‘Well, stop arguing all of you, and come to tea,’ said Mrs. Fairfield.

‘Sheila must be ready for hers, I’m sure. Have you met Bunny, Sheila?’

‘No. Who’s Bunny?’

‘One of mother’s young men,’ explained Hypatia. ‘Quite an acquisition.

Aristocratic by birth, democratic in sentiment. Isn’t that it, mother?’

At tea they were joined by Edward, rather reluctantly, and by the

Honourable Richard Bunnard, _alias_ Bunny. Bunny was a fair freckled

youth, with sleek hair brushed straight back from his forehead and

well plastered to the head. His blue eyes followed Hypatia’s every

movement with patient doglike devotion, except when recalled from this

dereliction by the voice of Mrs. Fairfield.

‘Now then, Bunny! I want to hear what you think about this minimum wage

question. Is thirty-two shillings enough for a skilled worker like a

plate-layer?’

Bunny, very nervous, began opening and shutting his mouth soundlessly

like a goldfish.

‘Well, Mrs. Fairfield, I hardly think so. A fellow could hardly live on

such a mere pittance, could he? Forty-two or fifty-two or even....’

‘Sixty-two,’ murmured Hypatia.

‘Yes, sixty-two,’ he said, catching eagerly at a straw. ‘Or say three

guineas, sixty-three. Not much more than a hundred and fifty a year,

you know.’

‘There, father!’ cried Mrs. Fairfield. ‘What do you think of that?’

‘Of what, me dear?’

‘Why, the plate-layers are to have a minimum of sixty-three shillings a

week?’

Bunny laughed.

‘Oh no, Mrs. Fairfield. It doesn’t follow. I only said they ought to

have that.’

‘Well, you must see to it,’ retorted Mrs. Fairfield. ‘You young people,

that’s your work in life, to stir things up. I think you must go into

parliament, Bunny. Yes. I shall send you to parliament to put things

right for us.’

‘But perhaps Bunny would rather not be sent to parliament, mother?’

suggested Hypatia.

‘Indeed,’ said the young man, ‘I’d much rather not. Edward would make a

much better politician than I.’

Mrs. Fairfield proudly surveyed her son. ‘Ah, we must see about Edward.

We’re not quite ready for parliament yet, are we, Edward?’

Edward smiled. ‘For my part, I never shall be ready.’

‘Mother ought to go there herself,’ said Hypatia. ‘She’d put the world

straight in ten minutes.’

Her mother listened indulgently.

‘Do you know, Sheila, my children are very lucky children. They’ve

been brought up in perfect freedom. They’ve got the habit of freedom.

They do and think just as they like, have never known what compulsion

was. Here’s Hypatia now, with her religion: she’s never been taught

it by me; I’ve never forced anything down her throat. I believe that

everybody has a right to follow his own bent.’

‘It must be very nice,’ said Sheila, ‘to be brought up in an atmosphere

like that.’

‘It would be,’ Hypatia murmured, but Mrs. Fairfield did not take up the

challenge.

‘I wish you’d teach me your New Thought,’ begged Bunny of Hypatia.

‘Which is it, New Thought or Higher Thought?’ asked Sheila.

‘Neither,’ answered Edward. ‘It’s something newer and higher than

either. Unfortunately you have to believe it implicitly before you can

understand it to be anything but nonsense.’

‘You can be quiet, Edward,’ said his sister, ‘even if you can’t be

just.’

‘But, really,’ protested the scared Bunny. ‘I am quite in earnest,

Hypatia. I would listen respectfully to anyone’s religion, especially

yours. Won’t you tell me about it?’

Hypatia relented. ‘I will, some time. It’s useless with Edward about.’

‘It was founded by a woman,’ said Edward, ‘and she’s written a book

that is the beginning and end of all Truth. Read it, Bunny, read it and

live.’

‘You see.’ Hypatia smiled patiently. ‘That’s what I have to put up

with.’

‘It’s too bad,’ Bunny reproached Edward.

‘Oh, don’t sympathize with me, _please_!’ said Hypatia.

Sheila thought: ‘How hard she has grown!’ and, having already tasted

of her friend’s sublime certainties, she felt some relish for Edward’s

mockery.

Edward seemed the most likeable person in the room, except perhaps

Bunny. Edward was for the most part very quiet and self-contained. He

possessed rather an impressive dome of forehead, but he maintained

an impenetrable reserve without assuming that air of learning and

distinction in which his mother sought so earnestly to invest him. Mrs.

Fairfield’s maternal glance conveyed unmistakably to the rest: ‘We must

not trouble Edward with our trivial talk. His thoughts are not our

thoughts; neither are his ways our ways. He has taken his degree, and

he is writing a book.’ Sometimes she referred questions to him, as to

an authority; it was as though she was continually thrusting upon him

his bachelor’s hood, he as continually repudiating it with a confession

of ignorance or indifference. His anxiety to avoid oracular authority

kept him more silent than the rest; and this very silence gave him in

Sheila’s eyes a distinction that was almost fascination. She guessed

him to be modest, unassuming, and clever. The mystery of his inner life

drew her interest towards him.

But Bunny, too, was interesting; for Bunny had good looks and that

air of trustfully appealing for affection to which Sheila was so

susceptible. There was something pathetic about his obvious devotion to

Hypatia. Except the commanding Mrs. Fairfield he seemed to look at no

one else. He deferred to Hypatia constantly.

‘I suppose you would say that a headache is essentially unreal,

Hypatia? If we knew the truth about ourselves we shouldn’t have

headaches, should we?’

‘We shouldn’t have even heads,’ said Edward. ‘I see you’ve already had

a dose, Bunny.’

‘Shut up, Fairfield!’ said the Honourable Richard. ‘Give your sister a

hearing. Am I right, Hypatia?’

‘Certainly,’ agreed Hypatia. ‘Our failure to apprehend the truth is the

root of all so-called evil and pain.’

‘I see,’ said Bunny, wrinkling his brow.

Sheila was touched to see the poor boy falling so easy a pray to the

dominating Hypatia. But Mrs. Fairfield thought it was time to look

after her property.

‘You don’t, my poor Bunny,’ cut in Mrs. Fairfield. ‘Nor does anyone

else. No sense, anyhow. Don’t fill your mind with such stuff just to

please Hypatia.... You must be a good boy,’ she added, ‘and do as I

tell you.’

‘Mother means that, Bunny,’ said Hypatia. ‘She means every word,

although she tries to make a joke of it. If you want to please mother,

obey her in all things. It is the only way.’

Mrs. Fairfield became pale and distressed. Signs of an approaching

fainting-fit were perceptible. Observing them, her husband broke in

sharply. ‘Hypatia, hold your noise!’

So there was a feud, thought Sheila, between the young woman and the

old: a duel for the soul of Bunny. Since he had apparently no brains of

his own worth considering, the scalp would no doubt fall to Hypatia,

who had youth as an ally. And then what terrible vengeance would fall

upon him? Could nothing save him from them both? A highly dangerous

pity awoke in Sheila’s heart.

‘You shall all go to the Folk Dancing to-night,’ announced Mrs.

Fairfield.

* * * * *

The lure of Folk Dancing led them across two fields to a turreted

eccentric stone building known as the Summer School, which was at once

a gigantic advertisement and a place of mental and physical recreation

for Fairfield’s factory hands. He had spent thousands of pounds on this

long-cherished scheme, and only a well-timed fainting-fit of his wife’s

had prevented his spending thousands more.

Fairfield’s Summer School was as hygienic as his corsets. It was a

curious horseshoe-shaped building enclosing a large well-kept lawn in

the middle of which, on festive occasions, a maypole was erected; a

tower and belfry loomed at the back. To these cloisters the factory

hands were wont to repair for free instruction in the theory and

practice of arts and modern languages, for lectures on history,

sociology, science, for concerts and dances on the green. It claimed to

be, and was, a local centre of liberal popular culture. Anything and

everything could be discussed there save one thing: it was a point of

honour with the founder that Fairfield’s Hygienic Corsets should never

be mentioned.

Dusk had already fallen when the Fairfield party reached the green, and

the dancing had already begun. Someone began lighting the lamps.

‘This is jolly!’ said Bunny with infectious good spirits. ‘Won’t you

dance with me, Hypatia?’

‘I’ve never been taken for Hypatia before,’ Sheila answered.

‘Oh, sorry! It’s Miss Dyrle. Do dance with me, Miss Dyrle. It’s a waltz

this time, without trimmings.’

They whirled away among the dancers.

‘I don’t know these old dances, do you?’

‘No. But what does it matter? They stick in a few ordinary things now

and again specially for Philistines like us.’

Her heart danced with the music.

‘You brought your violin, didn’t you, Mr. Bunnard? When are you going

to play for us?’

But Bunny did not answer. Sheila was rather chilled to observe his

abrupt change of mood. He had caught sight of Hypatia dancing with her

brother.

They finished the set in silence, and Sheila was immediately claimed by

Edward. She felt bitterly alone in the world. She and Hypatia had come

to a definite parting of the ways; and she had no other friend.

After a few moments she complained to Edward of giddiness. He led her

to a seat.

‘Feel better now?’

‘Quite, thanks. But I’d rather not begin again just yet.’

He studied the ground.

‘It’s a year since you were here.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve often thought of that visit.’

‘Have you?’ said Sheila. ‘I live with my aunt, you know, and she

doesn’t approve of my visits to a home of free-thinkers.’

‘But you are not of her persuasion?’

‘Obviously not. Hypatia was my best friend.’

‘Was?’

He seemed to be offering a far from unwelcome sympathy.

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I wouldn’t have you tell her for the world. But

we’ve drifted away from each other.’

‘Yes? I fancied so.’

‘I suppose it’s this religion of hers,’ said Sheila. ‘Of course I don’t

care a rap what she believes, but she’s grown so ... so remote.’

‘I agree with you entirely. I’m glad she hasn’t converted _you_ anyhow.

My friend Bunny is doomed, I fear. Hypatia begs the whole question. If

matter is only an appearance it is none the less real to our minds: it

exists mentally. The whole philosophy is nothing but a silly quibble

about terms.’

‘How is your book getting on?’ asked Sheila.

‘Slowly, but it _is_ getting on. Writing a hundred thousand words is a

great labour. The mere pen-pushing alone is a bore.’

‘It must be. Couldn’t you dictate it?’

‘That would be difficult for me and very dull for the unfortunate

secretary. I’m afraid I should be too self-conscious to work well.’

‘At first, perhaps,’ said Sheila. ‘But that would wear off. And it

would be a privilege for the secretary, I should think.’

‘A privilege!’ He laughed. ‘Why, the book is scandalous and

atheistical.’

‘That’s why to help would be a privilege,’ she answered with a nervous

smile. ‘Would it really help you to be able to dictate to someone?’

‘That would depend, I expect.’

She summoned her courage.

‘Well, to me, for instance?’

