; she had never spoken to him—a far
worship, like that for a star. And always, always Daddy had
715
''716 NOVELS OF LOVE

been gentle; sometimes angry, but always gentle; and they—
sometimes not at all! And mixed up with it all, the dogs they
had had, and the cats they had had, and the cockatoo, and the
governesses, and their red cloaks, and the curates, and the panto-
mimes, and “ Peter Pan,” and “ Alice in Wonderland ”—Daddy
sitting between them, so that one could snuggle up. And later,
the school-days, the hockey, the prizes, the holidays, the rush
into his arms; and the great and wonderful yearly exodus to
far places, fishing and bathing; walks and drives; rides and
climbs, always with him. And concerts and Shakespeare plays
in the Christmas and Easter holidays; and the walk home
through the streets—all lighted in those days—one on each side
of him. And this was the end! They waited on him at break-
fast: they kept stealing glances at him, photographing him in
their minds. Gratian got her camera and did actually photo-
graph him in the morning sunlight with Noel, without Noel,
with the baby; against all regulations for the defence of the
realm. It was Noel who suggested: “* Daddy, let’s take lunch
out and go for all day on the cliffs, us three, and forget there’s
a war.”

So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns
travelling to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz
of insects. Yet that hum of summer, the innumerable voices
of tiny lives, gossamer things all as alive as they, and as impor-
tant to their frail selves; and the white clouds, few and so slow-
moving, and the remote strange purity which clings to the chalky
downs, all this white and green and blue of land and sea had its
peace, which crept into the spirits of those three alone with
Nature, this once more, the last time for—who could say how
long? They talked, by tacit agreement, of nothing but what
had happened before the war began, while the flock of the blown
dandelions drifted past. Pierson sat cross-legged on the grass,
without his cap, suffering a little still from the stiffness of his
unwonted garments. And the girls lay one on each side of him,
half critical, and half admiring. Noel could not bear his
collar.

“Tf you had a soft collar you’d be lovely, Daddy. Perhaps
out there they’ll let you take it off. It must be fearfully hot
in Egypt. Oh! I wish I were going. I wish I were going every-
where in the world. Some day!” Presently he read to them,
Murray’s “ Hippolytus” of Euripides. And now and then Gra-
tian and he discussed a passage. But Noel lay silent, looking
''SAINT’S PROGRESS q17

at the sky. Whenever his voice ceased, there was the song of
the larks, and very faint, the distant mutter of the guns.

They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and
have tea before Evening Service. Those hours in the baking
sun had drawn virtue out of them; they were silent and melan-
choly all the evening. Noel was the first to go up to her bed-
room. She went without saying good night—she knew her
father would come to her room that last evening. George had
not yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with Pierson in
the drawing-room, round whose single lamp, in spite of close-
drawn curtains, moths were circling. She moved over to him
on the sofa.

“Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we’ll take care
of her.”

“ She can only take care of herself, Gracie, and will she? Did
you know that Captain Fort was here yesterday?”

“She told me.”

“What is her feeling about him? ”

“I don’t think she knows. Nollie dreams along, and then
suddenly rushes.”

“T wish she were safe from that man.”

“But, Dad, why? George likes him and so do I.”

A big grey moth was fluttering against the lamp. Pierson
got up and caught it in the curve of his palm. “Poor thing!
You’re like my Nollie; so soft, and dreamy, so feckless, so reck-
less.” And going to the curtains, he thrust his hand through,
and released the moth.

“Dad!” said Gratian suddenly, “we can only find out for
ourselves, even if we do singe our wings in doing it. We've been
reading James’s ‘Pragmatism.’ George says ‘the only chapter
that’s important is missing—the one on ethics, to show that
what we do is not wrong till it?s proved wrong by the result.
I suppose he was afraid to deliver that lecture.”

Pierson’s face wore the smile which always came on it when
he had to deal with George, the smile which said: “ Ah,
George, that’s very clever; but I know.”

“My dear,” he said, “that doctrine is the most dangerous in
the world. I am surprised at George.”

“TI don’t think George is in danger, Dad.”

“George is a man of wide experience and strong judgment
and character; but think how fatal it would be for Nollie, my
poor Nollie, whom a little gust can blow into the candle.”
''718 NOVELS OF LOVE

“ All the same,” said Gratian stubbornly, “I don’t think
anyone can be good or worth anything unless they judge for
themselves and take risks.”.

Pierson went close to her; his face was quivering.

“ Don’t let us differ on this last night; I must go up to Nollie
for a minute, and then to bed. I shan’t see you to-morrow;
you mustn’t get up; I can bear parting better like this. And
my train goes at eight. God bless you, Gracie; give George my
love. I know, I have always known that he’s a good man, though
we do fight so. Good-bye, my darling.”

He went out with his cheeks wet from Gratian’s tears, and
stood in the porch a minute to recover his composure. The
shadow of the house stretched velvet and blunt over the rock-
garden. A night-jar was spinning; the churring sound affected
him oddly. The last English night-bird he would hear. Eng-
land! What a night—to say good-bye! ‘My country!’ he
thought; ‘my beautiful country!’ ‘The dew was lying thick
and silvery already on the little patch of grass—the last dew,
the last scent of an English night. The call of a bugle floated
out. “England!” he prayed; “God be about you!” A little
sound answered from across the grass, like an old man’s cough,
and the scrape and rattle of a chain. A face emerged at the
edge of the house’s shadow; bearded and horned like that of
Pan, it seemed to stare at him. And he saw the dim grey form
of the garden goat, heard it scuttle round the stake to which
it was tethered, as though alarmed at this visitor to its domain.

