IX

That was far and away the most disconcerting thing that had happened

at Amberley within Straker's recollection.

It must have been very disagreeable for Philippa.

When, five days ago, he had wondered if he would ever live to see

Philippa disconcerted, he had not contemplated anything like this.

Neither, he was inclined to think, had Philippa in the beginning.

She could have had no idea what she was letting herself in for. That

she had let herself in was, to Straker's mind, the awful part of it.

As he walked home from the station he called up all his cleverness,

all his tact and delicacy, to hide his knowledge of it from

Philippa. He tried to make himself forget it, lest by a word or a

look she should gather that he knew. He did not want to see her

disconcerted.

The short cut to Amberley from the station leads through a side gate

into the turning at the bottom of the east walk. Straker, as he

rounded the turning, saw Miss Tarrant not five yards off, coming

down the walk.

He was not ready for her, and his first instinct, if he could have

yielded to it, would have been to fly. That was his delicacy.

He met her with a remark on the beauty of the morning. That was his

tact.

He tried to look as if he hadn't been to see Furnival off at the

station, as if the beauty of the morning sufficiently accounted for

his appearance at that early hour. The hour, indeed, was so

disgustingly early that he would have half an hour to put through

with Philippa before breakfast.

But Miss Tarrant ignored the beauty of the morning.

"What have you done," she said, "with Mr. Furnival?"

It was Straker who was disconcerted now.

"What have I done with him?"

"Yes. Where is he?"

Straker's tact was at a disadvantage, but his delicacy instantly

suggested that if Miss Tarrant was not disconcerted it was because

she didn't know he knew. That made it all right.

"He's in the seven-fifty train."

A light leaped in her eyes; the light of defiance and pursuit, the

light of the hunter's lust frustrated and of the hunter's ire.

"You must get him back again," she said.

"I can't," said Straker. "He's gone on business." (He still used

tact with her.) "He had to go."

"He hadn't," said she. "That's all rubbish."

Her tone trod his scruples down and trampled on them, and Straker

felt that tact and delicacy required of him no more. She had given

herself away at last; she had let herself in for the whole calamity

of his knowledge, and he didn't know how she proposed to get out of

it this time. And he wasn't going to help her. Not he!

They faced each other as they stood there in the narrow walk, and

his knowledge challenged her dumbly for a moment. Then he spoke.

"Look here, what do you want him for? Why can't you let the poor

chap alone?"

"What do you suppose I want him for?"

"I've no business to suppose anything. I don't know. But I'm not

going to get him back for you."

Something flitted across her face and shifted the wide gaze of her

eyes. Straker went on without remorse.

"You know perfectly well the state he's in, and you know how he got

into it."

"Yes. And I know," she said, "what you think of me."

"It's more than I do," said Straker.

She smiled subtly, mysteriously, tolerantly, as it were.

"What did you do it for, Philippa?"

Her smile grew more subtle, more tolerant, more mysterious; it

measured him and found him wanting.

"If I told you," she said, "I don't think you'd understand. But I'll

try and make you."

She turned with him and they walked slowly toward the house.

"You saw," she said, "where he was going before I came? I got him

out of that, didn't I?"

He was silent, absorbed in contemplating the amazing fabric of her

thought.

"Does it very much matter how I did it?"

"Yes," said Straker, "if you ask me, I should say it did. The last

state of him, to my mind, was decidedly worse than the first."

"What do you suppose I did to him?"

"If you want the frankness of a brother, there's no doubt you--led

him on."

"I led him on--to heights he'd never have contemplated without me."

Straker tried to eliminate all expression from his face.

"What do you suppose I did to him last night?"

"I can only suppose you led him further, since he went further."

By this time Straker's tact and delicacy were all gone.

"Yes," said Miss Tarrant, "he went pretty far. But, on the whole,

it's just as well he did, seeing what's come of it."

"What _has_ come of it?"

"Well, I think he realizes that he has a soul. That's something."

"I didn't know it was his soul you were concerned with."

"He didn't, either. Did he tell you what I said to him?"

"He told me you gave him a dressing down. But there was something

that he wouldn't tell. What _did_ you say to him?"

"I said I supposed, after all, he had a soul, and I asked him what

he meant to do about it."

"What does he?"

"That's what I want him back for," she said, "to see. Whatever he

does with it, practically I've saved it."

