Roger North let himself down into the cane deck-chair by his study
window with a sigh of relief. The wonderful weather still held. It had
been a hot morning, there were people staying in the house—people who
bored North—and lunch had been to him a wearisome meal. Everyone had
consumed a great deal of food and wine and talked an amazing lot of
nonsense, and made a great deal of noise, and the heat had become
unbearable.
Here, though the warmth was great, the stillness was perfect. The rest
of the world had retired to their rooms to change for the tennis party
in the afternoon. North felt he could depend on at least an hour of
quiet. Across the rosebeds and smooth lawns he could see his cattle
lying in the tall grass under the trees. He watched others moving slowly
from shade to shade—Daisy and Bettina, and Fancy—and presently Patricia,
the big white mother of many pigs, hove in sight on her way to the
woods. For North was a farmer too, and loved his beasts better, it must
be owned, than he loved his own kind.
He cut a hole in the orange he had brought from the lunch-table and
commenced to suck in great content. Like the ladies of Cranford he
considered there was no other way to eat an orange. He also agreed with
them that it was a pleasure that should be enjoyed in private.
He gave himself up to the soothing peace and rest of his cool shaded
room. The friendly faces of his beloved books looked down on him, the
fragrance of his roses came in, hot and sweet, a very quintessence of
summer. Patricia had reached the wood now; he watched her dignified
waddle disappear in its green depths. What a pleasant and beautiful
world it all was, except for the humans.
He dropped the jangling remains of the irritating lunch interval out of
his consciousness, and his mind drifted back to his morning’s work, the
conclusion of a week of observation, of measurements, of estimating
quantities, of balancing relations. A week of the scientist’s
all-absorbing pursuit of knowledge, which had, as his wife complained,
made him deaf and dumb and blind to all else. A disturbing fact in his
work was beginning to force itself upon him. He was becoming more and
more conscious that, in spite of the exquisite delicacy of scientific
apparatus, observation was becoming increasingly difficult. He could no
longer make the atom a subject of observation; it escaped him. He was
beginning to base his arguments on mathematical formula. Even with the
chemical atom, four degrees below the ultimate physical atom, he was
beginning to reason, without basing his reasons on observation, because
he could not observe; it was too minute, too fine, too delicate—it
escaped him. He had no instrument delicate enough to observe. He had
come to a deadlock. The fact forced itself upon him with ever-increasing
insistence; he could no longer deny it. He could carry some of his
investigations no farther without the aid of finer, subtler instruments.
His methods failed him. Nor could his particular order of mind accept
the new psychology. He could not investigate by means of hypnotism, or
autoscopy, or accept the strange new psychological facts which were
revolutionizing all the old ideas of human consciousness, because he
could not get away from the fundamental fact that science had no theory
with which these strange new things would fit, no explanation, as he had
said to Ruth Seer, which could arrange them in a rational order. And,
dreaming in the warmth of the afternoon, with the fragrance and beauty
of the wonderful universe filtering into his consciousness, the idea
penetrated with ever-growing insistence: Had the gods, by some wonderful
chance, by some amazing good fortune, placed in his hands, his, Roger
North’s, an instrument, finer, subtler, more delicate, than any of which
he had ever dreamed, the consciousness that was materializing as Ruth
Seer? He seemed struggling with himself, or rather with another self—a
self that was striving to draw him into misty unreal things, and he
shrank back into his world of what seemed to him solid, tangible things,
things that he could touch and handle and prove by measure and
calculation and observation. And then again the larger vision gripped
him. Was there indeed a finer, subtler, more wonderful matter, waiting
to be explored by different, finer, subtler methods? What was it Dick
Carey and Ruth Seer cognized, contracted with outside his ken? Could he
be certain it did not exist? “God! it would give you an horizon beyond
eternity,” he had said to Ruth Seer; that was true enough—if the vision
was true. Always till now he had thought of any vision beyond as a
fable, invented by wise men to help lesser men through what was after
all but a sorry business. And now, for the first time, it really gripped
him—what it would mean if it were not a fable, not a useful deception
for weaker men who could not face life as it really was. God! it would
give you an horizon beyond eternity! The vision was as yet only a dim
muddle of infinite possibilities and Roger North’s mind hated muddle. He
was like the blind man of Bethsaida who, when Christ touched his eyes,
looked up, and saw men, as trees, walking.