‘_You!_’

‘Yes, me,’ she said humbly. ‘I _can_ spell, you know.’

‘You would do that for me?’ he exclaimed in amazement.

‘I’d willingly do it--for the cause,’ she added rather mischievously.

‘How astoundingly decent of you!’

‘It’s not very polite to be so surprised to find me decent,’ she said,

laughing at him.

He looked with undisguised admiration into her Irish eyes. ‘By Jove,

what things we could do together!’

A flame of comradeship leaped to life in Sheila. The word ‘together’

made an echoing music in her mind.

Mr. Fairfield stood before them.

‘Miss Dyrle, give me the honour. A real old-fashioned dance this time

instead of these new-fangled folk things. Sir Roger de Coverley. And

after that Bunny’s going to give us a tune on the fiddle.’

Later, feeling rather breathless and crumpled, she listened to Bunny’s

‘tune on the fiddle.’ She could see the violinist’s face, with a new

expression in his eyes, spangled grotesquely with a red light from a

fairy lamp. The moon was rising in a pale green sky. Two tall feathery

trees, swaying in the gentle wind, seemed to caress each other as

they merged for a moment and drew apart again. The music spoke--spoke

to Sheila intimately. It seemed to have for her a secret message. It

communicated a tremulous half-sobbing ecstasy of pain and beauty: it

drew her, shuddering with delight, through divers moods. Now she was

in a moonlit forest of tall poplars, walking, walking, alone in the

universe. Now there was a flowered field, full of white and green,

yellow and red, made glad with the twinkling feet of dancing shepherds

and shepherdesses.

As if in response to the music, stars began tremblingly to peer through

the luminous green curtain of the sky.

The next morning Edward invited her into the holy of holies where the

book was being written.

It was a small room having some of the austerity of a monk’s cell. Two

of the walls were lined with books, classified under such headings as

Ancient History, Mediæval History, Modern History, Sociology, Science,

Philosophy.

‘I do everything on a system,’ remarked Edward in a rather satisfied

tone; but Sheila only laughed at his labels.

‘I could never read here,’ she said. ‘I should put a ticket on myself

and stand in the corner all day. What a dreadfully orderly room!’

‘Don’t you like it?’ There was disappointment in his tone.

‘Yes, very much. It is little and quiet and studious. There’s no

cabbage pattern on the wall and no Jorrocks pictures. There are

no pictures of podgy children stroking big dogs, and no family

photographs.... I’m sure that gentleman over there isn’t in the

family.’ She pointed to a photograph of a Greek statue.

‘No, that’s Euripides. And yet there’s something about the room that

you don’t like. What is it?’

‘Well, you do everything on a system, you said. I think that’s what’s

wrong. You’ve done this room on a system. _Ars est celare artem._ Isn’t

it the same with systems?’

‘Do you read Horace much?’ he enquired.

‘Not at all,’ confessed Sheila. ‘I found that tag at the end of a

dictionary.’

He laughed. ‘You’re delightfully honest.’

A shaft of sunlight falling on his face made visible the little downy

hairs over his cheekbones. Sheila caught her eyes involuntarily looking

at them.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you going to work now?’

‘There’s no hurry.’

‘Come, come, I’m sure your system doesn’t permit loitering! Can you

provide me with pen and paper?’

‘Do you really mean me to dictate to you?’

She felt a sudden twinge of embarrassment lest she was pressing

unwanted assistance upon him.

‘You said I was honest just now. Will you be equally honest with me? If

my presence would disturb you, please turn me out.’

He considered gravely for a moment. ‘One can hardly tell--save by

experiment.’

‘You wouldn’t mind telling me, would you?’

‘No. I would tell you at once. You have sense enough not to be

offended.’

She was absurdly elated by this curt compliment.

‘Besides,’ he added, ‘the book comes first with me always. Nothing else

matters.’

She ruminated upon that thought for several seconds. The bluntness,

the ungraciousness of it at once repelled and attracted her. She could

not but admire Edward’s capacity for impersonal enthusiasm; it made

him great; and she found something fascinating in his indifference

to lesser things. Among those lesser things she was content, for the

moment, to include herself. To be his tool, to help him in his work:

such service, she felt, would be its own sufficient reward.

Noting her silence, ‘That seems to you inhuman?’ he asked.

‘It seems to me superhuman,’ answered Sheila. ‘Perhaps that’s the

secret of fine living: to subordinate all personal things to some great

impersonal passion.’

‘That’s just how I feel,’ he said.

Sheila continued. ‘Unless we’re content to be miserable and useless,

we must have a consuming passion, if it’s only for collecting beetles:

something that doesn’t depend on anybody else.... Persons change,’ she

added sadly.

‘You’re thinking of Hypatia,’ he suggested.

‘Hypatia, yes. And someone else. It’s like building your house on sand,

you know, ever to rely on persons.’

‘Still,’ said Edward, ‘if a person’s rational and consistent--and there

_are_ consistent persons.’

‘Yes, and there are clockwork toys. A perfectly consistent person must

be very much like them, I should think.’

‘But surely you agree that man _is_ just that: a mechanical toy in

the hands of Necessity. The illusion of freewill is only disguised

mechanism.’

‘How dreadful!’ Sheila exclaimed. ‘Then Henley’s lines:

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul--

are meaningless to you?’

‘The man who thinks that he is master of his fate is the most enslaved

of all persons,’ said Edward. ‘For he is not even master of the facts.’

‘That’s a quotation from your book, I believe,’ said Sheila. And the

young man blushed.

This was the beginning of a long and animated discussion, the first

of many. In Edward Sheila discovered that reliability which she had

thought could be attributed to no person. His mind was keen and

critical: it worked with a certain deadly precision that was as

impressive and at times almost as terrifying as a piece of gigantic

machinery. He had doubts and hesitancies indeed: the hesitancies of one

aware of the subtleties, the baffling complexity, of problems which

less careful minds deemed simple; but once he had reached a definite

decision, nothing short of overpowering ratiocination, no consideration

of comfort or sentiment, could shake him from it. And while her sense

of poetry revolted against a certain aridness in his philosophy,

the very magnitude and the shattering presumption of his attempt to

rationalize the universe overpowered her imagination and thrilled her

with a sense of great adventure.

4

In sharp contrast with this austere enthusiasm for Edward Fairfield and

his work, there flickered up in her heart a secret romantic compassion

for the Honourable Richard Bunnard, that fair-haired, frank-eyed,

simple-minded young man, whose nickname, Bunny, appeared even to the

eye of affection so entirely suitable. For his youth and good nature,

for his docility, for the irresponsible levity that even the Fairfield

atmosphere could not entirely inhibit, and still more for the less

definite charm he unconsciously exercised over her, Sheila conceived a

liking that trembled sometimes dangerously on the verge of tenderness.

She was stirred by his voluntary surrender of his personality into the

grasping hands of Hypatia, the high-priestess of a new oracle, and

trembled at the thought of his being immolated, a blood sacrifice,

upon that godless altar. But, most of all, the memory of his music

troubled the deep cool waters of her mind. She sought in him often, and

sometimes for a fleeting instant found, the transfigured face of the

violinist who had once laid his spell upon her.

She swayed for a while between these two magnetic points: Edward’s

intellectuality and Bunny’s manifest need for being looked after;

but if the one’s self-sufficiency sometimes repelled her the other’s

comparative vacuity of mind no less tried her patience. With such an

alternative, perhaps her womanhood would have urged her irresistibly

towards Bunny, in spite of discouraging precedent, had not that youth

remained unaware of her claim to be anything more exciting (and that

was exciting enough, no doubt) than Hypatia’s friend.

‘If only he had Edward’s brains as well as his own niceness,’ Sheila

said to herself; and humour compelled her to add, self-scornfully:

‘Well, what if he had? He’d perhaps be even more indifferent to me

than he is now.’ And that would have been hard; for his absorption in

Hypatia was so complete that he could even sing her praises in little

solitary interviews with Sheila contrived for that very purpose.

‘Don’t you think she’s very clever?’ he said one day, incredulous of a

hint of criticism.

‘I know she’s got wonderful brains,’ Sheila assured him. ‘But at

present I believe they’re under a cloud. That sounds horribly dogmatic,

I expect. But I really think Hypatia’s a little bit of a fanatic

nowadays.’

He rebelled against that. ‘She’s an enthusiast, if you like.’

Sheila smiled. ‘Perhaps that’s all. I suppose fanaticism’s only the

name we give to the other person’s enthusiasm.’

‘I must say she often puzzles me,’ admitted Bunny. ‘You know her very

well, don’t you?’

‘Not so well as you do, I expect.’

‘Oh, but you were at school with her,’ he urged.

‘That’s five, six, seven years ago.’

‘Still....’ He ached to believe that Sheila out of the fulness of her

knowledge of Hypatia could help him. ‘Do you think she’s capable of

liking anybody?’

‘Liking?’ The clear inadequacy of the word arrested her.

‘Liking very much, I mean, don’t you see? It’s this way: supposing you

wanted....’ He waited as if for her to help him out. But she rather

pointedly didn’t. ‘She seems so aloof very often, don’t you think?’

To this mild proposition Sheila assented. ‘A little cold, you think,

perhaps?’ She guided his stumbling feet thus far.

‘Cold, but not,’ he hoped, ‘incapable of--well, affection, as it were.’

Sheila agreed gravely that ‘incapable’ would be too absolute a word.

‘She is very fine-looking.’ He had the air of submitting this idea for

her acceptation.

‘Fine is quite the right epithet,’ Sheila assured this incredible

youth. ‘She has always been fearless; you can see that in her face. And

she had a sense of humour once.’ To herself she added: ‘Am I so very

maternal that he must confide in me?’

After a brief transitional hovering, when he was neither quite in

Sheila’s company nor definitely out of it, he went away, no doubt to

treasure all these things in his heart, leaving Sheila in a state that

oscillated between amusement and a half-ashamed regret. And that night

Hypatia, joining her friend in the spacious bedroom that they shared,

displayed unwonted animation. Whether it was Bunny or the stirring in

its sleep of old friendship that loosened her tongue, Sheila patiently

waited to have revealed to her.

Hypatia was in a reminiscential mood. She sat on Sheila’s bed and

talked of Selborne days, of feuds with Miss Fry, of Sheila’s Aunt

Hester, and of what little she knew of Kay. She appeared rather to

dwell on Kay. She called up once-familiar faces from the pit of

oblivion and set them again speaking forgotten parts. And presently,

without preamble, she remarked: ‘There’s more in Bunny than he allows

to appear, don’t you think?’

‘Very likely,’ Sheila said, sleepily. ‘But you know him so much better

than I.’

‘He’s ductile,’ said Hypatia, rather consciously selecting the word.

‘Too much so,’ Sheila ventured. ‘How beautifully he plays the violin.

That night at the Folk Dancing he was wonderful.’

‘Yes. In his way he’s quite a genius. Though of course this musical

glamour is not really healthy. It’s a kind of delusion, a magnetism. In

Real Knowledge it doesn’t exist.’