She turned to him, lucid and triumphant.

"Could any other woman have done it? Do you see Mary Probyn doing

it?"

"Not that way."

"It was the only way. You must," she said, "have temperament."

The word took Straker's breath away.

"You didn't like the way I did it. I can't help that. I had to use

the means at my disposal. If I hadn't led him on how could I have

got hold of him? If I hadn't led him further how could I have got

him on an inch?"

"So that," said Straker quietly, "is what you did it for?"

"You've seen him," she answered. "You don't seriously suppose I

could have done it for anything else! What possible use had I for

that young man?"

He remembered that that was what she had said about Mr. Higginson.

But he confessed that, for a lady in a disconcerting situation, she

had shown genius in extricating herself.

Fanny's house party broke up and scattered the next day. A week

later Straker and Will Brocklebank saw Furnival in the Park. He was

driving a motor beyond his means in the society of a lady whom he

certainly could not afford.

"Good God!" said Brocklebank. "That's Philippa."

By which he meant, not that Furnival's lady in the least resembled

Philippa, but that she showed the heights to which Philippa had led

him on.

X

Brocklebank agreed with Straker that they had got to get him out of

that.

It was difficult, because the thing had come upon Furnival like a

madness. He would have had more chance if he had been a man with a

talent or an absorbing occupation, a politician, an editor, a

journalist; if he had even been, Brocklebank lamented, on the London

Borough Council it might have made him less dependent on the

sympathy of ruinous ladies. But the Home Office provided no

competitive distraction.

What was worse, it kept him on the scene of his temptation.

If it hadn't been for the Home Office he might have gone abroad with

the Brocklebanks; they had wanted him to go. Straker did what he

could for him. He gave him five days' yachting in August, and he

tried to get him away for week-ends in September; but Furnival

wouldn't go. Then Straker went away for his own holiday, and when he

came back he had lost sight of Furnival. So had the Home Office.

For three months Furnival went under. Then one day he emerged. The

Higginsons (Mary Probyn and her husband) ran up against him in

Piccadilly, or rather, he ran up against them, and their forms

interposed an effective barrier to flight. He was looking so

wretchedly ill that their hearts warmed to him, and they asked him

to dine with them that evening, or the next, or--well, the next

after that. He refused steadily, but Mary managed to worm his

address out of him and sent it on to Fanny Brocklebank that night.

Then the Brocklebanks, with prodigious forbearance and persistence,

went to work on him. Once they succeeded in getting well hold of him

they wouldn't let him go, and between them, very gradually, they got

him straight. He hadn't, Fanny discovered, been so very awful; he

had flung away all that he had on one expensive woman and he had

lost his job. Brocklebank found him another in an insurance office

where Fanny's brother was a director. Then Fanny settled down to the

really serious business of settling Furnival. She was always asking

him down to Amberley when the place was quiet, by which she meant

when Philippa Tarrant wasn't there. She was always asking nice girls

down to meet him. She worked at it hard for a whole year, and then

she said that if it didn't come off that summer she would have to

give it up.

The obstacle to her scheme for Furny's settlement was his

imperishable repugnance to the legal tie. It had become, Fanny

declared, a regular obsession. All this she confided to Straker as

she lunched with him one day in his perfectly appointed club in

Dover Street. Furny was coming down to Amberley, she said, in July;

and she added, "It would do you good, Jimmy, to come, too."

She was gazing at him with a look that he had come to know, having

known Fanny for fifteen years. A tender, rather dreamy look it was,

but distinctly speculative. It was directed to the silver streaks in

Straker's hair on a line with his eyeglasses, and he knew that Fanny

was making a calculation and saying to herself that it must be quite

fifteen years or more.

Straker was getting on.

A week at Amberley would do him all the good in the world. She

rather hoped--though she couldn't altogether promise him--that a

certain lady in whom he was interested (he needn't try to look as if

he wasn't) would be there.

"_Not_ Philippa?" he asked wearily.

"No, Jimmy, not Philippa. You know whom I mean."

He did. He went down to Amberley in July, arriving early in a golden

and benignant afternoon. It was precisely two years since he had

been there with Philippa. It was very quiet this year, so quiet that

he had an hour alone with Fanny on the terrace before tea.

Brocklebank had taken the others off somewhere in his motor.