He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel’s narrow little
room, next the nursery. No voice answered his tap. It was
dark, but he could see her at the window, leaning far out, with
her chin on her hands.

“ Nollie!”

She answered without turning: “Such a lovely night, Daddy.
Come and look! I’d like to set the goat free, only he’d eat the
rock plants. But it is his night, isn’t it? He ought to be run-
ning and skipping in it. It’s such a shame to tie things up.
Did you never feel wild in your heart, Daddy?”

“ Always, I think, Nollie; too wild. It’s been hard to tame
oneself.”

Noel slipped her hand through his arm. “ Let’s go and take
the goat and skip together on the hills. If only we had a penny
whistle! Did you hear the bugle? The bugle and the goat!”

Pierson pressed the hand against him.
''a

SAINT’S PROGRESS 719

“ Nollie, be good while I’m away. You know what I don’t
want. I told you in my letter.” He looked at her cheek, and
dared say no more. Her face had its “ fey ” look again.

“Don’t you feel,” she said suddenly, “on a night like this,
all the things, all the things—the stars have lives, Daddy, and
the moon has a big life, and the shadows have, and the moths
and the birds and the goats and the trees, and the flowers, and
all of us—escaped? Oh! Daddy, why is there a war? And
why are people so bound and so unhappy? Don’t tell me it’s
God—don’t!”

Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the
Greek song he had been reading aloud that afternoon:

“O for a deep and dewy Spring,
With runlets cold to draw and drink,
And a great meadow blossoming,
Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
To rest me by the brink.
O take me to the mountain, O,
Past the great pines and through the wood,
Up where the lean hounds softly go,
A-whine for wild things’ blood,
And madly flies the dappled roe,
O God, to shout and speed them there;
An arrow by my chestnut hair
Drawn tight and one keen glimmering spear—
Ah! if I could! ”

All that in life had been to him unknown, of venture and
wild savour; all the emotion he had stifled; the swift Pan he
had denied; the sharp fruits, the burning suns, the dark pools,
the unearthly moonlight, which were not of God—all came with
the breath of that old song, and the look on the girl’s face. And
he covered his eyes.

Noel’s hand tugged at his arm. “ Isn’t beauty terribly alive,”
she murmured, “like a lovely person? it makes you ache to
kiss it.”

His lips felt parched. “There is a beauty beyond all that,”
he said stubbornly.

“Where? ”

“Holiness, duty, faith. O Nollie, my love!” But Noel’s
hand tightened on his arm.

“Shall I tell you what I should like?” she whispered. “To
take God’s hand and show Him things. I’m certain He’s not
seen everything.”
''720 NOVELS OF LOVE

A shudder went through Pierson, one of those queer sudden
shivers, which come from a strange note in a voice, or a new
sharp scent or sight.

“My dear, what things you say!”

“ But He hasn’t, and it’s time He did. We'd creep, and peep,
and see it all for once, as He can’t in His churches. Daddy, oh!
Daddy! I can’t bear it any more; to think of them being killed
on a night like this; killed and killed so that they never see it
all again—never see it—never see it!” She sank down, and
covered her face with her arms.

“TI can’t, I can’t! Oh! take it all away, the cruelty!) Why
does it come—why the stars and the flowers, if God doesn’t care
any more than that?”

Horribly affected he stood bending over her, stroking her head.
Then the habit of a hundred death-beds helped him. “Come,
Nollie! This life is but a minute. We must all die.”

“ But not they—not so young!” She clung to his knees, and
looked up. “Daddy, I don’t want you to go; promise me to
come back!”

The childishness of those words brought back his balance.

“ My dear sweetheart, of course! Come, Nollie, get up. The
sun’s been too much for you.”

Noel got up, and put her hands on her father’s shoulders.
“ Forgive me for all my badness, and all my badness to come,
especially all my badness to come! ”

Pierson smiled. “TI shall always forgive you, Nollie; but
there won’t be—there mustn’t be—any badness to come. I pray
God to keep you, and make you like your mother.”

“Mother never had a devil, like you and me.”

He was silent from surprise. How did this child know the
devil of wild feeling he had fought against year after year, until
with the many years he had felt it weakening within him!

She whispered on: “I don’t hate my devil. Why should I?
—it’s part of me. Every day when the sun sets, I’ll think of
you, Daddy; and you might do the same—that’ll keep me good.
I shan’t come to the station to-morrow, I should only cry. And
I shan’t say good-bye now. It’s unlucky.”

She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that
fervent embrace, he kissed her cheeks and hair. Freed of each
other at last, he stood for a moment looking at her by the
moonlight.

“There never was anyone more loving than you, Nollie!”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 721

he said quietly. “Remember my letter. And good night, my
love!” Then, afraid to stay another second, he went quickly
out of the dark little room... .

George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice
saying softly: “George, George!”

Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and
Noel’s face just visible.

“ George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me.”

Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-
out arm moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had
once said, he had no music in his soul. He loosed the goat.
''IV
1 §

In the weeks which succeeded Pierson’s departure, Gratian and
George often discussed Noel’s conduct and position by the light
of the Pragmatic theory. George held a suitably scientific view.
Just as—he would point out to his wife—in the physical world,
creatures who diverged from the normal had to justify their
divergence in competition with their environments, or else go
under, so in the ethical world it was all a question of whether
Nollie could make good her vagary. If she could, and grew in
strength of character thereby, it was ipso facto all right, her
vagary would be proved an advantage, and the world enriched.
If not, the world by her failure to make good would be im-
poverished, and her vagary proved wrong. The orthodox and
academic—he insisted—were always forgetting the adaptability
of living organisms; how every action which was out of the
ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other actions together
with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer. “ Of course Nollie
was crazy,” he said, “but when she did what she did, she at
once began to think differently about life and morals. The
deepest instinct we all have is the instinct that we must do what
we must, and think that what we’ve done is really all right;
in fact the instinct of self-preservation. We're all fighting ani-
mals; and we feel in our bones that if we admit we’re beaten—
we are beaten; but that every fight we win, especially against
odds, hardens those bones. But personally I don’t think she can
make good on her own.”

Gratian, whose Pragmatism was not yet fully baked, re-
sponded doubtfully :

“No, I don’t think she can. And if she could I’m not sure.
But isn’t Pragmatism a perfectly beastly word, George? It has
no sense of humour in it at all.”

“Tt is a bit thick, and in the hands of the young, deuced likely
to become Prigmatism ; but not with Nollie.”

They watched the victim of their discussions with real anxiety.
The knowledge that she would never be more sheltered than
she was with them, at all events until she married, gravely

722
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 723

impeded the formation of any judgment as to whether or no
she could make good. Now and again there would come to
Gratian—who after all knew her sister better than George—
the disquieting thought that whatever conclusion Noel led them
to form, she would almost certainly force them to abandon
sooner or later.

Three days after her father’s departure Noel had declared
that she wanted to work on the land. This George had promptly
vetoed.

“You aren’t strong enough yet, my dear. Wait till the har-
vest begins. Then you can go and help on the farm here. If
you can stand that without damage, we’ll think about it.”

But the weather was wet and harvest late, and Noel had
nothing much to do but attend to her baby, already well at-
tended to by Nurse, and dream and brood, and now and then
cook an omelette or do some housework for the sake of a gnawing
conscience. Since Gratian and George were away in hospital
all day, she was very much alone. Several times in the evenings .
Gratian tried to come at the core of her thoughts. Twice she
flew the kite of Leila. The first time Noel only answered:
“Yes, she’s a brick.” The second time, she said: “I don’t want
to think about her.”

But, hardening her heart, Gratian went on: “Don’t you
think it’s queer we’ve never heard from Captain Fort since he
came down?”

In her calmest voice Noel answered: “ Why should we, after
being told that he wasn’t liked ? ”

“Who told him that?”

“TI told him, that Daddy didn’t; but I expect Daddy said
much worse things.” She gave a little laugh, then softly added :
“ Daddy’s wonderful, isn’t he?”

ce How ? 2?

“The way he drives one to do the other thing. If he hadn’t
opposed my marriage to Cyril, you know, that wouldn’t have
happened, it just made all the difference. It stirred me up so
fearfully.” Gratian stared at her, astonished that she could see
herself so clearly. Towards the end of August she had a letter
from Fort.

“Dear Mrs. Latrp,
“You know all about things, of course, except the one thing
which to me is all important. I can’t go on without knowing
''124 NOVELS OF LOVE

whether I have a chance with your sister. It is against your
father’s expressed wish that she should have anything to do
with me, but I told him that I could not and would not promise
not to ask her. I get my holiday at the end of this month,
and am coming down to put it to the touch. It means more to
me than you can possibly imagine.
“T am, dear Mrs. Laird,
“ Your very faithful servant,
“ James Fort.”

She discussed the letter with George, whose advice was:
“ Answer it politely, but say nothing; and nothing to Nollie.
I think it would be a very good thing. Of course it’s a bit of
a makeshift—twice her age; but he’s a genuine man, if not
exactly brilliant.”

Gratian answered almost sullenly: “I’ve always wanted the
very best for Nollie.”

George screwed up his steel-coloured eyes, as he might have
looked at one on whom he had to operate. “ Quite so,” he said.
“But you must remember, Gracie, that out of the swan she
was, Nollie has made herself into a lame duck. Fifty per cent
at least is off her value, socially. We must look at things as
they are.”

“ Father is dead against it.”

George smiled, on the point of saying: ‘That makes me
feel it must be a good thing.’ But he subdued the impulse.

“T agree that we’re bound by his absence not to further it
actively. Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it’s up to her and
no one else. After all, she’s no longer a child.”

His advice was followed. But to write that polite letter,
which said nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or
three hours’ penmanship. She was very conscientious. Knowl-
edge of this impending visit increased the anxiety with which
she watched her sister, but the only inkling she obtained of
Noel’s state of mind was when the girl showed her a letter she
had received from Thirza, asking her to come back to
Kestrel. A postscript, in Uncle Bob’s handwriting, added these
words :

“We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve’s gone and
left us again. We miss you and the youngster awfully. Come
along down, Nollie—there’s a dear!”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 725

“They’re darlings,” Noel said, “but I shan’t go. I’m too
restless, ever since Daddy went; you don’t know how restless.
This rain simply makes me want to die.”