Suddenly he got up and moved a photograph of Dick Carey that stood upon
his writing-table, moved it to an inconspicuous place on the mantelshelf
amongst other photographs. Then he hesitated for a moment before he took
one of the others and put it on the writing-table.
And this simple action meant that Roger North had put on one side his
shrinking from the intangible and invisible and had started on new
investigations with new instruments for observation.
Then he went back to his chair and began a second orange. Mansfield had
just carried out the croquet mallets and balls, and was arranging for
the afternoon games in his usual admirable manner. North watched him
lazily as he sucked the orange, pleasantly conscious that a new interest
had gripped his life, his mind already busy, tabulating, arranging the
different subtler matter he proposed to work with.
It was here the door opened, and with the little clatter and bustle
which always heralded her approach, his wife entered, curled, powdered
and adorned, very pretty and very smart, for her afternoon party.
A visit from her at this moment was altogether unexpected. It was also
unfortunate.
It is doubtful if much had depended on it, whether Mrs. North could have
helped some expression of her objection to orange-sucking when indulged
in by her husband. She came to an abrupt halt in the doorway and looked
much as if there was a bad smell under her nose.
There was an unpleasant pause. North, inwardly fumed, continued to suck
his orange. He had, it is to be feared, the most complete contempt for
his wife’s opinion on all subjects, and it irritated him to feel that
she had nevertheless, at times, a power which, it must be confessed, she
had used unmercifully in the early days of their married life, to make
him feel uncomfortable.
Finally he flung the orange at the wastepaper basket, missed his aim,
and it landed, the gaping hole uppermost, in the centre of the hearth.
“If you want to speak to me,” he said irritably, “you had better come
and sit down. On the other hand, if you do not like my sucking an
orange, you might have gone away till I had finished.”
“I didn’t say anything,” said Mrs. North.
She skirted the offending orange skin carefully and arranged the fluffy
curls at the back of her neck in front of the glass. Then she sat down
and arranged the lace in front of her frock.
“I can’t think why you are always so disagreeable now,” she complained
at length. “You used to be so fond of me once.”
By this time the atmosphere was electric with irritation. A more
inopportune moment for such an appeal could hardly have been chosen.
“I don’t suppose you have dressed early to come down and tell me that,”
said North. It was not nice of him, and he knew it was not nice, but for
the life of him he could not help it. Indeed it was only by a superhuman
effort that his answer had not verged on the brutal.
“I came to talk to you about Violet, but it’s so impossible to talk to
you about anything.”
“Why try?” interposed North.
“I suppose you take some interest in your own child?” retorted Mrs.
North. “I daresay you have not noticed it, but she is looking wretchedly
ill.”
North relapsed into silence and continued to watch Mansfield’s
preparation on the lawn.
“_Have_ you noticed it?” asked his wife, her voice shrill now with
exasperation.
“Yes,” said North.
“Very well then, why can’t you take some interest? Why can’t you ever
talk things over with me like other husbands do with their wives? And it
isn’t only that she looks ill; she’s altered—she isn’t the same girl she
was even a year ago. And people remark on it. She isn’t popular like she
used to be. People seem afraid of her.”
She had secured North’s attention now. The drawn lines on his face
deepened. There was anxiety as well as irritation in his glances.
“Have you spoken to her? Tried to find out what is wrong?”
“No,” said Mrs. North. “At least I have _tried_, but it’s impossible to
get anything out of her. It’s like talking to a stranger. Really,
sometimes I’m frightened of her. It sounds ridiculous, of course, but
there it is. And we used to be such good friends and tell each other
everything.”
“I am afraid she has never really got over Dick’s death,” said North,
his manner appreciably gentler. “And possibly her marriage so soon after
was not the wisest thing.”
“You approved of it quite as much as I did.”
“Certainly. I am not in any sense blaming you. Besides, Violet did not
ask either our advice or our approval. My meaning rather is, that
possibly she is paying now for what I own seemed to me at the time a
quite amazing courage.”