‘He’s rather marvellous, your friend Bunny,’ Sheila said tritely,

chilled by Hypatia’s eternal prosing.

‘He’s a very nice boy. But under mother’s thumb at present. I shall

change that.’

Sheila shivered. ‘You! How?’

‘He proposed to me to-night.’

Sheila was dumbstruck for a moment. Then, ‘You’re very calm about it,’

she said. ‘Did you...?’

‘Not yet. But if I do accept him there’ll be a fine tussle with mother.’

‘Doesn’t your mother like him?’

‘Immensely. But mother has an inordinate appetite for affection. She’s

like a spider with a fly. She won’t share him.’

‘How bitterly you speak!’

Hypatia loftily repudiated the suggestion. ‘Not at all. I’m merely

stating a fact. You will see, if you’re here long enough.’

‘Poor Bunny!’ said Sheila.

‘Oh, don’t worry about him. I shan’t let mother gobble him up, you may

be sure.’

‘I’m sure you won’t,’ Sheila replied, biting her lip. ‘You’ll marry him

sooner than that.’

But irony was lost on Hypatia. ‘Mother shan’t have him,’ she reiterated.

5

Edward found the presence of another person distracting. The dictation

of his book was soon abandoned, and he pursued his solitary way.

Yet not solitary, for he was not unconscious that his solitude had

been invaded, destroyed; and he was not yet sure whether he liked or

resented the invasion. In spirit another walked by his side. For Sheila

this book, child of his brain, became a living thing to be thought

about with a reverent excitement. She was still enough of a child to

find this making of books miraculous: it was like that creation of

something out of nothing which the church attributed to God. The best

of Edward went into his book, and Sheila was quick to remember this in

his defence when vitality or humour seemed lacking in him. He worked

with clocklike regularity. He wrote from nine till twelve-thirty. He

resumed work, after lunch, at one-thirty and wrote till, at half-past

four, some toast and tea was brought to him on a tray. For this

refreshment he allowed himself twenty minutes, and for ten minutes he

systematically did nothing. From five till seven was his final daily

spell.

Seven o’clock released him from his self-imposed task. At half-past

seven he dined with his family, and having dined was free to cultivate

such social amenities as he did not utterly despise. He formed the

habit of seeking out Sheila; he persuaded her to go for walks with him:

strenuous almost racing walks, conscientious and concentrated exercise,

essential to the maintenance of physical and therefore mental fitness.

She, glad of an antidote for the daily dose of omniscience forced down

her throat by Hypatia, welcomed this new friendship. She was a willing

and intelligent listener; the quickness of her mind delighted him,

and his appreciation evoked an answering delight in her. The variety

and colour of her thinking, a habit she had of investing with emotion

even the dry bones of argument, provided a foil for Edward’s exact

logic. She took imaginative leaps in metaphysical speculation, while

he plodded laboriously on from point to point, never retracing a step.

They sharpened their wits against each other and felt marvellously

stimulated by the process. And still it was of the book, and of cognate

subjects, that he talked, in an unending torrent of discourse. He

involved himself in sentences so prodigious that Sheila sometimes got

lost in a labyrinth of phrases and subordinate clauses. More than once

she felt rising in her a secret impatience; she even got to the point

of contemplating the discontinuance of an intercourse that became daily

more overpowering. Yet looking back, as the days passed, upon that

vista of intimate, flushed, excited talk, she could not find heart to

cut adrift from him; moreover, he had made her feel, not without a

sense of her presumption, that she had somehow become necessary to his

literary scheme. These enormously distended monologues of his helped

him to clarify his thought, and her occasional interpolated criticism

freshened his dialectic processes. She felt a certain responsibility

for him.

Mrs. Fairfield observed this ripening intimacy with a curious

admixture of benevolence and displeasure. One evening she came upon her

son and Sheila sauntering in the garden together a few minutes before

seven, and smiled at her guest with an inimical glint in her eye.

‘Sheila dear,’ she said bitter-sweetly, ‘you mustn’t take my son from

his work.’

Sheila, flushing with resentment, could make no reply.

‘Mother,’ said Edward, neither hotly nor coldly, ‘you interrupt the

thread of my argument.’

Mrs. Fairfield flashed a point of jealous fire at Sheila, who turned on

her heel, biting her lips in vexation. She was astounded and ashamed by

this momentary and involuntary revelation of a woman’s soul.

Edward followed her without an instant’s hesitation.

‘See you at dinner, mother,’ he said casually, over his shoulder....

‘The matter is not quite so simple as that,’ he went on, speaking

to the girl at his side. ‘The vitalist hypothesis has implications

that lie deeper than that altogether, and that run, in my opinion,

altogether counter to the ascertained facts of experience. Chemical

analysis....’

Sheila let him ramble on, grateful that he took no notice of her

evident embarrassment. She wished he had left her. She wanted to

escape from the intolerable sense of having been delivered an insulting

ultimatum, a warning, by Edward’s detestable mother. Yes, Edward’s

detestable mother: that was how she thought of the woman in whose mien

she had read ‘Hands off my property!’ Her instinct was to run away from

the house and never return; but slowly, as Edward’s sentences gathered

length and momentum, she came to regard such an action as merely

melodramatic.

She cut one of his clauses in half by asking abruptly: ‘What did your

mother mean by that?’

He was pulled up short, and left floundering.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sheila; ‘I’m very rude. I’m afraid I wasn’t

listening. I was thinking of what your mother said. What makes her hate

me so?’

‘Hate you! Dear me, no!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re too sensitive. Mother is

hurt because I give my confidence to you and not to her. Don’t worry

about her. She’ll have to get used to it.’

‘Oh no, she won’t. I am going home to-morrow.’

‘To-morrow?’

‘I had already arranged to, you know,’ Sheila untruthfully assured him.

‘I hope you will stay longer,’ he said earnestly. ‘If mother has

offended you she shall apologize. I’ll see to it.’

‘Pray do nothing of the kind. And let’s drop the subject.... Won’t you

forgive my inattention and tell me what you were saying?’

They had by now reached a remote part of the garden, a part from

which the house was hidden by a mass of sweet peas clustering over

trelliswork. A rustic seat on the gravel path by the trim croquet-lawn

invited them to rest.

‘By the way,’ he said, when they had sat down. ‘I’ve finished the

_magnum opus_.’

‘Finished!’ she exclaimed, glowing with excited pleasure. ‘How fine!

Aren’t you tremendously glad?’

‘It’s a relief,’ he admitted. ‘I shall take a week’s rest and then

start the revision.’

She, exulting still in the accomplished work, could spare no thought

for the revision.

‘How jolly to have finished! You didn’t tell me you were near the end?’

‘Ah, you’d forgotten then.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘I told you a

fortnight ago that I should finish on the thirteenth of this month.’

She was suitably astonished.

‘You mean to say you knew to a day?’

‘I work on a programme, you see,’ he said, relishing her surprised

admiration.

Now that the work was done he seemed to have time for human weaknesses.

This unexpected boyish vanity made Sheila like him more than she had

ever done before.

‘I suppose you’re pleased with yourself now!’ she mocked him gently.

‘Very!’ he confessed. They both laughed.

‘There was another thing that might have told you,’ he said. ‘I came

out of my room before seven o’clock to-night. Have you ever known that

happen before?’

‘You see, my watch had stopped,’ she explained. ‘So that is what your

mother----’

‘Probably.’

‘Why didn’t you explain to her?’ she asked him.

‘I refuse to propitiate her,’ he said. ‘Besides, I wanted you to know

first.’

She was silent.

‘Sheila,’ he said gently, ‘we could do such a lot together!’

She began to rise from her seat, but he placed on her knee a strong and

strangely reassuring hand.

‘It’s a year since your last visit to us, isn’t it?’

Sheila found her voice, a very small voice now, and answered ‘Yes.’

‘Well, a year ago I made up my mind to ask you to marry me. Will you?’

There was a teeming silence. Sheila’s mind was in a whirl. There seemed

something wanting in the richness of this moment, a disconcerting gap

in the happiness that had come within her reach. But another feeling

conquered. She looked at him with her heart in her eyes.

‘If I can help you.... Oh, Edward, I _do_ want to help you!’

‘My dear!’ he said. He kissed her cheek in warm brotherly fashion. ‘We

shall be very happy together, you and I.’ He took her hand in his.

For a moment they contemplated this prospective happiness without

speaking. The gong summoned them to dinner.

* * * * *

Sheila accompanied Edward into the house with a numbed feeling in one

corner of her mind. She could not banish a vague half-formed doubt

that had crept into the heart of her new happiness. There was so much

that was fine, so much that was bracing, about her relationship with

Edward, and she told herself that this lurking discontent was mere

perversity. A feeling of comradeliness struggled with a sense of

chill. She was to be his friend, his wife, the partner of his life’s

work; they were intellectually in tune: what more could she ask of

life? What was this secret craving for tenderness, for romance, but a

foolish lapse into the sentimental dreaming of her school-days? Edward

offered her in abundance what that boy-lover Kay Wilton had been so

conspicuously unable to offer: the sympathy of an alert mind. Sympathy

and comradeship--were not these the fairest flowers of life? The rest

were gaudy hothouse plants, nurtured in an artificial warmth and unable

to endure the healthy rigours of continual daily intimacy.

She tried by such reflections to still the whispering voice within

her; nevertheless she was not herself during dinner, and it was with a

catch of the breath, afterwards, that she heard Edward announce their

betrothal to his parents. Stated coldly, the compact had the terrifying

air of something irrevocable. She controlled with effort an impulse to

flee from the room.

Mrs. Fairfield was exclamatory and encouraging, and Mr. Fairfield

vaguely echoed his wife’s expressions of pleasure. Mrs. Fairfield

opened her plump arms and wrapped them round Sheila as though taking

permanent possession of her.

‘My dear Sheila!’ she exclaimed. ‘A new daughter for me!’

From that capacious and efficient embrace Sheila emerged with a sense

of having been rescued from a yawning gulf. The one thought in her

mind was that she did not wish to be a daughter to Mrs. Fairfield.

She felt that Edward’s mother would as readily take, if she could,

the globe itself into that large embrace, and exult greedily in her

newly-acquired property, like a child with a big ball that it may

bounce to its heart’s content.

‘Now that _is_ nice!’ said Mr. Fairfield. ‘Very pleasant arrangement

indeed! Well, well!’

A diversion was created by the entry of Bunny. He tried to conceal an

air of desperate purpose under the affectation of breeziness.

‘Hullo, by Jove!’ he exclaimed. ‘How are you, Mrs. Fairfield? How are

you, sir? How do, Ted? And how are you, Miss Dyrle? Myself, I’m jolly

fine. Thanks for kind inquiries.’

‘That’s a comfort anyhow,’ said Mrs. Fairfield grimly. ‘You seem a

little upset.’