2 §

The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week
harvest began. By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the
farmer’s binder was broken; he could not get it repaired, and
wanted all the human binders he could get. That first day in
the fields blistered her hands, burnt her face and neck, made
every nerve and bone in her body ache; but was the happiest
day she had spent for weeks, the happiest perhaps since Cyril
Morland left her, over a year ago. She had a bath and went
to bed the moment she got in.

Lying there nibbling chocolates and smoking a cigarette, she
luxuriated in the weariness which had stilled her dreadful rest-
lessness. Watching the smoke of her cigarette curl up against
the sunset glow which filled her window, she mused: If only
she could be tired out like this every day! She would be all right
then, would lose the feeling of not knowing what she wanted,
of being in a sort of large box, with the lid slammed down,
roaming round it like a dazed and homesick bee in an over-
turned tumbler; the feeling of being only half alive, of having
a wing maimed so that she could only fly a little way, and must
then drop.

She slept like a top that night. But the next day’s work was
real torture, and the third not much better. By the end of the
week, however, she was no longer stiff.

Saturday was cloudless; a perfect day. The field she was work-
ing in lay on a slope. It was the last field to be cut, and the
best wheat yet, with a glorious burnt shade in its gold and the
ears blunt and full. She had got used now to the feel of the
great sheaves in her arms, and the binding wisps drawn through
her hand till she held them level, below the ears, ready for the
twist. There was no new sensation in it now; just steady, rather
dreamy work, to keep her place in the row, to the swish-swish of
the cutter and the call of the driver to his horses at the turns;
with continual little pauses, to straighten and rest her back a
moment, and shake her head free from the flies, or suck her
finger, sore from the constant pushing of the straw ends under.
So the hours went on, rather hot and wearisome, yet with a
''726 NOVELS OF LOVE

feeling of something good being done, of a job getting surely
to its end. And gradually the centre patch narrowed, and the
sun slowly slanted down.

When they stopped for tea, instead of running home as usual,
she drank it cold out of a flask she had brought, ate a bun and
some chocolate, and lay down on her back against the hedge.
She always avoided that group of her fellow workers round the
tea-cans which the farmer’s wife brought out. To avoid people,
if she could, had become habitual to her now. They must know
about her, or would soon if she gave them the chance. She
had never lost consciousness of her ring-finger, expecting every
eye to fall on it as a matter of course. Lying on her face, she
puffed her cigarette into the grass, and watched a beetle, till
one of the sheep-dogs, scouting for scraps, came up, and she fed
him with her second bun. Having finished the bun, he tried
to eat the beetle, and, when she rescued it, convinced that she
had nothing more to give him, sneezed at her, and went away.
Pressing the end of her cigarette out against the bank, she turned
over. Already the driver was perched on his tiny seat, and his
companion, whose business it was to free the falling corn, was
getting up alongside. Swish—swish! It had begun again. She
rose, stretched herself, and went back to her place in the row.
The field would be finished to-night; she would have-a lovely
rest—all Sunday! Towards seven o’clock a narrow strip, not
twenty yards broad, alone was left. This last half hour was
what Noel dreaded. To-day it was worse, for the farmer had no
cartridges left, and the rabbits were dealt with by hullabaloo
and sticks and chasing dogs. Rabbits were vermin, of course,
and ate the crops, and must be killed; besides, they were good
food, and fetched two shillings apiece; all this she knew—
but to see the poor frightened things stealing out, pounced on,
turned, shouted at, chased, rolled over by great swift dogs,
fallen on by the boys and killed and carried with their limp grey
bodies upside down, so dead and soft and helpless, always made
her feel quite sick. She stood very still, trying not to see or
hear, and in the corn opposite to her a rabbit stole along,
crouched, and peeped. ‘Oh!’ she thought, ‘come out here,
bunny. Tl let you away—can’t you see I will? It’s your only
chance. Come out!’ But the rabbit crouched, and gazed, with
its little cowed head poked forward, and its ears laid flat; it
seemed trying to understand whether this still thing in front of
it was the same as those others. With the thought, ‘ Of course
''SAINT’S PROGRESS T27

it won’t while I look at it,’ Noel turned her head away. Out of
the corner of her eye she could see a man standing a few yards
off. The rabbit bolted out. Now the man would shout and
turn it. But he did not, and the rabbit scuttled past him and
away to the hedge. She heard a shout from the end of the
row, saw a dog galloping. Too late! Hurrah! And clasping
her hands, she looked at the man. It was Fort! With the
queerest feeling—amazement, pleasure, the thrill of conspiracy,
she saw him coming up to her.

“T did want that rabbit to get off,” she sighed out; “ I’ve been
watching it. Thank you!”

He looked at her. “ My goodness!” was all he said.

Noel’s hands flew up to her cheeks. “Yes, I know; is my
nose very red i ae

“No; you’re as lovely as Ruth, if she was lovely.”

Swish—swish! The cutter came by; Noel started forward to
her place in the row; but catching her arm, he said: “No,
let me do this little bit. I haven't had a day in the fields since
the war began. Talk to me while I’m binding.”

She stood watching him. He made a different, stronger twist
from hers, and took larger sheaves, so that she felt a sort of
jealousy.