She broke it to him that the lady in whom he was interested wasn't

there. Straker smiled. He knew she wouldn't be. The others, Fanny

explained, were Laurence Furnival and his Idea.

"His Idea?"

"His Idea, Jimmy, of everything that's lovable."

There was a luminous pause in which Fanny let it sink into him.

"Then it's come off, has it?"

"I don't know, but I think it's coming."

"Dear Mrs. Brockles, how did you manage it?"

"I didn't. That's the beauty of it. He managed it himself. He asked

me to have her down."

She let him take that in, too, in all its immense significance.

"Who is she?"

"Little Molly Milner--a niece of Nora Viveash's. He met her there

last winter."

Their eyes met, full of remembrance.

"If anybody managed it, it was Nora. Jimmy, do you know, that

woman's a perfect dear."

"I know you always said so."

"_He_ says so. He says she behaved like an angel, like a saint,

about it. When you think how she cared! I suppose she saw it was the

way to save him."

Straker was silent. He saw Nora Viveash as he had seen her on the

terrace two years ago, on the day of Philippa's arrival; and as she

had come to him afterward and asked him to stand by Furnival in his

bad hour.

"What is it like, Furny's Idea?" he asked presently.

"It's rather like Nora, only different. It's her niece, you know."

"If it's Nora's niece, it must be very young."

"It is. It's absurdly young. But, oh, so determined!"

"Has she by any chance got Nora's temperament?"

"She's got her own temperament," said Fanny.

Straker meditated on that.

"How does it take him?" he inquired.

"It takes him beautifully. It makes him very quiet, and a little

sad. That's why I think it's coming."

Fanny also meditated.

"Yes. It's coming. There's only one thing, Jimmy. Philippa's coming,

too. She's coming to-day, by that four-something train."

"My dear Fanny, how you _do_ mix 'em!"

It was his tribute to her enduring quality.

"I asked her before I knew Laurence Furnival was coming."

"_She_ knew?"

"I--I think so."

They looked at each other. Then Fanny spoke.

"Jimmy," she said, "do you think you could make love to Philippa?

Just, _just_," she entreated (when, indeed, had she not appealed to

him to save her from the consequences of her indiscretions?), "until

Furny goes?"

Straker's diplomatic reply was cut short by the appearance of

Laurence Furnival and Molly Milner, Nora's niece. They came down the

long terrace with the sun upon them. She was all in white, with here

and there a touch of delicate green. She was very young; and, yes,

she was very like Mrs. Viveash, with all the difference of her youth

and of her soul.

Furnival was almost pathetically pleased to see Straker there; and

Miss Milner, flushed but serene in the moment of introduction, said

that she had heard of Mr. Straker very often from--she hesitated,

and Straker saw what Fanny had meant when she said that the young

girl had a temperament of her own--from Mr. Furnival. Her charming

smile implied that she was aware that Straker counted, and aware of

all that he had done for Furnival.

As he watched her he began to see how different she was from Nora

Viveash. She was grave and extraordinarily quiet, Furnival's young

girl. He measured the difference by the power she had of making

Furnival--as Straker put it--different from himself. She had made

him grave and quiet, too. Not that he had by any means lost his

engaging spontaneity; only the spontaneous, the ungovernable thing

about him was the divine shyness and the wonder which he was

utterly unable to conceal.

It was at its height, it had spread its own silence all around it,

when, in that stillness which was her hour, her moment, Philippa

appeared.

She came down the terrace, golden for her as it had been two years

ago; she came slowly, more slowly than ever, with a touch of

exaggeration in her rhythm, in her delay, in the poise of her head,

and in all her gestures; the shade too much that Straker had

malignly prophesied for her. But with it all she was more beautiful,

and, he could see, more dangerous, than ever.

She had greeted the three of them, Fanny, Brocklebank, and Straker,

with that increase, that excess of manner; and then she saw Furnival

standing very straight in front of her, holding out his hand.

"Mr. Furnival--but--how _nice_!"

Furnival had sat down again, rather abruptly, beside Molly Milner,

and Fanny, visibly perturbed, was murmuring the young girl's name.

Something passed over Miss Tarrant's face like the withdrawing of a

veil. She was not prepared for Molly Milner. She had not expected to

find anything like that at Amberley. It was not what she supposed

that Furnival had come for. But, whatever he had come for, that, the

unexpected, was what Furnival was there for now. It was

disconcerting.