“She confided in you all that dreadful time far more than she did in
me,” said Mrs. North fretfully, and with her pitiful inability to meet
her husband when his natural kindness of heart or sense of duty moved
him to try to discuss things of mutual interest with her in a friendly
spirit. “If you had not taken her away from me then, it might have been
different.”
North shrugged his shoulders, and returned to his contemplation of the
croquet lawn and Mansfield’s preparations. Violet had never from her
babyhood been anything but a bone of contention, unless he had been
content never to interfere or express opinions contrary to his wife’s.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Only show some natural interest in your own child,” she retorted. “But
you never can talk anything over without being irritable. And as to her
marriage with Fred, we were all agreed it was an excellent thing. Of
course if you haven’t noticed how altered she is, it’s no good my
telling you.”
“I have noticed it,” said North shortly.
“Well, what do you think we had better do?”
“You really want my opinion?”
North had said this before over other matters. He wrestled with the
futility of saying it over this. But he knew that his wife was a
devoted, if sometimes an unwise, mother, and he had on the whole been
very generous to her with regard to their only child. He sympathized
with her now in her anxiety.
“Of course I do,” she responded. “Isn’t it what I’ve been saying all
this time?”
“Then honestly I don’t see what either you or I can do but stand by. She
knows we’re there right enough, both of us. She can depend on Fred too,
she knows that. But it seems to me that until she comes to us we’ve got
to leave her alone to fight out whatever the trouble is in her own way.
I think you are right—there _is_ trouble. But we can’t force her
confidence and we should do no good if we did. I’m afraid you won’t
think that much help.” He looked at her with some kindness. “But I
believe it is quite sound advice.”
“It’s dreadful to feel like a stranger with one’s own child,” complained
Mrs. North. “It makes me perfectly miserable. Of course I don’t think a
father feels the same as a mother.”
A shadow fell across the strip of sunlight coming in from the window. A
gay voice broke the sequence of her complaint.
“Oh, _here_ you are!” it said.
Both of them looked up hastily, almost guiltily. Violet Riversley stood
on the gravel pathway outside. A gay and gallant figure, slim and
straight in her favourite white. The sun shone on the smooth coiled
satin of her dark hair, on the whiteness of her wonderful skin. Her
golden eyes danced as she crossed the step of the French window.
“I felt in my bones you would be having a party this afternoon,” she
said. “So I put Fred and myself into the car, and here we are!”
She looked from one to the other and they looked at her, momentarily
bereft of speech. For here was the old Violet, gay with over-brimming
life and mirth, the beautiful irresistible hoyden of the days before the
war, before Dick Carey had died, suddenly back again as it were. And
now, and now only, did either of them realize to the full the difference
between her and the Violet they had just been discussing.
“What is the matter with you both?” she cried. “You look as if you were
plotting dark and desperate deeds! And Mansfield is nearly in tears
under the beech-tree because he can’t arrange the chairs to his
satisfaction without you.” She looked at her mother. “He says”—she
looked at her father and bubbled with mirth—“the trenches have spoilt
his sense of the artistic! And he says he is a champion at croquet now
himself. He won all the competitions at V.A.D. hospital. Do you think we
ought to ask him to play this afternoon?”
“My dear Violet——” began Mrs. North, smitten by the horror of the
suggestion.
“Look here, Vi,” said North. On a sudden impulse he put his long legs
down from his deck-chair, sat erect, and swept her gay badinage aside.
“We were talking about you.”
“Me!”
She bent her straight black brows at him, a shadow swept over her
brilliance, she shivered a little.
“I suppose I have been pretty poisonous to you lately.” She meditated
for a moment. Then her old irresistible mischievous smile shone out.
“But it’s nothing to what I’ve been to poor Fred.”
She ran her lithe fingers through North’s grizzled hair and became
serious again.
“Dad and Mums, darlings, I don’t know what’s been the matter with me—but
I’ve been in hell. I woke up this morning and felt like
Shuna-something’s daughter when the devil was driven out of her. And I
got up and danced round the room in my nighty, because the old world was
beautiful again and I didn’t hate everything and everybody. And don’t
talk to me about what I’ve been like, darlings—I don’t want to think of
it. All I know is, it’s gone, and if it ever comes back——”
She stopped and repeated slowly:
“If it ever comes back——”
Her slim erect figure shivered, as a rod of steel shivers driven by
electric force.