“T didn’t know you knew about this sort of thing.”

“Oh, Lord, yes! I had a farm once out West. Nothing like
field-work, to make you feel good. I’ve been watching you; you
bind jolly well.”

Noel gave a sigh of pleasure.

“ Where have you come from?” she asked.

“ Straight from the station. I’m on my holiday.” He looked
up at her, and they both fell silent.

Swish—swish! The cutter was coming again. Noel went to
the beginning of her portion of the falling corn, he to the end
of it. They worked towards each other, and met before the
cutter was on them a third time.

“ Will you come in to supper?”

“Td love to.”

“Then let?s go now, please. I don’t want to see any more
rabbits killed.”

They spoke very little on the way to the bungalow, but she
felt his eyes on her all the time. She left him with George and
Gratian who had just come in, and went up for her bath.

Supper had been laid out in the verandah, and it was nearly
''728 NOVELS OF LOVE

dark before they had finished. In rhyme with the failing of the
light Noel became more and more silent. When they went in,
she ran up to her baby. She did not go down again, but as
on the night before her father went away, stood at her window,
leaning out. A dark night, no moon; in the starlight she
could only just see the dim garden, where no goat was grazing.
Now that her first excitement had worn off, this sudden re-
appearance of Fort filled her with nervous melancholy. She
knew perfectly well what he had come for, she had always
known. She had no certain knowledge of her own mind; but
she knew that all these weeks she had been between his influ-
ence and her father’s, listening to them, as it were, pleading
with her. And, curiously, the pleading of each, instead of
drawing her towards the pleader, had seemed dragging her away
from him, driving her into the arms of the other. To the pro-
tection of one or the other she felt she must go; and it hu-
miliated her to think that in all the world there was no other
place for her. The wildness of that one night in the old Abbey
seemed to have power to govern all her life to come. Why
should that one night, that one act, have this uncanny power
to drive her this way or that, to those arms or these? Must she,
because of it, always need protection? Standing there in the
dark it was almost as if they had come up behind her, with
their pleadings; and a shiver ran down her back. She longed
to turn on them, and cry out: “Go away; oh, go away! I
don’t want either of you; I just want to be left alone!” Then
something, a moth perhaps, touched her neck. She gasped and
shook herself. How silly!

She heard the back door round the corner of the house open-
ing; a man’s low voice down in the dark said:

“Who’s the young lady that comes out in the fields? ”

Another voice—one of the maids—answered:

“The Missis’s sister.’

“They say she’s got a baby.”

“Never you mind what she’s got.”

Noel heard the man’s laugh. It seemed to her the most odious
laugh she had ever heard. She thought swiftly and absurdly:
‘Tl get away from all this.’ The window was only a few feet
up. She got out on to the ledge, let herself down, and dropped.
There was a flower-bed below, quite soft, with a scent of
geranium-leaves and earth. She brushed herself, and went tip-
toeing across the gravel and the little front lawn, to the gate.
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 729

The house was quite dark, quite silent. She walked on, down
the road. ‘Jolly!’ she thought. ‘ Night after night we sleep,
and never see the nights: sleep until we’re called, and never see
anything. If they want to catch me they'll have to run.” And
she began running down the road in her evening frock and
shoes, with nothing on her head. She stopped after going per-
haps three hundred yards, by the edge of the wood. It was
splendidly dark in there, and she groped her way from trunk
to trunk, with a delicious, half-scared sense of adventure and
novelty. She stopped at last by a thin trunk whose bark glim-
mered faintly. She felt it with her cheek, quite smooth—a
birch-tree; and, with her arms round it, she stood perfectly
still. Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh and sweet-scented
and dark! The little tree trembled suddenly within her arms,
and she heard the low distant rumble, to which she had grown so
accustomed—the guns, always at work, killing—killing men and
killing trees, little trees perhaps like this within her arms, little
trembling trees! Out there, in this dark night, there would
not be a single unscarred tree like this smooth quivering thing,
no fields of corn, not even a bush or a blade of grass, no leaves
to rustle and smell sweet, not a bird, no little soft-footed night
beasts, except the rats; and she shuddered, thinking of the Bel-
gian soldier-painter. Holding the tree tight, she squeezed its
smooth body against her. A rush of the same helpless, hopeless
revolt and sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from her that
passionate little outburst to her father, the night before he
went away. Killed, torn, and bruised; burned, and killed, like
Cyril! All the young things, like this little tree.

Rumble! Rumble! Quiver! Quiver! And all else so still, so
sweet and still, and starry, up there through the leaves... . ‘I
can’t bear it!’ she thought. She pressed her lips, which the sun
had warmed all day, against the satiny smooth bark. But the
little tree stood within her arms insentient, quivering only to the
long rumbles. With each of those dull mutterings, life and love
were going out, like the flames of candles on a Christmas-tree,
blown, one by one. To her eyes, accustomed by now to the dark-
ness in there, the wood seemed slowly to be gathering a sort of
life, as though it were a great thing watching her; a great
thing with hundreds of limbs and eyes, and the power of breath-
ing. The little tree, which had seemed so individual and
friendly, ceased to be a comfort and became a part of the whole
living wood, absorbed in itself, and coldly watching her, this
''730 NOVELS OF LOVE