‘Upset! Me!’ cried Bunny. He calmed a little to add: ‘Bit excited

perhaps. Got some news for you, Mrs. Fairfield.’

‘Ha!’ The light of triumph gleamed in Mrs. Fairfield’s eye. ‘You’ve

agreed to be president of the Workers’ Federation after all.’

‘No, not exactly.’

‘You haven’t!’ Mrs. Fairfield became the picture of righteous

indignation. ‘You refuse to do a little thing like that for me, when

your name would be so valuable to us!’

‘It wouldn’t be fair to my father. He’s a bit old-fashioned, I dare

say, but there it is. He can’t help being an earl. He makes rather a

point of my not getting too deep in the movement.’

The Honourable Richard Bunnard stood on one toe and twirled once round

to assure every one that he was perfectly at ease.

‘Please don’t fidget, Bunny, when you’re talking to me, even though I

_am_ only an old woman. Once again I ask you, and for the last time:

will you do the right thing, the public-spirited thing?’

Bunny tried to soothe the exasperated lady.

‘My dear Mrs. Fairfield, I’ve already promised my father.’

The storm burst.

‘Your father! Fiddlesticks your father! Hypatia’s at the bottom of

this!’

‘Don’t get excited, mother,’ urged Edward.

‘I will, I will,’ retorted his mother. ‘I’ve a perfect right to get

excited. You young people, you’ve got hearts of stone. All the love we

mothers lavish on you is nothing to you. Do we get any gratitude? Not a

bit! _Scorn_, yes, plenty of it! Scorn of our grey hairs and our silly

ways and our ignorance. But gratitude--the last thing in the world....

Some chit of a girl comes....’

Edward shrugged his shoulders in cold disgust.

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Mrs. Fairfield. There was an ominous pause. Her husband

rushed towards her.

‘It’s all right, me dear. I’ve got you safe and sound. Sit down and

have a bit of a rest.’

The afflicted lady sighed.

‘She’s going to faint,’ cried Mr. Fairfield. ‘Why didn’t you let her

have her way, you young devils, you!’

‘Of course she’s going to faint,’ said Edward. ‘That is the last scene

of the melodrama.’

Sheila watched the scene with a mixture of indignation and compassion.

The indignation was short-lived: it died suddenly at sight of Edward’s

complete detachment. He seemed utterly devoid of the filial sentiment

that would have made allowances for his mother. For she was, after all,

his mother, Sheila reflected. She had faced death to bring him into

the world. He was flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone: for him she

had spent herself, and he was still the centre of her life. Had Edward

shewn anger, Sheila would have been wholeheartedly with him, but this

cold disdain, this resolute refusal to be stirred a hair’s breadth

either to pity or to wrath seemed to Sheila’s warmer heart almost

inhuman, although it extorted from her an unwilling admiration.

‘I think I’d better clear out,’ said Bunny, moving towards the door.

‘Sorry to have been the cause of a disturbance.’

But Mrs. Fairfield’s recovery was as abrupt as her collapse had been.

From the arm-chair into which her husband had placed her she urged the

young man to stay.

‘Don’t go, Bunny. I’m better now. It was my son upset me, not you. Come

and tell me your news?’

She spoke in a languid faded tone, the tone of one bearing bravely an

immense burden of wrongs.

‘Well ...’ began Bunny nervously, glancing towards Sheila.

Edward, intercepting the glance, asked: ‘Are we _de trop_, Bunny?’

Mr. Fairfield intervened. ‘Edward and Miss Dyrle have just come to an

understanding, Bunny.’

‘An understanding?’ asked Bunny.

‘Yes. Bit of sweethearting, you know.’

‘Really!’ cried Bunny, beaming. ‘I congratulate you. Well, that makes

it easier for me. There’ll be a double event.’

‘A what?’ demanded Mrs. Fairfield, all the languor gone from her.

‘You see,’ Bunny explained, ‘I’m engaged to be married.’

‘Well I declare!’ said Mr. Fairfield. ‘Engaged! Why, everybody’s

getting engaged. Time we set about it, mother, eh?’

Edward made a congratulatory noise. Only Mrs. Fairfield was silent,

watching Bunny with feline intentness.

‘Well,’ she said sharply. ‘Who’s the young lady, Bunny?’

Bunny, with his hands in his pockets agitating a bunch of keys, stood

first on one leg and then on the other.

‘That was what I came for,’ he said, blushing, ‘to ask your blessing,

don’t you know. You see, Hypatia....’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Fairfield curtly. ‘What about Hypatia?’

Even the amiable Bunny had not unlimited patience.

‘Hypatia?’ he said. ‘Well, nothing about her. You asked me who was the

young lady. I’ve told you.’

‘Hypatia!’ demanded Mrs. Fairfield.

‘Exactly,’ answered Bunny, and strode out of the room.

‘Herbert!’ cried Mrs. Fairfield to her husband. ‘Go after him. At once.

Hypatia shan’t have him. She shan’t!’

‘You’d better faint again, mother,’ remarked Edward.

‘Oh, Edward, how can you!’ cried Sheila, stung to speech.

She beckoned him to the bay window, as Mrs. Fairfield followed her

husband to the door.

‘Edward,’ Sheila said, ‘are you sure you want me?’

He looked at her in surprise. ‘You know I do.’

Sheila felt that her question needed an apology. ‘It’s only that I hate

to cause a fuss. Your mother does loathe me, I’m sure.’

He took both her hands in his for a moment. ‘Sheila, you’re not going

to forsake me, are you?’

‘Not ... if you really care,’ she answered in a low voice.

Mrs. Fairfield from the passage stepped back into the room.

‘Children!’ she muttered, regarding the lovers with malevolence,

‘children ... no, vipers!’

Her husband returned, followed by Bunny wrapped in his dignity and by

Hypatia armed with invincible placidity.

‘Now understand this,’ began Mrs. Fairfield. ‘We old folk refuse to

be ignored. We just won’t put up with this insulting behaviour. You

think we don’t count, but we’ll see. Bunny, let’s hear no more of

this nonsense about marrying Hypatia. You shall not marry her. You’re

a young snob. And Sheila shan’t marry my Edward either. I won’t be

robbed of my children by young stuck-up creatures who despise me and my

husband because we’re in trade.’

‘What a wicked lie!’ exclaimed Sheila, with flashing eyes. ‘You know we

don’t despise you! Everybody’s parents are in trade ... except Bunny’s,

I suppose.’

‘Herbert!... Edward! Will you stand here and hear this girl call your

mother a wicked liar?’

‘Where do you want me to stand?’ enquired Edward. ‘Besides, I’m not

Sheila’s controller. I’m not even her parent.’

‘You will leave my son alone,’ said Mrs. Fairfield, struggling with her

rising passion. ‘Marry the Honourable Richard, if you want to marry.’

‘But that would still leave Edward and Hypatia unmarried,’ objected

Bunny, lapsing into weak humour. ‘They can’t marry each other, you

know.’

‘And you leave Hypatia alone!’ Hypatia’s mother turned upon Bunny.

‘I’ll make father disinherit them both if they disobey me.’

‘Is that all you have to say, mother?’ asked Hypatia, with the patient

smile of the Christian Scientist.

‘No, it is _not_....’

‘Well, it’s quite enough,’ Hypatia assured her. ‘Come along, Bunny.

Come and buy the licence.’

Without a word, the young man followed Hypatia out of the room.

The flame of battle was awake now in Sheila’s heart, burning away all

lingering reluctance, all doubts and fears. If there was to be a feud,

there was no doubt upon which side she would fight. Age had declared

war upon Youth, and all the spirit in her woke to the challenge.

Edward, her comrade, was being threatened with disinheritance. Sheila

knew now that she was irrevocably his: a hint of doubt would have been

shameful treason. She forgot the cold formality of his attitude to

his mother: she remembered only his strength, his glorious unyielding

strength.

‘Look here, mother,’ Edward was saying, ‘you’ll have to readjust your

ideas a little.’ He waved aside a hysterical interruption. ‘No, it’s no

use indulging in heroics: your storming only makes me tired. Storm in a

teacup, that’s all. Listen to me.’

Mrs. Fairfield turned her back on him.

‘Yes, listen like that, if you wish. It’s extraordinarily rude, but

never mind. I was saying that you’ve got to readjust your ideas a

little. They’re about a hundred years behind the times. We young

people, as you call us, have as much right to live as you, and as much

right to freedom.’

His mother wheeled round swiftly. ‘Freedom! You’ve had too much

freedom!’

‘Please don’t interrupt,’ said Edward. ‘There’s been quite enough

shouting and stamping. I want you to reason the thing out calmly.

Freedom consists in being left alone, left with room to grow, not in

being penned round with affection and told every minute of the day that

of course we can do as we like if we don’t love mother and father.’

‘You’re hitting too hard,’ whispered Sheila.

‘You think,’ Edward continued, ‘because you’ve born and bred us and

sacrificed yourself for us that Hypatia and I belong to you.’

‘Oh no, you don’t belong to me,’ said Mrs. Fairfield in fierce sarcasm.

‘I’m only your mother: that’s all.’

‘Precisely,’ said Edward. ‘Our mother, not our owner. We belong to

nobody. We have our separate lives to live, and we intend to live them

in our own way.’

‘You’re mine, mine, mine!’ protested his mother. ‘Don’t you feel any

common gratitude for what I’ve done for you? I gave you life; I fed you

with my body; and now--is this the end?’

‘Those are services that cannot be repaid,’ he answered, without any

trace of emotion. ‘If in return for what you did for me I had to submit

to be your doll for ever, it were better that I had not been born at

all.’

‘Brutal, brutal!’ interjected his father, waking from a spell of

bewilderment.

‘Perhaps,’ conceded Edward, ‘but it’s nature. Nature is brutal. Do you

think that because you gave me life, as you say, that you have the

right to take it away, or smother it, or confine it, at your pleasure?

You shut your eyes to logical inference. See to what absurd conclusions

your wild unreasoning would lead you if you dared follow it to the

end. Time and again civilization has been hindered in its march....’

For a moment Sheila ceased her loyal silent applause to ask herself:

Why does Edward talk like a parliamentary candidate? But Mrs. Fairfield

quickly distracted her attention from that question.

‘I see,’ she said, ‘I’m nothing to you. I’m only your mother. This bit

of a girl, who’s done nothing for you, whom you’ve known ten minutes,

is more to you than your mother is.’

Edward assented gravely. ‘So much more than I propose to live with her

and not with you. You were a bit of a girl yourself once, mother. If

father had been more devoted to _his_ mother than to you, you might

have been a childless spinster at this moment.’

‘Now then,’ said Mr. Fairfield, briskly asserting himself. ‘We’ve had

about enough of this. Mother’s had her say. And you’ve had yours.

You’ve got the gift of the gab all right. Now just you cut along and

leave your mother alone.’

‘Herbert, he shan’t have a penny of your money!’ Mrs. Fairfield turned

confidently to her husband for ratification of this threat. ‘Tell him

so.’