Philippa, in fact, was disconcerted.

All this Straker took in; he took in also, in a flash, the look that

passed between Miss Tarrant and Miss Milner. Philippa's look was

wonderful, a smile flung down from her heights into the old dusty

lists of sex to challenge that young Innocence. Miss Milner's look

was even more wonderful than Philippa's; grave and abstracted, it

left Philippa's smile lying where she had flung it; she wasn't

going, it said, to take _that_ up.

And yet a duel went on between them, a duel conducted with proper

propriety on either side. It lasted about half an hour. Philippa's

manner said plainly to Miss Milner: "My child, you have got hold of

something that isn't good for you, something that doesn't belong to

you, something that you are not old enough or clever enough to keep,

something that you will not be permitted to keep. You had better

drop it." Miss Milner's manner said still more plainly to Philippa:

"I don't know what you're driving at, but you don't suppose I take

you seriously, do you?" It said nothing at all about Laurence

Furnival. That was where Miss Milner's manner scored.

In short, it was a very pretty duel, and it ended in Miss Milner's

refusing to accompany Furnival to the Amberley woods and in

Philippa's carrying him off bodily (Straker noted that she scored a

point there, or seemed to score). As they went Miss Milner was seen

to smile, subtly, for all her innocence. She lent herself with great

sweetness to Brocklebank's desire to show her his prize roses.

Straker was left alone with Fanny.

Fanny was extremely agitated by the sight of Furnival's capture.

"Jimmy," she said, "haven't I been good to you? Haven't I been an

angel? Haven't I done every mortal thing I could for you?"

He admitted that she had.

"Well, then, now you've got to do something for me. You've got to

look after Philippa. Don't let her get at him."

"No fear."

But Fanny insisted that he had seen Philippa carrying Furnival off

under Molly Milner's innocent nose, and that her manner of

appropriating him, too, vividly recalled the evening of her arrival

two years ago, when he would remember what had happened to poor

Nora's nose.

"She took him from Nora."

"My dear Fanny, that was an act of the highest moral----"

"Don't talk to me about your highest moral anything. _I_ know what

it was."

"Besides, she didn't take him from Nora," she went on, ignoring her

previous line of argument. "He took himself. He was getting tired of

her."

"Well," said Straker, "he isn't tired of Miss Milner."

"She's taken him off _there_," said Fanny. She nodded gloomily

toward the Amberley woods.

Straker smiled. He was looking westward over the shining fields

where he had once walked with Philippa. Already they were returning.

Furnival had not allowed himself to be taken very far. As they

approached Straker saw that Philippa was pouring herself out at

Furnival and that Furnival was not absorbing any of it; he was

absorbed in his Idea. His Idea had made him absolutely impervious to

Philippa. All this Straker saw.

He made himself very attentive to Miss Tarrant that evening, and

after dinner, at her request, he walked with her on the terrace.

Over the low wall they could see Furnival in the rose garden with

Miss Milner. They saw him give her a rose, which the young girl

pinned in the bosom of her gown.

"Aren't they wonderful?" said Philippa. "Did you ever see anything

under heaven so young?"

"She is older than he is," said Straker.

"Do you remember when he wanted to give _me_ one and I wouldn't take

it?"

"I have not forgotten."

The lovers wandered on down the rose garden and Philippa looked

after them. Then she turned to Straker.

"I've had a long talk with him. I've told him that he must settle

down and that he couldn't do a better thing for himself than----"

She paused.

"Well," said Straker, "it _looks_ like it, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Philippa. "It looks like it."

They talked of other things.

"I am going," she said presently, "to ask Miss Milner to stay with

me."

Straker didn't respond. He was thinking deeply. Her face was so

mysterious, so ominous, that yet again he wondered what she might be

up to. He confessed to himself that this time he didn't know. But he

made her promise to go on the river with him the next day. They were

to start at eleven-thirty.

At eleven Fanny came to him in the library.

"She's gone," said Fanny. "She's left a little note for you. She

said you'd forgive her, you'd understand."

"Do _you_?" said Straker.

"She said she was going to be straight and see this thing through."

"What thing?"

"Furny's thing. What else do you suppose she's thinking of? She said

she'd only got to lift her little finger and he'd come back to her;

she said there ought to be fair play. Do you see? She's gone

away--to save him."

"Good Lord!" said Straker.

But he saw.