intruder of the mischievous breed, the fatal breed which loosed
those rumblings on the earth. Noel unlocked her arms, and
recoiled. A bough scraped her neck, some leaves flew against
her eyes; she stepped aside, tripped over a root, and fell. A
bough had hit her too, and she lay a little dazed, quivering at
such dark unfriendliness. She held her hands up to her face for
the mere pleasure of seeing something a little less dark; it was
childish, and absurd, but she was frightened. The wood seemed
to have so many eyes, so many arms, and all unfriendly ; it
seemed waiting to give her other blows, other falls, and to guard
her within its darkness until ! She got up, moved a few
steps, and stood still, she had forgotten from where she had come
in. And afraid of moving deeper into the unfriendly wood, she
turned slowly round, trying to tell which way to go. It was all
just one dark watching thing, of limbs on the ground and in the
air, ‘Any way, she thought; ‘any way of course will take me
out!’ And she groped forward, keeping her hands up to guard
her face. It was silly, but she could not help the sinking, scat-
tered feeling which comes to one bushed, or lost in a fog. If the
wood had not been so dark, so—alive! And for a second she had
the senseless, terrifying thought of a child: ‘What if I never get
out!’ Then she laughed at it, and stood still again, listening.
There was no sound to guide her, no sound at all except that
faint dull rumble, which seemed to come from every side, now.
And the trees watched her. ‘Ugh!’ she thought; ‘I hate this
wood!’ She saw it now, its snaky branches, its darkness, and
great forms, as an abode of giants and witches. She groped and
scrambled on again, tripped once more, and fell, hitting her fore-
head against a trunk. The blow dazed and sobered her. ‘ It’s
idiotic, she thought ; ‘I’m a baby! I’ll just walk very slowly till
I reach the edge. I know it isn’t a large wood!’ She turned
deliberately to face each direction; solemnly selected that from
which the muttering of the guns seemed to come, and started
again, moving very slowly with her hands stretched out. Some-
thing rustled in the undergrowth, quite close; she saw a pair of
green eyes shining. Her heart jumped into her mouth. The
thing sprang—there was a swish of ferns and twigs, and—
silence. Noel clasped her breast. A poaching cat! And again
she moved forward. But she had lost direction. ‘I’m going
round and round, she thought. ‘They always do.’ And the
sinking scattered feeling of the “bushed” clutched at her again.
‘Shall I call?’ she thought. ‘I must be near the road. But it’s

 
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 731

so babyish.’? She moved on again. Her foot struck something
soft. A voice muttered a thick oath; a hand seized her ankle.
She leaped, and dragged and wrenched it free; and, utterly
unnerved, she screamed, and ran forward blindly.
''Vv

No one could have so convinced a feeling as J immy Fort that he
would be a “bit of a makeshift” for Noel. He had spent the
weeks after his interview with her father obsessed by her image,
often saying to himself: “It won’t do. It’s playing it too low
down to try and get that child, when I know that, but for her
trouble, I shouldn’t have a chance.” He had never had much
opinion of his looks, but now he seemed to himself absurdly old
and dried-up in this desert of a London. He loathed the Office
job to which they had put him, and the whole atmosphere of
officialdom. Another year of it, and he would shrivel like an old
apple! He began to look at himself anxiously, taking stock of
his physical assets now that he had this dream of young beauty.
He would be forty next month, and she was nineteen! But there
would be times too when he would feel that, with her, he could be
as much of a “three-year-old” as the youngster she had loved.
Having little hope of winning her, he took her “ past ” but
lightly. Was it not that past which gave him what chance he
had? On two things he was determined: He would not trade on
her past. And if by any chance she took him, he would never
show her that he remembered that she had one.

After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his
holiday began, in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his
appearance, which made him feel older, leaner, bonier and
browner than ever. He got up early, rode in the rain, took
Turkish baths, and did all manner of exercises ; neither smoked
nor drank, and went to bed early, exactly as if he had been going
to ride a steeplechase. On the afternoon, when at last he left on
that terrific pilgrimage, he gazed at his face with a sort of
despair, it was so lean, and leather-coloured, and he counted
almost a dozen grey hairs.

When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was
working in the corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that
Fate was on his side. Such a meeting would be easier than any
other! He had been watching her for several minutes before she
saw him, with his heart beating more violently than it had ever
beaten in the trenches; and that new feeling of hope stayed with
him all through the greeting, throughout supper, and even after

732
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 733

she had left them and gone upstairs. Then, with the suddenness
of a blind drawn down, it vanished, and he sat on, trying to talk,
and slowly getting more and more silent and restless.

“Nollie gets so tired, working,” Gratian said. He knew she
meant it kindly but that she should say it at all was ominous.
He got up at last, having lost hope of seeing Noel again, con-
scious too that he had answered the last three questions at
random.

In the porch George said: “You'll come in to lunch to-
morrow, won’t you?”

“ Oh, thanks, I’m afraid it’ll bore you all.”

“ Not a bit. Nollie won’t be so tired.”