Then she flung up a defiant hand and laughed. The gay light laughter of
the old Violet. “But I won’t let it! Never again! Never, never, never!
Mums, come out and wrestle with Mansfield’s lost artistic sense.”
She lifted Mrs. North, protesting shrilly, bodily out of her chair.
“My dear Violet! Don’t! Oh, my hat!” she cried, and retreated, like a
ruffled bird, to the looking-glass over the mantelshelf to rearrange her
plumage.
Violet seized her father by both hands and pulled him too out of his
chair.
“Come and play a game of croquet with me before the guests come, Herr
Professor,” she said.
It was her old name for him in the days when Karl von Schäde had brought
many German expressions and titles into their midst. It struck North
with a curious little unpleasant shock.
“Why have you put poor Dick’s photo up here?” asked his wife.
“Oh, do leave my things alone!” exclaimed North.
His wife’s capacity for discovering and inquiring into any little thing
he did not want to explain was phenomenal. It irritated him to see her
pick up the frame. It irritated him that she would always speak of his
dead friend as “poor Dick.”
The atmosphere disturbed by Violet’s sudden radiant entrance became once
more charged with electric irritation.
Mrs. North put down the frame with a little click.
“I thought it was some mistake of the servant’s,” she said stiffly.
Violet pulled her father out of the French window. “Come, we have only
time for half a game now,” she said.
Mrs. North followed.
“Your Miss Seer is coming this afternoon, Roger,” she said. “I do hope
you won’t talk to no one else, if you intend to appear at all. It looks
so bad, and only makes everyone talk!”
With which parting shot she retreated towards Mansfield and the chairs.
Violet slipped her arm through her father’s as they crossed the lawn.
“She can’t help it, daddy,” she said soothingly.
North laughed, a short mirthless laugh.
“I suppose not. Go ahead, Vi. I’ll take blue.”
They buried themselves in the game after the complete and concentrated
manner of the real croquet player. Both were above the average, and it
was an infinite relief to North to find Violet taking her old absorbing
interest in his defeat.
Presently Fred Riversley wandered out and stood watching them, stolid
and heavy as usual, but his nod to North held meaning, and a great
content. North was beginning to like this rather dull young man in a way
he would once have thought impossible. He had been the plainest, the
least attractive, and the least interesting of the group of brilliant
children who had grown up in such a bewilderingly sudden way, almost, it
seemed, on the declaration of war, and of whom so few were left. North’s
mind drifted back to those days which seemed so long ago, another
lifetime, to those gay glad children who had centred round his friend
and so been part of his own life. And then a sudden nostalgia seized
him, a sick sense of the purposeless horror of life. And you
cared—really cared—if you made a bad shot at croquet, or if your wife
objected to your sucking oranges. Mansfield, who had faced death by
torture minute after minute out there, was worried because he could not
arrange the chairs at a tennis party. And those boys and the girl,
little Sybil Rawson, were all broken up, smashed out of existence,
finished. They had not even left any other boys and girls of their own
behind; they were some of nature’s waste.
He missed his shot, and Violet gave a cry of triumph. It gave the game
into her hands. She went out with a few pretty finish shots.
“Not up to your usual mark that, sir!” said Riversley.
“No,” said North. “It was a rotten shot!” And he _did_ care. He was
annoyed with himself. “Rotten!” he said, and played the stroke over
again.
“Absolutely unworthy!” laughed his daughter.
She put out first one and then the other of her balls with deft
precision and waved her mallet to an approaching car.
“Here are the Condors,” she said. “And Condie himself! I haven’t seen
him for ages, the old dear!”
She skimmed the lawn like a bird towards the front door.
Mansfield was tenderly assisting an enormously stout gentleman to get
out of the car backwards.
“Excellent, bombardier!” said the stout gentleman. “Excellent. You have
let me down without a single twinge. Now they put my man into the motor
transport. Most unfortunate for me. The knowledge of how to handle a
live bomb would have been invaluable.”