‘We’ll see. We’ll see. I’m not dead yet,’ said the little man, with

unwonted independence. ‘I hadn’t any pennies myself when I was his age.’

His wife turned upon him a terrible _Et tu Brute_ look.

‘Never you mind,’ he retorted, with incredible courage. ‘There’s sense

in what the lad says, even though he is a bit of a hard nut. Gets that

from his father perhaps.’

‘His father!’ cried the mother in scorn. ‘They’re their mother’s

children, both of them. Else they’d never dare to treat me like this.’

There was pride as well as anger in the glance she flashed at Edward as

she gathered up her skirts and rustled out of the room.

PART THE THIRD

_Sheila Fairfield_

1

All roads led to Edward Fairfield. His atheism, his sister, Aunt

Hester’s opposition, all conspired to fling Sheila into the polite

dispassionate arms of that rational young graduate from Cambridge.

Kay had offered romance without intellectual comradeship: Edward

offered a kind of business partnership in the propagation of rational

atheology, and this proved an irresistible bait for a spirited girl

hustled by disaster into premature cynicism. Edward concerns us no

further, save that he married her, respected her, and practised upon

her the editorials that appeared week by week in his own paper _The

Iconoclast_. Everything that he did was in perfect taste and supported

by a perfect reason. When, for example, she declared their marriage a

failure, he provided her with a pair of admirable rooms in his own

well-appointed house, and lived thereafter in contented celibacy. He

was just to the point of inhumanity; but she, a disappointed woman,

was not just. The efficient elegance of her home afflicted her. It

seemed a mere piece of machinery for the daily manufacture of well-bred

happiness. Her two rooms, until she had transformed them, seemed sleek,

complacent: they announced to her, with the patient smile and in the

incisive tones of a secularist lecturer, the supremacy of Reason. In

herself, reason was far from supreme.

A woman with love must bestow it somewhere: Sheila poured it without

stint upon her dream of Kay. Ten years divided them, and more, before

that dream was finally destroyed. Sophie, his wife, gave birth to

a child, and Sheila, impelled by who knows what medley of motives,

visited her. They sat and talked about nothing in a room pervaded

by yellow. A pale-brown flower perpetuated itself at intervals on

the walls; a small occasional table set in the middle of a dark

yellowish carpet was covered by a buff cloth; a gilt-framed oval

mirror surmounted the mantelpiece. There were photographs on the

mantelpiece of Sophie’s father, of Sophie’s child, of Sophie, and one

of Kay standing stiffly with a book in his hand--a cruel photograph,

courageously signed by the photographer. Sheila gave no second glance

to it.

She interrupted a remark of Sophie’s about the chapel Dorcas Society by

saying, ‘Oh I forgot to ask--you don’t mind Bernard being here, do you?’

‘Bernard?’ Sophie was mystified.

Sheila pointed to the Irish terrier that was frisking round her.

A little ripple of merriment came from Sophie.

‘Do you call the dog Bernard? How funny! I love dogs, but father

doesn’t care for them.... But of course he won’t mind yours,’ she added

hastily.

Sheila tried to puzzle out how Mr. Dewick could even have a chance

of objecting to her dog, but just then a diversion was created by

the entry of a rather plump old-young man in a morning coat rubbing

his hands together and making an indeterminate noise in a vague

endeavour to be hospitable. He wore a little brown moustache and short

side-whiskers near the ears. His hair had receded considerably, more

especially where the parting was, and had left an expanse of shining

brow.

‘Well, well,’ he said, nervously cheerful. ‘How are you after all this

while? I’m sure we’re very pleased.’

Sheila recognized him instantly, although there seemed indeed nothing

of the old Kay left to recognize. Yet this was Kay. This was he who

years ago under the moon had whispered to her, with eyes full of

dreams, his boyish love. Shades of the meeting-house had closed on that

boy for ever.

Almost sick with disappointment, she shook hands with him, and

quickly sought refuge in responding to the terrier’s still frantic

demonstrations.

‘I hope you like my dog,’ she remarked to Kay, shy of using his name.

‘Yes, yes, fine fellow,’ responded Kay. ‘Come on, good dog, good dog!’

He patted the dog awkwardly.

‘We call him Bernard,’ explained Sheila, afraid of the smallest hiatus.

‘George Bernard, because he’s Irish and vivacious.’

Kay looked puzzled. ‘But why ... do you call him George Bernard? I

didn’t quite catch....’

‘After Shaw, you know,’ Sheila explained. ‘We suspect Bernard of having

been a distinguished playwright in a previous incarnation.’

‘Oh I see!’ said Kay, his brow clearing.

But it was knitted again the next moment.

‘What was it the Reverend Aitken was saying about Shaw last Sunday,

mother?’

‘I remember something,’ Sophie answered. ‘I think he said he was a

mountaineer, didn’t he?’

‘Mountaineer,’ murmured Kay. ‘I think not. Ah no, mountebank! That was

the word.’

Here Sheila joined the conversation in a mildly argumentative vein, but

Kay sidetracked by waxing indignant over the attempted introduction of

a liturgy into divine service. He had set his face against _that_, he

assured them: every true nonconformist at the church meeting had set

his face against _that_, and right feeling had ultimately triumphed

over the incipient popery. It appeared indeed that the cosmos was being

conducted in an entirely proper manner, except for the wanton behaviour

of the east wind. He considered the east wind very dangerous. He became

impressive and told a long story about a man of his acquaintance who

ventured out in an east wind without his overcoat, caught a chill,

developed pneumonia, and had to take to his bed.

‘Dead in a week!’ finished Kay, dramatically and with relish.

Except for an appreciative murmur from his wife, the story was

received in silence. Sheila with a stunned sensation was telling

herself: ‘I would never have let him get like this.’ But Kay,

misinterpreting the silence, began another story. It concerned another

man who ventured out in an east wind without his overcoat. This man had

a similar series of adventures, his experience differing from the first

man’s only in that he lingered for two days and then died, leaving a

widow and five children. Kay could not remember whether there were

three boys and two girls, or three girls and two boys. He began naming

them on his fingers. There were Horace and George, Margaret and Vera.

That made four. He was sure there was another one--he remembered the

child perfectly as a baby, but he could not for the life of him recall

its sex. He felt sure that its name began with F.

He became perplexed.

‘Mother, can’t _you_ remember?’ he asked. The question was an

accusation.

‘Remember what, dear?’ inquired Sophie in her gentle way.

‘The name of Tomlinson’s youngest. You remember Tomlinson.’

‘I don’t believe I do,’ said Sophie.

Sheila sat silent, limp under the burden of her disillusionment. She

felt something like fear when Sophie, with a rapturous cry, ‘She’s

awake!’, rose and darted from the room to fetch her little girl. To

hide her nervousness she said, ‘Such an unusual name you gave her,

didn’t you? What made you think of Robina?’

While Kay was losing himself in explanations Sophie came back, leading

her baby daughter by the hand. The mother’s face was shining.

‘Oh!’ A passionate cry broke from Sheila. In a moment she was on her

knees gazing with adoration at the flaxen-haired, elf-like child.

For from the big dreaming eyes her vanished Kay looked at her; the

wonderful boy dead and buried in a prematurely old man, lived again in

this two-year old girl. Hungrily Sheila kissed the tiny face ... and

once again she felt his arm about her and heard his boyish whispers.

‘Oh, give her to me!’ she cried, looking up over the child’s head at

its father.

Kay’s face lit up.

‘I’ve got it now. I remember,’ he said triumphantly.

‘What?’ asked Sophie, troubled by Sheila’s emotion, and yet gratified

by it.

‘Why,’ said Kay, ‘the name of Tomlinson’s youngest. It was Freddie. I

told you it began with an F.’

He looked round with modest pride, and was surprised to see Sheila

burst into tears.

* * * * *

So that was the solution of the problem. The beauty of life was only

for the young, the very young. In a child’s heart and nowhere else the

kingdom of heaven was to be found, a frail gossamer thing vanishing

with the years. This was the common lot: by contact with the world

to rub the down of paradise off our souls, to grow drab and dull in

spirit, drab and dull in mind, even before that waning of physical

strength which alone could assuage the bitterness of the process. In

Kay youth had died; in Edward--Edward had never been young; but in

herself youth lived and craved more life. Yes, it lived still, but now

it was stricken and dying.

It flashed upon her then that she too could renew her youth. In a child

she could live again.

But a child had been denied her.

She deemed her life to be already virtually finished. She would age

from this moment: after a brief fever her mind would dim and even the

desire for beauty would sink into oblivion. She tried to hope it would

be soon, but the struggling youth in her cried out against the hope.

2

The struggling youth in her cried out, and, years later, the cry was

answered. Beauty became incarnated in the person of Stephen Redshawe,

whose son she later encountered in the house at Maadi. The past rose in

sad loveliness, enveloping her with the fragrance of pressed flowers;

but of all the memories that surged in her, this one alone broke in

pitiless splendour over her consciousness. In that moment Stephen

Redshawe lived again, less as a man and a lover than as a gleam, an

ecstasy, a chord of divine music, a symbol of all that she had longed

for and lost. Other things she could recall minutely, but Stephen

remained a vague splendour. She recalled how, in her little cottage

near Mundesley, she had waited for his promised coming; how she had

looked again and again, in wonder, to find in her mirror the face he

had called lovely. It was a face ravaged less by her thirty-three years

than by discontent. His sisters and his mother she remembered only as

so many bundles of feminine hostility. They disapproved of her, and no

wonder: was she not a married woman, holiday-making alone, who yet

suffered gladly the admiration of an infatuated boy? They called her

adventuress, no doubt, and she, even in the midst of the adventure,

made allowances for them. She had neither the strength nor the will to

renounce the fairest gift that life offered.

‘May I come in?’ Stephen’s tall figure filled the doorway.

‘You must,’ Sheila answered, with a smile. ‘I’m not going to give you

any tea while you stand there keeping the sunshine out.’

‘This is our last meeting,’ blundered Stephen. ‘I want to tell you....’

Suddenly dreading to hear the words for which she longed, Sheila fended

them away. ‘Eat your pretty cake,’ she admonished him.

After tea they went out into the sandy paddock and talked for an hour

of indifferent things, of trains, of luggage, of books and bad music

... until a stillness fell, heralding dusk. Evening became personal

and urgent to enfold them: they could hear in the wash of the water,

rhythmically plashing the sand, the rise and fall of her bosom; they

could feel her breath sweeter than apples in the autumn air. And all

the skies that during the past weeks of stolen companionship they

had seen together, all the tides they had watched moving upon the

shore, became fused with that sky, with that tide; all the hours of

their comradeship were gathered up into that hour. They surrendered

themselves to the embracing arms of silence.

To Sheila it was as if infinity had been spilled into time: the moments

throbbed by, brimming with beauty, until the silence that these two

guarded became a music, a poem, a flower of loveliness. It was a flower

that budded and blossomed till their vision dimmed with the glory of

it, a flower that burst and fell scattering pollen and perfume.