Again—so well meant. They were very kind. He looked up
from the gate, trying to make out which her window might be;
but all was dark. A little way down the road he stopped to light
a cigarette; and, leaning against a gate, drew the smoke of it
deep into his lungs, trying to assuage the ache in his heart. So
it was hopeless! She had taken the first, the very first chance,
to get away from him! She knew that he loved her, could not
help knowing, for he had never been able to keep it out of his
eyes and voice. If she had felt ever so little for him, she would
not have avoided him this first evening. ‘I'll go back to that
desert, he thought; ‘I’m not going to whine and crawl. Ill go
back, and bite on it; one must have some pride. Oh, why the
hell am I crocked-up like this? If only I could get out to
France again!’ And then Noel’s figure bent over the falling
corn formed before him. ‘I’ll have one more try,’ he thought;
“one more—to-morrow somewhere, I’ll get to know for certain.
And if I get what Leila’s got I shall deserve it, I suppose. Poor
Leila! Where is she? Back at High Constantia?’ What was
that? A cry—of terror—in that wood! Crossing to the edge,
he called “Coo-ee!” and stood peering into its darkness. He
heard the sound of bushes being brushed aside, and whistled. A
figure came bursting out, almost into his arms.

“Hallo!” he said; ° what's up?”

A voice gasped: “ Oh! It’s—it’s nothing

He saw Noel. She had swayed back, and stood about a yard
away. He could dimly see her covering her face with her arms.
Feeling instinctively that she wanted to hide her fright, he said
quietly :

“ What luck! I was just passing. It’s awfully dark.”

“I—I got lost; and a man—caught my foot, in there!”

129
''734 NOVELS OF LOVE

Moved beyond control by the little gulps and gasps of her
breathing, he stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders.
He held her lightly, without speaking, terrified lest he should
wound her pride.

“J—I got in there,” she gasped, “and the trees—and I
stumbled over a man asleep, and he——”

“Yes, yes, | know,” he murmured, as if to a child. She had
dropped her arms now, and he could see her face, with eyes
unnaturally dilated, and lips quivering. Then moved again
beyond control, he drew her so close that he could feel the
throbbing of her heart, and put his lips to her forehead all wet
with heat. She closed her eyes, gave a little choke, and buried
her face against his coat.

“There, there, my darling!” he kept on saying. “There,
there, my darling!” He could feel the snuggling of her cheek
against his shoulder. He had got her—had got her! He was
somehow certain that she would not draw back now. And in the
wonder and ecstasy of that thought, all the world above her head,
the stars in their courses, the wood which had frightened her,
seemed miracles of beauty and fitness. By such fortune as had
never come to man, he had got her! And he murmured over
and over again:

“JT love you!” She was resting perfectly quiet against him,
while her heart ceased gradually to beat so fast. He could feel
her cheek rubbing against his coat of Harris tweed. Suddenly he
sniffed at it, and whispered:

“Tt smells good.”
'' 

VI

WueEN summer sun has burned all Egypt, the white man looks
eagerly each day for evening, whose rose-coloured veil melts
opalescent into the dun drift of the hills, and iridescent above,
into the slowly deepening blue. Pierson stood gazing at the
mystery of the desert from under the little group of palms and
bougainvillea which formed the garden of the hospital. Even-
song was in full voice: From the far wing a gramophone was
grinding out a music-hall ditty ; two aeroplanes, wheeling exactly
like the buzzards of the desert, were letting drip the faint whir
of their flight ; metallic voices drifted from the Arab village; the
wheels of the water-wells creaked ; and every now and then a dry
rustle was stirred from the palm-leaves by puffs of desert wind.
On either hand an old road ran out, whose line could be marked
by the little old watch-towers of another age. For how many
hundred years had human life passed along it to Hast and West;
the brown men and their camels, threading that immemorial
track over the desert, which ever filled him with wonder, so still
it was, so wide, so desolate, and every evening so beautiful! He
sometimes felt that he could sit for ever looking at it; as though
its cruel mysterious loveliness were—home; and yet he never
looked at it without a spasm of homesickness.

So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts
of men. Or at least he did not feel it had. Both at the regi-
mental base, and now in this hospital—an intermediate stage—
waiting for the draft with which he would be going into Pales-
tine, all had been very nice to him, friendly, and as it were in-
dulgent; so might schoolboys have treated some well-intentioned
dreamy master, or business men a harmless idealistic inventor
who came visiting their offices. He had even the feeling that
they were glad to have him about, just as they were glad to
have their mascots and their regimental colours; but of heart-to-
heart simple comradeship—it seemed they neither wanted it of
him nor expected him to give it, so that he had a feeling that
he would be forward and impertinent to offer it. Moreover, he
no longer knew how. He was very lonely. ‘ When I come face
to face with death, he would think, ‘ it will be different. Death
makes us all brothers. I may be of real use to them then.’

735
''736 NOVELS OF LOVE

They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to
that even-song, gazing at the old desert road.

“ East Bungalow.
“ DartIne Dan,

“T do hope this will reach you before you move on to Pales-
tine. You said in your last—at the end of September, so I hope
you'll just get it. There is one great piece of news, which I’m
afraid will hurt and trouble you; Nollie is married to Jimmy
Fort. They were married down here this afternoon, and have
just gone up to Town. They have to find a house of course.
She has been very restless, lonely, and unhappy ever since you
went, and I’m sure it is really for the best. She is quite another
creature, and simply devoted, headlong. It’s just like Nollie.
She says she didn’t know what she wanted, up to the last minute.
But now she seems as if she could never want anything else.