He heaved slowly round in time to receive Violet Riversley’s
enthusiastic welcome. His face was very round and full, the features, in
themselves good, partially buried in many rolls of flesh, the whole
aspect one of benign good nature. Only an occasional penetrating flash
from under his heavy eyelids revealed the keen intelligence which had
given him no small reputation in the political world.
“Ah, little Vi! It’s pleasant to see you again,” he said. “How are you,
North?” His voice was soft and thick, but had the beauty of perfect
pronunciation.
It was the only sound ever known to check his wife’s amazing flow of
conversation. She owned herself that it had been difficult, but she had
recognized the necessity early in their married life.
“You see, no one wanted to hear me talk if they could hear him,” she
explained. “Now it has become a habit. Condor has only to say ‘Ah!’ and
I stop like an automaton.”
At this moment she was following him from the car amid the usual shower
of various belongings. Violet and her husband assisted her while North
and Mansfield gathered up the débris.
“Yes, my dears, we have been to a meeting as usual. Natural—I mean
National Economy. Condor made a really admirable speech, recommending
impossible things; excellent, of course—only impossible! My glasses?
Thank you, Roger. Yes, isn’t the car shabby? I am so thankful. A new
Rolls-Royce has such a painfully rich appearance, hasn’t it? And the old
ones go just as well, if not better. That scarf? Um—yes—perhaps I will
want it. Let us put it into Condor’s pocket. A little more padding makes
no difference to him.”
“When I was younger it used to be my privilege and pleasure to pick up
these little odds and ends for my wife,” said Lord Condor, smiling
good-naturedly, while his wife stuffed the scarf into his pocket. “But
alas! my figure no longer permits.”
“I remember my engagement was a most trying time,” said Lady Condor. “My
dear mother impressed on me that if Condor once realized the irritation
my untidiness and habit of dropping my things about would cause him in
our married life, he would break it off. What, Vi? Oh, damn the thing!”
Violet Riversley, holding a gold bag which had mysteriously dropped from
somewhere, went off into a helpless fit of laughter.
“Don’t laugh, my dear. It is nothing to laugh at. I do hope Mansfield
did not hear! One catches these bad habits, but I have not taken to
swearing. I do not approve of it for women—or of smoking—do I, Condor?
But that wretched bag has spoilt my whole afternoon; that is the fifth
time it has been handed to me. I could not really enjoy Condor’s speech.
Quite admirable—only no one could possibly do the things he recommended.
But where was I? Oh yes—the bag—you see, I bought it at Asprey’s! You
know, in Bond Street—yes. There was a whole window full of them. How
should it strike one that they were luxuries, and that the scarcity of
gold was so great? One has got quite used to the paper money by now. And
somehow it never seems so valuable as real sovereigns. I am sure our
extravagance is due to this. It’s nearly as bad as paying by cheque. But
where was I? Oh, my bag! You see, we all went to this meeting to
patronize National Economy. Most necessary, Condor says, and we must all
do our best. But it really would have been better, I think, if we had
not all gone in our cars and taken our gold bags. Everyone seemed to
have a gold bag—and aigrettes on their heads. I never wear them myself.
The poor birds—I couldn’t. But I know they cost pounds and pounds, and
no one could call them necessities. Or the gold bags of course, if gold
is so very scarce. Ought we to send them to be melted down? I will
gladly send mine into the lower regions. Just as we were entering it
plopped down on the step, and you can imagine the noise it made, and a
quite poor-looking man picked it up and gave it back to me. He had on
one of the dreadful-looking suits, you know, that they gave our poor
dear men when they were demobilized. He was most pleasant, but what must
he have thought? And I could not explain to him about the shop
window-full because Condor was waiting for me. And then, on the
platform, just as Condor was making one of his most telling points, it
_clanged_ down off my lap, and of course it fell just where there was no
carpet. I tried to kick it under the chair, but little Mr. Peckham—you
know him, dear—would jump up and make quite a show of it, handing it
back to me. No, don’t give it me again. Put it into Condor’s pocket. But
he has gone! To see the pigs with Roger? Isn’t it wonderful the
attraction pigs have for men of a certain age! My dear father was just
the same, and he called his pigs after us—or was it us after the pigs?—I
don’t quite remember which. And where is your mother? Oh, I see—playing
croquet with Mrs. Ingram. My dear, did you ever see such a hat! Like a
plate of petrified porridge, isn’t it? No, tell your mother not to come.
