Occupied with public affairs, and in much social request, it was

difficult to think of Farquharson as having either time or inclination

to play the part of a modern suitor--to woo the object of his affections

with lunch at one restaurant and tea at another, and dinner at a third

and supper at a fourth, after the modern mode. Indeed, so far as Miss

Beadon was concerned, he scarcely seemed to recognize her existence.

But for Brand, one doubted if even Dora could have construed his

"good-mornings" and "good-nights" into the protestations of undying

love.

A clever and unscrupulous woman can usually get what she wants without

help. But Dora was not clever. Her platitudes, her plainness, told

against her. Things seemed at a deadlock. It is not much use to have

written what you think is a successful comedy if all the leading

characters refuse to play the parts you have assigned to them.

As well attempt to influence the elements themselves as Farquharson.

Unless Evelyn could be made to intervene. But Evelyn, once so

tractable, was unmoved now by threats or pleading; nothing would induce

her to meet Farquharson voluntarily.

Ah, but what if she could be used unconsciously? Suddenly Brand saw

light. What had he told Miss Beadon just now? "A man will never

willingly compromise the woman he cares for." If Farquharson could be

made to think that he had put Evelyn in a false position, he would take

the readiest means of disproving the statement. And the announcement of

a man's engagement or marriage to one woman is the best public

contradiction of his interest in another. Once Evelyn's name was called

into the question, Farquharson was the man to act quickly. Let Miss

Beadon be but near at such a moment, and she would seem the easiest

solution of the difficulty.

"I may be able to help you," Brand said after a pause. "It won't be

easy--it may give me and those I love infinite pain. But friendship

isn't worth much if one isn't willing to risk a great deal for it, and I

am sure you are the last woman in the world to forget such a kindness."

He spoke meaningly. Dora held out her hand. Her vanity was piqued, and

as much of her heart as such a woman can give was involved. Generally,

to set her heart on anything meant that it became hers very shortly.

These unaccustomed barriers had completely unnerved her; she would have

taken any means to secure Brand's help.

"You can count on me," she said, ready at that moment to promise him

anything he asked. "There's nothing you can ask of me that I won't do

for you in the future if you'll only help me now. I mean it; and I never

break my word."

Brand smiled.

"Oh, well, it won't be a very serious matter. Perhaps I shall ask you to

do some little service for me later on, but I don't suppose it will tax

your resources as wife of--the Prime Minister, shall we say?"

They were walking in the direction of Knightsbridge. The clock at the

Guards' Barracks struck the hour.

"Suppose you go and see Evelyn now? I see a way of helping you which

must be put in train at once." He lifted his hat, and, crossing to Hyde

Park Corner, hailed a hansom. "The _Crystal_ offices, Fleet Street," he

said.

"Mr. Brand, _Mr. Brand_, did you say? What on earth can the man want

with me? Take him to the library, James, and say I'll come as soon as I

can."

Lady Wereminster, erect and stately, gave Henry Brand the mere tips of

her fingers, and withered him with her most disconcerting stare. She

knew that to meet an unwelcome guest in complete silence puts him at the

most serious disadvantage. Her quick eye took in every detail of

Brand's faultlessly arranged air of distress. "Good Heavens, the man

looks like a mourner; even his tie-pin is in keeping. Has he come to

borrow money, or what?" she wondered.

"Lady Wereminster, forgive me. May I sit down?"

The voice was low and broken. Lady Wereminster raised her eyebrows,

allowing but one word to escape from her tightly pursed lips.

"Certainly."

Brand hesitated.

"I have come to consult you about a matter that is very near my heart,

Lady Wereminster. A matter that concerns Evelyn's welfare. Otherwise I

should never have dreamed of intruding upon you."

"The time between half-past two and a quarter to three is usually spent

in idleness," said Lady Wereminster grimly. "Go on, please."

"I shall go straight to the point," said Brand. "I am in great trouble,

I've heard rumours----" He stopped again, choked by emotion, while Lady

Wereminster watched him with a look of stone. "A man can fight his own

battles, good or ill scarcely matter where his character is concerned.

But when the name of the woman one loves best----" He corrected himself

hastily, seeing his hostess's momentary expression of surprise. "When

one's wife's name is spoken with ever such slight levity, it's another

matter." He paused, shielding his face with his hands, pent-house

fashion, as though utterly overcome.

Lady Wereminster looked rather pale.

"To what, pray, are you alluding?" she asked.

Brand looked up desperately.

"Have you seen this week's _Crystal_, Lady Wereminster? It came

half-an-hour ago. I've kept it from Evelyn till now. You know those

accursed problems that they print weekly--one's meant to read between

the lines. The ghastly part of them is that they are veiled under so

damnable and complete a cloak of anonymity."