“Dad dear, Nollie could never have made good by herself.
It isn’t her nature, and it’s much better like this, I feel sure,
and so does George. Of course it isn’t ideal—and one wanted
that for her; but she did break her wing, and he is so awfully
good and devoted to her, though you didn’t believe it, and per-
haps won’t, even now. The great thing is to feel her happy
again, and know she’s safe. Nollie is capable of great devotion ;
only she must be anchored. She was drifting all about; and one
doesn’t know what she might have done, in one of her moods.
I do hope you won’t grieve about it. She’s dreadfully anxious
about how you'll feel. I know it will be wretched for you, so far
off; but do try and believe it’s for the best. . . . She’s out of
danger; and she was really in a horrible position. It’s so good
for the baby, too, and only fair to him. I do think one must
take things as they are, Dad dear. It was impossible to mend
Nollie’s wing. If she were a fighter, and gloried in it, or if
she were the sort who would ‘ take the veil ’—but she isn’t either.
So it ts all right, Dad. She’s writing to you herself. I’m sure
Leila didn’t want Jimmy Fort to be unhappy because he couldn’t
love her; or she would never have gone away. George sends you
his love; we are both very well. And Nollie is looking splendid
still, after her harvest work. All, all my love, Dad dear. Is
there anything we can get, and send you? Do take care of your
blessed self, and don’t grieve about Nollie.

“ QRATIAN.”
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 737

A half-sheet of paper fluttered down; he picked it up from
among the parched fibre of dead palm-leaves.

“ DADDY DARLING,
“Tve done it. Forgive me—I’m so happy.
“Your Nouuiz.”

The desert shimmered, the palm-leaves rustled, and Pierson
stood trying to master the emotion roused in him by those two
letters. He felt no anger, not even vexation ; he felt no sorrow,
but a loneliness so utter and complete that he did not know
how to bear it. It seemed as if some last link with life had
snapped. ‘My girls are happy, he thought. ‘If I am not—
what does it matter? If my faith and my convictions mean
nothing to them—why should they follow? I must and
will not feel lonely. I ought to have the sense of God
present, to feel His hand in mine. If I cannot, what use am
I—what use to the poor fellows in there, what use in all the
world ??

An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody
on a little wooden Arab flute. Pierson turned back into the
hospital humming it. A nurse met him there.

“The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I
expect he’d like to see you.”

He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to
the west window end, where two screens had been put, to block
off the cot. Another nurse, who was sitting beside it, rose at
once.

“ He’s quite conscious,” she whispered ; “he can still speak a
little. He’s such a dear.” A tear rolled down her cheek, and
she passed out behind the screens. Pierson looked down at the
boy; perhaps he was twenty, but the unshaven down on his
cheeks was soft and almost colourless. His eyes were closed.
He breathed regularly, and did not seem in pain; but there was
about him that which told he was going; something resigned,
already of the grave. The window was wide open, covered by
mosquito-netting, and a tiny line of sunlight, slanting through
across the foot of the cot, crept slowly backwards over the sheets
and the boy’s body, shortening as it crept. In the grey white-
ness of the walls, the bed, the boy’s face, just that pale yellow
bar of sunlight, and one splash of red and blue from a little flag
''738 NOVELS OF LOVE

on the wall glowed out. At this cooler hour, the ward behind
the screens was almost empty, and few sounds broke the stillness ;
but from without came that intermittent rustle of dry palm-
leaves. Pierson waited in silence, watching the sun sink. If
the boy might pass like this, it would be God’s mercy. Then
he saw the boy’s eyes open, wonderfully clear eyes of the lighted
grey which has dark rims; his lips moved, and Pierson bent
down to hear.

“Tm goin’ West, zurr.” The whisper had a little soft burr;
the lips quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face,
and passed.

Through Pierson’s mind there flashed the thought: ‘O God!
Let me be of some help to him!’

“To God, my dear son!” he said.

A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy’s
lips.

Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fer-
vently praying. His whispering mingled with the rustle of the
palm-leaves, while the bar of sunlight crept up the body. In
the boy’s smile had been the whole of stoic doubt, of stoic
acquiescence. It had met him with an unconscious challenge ;
had seemed to know so much. Pierson took his hand, which
lay outside the sheet. The boy’s lips moved, as though in
thanks; he drew a long feeble breath, as if to suck in the thread
of sunlight; and his eyes closed. Pierson bent over the hand.
When he looked up the boy was dead. He kissed his forehead
and went quietly out.

The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a
hillock beyond the track on the desert’s edge, and stood looking
at the afterglow. The sun and the boy—together they had gone
West, into that wide glowing nothingness.

The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came
to him clear and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely.
Why had that smile so moved him? Other death smiles had
been like this evening smile on the desert hills—a glowing
peace, a promise of heaven. But the boy’s smile had said:
‘Waste no breath on me—you cannot help. Who knows—who
knows? I have no hope, no faith; but I am adventuring. Good-
bye!’ Poor boy! He had braved all things, and moved out
uncertain, yet undaunted! Was that, then, the uttermost truth,
was faith a smaller thing? But from that strange notion he
recoiled with horror. ‘In faith I have lived, in faith I will
''SAINT’S PROGRESS 739

die!’ he thought, ‘God helping me!’ And the breeze, ruffling
the desert sand, blew the grains against the palms of his hands,
outstretched above the warm earth.

1917-18.
'' 
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