I will just wave my hand. Go and tell her not to stop her game, dear
Violet. And here is Arthur! He has something important to tell me—I know
by his walk. Now let us get comfortable first, and where we shall not be
disturbed. Yes. Those two chairs over there.”
“I do want a little chat if possible, Marion,” said Mr. Fothersley. He
retrieved a scarf which had floated suddenly across his path, with the
skill born of long practice. “Yes, I will keep it in case you feel
cold.”
He folded it in a neat square so that it could go into his pocket
without damage to either scarf or pocket, and held the back of her chair
while she fitted herself into it.
“A footstool? Thank you, Arthur. I will say for Nita, she understands
the art of making her guests comfortable. Now at the Howles’ yesterday I
had a chair nearly impossible to get into and quite impossible to get
out of! But where were we? Oh yes—you have got something you want to
tell me. I always know by your walk.”
Mr. Fothersley was a little vexed. “I cannot see how it can possibly
affect my walk, Marion.”
“It is odd, isn’t it?” said her Ladyship briskly. “It is just like my
dear father. A piece of news was written all over him until he got rid
of it. I remember when poor George Somerville shot himself—my dear
mother and I were sitting on the terrace, and we saw my father coming up
from the village—quite a long way off—you could not distinguish a
feature—but we knew at once he was bringing news—news of importance. But
where were we?”
She stopped suddenly and looked at him with the smile which had turned
the heads of half the gilded youth of fifty years ago.
“I am a garrulous old woman, my dear Arthur. You are anxious
about something, and here am I worrying you with my silly
reminiscences—yes—now what is it? Tell me all about it, and we will see
what can be done.”
“I am certainly perturbed,” said Mr. Fothersley. He smoothed down his
delicate grey waistcoat and settled himself back in his chair. “I am
afraid there is no doubt Nita is becoming jealous of Miss Seer.”
“Good heavens! I would as soon suspect that blue iris!”
“Quite so! Quite so! But you know what Nita is about these things. And,
unfortunately, it appears that Roger has been over to Thorpe once or
twice alone lately.”
“Perfectly natural,” said her Ladyship judicially. “He would be
interested in the farm for Dick’s sake. I like to go there myself. She
hasn’t spoilt the place.”
“Nita called her ‘that woman’ to me just now,” said Mr. Fothersley
solemnly.
Lady Condor raised her hand. “That settles it, of course! And now, dear
Arthur, what is to be done? We really cannot have one of those dreadful
performances that have unfortunately occurred in the past!”
“I really don’t know,” said Mr. Fothersley. He was divided between
excitement and distress. “It is quite useless to talk to either of them.
Nita generally consults me, but she listens neither to reason nor
advice. And Roger only laughs or loses his temper.”
“Yes,” agreed Lady Condor. “I think it depends on the state of his
liver. And as for poor Nita listening to reason on that subject—well—as
you say!”
“If only she would not tell everybody it would not be so terrible.”
“Ah, that is just the little touch of bourgeois,” said Lady Condor. “It
was wine, wasn’t it? Or was it something dried? And poor dear Roger is
really so safe—yes—he would be terribly bored with a real _affair de
cœur_. He would forget any woman for weeks if he were arranging a
combination of elements to see if they would blow each other up. And if
the poor woman made a scene, or uttered a word of reproach even, he
would be off for good and all—pouf—just like that. And what good is that
to any woman? I have told Nita so, but it is no good—no! Now if she had
been married to Condor! Poor darling, he is perfectly helpless in the
hands of anything in petticoats! It is not his fault. It is temperament,
you know. All the Hawkhursts have very inflammable dispositions. And
when he was younger, women were so silly about him! I used to pretend
not to know, and I was always charming to them all. It worked
admirably.”
“I always admired your dignity, dear Marion,” said Mr. Fothersley.
“_We_ have always shielded our men,” said Lady Condor, and she looked a
very great lady indeed.
“Our day is passing,” said Mr. Fothersley sadly. “I deplore it very
much. Very much indeed.”