He bent towards her, with cheeks flaming. ‘You know, don’t you?’ he

said, and for a moment could not go on. To Sheila life was become

exquisitely unreal, a work of art. ‘You must know,’ he said brokenly,

‘that I adore you.’

Compassionately she laid her cool hand on his.

‘Yes,’ she said, in a low tone tenderly soothing.

‘Ah!’ His breath fluttered. She gave him her trembling lips.

They kissed, first, like boy and girl, timidly; then like comrades

united after a long parting; again, and a red splendour flamed through

the throbbing world. He lifted her into his arms, and divine madness

seized her. He carried her with strong unfaltering stride into the

house.

And this day, which they had called the end, was really the beginning.

She returned on the morrow to Edward’s house and confided to her

husband that she wished him to divorce her. Edward listened patiently,

like the disinterested friend he was; but his disinterestedness made

her pride wince, and the old hated surroundings were bleak about her.

Yet on that night of her return, in the sanctuary of her bedroom, she

undressed with a new joy. She stood nude before the wardrobe mirror

and gazed with awe upon the pure rounded loveliness of her own form.

She stroked gently her white velvet skin. Her body, so long disdained,

had become sacred to her again. As she laid her head, that kingdom

of heaven, upon her pillow, and murmured Stephen’s name, Stephen

himself, in a suburb fourteen miles away, posted his weekly letter

to the girl--no adventuress, she--who was to become his wife and the

mother of his only son. For Stephen, too, was back in the old routine,

enfolded and pressed close to the bosom of his family, conscious of

his mother’s eyes watching him with an angry solicitude. Not without a

struggle did he succumb. To Grace, whose pretty simplicity no longer

held him, he hinted dire things; but at the first gesture of suffering

from her he winced, and surrendered. And he wrote to Sheila in his

best literary style. She carried the letter, as she had carried its

predecessors, into the summer-house, that she might commune with her

lover undisturbed.

‘Darling,’ she read, ‘the thought of how I must hurt you is hell to me.’

She caught her breath, looked once upon the sky, and then bent her eyes

again to receive the blow....

With mind benumbed she looked up from the fastidious caligraphy to find

Stephen himself standing, like a whipped dog, before her. For a moment

they strangely stared.

‘Why have you come?’

He broke out into self-pity. ‘Oh, I can’t bear it. Don’t for God’s sake

look like that.... I couldn’t leave you without a word from your lips.’

She tried to harden her heart. ‘Is that all?’

His hands made a helpless gesture. ‘I’m such a despicable coward. I’ve

lived always among dreams. Real life is too hard for me--I’d be better

dead.’

‘Why have you come?’ she asked. ‘Have you anything to add to this?’

She held out his letter. ‘Why not leave it at that?’

‘I had to see you,’ he said. ‘I had to ask your forgiveness. I hoped to

get here before that thing. Oh, how detestable I am!’

He dropped on to the seat beside her and sat, hunched and shaking, a

figure of desolation.

‘Never mind,’ said Sheila firmly. ‘Don’t cry over spilt milk. You’re

quite free now to go back to her. And you’ve done me no harm.’

He stammered in amazement. ‘You can say that! Don’t you see how

contemptible I am! I would like to kill myself!’

He brooded on that thought. Death was the only escape from his own

insufferable egoism. Then he began to perceive that he was extracting

enjoyment even from the savour of his own self-loathing. He was rolling

the bitterness round on his tongue till it had a certain sweetness for

him. He was indulging in an orgy of painful emotions that was delicious

to the very egoism it wounded. He was discovering hitherto unplumbed

depths in his nature and being fascinated by the stupendous spectacle

of his own soul’s suffering. And he knew that the experience was far

too morbidly interesting to drive him to suicide.

The perception of his self-pity afflicted Sheila with a new and more

sickening pain. Something of this change must have been visible in her

face, for with a manifest effort he became calm, and began speaking in

more normal tones.

‘Perhaps we shall be glad afterwards,’ he said slowly. ‘The scandal

would have killed my mother....’

Sheila winced. ‘Oh, Stephen, are you trying to make me hate you? Why

did you say that?...’

‘Why----’

‘Why do you talk in that unreal way? Why do you pretend ... try at the

last moment to blind me with false pious reasoning!’

‘But what I said about my mother----’

‘--Was false as water. You didn’t mean a word of it. You are too

dreadfully sorry for yourself to care about your mother. You’re

breaking faith, and because it hurts you you’re trying to feel good

about it. God knows I haven’t disputed your decision--nor even blamed

you for it. But now, please go!’

He rose. ‘I am not to come back?’

‘No, no. Go away.’

‘But, Sheila----’

‘Why will you torture me so?’ she cried. ‘It’s your own choice. If only

you’d never come to-night--it would have been so much kinder.’

‘Oh, I can’t bear this!’ He trembled towards her.

She rose, to confront him with lustreless eyes.

‘Are you made of straw? Can you neither take me nor leave me?...

Good-bye.’

‘God, how you hate me now!’ he murmured, as she swept past him.

She paused to say: ‘That should be nothing to you. But it’s not true.

You have done me no harm. I had never known happiness before you came

... but,’ she added, with his child in her womb, ‘I shall soon forget,

and you will have made no difference. None at all.’

She stumbled out into the hateful sunlight and went, half-running,

towards the house.

3

In Edward’s house, and with Edward’s bored approval--for he was busy

at the time on a scathing history of the Jesuits--Stephen’s child was

born. And, in the triumph that followed agony, the spirit of Sheila

rose from the dead. Four years later, determined to purge herself of

bitterness, she visited the scene of her love. When she entered the

paddock again, her silent but excited child at her side, her eyes

filled with tears at the sight of the old romantic disorder that had

once so charmed her. ‘These poppies,’ her heart said, ‘are children

of flowers that witnessed our love.’ The paddock was shut in on three

sides by a hedge of briar. In the long rank grass numberless weeds had

rioted unchecked for many years, and the hand of the picnicker lay

heavy on the land. A medley of docks, nettles, thistles, poppies, empty

cigarette packets, paper bags, ginger-beer bottles, and corks, greeted

Sheila’s eyes. ‘What a pickle!’ she said.

‘What a lovely pickle, Sheila,’ the little girl echoed. She began

collecting corks with the solemnity of an elderly spinster gathering

a cautionary nosegay for a drunkard’s grave. This was a simile that

Sheila, gravely nonsensical, suggested to Rosemary, who with perfect

dignity assented. ‘How fortunate that Edward isn’t here to be shocked

by my vulgarity,’ Sheila thought.

Entering the house she found there matter for surprise: a greasy

plate, a crust of bread, and a breakfast cup, caked with tannin,

standing ankle-deep in a saucer half-full of spilt tea. The next moment

Mrs. Boddy arrived, a little red berry of humanity to whom had been

entrusted a duplicate key and the duty of preparing the place for

habitation.

‘Oh, ma’am!’ said Mrs. Boddy. ‘To think that you should have got ’ere

before me, without a bit of tea ready or nothing.’ The sight of those

inglorious festal remains was the culminating assault on her feelings.

‘There! Just look at that.’

Sheila nodded, smiling. ‘Some one’s been here evidently. The question

is, Who?’

‘And how?’ added Mrs. Boddy. ‘’Ow?’ she repeated, by way of emphasis.

‘And oh,’ she cried, enveloping Rosemary, ‘here’s the dear little ducky

duck. Hasn’t she got a kiss for the wicked old woman that didn’t get

her mother’s tea ready?’

Having released Rosemary, Mrs. Boddy stood brooding. ‘There’s been a

man here. One of those persons of the tramp class.’

After a moment’s contemplation of this hypothetical tramp, ‘It’s not at

all nice,’ she added, and drew away from the polluted table. ‘You might

be murdered in your beds.’

‘Well, if one must be murdered, one could hardly choose a more

comfortable place,’ said Sheila. ‘Let’s try to make a fire to boil the

kettle on, shall we? I’m longing for my tea.’

Mrs. Boddy became the embodiment of bustle. She shot out of the house

in search of dry sticks for the fire.

‘And do you know what I would do if I were you, ma’am?’ she enquired,

reappearing after a brief and successful forage. ‘I’d have my tea

and go straight back to town. Straight back. I wouldn’t stay another

minute.’

‘Not stay!’ echoed Sheila in weak astonishment. ‘Not stay for a

holiday?’

‘Not to be murdered, I wouldn’t.’

‘After coming all this way?’

‘Not to be murdered,’ repeated Mrs. Boddy firmly.

‘But perhaps we shan’t be murdered.’

‘You mark my words,’ Mrs. Boddy admonished her.

Sheila laughed. ‘I’m not going to be frightened away by a dirty cup and

saucer.’

‘Well, let’s hope for the best,’ said Mrs. Boddy, with an unexpected

access of cheerfulness. ‘And after all, if anything nasty _does_

happen, I’m not above half a mile away, am I?’

She emerged, goggle-eyed, from the pantry.

‘And blest if me lord haven’t helped himself to the stores I got in

for you!’ she exclaimed, shrilly indignant; and then, with lingering

pathos: ‘Oh, _ma’am_!’

After tea Mrs. Boddy went home, and Sheila took her child into the

belittered paddock, and sat in a deck-chair, crocheting, and watching

the shadows lengthen, while Rosemary in her busily silent fashion

wandered in the long grasses. From time to time the little girl took

an occasional bite out of an apple with which Mrs. Boddy had sought to

win her regard, until she made a discovery that sent her running to her

mother, somewhat sternly demanding why she had been given an apple from

which the cork had not been removed. Later, the paddock was invaded by

a sleek brown dog with melancholy eyes, velvet ears, and a general air

of unctuous virtue, with whom Rosemary instantly made friends.

‘What a dear dog,’ she said, returning to Sheila’s chair after spending

twenty minutes in the company of this engaging creature.

‘Yes. He seems at home here,’ replied Sheila, thinking of Mrs. Boddy’s

tramp.

‘Of _course_ he’s at home,’ said the child with magisterial emphasis.

‘I asked him to make himself at home. And he did.’

‘How friendly of him.’ Sheila’s eyes drank in eagerly the absurd

delicious gravity of Rosemary’s thought-puckered face. ‘I wonder what

his name is.’

‘His name,’ answered the child casually, ‘is Poker.’ After a pause she

added: ‘Poker Morgan his name is. He’s just come home from school.’

Sheila waited with becoming seriousness for further details of Poker

Morgan’s eventful life. ‘He goes to school every day,’ Rosemary went

on. ‘Every day except Sunday. On Sunday he doesn’t go to school, he

doesn’t. He stays at home with his mother.’

‘How nice for Mrs. Morgan,’ said Sheila. ‘And what does Poker learn at

school?’

‘Oh, just lessons; that’s all.’ Rosemary dismissed the question with

the air of having sufficiently explained everything. ‘May I have

another sponge finger, please, Sheila?’