"Will you kindly oblige me by being more explicit?" asked Lady

Wereminster, after a glacial pause.

Brand turned, at bay, his eyes flashing. He was really playing his part

excellently.

"There's something about Evelyn!--about Evelyn!--in the paper."

"An unopened copy is on the table beside you," said Lady Wereminster.

"Will you kindly read me the paragraph to which you refer?"

Holding the table for support, Brand read on slowly, giving each word

its full significance.

"'_A woman who contemplates an eventual menage a trois is wise not to

marry an athletic husband._'

"'_Gratitude is a virtue, remember, though it does not always lead to

virtue where politics are concerned._'

"'_He was lately seen in Sussex, where she had temporarily taken up her

residence._'

"'_After all, more ways than one lead to the Divorce Court._'"

There was a long pause.

"And you mean to tell me," Lady Wereminster began very slowly. Then she

stopped, her voice was shaking.

Brand bowed his head.

"Unmistakable. I heard a man laugh at it just now in the club.

'Farquharson and----' he said. Then he saw me."

Lady Wereminster put out a warning hand.

"No names, please; it's not safe even here. Oh, if I were a man!" Her

eyes blazed. "Couldn't one horsewhip the editor? or--no, that would

make a scandal at once. That's where people like these have everything

in their hands. Nothing is so easy to spread as a lie about a woman.

One word of suspicion and you could blacken Una herself. This must be

stopped--but how? What can we do?"

For the first time in her life she was identifying herself with Brand,

even consulting him on mutual terms.

"They are bound to go on meeting. And now at every turn there will be

eyes to watch and lips to sneer. If I had my way, I'd have the people

who spread lies like these stand naked in a public pillory. There's a

jealous woman or women behind it, of course. Trace any scandal to its

source, and you will find that the one man or woman from whom it

originally emanated was the one who would benefit by its being spread.

In a question of work, you will find it is the woman beaten in her own

field by a younger woman, socially superior, who starts the scandal; in

love, the vanquished rival. Scandal can't create itself; there's always

at least one pair of lying lips to bring it into being."

"What if the man were to--but then he never would----" Brand faltered.

Lady Wereminster threw up her hands with a cry.

"You have it," she said; "there's only one way he can stop it. He must

marry. People must think that she has been his confidante

throughout--has known about it from the first. She's not the kind of

woman to stand up against a stab in the dark like this. It would kill

her!"

"But is Farquharson likely to marry? Is there any one with whom his

name is associated?" said Brand doubtfully. "He never seemed to me a

marrying man."

"That's not the question," said Lady Wereminster decidedly. "The whole

point is that he must save her. Good Heavens, that Evelyn should be the

talk of any club!" She rang the bell violently. "Give me the paper. I

shall go and see Mr. Farquharson myself at once, and put the matter

straight before him. He owes everything to Evelyn, and he's brought

this upon her. They say it's always the woman who goes to the wall in

these matters. Well, she shan't in this case, if I have to take the man

to the church myself. Good-bye, and thank you."

She extended a hurried forefinger and waved him to the door. He bowed,

well satisfied.

"Order the victoria at once, James; I'm in a hurry."

Taking out her glasses, Lady Wereminster re-read the paragraph line by

line.

"Oh, if I had but seen Evelyn lately! But meeting Miss Beadon when I

ran in the other morning stopped my going for a week. 'Sussex'--and

'politics'!--Oh, Evelyn, Evelyn!"

*CHAPTER II*

"The cleverest of all devils is opportunity."--VIELAND.

"Evelyn, you must help me," said Miss Beadon angrily. "How can you say

no, and be so horribly cruel? It's such a tiny favour to ask; it shan't

cost you a penny, I promise, if you'll only come. I'll let the carriage

pick you up." She was on the verge of tears.

Evelyn, to whom tears came with difficulty, thought that they caused

other women acute mental agony like her own.

She held out her hand.

"Please don't cry, Dora. There's more in this than you know. I've got

to think things out. Be quiet for a minute, dear."

On the face of it it was a small thing Miss Beadon was asking, merely

that Evelyn should make a point of accompanying her to the last reunion

that night in Hare's rooms before he left town. Evelyn had already

accepted the invitation tentatively, meaning only to go if she heard

that Farquharson would not be present. At large parties they were able

to avoid each other easily. They had never been much together in public.

But at so small and intimate a gathering as this--Hare was expecting

only ten or twelve people--they must infallibly be thrown together and

meet as though things were on the old footing, before their bitter-sweet

secret had drawn them near.