“Fortunately”—Lady Condor pursued her reminiscences—“Condor has a sense
of humour, which always prevented him making himself really ridiculous:
that would have worried me. A man running round a woman looking like an
amorous sheep! Where are my glasses, Arthur? And who is that girl over
there, all legs and neck? Of course the present style of dress has its
advantages—one has nothing on to lose. But where was I? Something about
sheep? Oh yes, dear Condor. I have always been so thankful that when he
lost his figure—he had a very fine figure as a young man you remember—he
gave up all that sort of thing. You _must_, of course, if you have any
sense of the ridiculous. But about Roger and Miss Seer. She is a woman
with dignity. Now where can she have got it from? She seems to have been
brought up between an orphan clergy school and some shop—was it old
furniture?—something old I know. Not clothes—no—but something old. And
some one said she had been a cook. But one can be anything these days.”
“She is of gentle birth,” said Mr. Fothersley. “Her mother, I gather,
was a Courthope, and the Seers seem to be quite good people—Irish I
believe—but of good blood. It always tells.”
“You never know which way,” said her Ladyship sagely. “Now look at my
Uncle Marcus. Oh, there _is_ Miss Seer. Yes—I really don’t think we need
worry. It would be difficult to be rude to her. There, you see—dear Nita
is being quite nice! And Roger is quite safe with Condor and the pigs.”
It was indeed late in the afternoon before North came upon Ruth,
watching a set of tennis.
“You don’t play?” he asked.
“I never had the chance to learn any of the usual things,” she said,
smiling. “I’m afraid I only came to-day with an ulterior motive. I want
you to show me a photograph of Dick Carey.”
“That, oddly enough, was also in my mind,” he said, smiling too. “Come
into my study and find it for yourself.”
He was conscious of a little pleasant excitement as they went, and also
of a curious uncertainty as to whether he wanted the experiment to
succeed or not.
Ruth went in front of him through the French window and stood for a
while looking round her. She was not a slow woman, but nothing she did
ever seemed hurried.
“What a delicious room!” she said. “And what a glory of books! And I do
like the way you have your writing-table. How much better than across
the window, and yet you get all the light. I may poke about?”
“Of course.”
She moved the writing-table and picked up a quaint letter-weight with
interest. The photograph she ignored.
“I love your writing-chair,” she said.
“It was my grandfather’s. The only bit I have of his. My parents cleared
out the whole lot when they married—too awful, wasn’t it?”
“But your books are wonderful! Surely you have many first editions here.
Old Raphael would have loved them.”
“The best of my first editions are on the right of the fireplace.”
She turned, and then suddenly her face lit. Lit up curiously, as if
there were a light behind it.
“Oh!” she said quite softly, then crossed to the fireplace and stood
looking at the photograph he had moved that afternoon from the
writing-table.
She did not pick it up or touch it; only looked at it with wide eyes for
quite a long time.
Then she turned to him.
“That is the man I saw,” she said. “Now will you believe?”
And at that moment the Horizon beyond Eternity did indeed approach
closer, approach into the realm of the possible.
He admitted nothing, and she did not press it. She sat down in the big
armchair on the small corner left by Larry, who was curled up in it
asleep. He shifted a little to make more room for her and laid a gentle
feathered paw upon her knee.
“That’s odd,” said North. “He won’t let anyone else come near my chair
when he’s in it.”
“He knows I’m a link,” said Ruth, smiling. “I wish you could look on me
as that too.”
“I do—but for purposes of research only. You mustn’t drive me too
quickly.”
“I won’t. Indeed I won’t.” She spoke with the earnestness of a child who
has asked a favour. “I only want you just not to shut it all out.”
“I’m interested, and that is as far as I can go at present. I wondered
if you would care to read a bit of Dick’s diary which I have here. It
came to me with other papers, and there are some letters here.”
“Oh!” The exclamation was full of interest and pleasure.
He gave her the small packet, smiling, and she held it between both her
hands for a moment looking at it.
“They will be very sacred to me,” she said.
He nodded. “One feels like that. It is only a small portion of a diary.
I fancy he kept one very intermittently. Dick was never a writer. But
the letter about von Schäde will interest you.”