Irresponsibly light-hearted, Sheila retired to bed, joining Rosemary

in the little attic room with the homicidal slanting roof. She stood

for some time at the east window, bathing in the moonlight, and looking

towards the sea which broke within twenty yards of the crumbling wall.

The wind fluttered her night-dress.

Nocturnal calm was abruptly shattered by a beer-thickened voice

uttering a passionate demand for admittance. Sheila stepped quickly

across the room to the western window.

‘You let me in before yourrurt,’ urged the voice. And Sheila, leaning

out of the window, saw a gentleman in baggy corduroys that were tied

with string at the knees peering up at her malevolently from under a

huge cloth cap. The moon focussed her light upon his impressive figure.

‘Mrs. Boddy’s tramp,’ murmured Sheila, secure in the knowledge of

having made fast all doors and windows.

‘I’ll soon show you whose ’ouse it is,’ promised the gentleman in the

garden.

‘Please go away,’ Sheila advised him. ‘I’m sure you must be ready for

your bed.’

Mrs. Boddy’s tramp found this well-meant counsel literally staggering.

He executed a series of curious plunges, and having described a

complete circle resumed his original stance.

‘Oh, it’s go away, is it?’

‘It really is,’ Sheila assured him. ‘I’m too tired to entertain a

strayed reveller. Please go away. I’m going to shut the window.’

‘Oh, it’s shut the window, is it?...’ enquired the strange gentleman,

in a slightly more conciliatory tone. ‘’Oose window? Answer me that.’

But the spirit of nonsense in Sheila had tired itself out. She withdrew

into the room, and when the voice broke loose again from its owner’s

control, she began to feel impatient. Presently this nuisance would

waken Rosemary, and perhaps even frighten her. This fear sent her

quickly back to the window.

‘If you don’t go away at once my husband will fetch a policeman.’

‘I’m a Nopper by trade,’ continued the visitor, unaccountably and

savagely hurling his cap on the ground. ‘Can’t I turn me head a minute

without a mob like you stealing the ’ouse off me back? Answer me that.’

The serene little figure of Rosemary sat up suddenly in bed.

‘Who’s that shouting to you, Sheila?’

‘The gentleman’s a hopper, dear. Go to sleep again, like a good girl.’

‘I don’t like him,’ said Rosemary. ‘Tell Mr. Hopper to go away.’

Sheila shut the window; and after a while the visitor withdrew, leaving

behind him a dirty cloth cap and the germ of a new mythology.

* * * * *

In the morning Rosemary found inscrutable but sufficient cause to

reverse her condemnation of Mr. Hopper. She spent the odd moments of

the next day embellishing the ideal portrait that her surprising young

fancy had drawn. At breakfast Mr. Hopper was a nice large gentleman;

by lunchtime he was wearing blue spectacles, had developed a taste

for sponge fingers, and was clad in a velvet jacket, like Edward’s,

with cavernous pockets containing a clockwork train and a woolly-pated

black doll. The next day he mysteriously acquired a brown beard and

a pair of spotty trousers similar to those of a certain harlequin

prominent among Rosemary’s cherished memories, and before the week

was out he was provided with a Botticelli halo that added sanctity to

an already distinguished appearance. Stories of his wonderful doings

began to circulate: how he had travelled in a train to the City to

buy feeding-bottles for Rosemary’s children; how his several mothers

(a generic term that included wives) had had to physic his cough; and

how bravely he could ride elephants. Mr. Hopper had various secondary

designations: sometimes he was known as the man with a lot of mothers

(a distinction he perhaps derived from Bluebeard); sometimes, more

tersely, as ‘my friend’; and sometimes as Poker Morgan’s father. In

short Mr. Hopper was canonized; Mr. Hopper became a legend. He went

triumphantly upon his swaggering, nonsensical, polygamous, but none

the less kindly way in Rosemary’s mind, a figure of flaming glory and

infinite adaptability; until abruptly, and without pity, she tired of

him and turned to other joys.

On Sunday morning she was taken, for the first time, to church; whence

she returned consumingly curious. To Sheila, who had hoped for no more

than a vague æsthetic enjoyment, the ceremony had been disappointing.

She felt unequal to explaining why Rosemary must on no account bestow

the big pockets and spotty trousers of her generous imagination upon

members of the Holy Trinity, whose names the little girl had fatally

remembered. But blasphemy being so clearly imminent, Sheila addressed

herself with a sigh to the task of averting it.

‘Jesus, dear, was the name of a real person, someone who really lived.

Not like Mr. Hopper.’

Rosemary’s intense dark eyes grew profoundly reproachful. This lapse

from poetic faith on the part of so skilled a fellow-artist as Sheila

was terrible. It was as though the whole beautiful city of pretence was

threatened with hostile invasion.

‘But Mr. Hopper is real too,’ Rosemary said, with quivering lip.

‘Of course he is,’ agreed Sheila hastily. ‘How silly of me! But he is

different. You mustn’t mix him up with these others.’

When some working agreement in this delicate matter had been reached,

they went to the beach together to dig sand castles and tell each

other stories: an idyllic experience, type of many shared during this

magical holiday.

4

Then upon the smooth sands of this quietude Terror planted his ugly

hoof. Rosemary was seized with illness. Unaccountably, in spite of

Sheila’s lavish care, she had caught a dangerous chill.

Sheila locked up the house, and ran, already feverish with anxiety, to

Mrs. Boddy. She arrived breathless, to find that amiable woman with her

arms up to the elbows in soapy water.

‘It’s Rosemary--she’s ill,’ gasped Sheila. ‘Please fetch someone

quickly.’ She dropped into the nearest chair, breathing hard.

The red hands leaped out of the wash-tub and were rubbed on an

immaculate white apron.

‘Pore lamb!’ cried Mrs. Boddy. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

Sheila was now upon her feet again, her breath recovered. ‘I don’t

quite know. She caught cold yesterday. I doctored her as best I could.

But this morning she’s worse--breathing badly and almost delirious.

Please go at once. She’s alone in the house--I’m going back.’

The vision of the sick child calling in vain for its mother stabbed

Sheila to an impossible speed. After running a few hundred yards she

was overtaken and picked up by a man driving a trap.

Back in the cottage, ‘I must keep calm. I mustn’t lose control of

myself,’ she urged upon her wildly beating heart; and she climbed the

stairs trying not to be terrified by the deathly silence of the place.

When she opened the bedroom door she could hear the sawing noise of the

child’s breathing, and fear laid a cold finger on her brain: could that

be what they called the death-rattle?

‘Ah,’ she said, half-aloud, ‘if I lose my nerve I shall be useless to

her in her greatest need.’ And, deciding that she could do no more, she

forced herself to sit down and await with iron patience the doctor’s

coming. She wondered whether she would do wrong if she opened the

window she had in her first panic shut. The room was unbearably stuffy.

‘Pure air _must_ be better than bad,’ she told herself; and unfastened

the catch. The garden seemed full of sunshine and birds and the smell

of honeysuckle.

She turned her head at the sound of steps on the stairs. ‘At last!’

A commanding and resolute female figure appeared in the doorway:

Edward’s sister, Hypatia.

‘Well, Sheila,’ said Hypatia, humorously grim. ‘You keep open house, I

see.’

Sheila stared, unable and uncaring to hide her disappointment. ‘Oh, you

mean my leaving the front door open. That’s for the doctor.’

Hypatia stepped into the room. ‘Something’s wrong.’ Her tone became

gentle as her glance fell upon Rosemary. ‘Rosemary--she’s ill?’

‘Yes ... Rosemary.’ Sheila’s voice lingeringly caressed the name.

‘Poor little kid,’ Hypatia murmured. ‘What is it?’

In an undertone Sheila began repeating her simple story. ‘Oh, I do

wish the doctor would come!’ she broke off. ‘It may be pneumonia or

something even more dreadful.’

Instantly forgetting Hypatia, she paced to the door and began running

downstairs. And at that moment a trap drew up outside the house, and

the doctor entered, followed at a respectful distance by Mrs. Boddy.

He was a tall curvilinear man with a stoop and an air of intense

preoccupation. With a perfunctory response to Sheila’s eager greeting

he followed her upstairs. Furtively, with eyes veiling mistrust, she

watched him approach the bedside.

Twenty seconds later her feelings towards him had totally changed.

He won her heart by the smile that flickered for a moment in his

face at first sight of his patient, and by the gentleness with which

he unclasped Rosemary’s fingers from the woolly bear that her arm

embraced. Sheila gave herself to the answering of his professional

questions.

* * * * *

Her fears a little stilled by the doctor’s reassurances, she

surrendered to Hypatia’s importunity by withdrawing with her into the

garden for a few moments.

‘Now, Sheila, my dear,’ Hypatia urged, taking her arm with a sisterly

caressing, ‘you’re not to worry. Worry’s fatal. The kid’s going to get

well quite soon.’

‘Do you really think so?’ asked Sheila, pathetically eager.

Hypatia feigned exasperated wonder. ‘Well, I’m dashed!’ she exclaimed,

in the old school-girl tone of nearly forty years ago. ‘What’s the good

of calling in a doctor and paying him ridiculous fees if you don’t

believe what he tells you? Didn’t Mr. New Moon say she’d be out of bed

in a fortnight?’

‘With care,’ supplemented Sheila, on whose brain the doctor’s words

were indelibly written.

‘Of course, with care. Without care we should all come to grief.’

Sheila faintly smiled. ‘Do you remember when you so hotly denied the

reality of sin, sickness, and death?’

‘Ah, that’s long ago,’ said Hypatia good-humouredly. ‘I’ve had a varied

career since then. Still, we live and learn.’

‘What’s the latest?’ asked Sheila.

‘The latest?’

‘The latest religious nostrum.’

‘Back in the fold for a time.’ Hypatia seemed to enjoy the new-found

pleasure of poking fun at herself. ‘Do you remember Herbert Spencer,

Sheila? But one can’t rest there. For me it’s Woman Suffrage now.

It’s got to come. And I’m reading Butler again. Good stuff. _Life and

Habit_ especially, and _Unconscious Memory_. Jumps on Darwin for having

banished mind from the universe. But you haven’t asked me why I’ve come

yet. Aren’t you surprised to see me?’

‘Why have you come?’ Sheila asked obediently. ‘I’m very glad you did

come,’ she added.

‘I wonder if you are really,’ mused Hypatia. ‘We’ve been too polite

to each other since we were married, Sheila, too polite to be quite

good friends. Never mind. I came to say good-bye. Bunny’s got a job in

Cairo. Something to do with irrigation. The sort of thing he wanted.’

‘Must I congratulate you?’ said Sheila. ‘No, I won’t. You two are going

to Egypt, and I shall never see you again. How very unpleasant of you.’

‘I wish you could come too. But Edward couldn’t very well move his

little pet idol _The Iconoclast_ to Cairo.’