But now Dora had come to demand Evelyn's help, and she was made to

confront the very thought which she most dreaded. Dora wanted to marry

Farquharson. Evelyn shut her eyes and tried to think what life would be

under such changed conditions. If the idea was no longer new, it was

none the less terrible. Spiritual forces may be called up to battle

with many foes successfully, but there are times when spiritual forces

fail, when foes from within, the very roots of our nature, take arms

against us. It seemed to Evelyn at that moment that the civil war

within her was sapping the very life in her body. She could have stood

aside to watch Farquharson rise higher and higher, alone, unhampered,

even although every step took him further from her, but how could she

bear to see him live his life out with another woman, reaping the small

domestic joys, gathering in time, perhaps, even the perfect fruit of the

tree of life?

"Thou shalt ask and not obtain." The words came back to her. This was,

perhaps, what God demanded of her, the penalty for having come near sin.

Daily crucifixion--not a mere seven hours agony, but one which would

endure to her life's end.

And yet the horrible selfishness of the point of view! What right had

she to deny him such little gifts as he might secure from life, which is

so rarely bountiful? His inward life, all its purposes and ambitions,

would be hers, and in a career like his there must inevitably be dark

moments when home comfort and joys, which he had never had, might brace

him to meet his difficulties, and nerve him, by sheer force of reaction,

for future battles.

She looked at Dora critically. Perhaps they had all misjudged her. Her

heart seemed to be set upon her object with absolute determination; and

if she loved Farquharson enough, nothing else mattered. Love was what

he needed--love near at hand, love wrapping him round. The love which

"feels no burthen, gives all for all and is all in all, which watches

and, sleeping, slumbers not, when weary is not tired."

"You love Mr. Farquharson--you want me to understand that you really

love him?" she said at last. "Love is such a big thing, Dora, I often

wonder if girls understand it. Modern men and women take more trouble

to choose a housekeeper than they give to the choice of a life-long

companion. Marriage is all give and take--and there's more in those

words than you will ever realize until you've gone right through the

marriage service, and come out at the other side. It's a thing of

deadly gravity, marriage, not a mere shifting of responsibility, or the

prospect of a better position, or the escape from home discomfort. You

are one of the lucky people to whom none of these three incentives need

appeal. Oh, Dora, there are so many unhappy marriages in this world,

and I'm so tired of them! Do make up your mind that yours shall be a

beautiful success, not just a brilliant one."

"You always take things so seriously," Dora said tartly. "Of course I

love him. Why should I want to marry him rather than any one else?

It's not as if he were the only one. I'm only asking you to chaperon me

for this one evening, not a lifetime, and it's nothing to make such a

fuss about, after all. I never get an opportunity of saying a word to

him without everybody seeing. Even servants may be reporters in

disguise. It makes even me unlike myself; and I know it's only the fear

of being seen and watched that keeps him from speaking to me. When he

was not so important he used to talk to me quite a lot, and quite

intimately. I remember one night at the Wereminsters' when he spoke of

you--implied he liked you, but said you weren't his style, or something

of the sort. For such a man that meant a lot. I'm not a woman to make

confidences, as you know, so I appreciate reserve in others. I've come

to you because you've seen everything from the first. You're married,

you've got all you want; why can't you help me by giving me one or two

of the opportunities nobody else in the whole world knows that I long

for?"

This sounded plausible enough. Dora's ways were not as Evelyn's, but

that was perhaps a mere matter of temperament. And the glow of

sacrifice burns with so white a flame that it illuminates even those

trivial objects that it falls upon.

"I'll come," said Evelyn, sighing. "What time shall I be ready?"

"We ought to be there at half-past nine," said Dora. "Will you be with

us at nine-fifteen? Then we can have a talk first. By the way, you'd

better take a cab, Evelyn, after all--you do live such an awfully long

way out."

"Thanks. Then you don't think me an interfering old woman?" said Lady

Wereminster.

"I think you are very kind," said Farquharson courteously. His tone was

final. He rose and held out his hand, and Lady Wereminster, who was

known amongst her circle of intimate friends as "The Social Tyrant,"

meekly acquiesced and left him.

"The man's extraordinarily reassuring," she told herself as she drove

away. "He says very little. But he's a man of his word, and he'll do

as I want. There's nothing he wouldn't do for Evelyn. I didn't dare

even say I was sorry for him. And these are matters that the world would

tell you you might not even pray about!" ...

Farquharson, left mercifully alone, went back to the table in his study

and sat down heavily. Blue Books, pamphlets, the records of his work

lay all about him, in orderly piles; Farquharson was nothing if not

scrupulously neat; his life lay there. Methodical, orderly, brilliant,

complete--which adjective best described it?