Ruth stood with her eyes fixed on the small packet. “Could you tell
me—would you mind—how it happened?” she said.
“A shell fell, burying some of his men. He went to help dig them out.
Another shell fell on the same place. That was the end.”
She looked up. Her eyes shone.
“He was saving life, not taking it. Oh, I am glad.”
She put the packet into the pocket of her linen skirt, gave him a little
smile, and slipped away almost as a wraith might slip. She wanted,
suddenly and overpoweringly, to get back to Thorpe....
Lady Condor, enjoying, as was her frequent custom, a second tea, said
quite suddenly, in the middle of a lament on the difficulty of obtaining
reliable cosmetics, “That is a clever woman!”
Mr. Fothersley, who was honestly interested in cosmetics, tore his mind
away from them and looked round.
“Who?” he asked.
“Miss Seer. I have been watching, after what you told me. You have not
noticed? She has been in Roger’s study with him, only about ten
minutes—yes—but she has done it without Nita knowing. Look, she is
saying good-bye now. And dear Nita all smiles and quite pleasant. Nita
was playing croquet of course but even then—— Perhaps it was just
luck—but quite amazing.”
Mr. Fothersley agreed. “Most fortunate,” he added.
“You know, Arthur, she is not unattractive,” Lady Condor continued. “By
no means in her _première jeunesse_ and can never have been a beauty.
But there is something cool and restful-looking about her which some men
might like. You never know, do you? I remember once Condor was quite
infatuated for a few weeks, with a woman rather in the same style.”
“But I thought you didn’t think——” began Mr. Fothersley.
“Of course I don’t think—not really.” Lady Condor watched Ruth’s
farewells through her glasses. “That’s what is so stupid about all these
supposed affairs of Roger’s. There never is anything in them. So
stupid——” She stopped suddenly and looked sideways at him, rather the
look of a child found with a forbidden toy.
“But——” began Mr. Fothersley, and stopped also.
The two old friends looked at each other.
“Arthur,” said Lady Condor. “I believe you are as bad as I am. Yes—don’t
deny it. I saw the guilt in your eyes. So funny—just as I discovered my
own. But so nice—we can be quite honest with each other.”
“My dear Marion—I don’t——” Mr. Fothersley began to protest.
“Dear Arthur, yes—you do. We both of us enjoy—yes—where are my glasses?
What a mercy you did not tread on them. But where was I? Yes. We both of
us enjoy these little excitements. Positively”—her shrewd old face
lighted up with mischief—“positively I believe we miss it when Roger is
not supposed to be carrying on with somebody. I discovered it in a flash
just this very moment! I do hope we don’t really hope there is something
in it all the time. It would be so dreadful of us.”
“Certainly we do not,” said Mr. Fothersley, deeply pained but
associating himself with her from long habit. “Most certainly not! I can
assure you my conscience is quite clear. Really, you are allowing your
imagination to run away with you. We have always done our best to stop
Nita creating these most awkward situations.”
“Yes, of course we have,” said Lady Condor soothingly. “I did not mean
that. But now where is Condor? Oh, he has walked home across the fields.
So good for his figure! I wish I could do the same for mine. Yes, Nita
has been quite nice to Miss Seer, and now Violet is seeing her off.”
“I am motoring back to town to-night,” Violet Riversley was saying as
she shut the door of Ruth Seer’s little two-seater car, “or I would like
to come over to Thorpe. How is it?”
“Just lovely,” said Ruth, smiling. “Be sure and come whenever you can.”
She had taken off the brakes, put out the clutch and got into gear
before Violet answered. Then she laid her hand, as with a sudden
impulse, on the side of the car.
“If one day I should—quite suddenly—wire to you and ask you to have me
to stay—would you?” she asked.
“Why yes, of course,” said Ruth.
“You might have other visitors—or be away.”
“No, I shall not have other visitors, and I shall not be away.”
The conveyances of other guests had begun to crowd the drive, and Ruth
had to give all her attention to getting her car out of a gate built
before the day of cars. It was only when she was running clear, down the
long slope from Fairbridge, that she remembered the curious and absolute
certainty with which she had answered Violet Riversley’s question.