‘Oh, that wouldn’t matter to me.’ Sheila was too weary to maintain a

pretence.

Hypatia raised her eyebrows. ‘You’ve quarrelled?’

‘My dear Hypatia, can you imagine Edward being so unreasonable as to

quarrel? We could part without tears, I assure you. But that doesn’t

mean I can come to Cairo with you. There’s Rosemary to consider.’

Hypatia smiled grimly. ‘That’s very thin. Go and pack your trunk for

Egypt, Sheila.’

Conversation was cut short by the arrival of the doctor.

‘She is already a little more comfortable,’ he assured Sheila, ‘and

sleeping.’ A fugitive smile crossed his face. ‘She is talking in her

sleep about fire-irons, so far as I can make out. A certain poker....’

‘Oh, that’s Poker Morgan,’ interposed Sheila, happy at the sound of so

friendly a name. ‘When will you come again?’

‘Mrs. Boddy is with the patient. An admirable person. I shall call

again to-night. Now, Mrs. Fairfield, are you a sensible woman?’

Sheila, eagerly submissive, hoped that she was. ‘I’ll do anything for

her that you tell me. She’s all I’ve got.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ he said. ‘But if you’re a sensible woman you’ll

not be alarmed when I suggest taking a second professional opinion.’

‘Please do,’ begged Sheila, who had long made a secret determination to

insist on such a precaution.

‘It’s not that I’m afraid about the child. But I’m a cautious man. And

I’ve never held omniscience to be part of a physician’s equipment. She

has had these chills before?’

‘Frequently, but never so badly.’

‘The nose and throat are affected,’ said the curving doctor. ‘She’s

acutely susceptible to cold. Treacherous east winds about. Bad place,

England, for a constitution like hers. You should take her to a warm

climate: warm and dry.’

With a boyish air of having finished a necessary recital he raised his

hat and began picking his way across the wilderness of paddock.

Sheila glanced at her friend’s face. Triumph danced in the eyes of

Hypatia.

PART THE FOURTH

_Evening of the Same Day_

‘Slip away while you can, and have a look at my Thought Forms,’ Mr.

Bunnard had urged the agitated young man; and by politely acquiescing

Stephen Redshawe’s son had condemned himself to suffer a two hours’

mystical monologue illustrated by coloured drawings. When they at last

emerged from what the old gentleman termed, with accidental aptness,

his den, the Egyptian dark had come, not at one stride yet swiftly, to

envelop the house at Maadi.

But the darkness of this particular April evening was but a more

exquisite light: day seen through a veil of mystery, purged of its

glare. Moon shed her unearthly pallor over the piazza with its pattern

in ochre and green, and silvered the leaves of the lebbek trees in the

garden. The intense dark blue of the sky was numerously divided by the

fine mesh of the mosquito netting that clung to the supporting white

columns. When Rosemary left the piano and sat down in the deck-chair

opposite Redshawe, only the incessant dry rattle of crickets remained

to make the stillness musical. She came like cool rain; she seemed

to bring with her a dewy grace that dispelled the languor wrought in

him by the too-intoxicating syringa; and he reposed gratefully in the

unmeasured comfort of her nearness.

Redshawe, dilettante in letters, groped in his mind for a phrase that

should symbolize the baffling quality in her: a quality as indefinable

as the fragrance of musk-roses. ‘Incarnate stillness’ hovered for his

choosing; but the futility of his efforts becoming thereby so patent,

he abandoned the search, quite reverently sighing. Stillness, silence,

the very spirit of quietude, in her became personal. She had light

brown hair and olive skin; she was perhaps twenty-five years old; but

her unfathomable dark eyes gazed from an oval face absurdly angelic

with the sublime gravity of a child. With Mrs. Bunnard rasping on one

side of him and Mr. Bunnard chirping a high-pitched chorus part on the

other, Redshawe strained his ears to catch Rosemary’s soft tones. In

conversation she palpitated an innocent curiosity. She focussed those

twin orbs of mystery upon his religious doubts; and not all the mature

intelligence of her arguments could obscure for him the shining of her

angel-infancy. That very phrase flashed on him while they talked, an

echo from his reading, suggesting another, from the same source, that

for a while almost satisfied his longing for an adequate symbol. ‘A

white celestial thought.’ Yes: Rosemary herself was a white celestial

thought.

‘The fundamental cause of reincarnation,’ said Mrs. Bunnard firmly,

‘is, as you know, the lust for sentient life. Once we have conquered

that----’

‘We shall have reached a consummation,’ interpolated her husband,

‘much, as Shakespeare says, to be desired.’

‘The law of periodicity, Mr. Redshawe,’ Mrs. Bunnard assured him,

‘is perfectly obvious and understandable. Night and day, life and

death, sleeping and waking--all these simple alternations are but

manifestations of a universal rhythm.’

Not to be outdone, ‘The systole and diastole,’ cried Mr. Bunnard,

deftly inserting a smile and a phrase into the manifest gap, ‘the

systole and diastole of the Cosmic Heart.’

Desperately, like a goaded animal, ‘But what,’ asked Redshawe, ‘has all

this God-throb....’

A surprising ripple of laughter arrested his question and drew his eyes

back to Rosemary. Sheila came generously to the rescue and distracted

to herself the enemy’s fire. In a little while Mrs. Bunnard withdrew to

her bedroom with the announced intention of meditating; and the battle

raged less furiously between the two remaining elders: so healingly

less that Redshawe had a beatific sense of being alone in the universe

with his divinity.

He plunged deeply into the cool waters of her elusive beauty, and they

talked eagerly, yet with harmonious pauses ... until he chanced to see

that on the third finger of her left hand she wore a plain gold ring.

* * * * *

Too desperately stricken to pay another moment’s homage to his ideal

English reticence, he in effect ran like a hurt child to Rosemary’s

mother by contriving an early opportunity of solitary speech with

her. He the more readily exposed his wound to Sheila because he now

perceived what until the shattering to bits of his fool’s paradise had

been beyond his vision: that Sheila too was suffering.

‘She’s married!’ he protested to her.

‘Rosemary?’ she wearily answered him.

‘Rosemary, of course,’ he cried, forgetting both patience and

ceremony. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘I didn’t tell you?’ Sheila repeated in astonishment.

Flushed and gloomy, he made equine plunges towards the explanation he

considered so superfluous.

‘Well, didn’t you know? Of course, you must have known. Yet how should

you?’

‘Know!’ echoed Sheila. ‘Know that she was married?’

‘No, no.’ Impatiently he shook the suggestion away. ‘What it means to

me--you must have known that?’

‘My poor boy! What _does_ it mean to you?’

They stared at each other with troubled eyes.

‘Everything,’ answered his helpless gesture.

Her face contracted with pain. She bowed her head. With pain, swiftly,

she bowed her head. For one terrible moment he thought she was going to

weep.

He put his arm round her shoulders.

‘It must be much worse for you,’ he said vaguely, wishing to help.

Already he knew dimly that he, being young, would forget some day.

She moved gently away from him. ‘But we mustn’t be tragic, must we?’

she said, trying to smile. ‘You don’t quite understand.’

‘I understand something,’ he pleaded, lest his sympathy should be

repulsed. ‘So very little, but something. I’ve loved her for weeks ...

but she must be infinitely more to you.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of Rosemary,’ said Sheila. ‘Please don’t look quite

like that,’ she almost passionately added.

He trod the fringe of the incomprehensible. ‘Ah, you were thinking....

My way of speaking perhaps reminded you....’

‘I was thinking of Rosemary’s father,’ Sheila abruptly assured him.

‘And so you are in love with my daughter, are you?’ She spoke almost

coldly. ‘Would you think me very bitter if I congratulated you on

losing her?’

His face was all question.

‘She would have broken your heart. She is very hard to those that love

her.’

‘Hard!’ His tone was almost scornful in its incredulity. ‘With the face

of an angel and the wondering eyes of a child!’

‘Yes. Have you never seen a child pick wings off flies? Rosemary is

still a child. Enchanting. Sweet beyond words. But with a child’s

incapacity for love.’

‘But she’s _married_!’

‘Yes,’ Sheila answered, with dreadful serenity. ‘She was married this

afternoon, when I supposed her to be at the Lodge with her aunt. She

dropped in somewhere to be married, and picked up Hypatia on the way

home.’

‘But....’ Redshawe was helpless.

‘Oh, I knew it must come soon. She had been engaged for some years.’

‘May I ask to whom?’

‘The Reverend Oliver Wendell Brunt, an American gentleman.’

Redshawe paced the room. ‘And where in thunder is he?’

‘On his knees, no doubt, invoking God’s blessing on his work in China.

He is a missionary. They leave to-morrow together. They’ve just had

the call from God and must obey at once. Rosemary has apologized very

nicely for her eccentricity. She was afraid I might make a fuss, and

cry at the ceremony; so she arranged it this way. And she just doesn’t

understand what it all means to me.’

‘What an inhuman crowd they are!’ muttered Redshawe. And he gasped to

recall Rosemary’s serene bearing, her untroubled beauty, her lucid

reasoning, her faultless rendering of Scriabine, and the placid prattle

of her uncle and aunt. An incredible household.

Silence fell between them.

‘Forgive me, Mrs. Fairfield,’ broke out Redshawe after a while. ‘I

shouldn’t have blundered in with my self-pity. But mine isn’t a boyish

fancy or any rot of that kind. To me she is just pure beauty. I’ve

always worshipped beauty. I could have poured out my life like wine at

her feet.’

‘And to me,’ said Sheila, ‘she was a little helpless thing that fumbled

at my breasts. She’s been my whole life for twenty-six years. I waited

for her coming as for the coming of God.... Let’s go in: they’ll be

waiting supper for us!’

Sadly, ‘Life seems to promise so much,’ Redshawe began, with the unique

solemnity of adolescence. ‘Beauty stands in the doorway and beckons ...

and when we follow she’s vanished.’

‘Lucky boy!’ with a wan smile Sheila said to him. ‘You’ll be busy

writing lyrics about this to-morrow.’

The door opened noiselessly, and in the doorway, two slender white

fingers resting on the handle, stood Rosemary, lightly poised on her

toes as though for celestial flight. Her eyes sparkled with an almost

stellar radiance; her cheeks were delicately flushed, and her lips

a little parted, like the petals of an awakening rosebud. Redshawe,

abashed at the memory of having criticized her for inhumanity,

worshipped once more her divinity, lapsed into mute adoration; and

Sheila held her breath, telling herself: ‘I may never see her stand

like that again.’

‘Supper’s ready, mother. I’m sure you’re both hungry.’ The words did

but tremble in the air for a moment, and then became no more than an

imperishable memory for mother and lover.

‘Do let me take you in, Mrs. Fairfield,’ said Redshawe, affectionately,

compassionately gallant; and as Sheila, a little tremulous but gravely

mistress of herself, took the arm he offered, ‘Thank you, my dear,’ she

rewarded him. But in her heart she was saying: ‘The last supper.’

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.