Yet in that moment it all seemed to him of little worth, little real

value. After all, to have your name in men's mouths for a season, what

is it? Success and enmity go hand in hand; the man or woman who finds

the highest is beset by a thousand treacheries and betrayals. The

little bank clerk, with his hundred and fifty pounds a year, setting out

to his work in the morning unnoticed, and unenvied, and returning to the

woman he loves at the close of office hours, has a happier lot than the

most important statesman in the empire. His small cup is full to the

brim with wholesome wine and water; that of the other is mixed with

vinegar and gall.

What had Farquharson's country done for him that he should work for it?

It had given him a legacy of dishonour, it had torn his heritage from

him. Why should he sow in blood, that the wastrel and incompetent

should reap the fruit of his toil in ease? Why should he spend himself

that England, who reared heroes only to spit upon them, should put him

on that pedestal which had so often, of late years, turned to a pillory?

And yet other men had braved and achieved so much more than he.

His mind leapt back to Kabul; to the doings of a little Corps of Guides,

Hamilton, Jenkyns, Kelly and the rest. Who remembered those deathless

heroes now? Hamilton, the most intrepid, he who had charged over two

thousand of the enemy, first with four men, and then with three, and

last of all alone, had his memorial in stone at Dublin. But stone

cannot speak or glow. Cold and immovable, it is the symbol of a

nation's heart.

Yet the call of one's country is strong. Now, at this moment, when he,

the strong man, wavered between allegiance to her service and denial of

her claims, weighing duty in the scale with happiness, her voice rose

with the calm insistence which drives a man to do the thing he would

not--to achieve what, humanly speaking, we should call impossible. Peace

and ease might have been Farquharson's in Taorna--life with the woman he

loved. He knew his power; he underrated Evelyn's. He faced again in

that moment the temptation to take her away against her will, maybe,

strong in the certainty that he could satisfy her, that they would find

together something which the average man and woman could never attain.

But the voice of the nation spoke, implacably. "I want you. You must

stay. I shall bruise and break you. No matter, you are dust, you can

return to the dust from which you came. You may ride in my car of

progress day and night, neither sleeping nor resting so long as your

wits are keen and your intellect alert. Once your eyes fail or your

hand trembles, I shall have no further use for you. From nothing you

came, to nothing you may then return. But my car will go on, and you

will have driven it for a little time."

Yes, he must stay. And if he stayed, he must make this sacrifice for

Evelyn; he must give up his dearest dream. For, grimly as he faced life

as a whole, he had always cherished the thought of marriage as his one

hope of human salvation. What he had said to Evelyn was true; not mere

words, but conviction. He believed that a man should only give himself

in marriage to the one woman who could make an equal gift of mind, body

and soul, the supreme trinity of surrender. Marriage was a

sacrament--marriage as God instituted it, not the false union that

convention recognized.

"And now the dream must go," he said aloud. His thoughts went back to

the old phrase of the picture gallery when he had spoken to Dan. "Yes,

dreams are only made to break, I suppose." He got up. "Since one woman

is as much or as little to me as another, if I can't have Eve as my

wife--I'll leave it to chance, and propose to the first unmarried woman,

if she will let me, who speaks to me to-night at Hare's."

"At last!" Miss Beadon said. "I thought you were never coming." She

was standing near the door, awaiting Farquharson's entry. She knew the

value of a convenient position. "We have hardly seen anything of you of

late." For once she was a trifle nervous. "But I've read all your

speeches. Father has told me how splendidly you've got on."

Not the ideal woman this, but a woman who at least could sympathize, who

would not need to be taught the necessities of her position.

Farquharson looked at her gravely. Something of her self-complacency

had left her; she was nervous and a little tremulous as to the result of

this meeting, for which she had plotted so eagerly.

"I have something to say to you," he said. "I must speak to these

people first, and then---- See, there are chairs in that little recess.

Will you wait for me there in ten minutes' time?"

*CHAPTER III*

"Youth from the windows of his innocence

Sent forth his soul to scan the future years.

Homeward it brings this strange intelligence--

'In life there are no tears.'

We who are older, shake our heads and say

'Another tale, we know, we who are men.'

But haply Youth espies the deathless years,

Seeing beyond our ken."

"I am not sorry that, after all, you were not there," wrote Lady

Wereminster to Hare, a few weeks later. "The Burial Service always

strikes me as comparatively gay when matched with the amended Marriage

Service of the Church of England. The one gives hope; the other preaches

duty instead. There is no romance in it, no mysticism. You are

practically told it is your duty to marry because you are not good

enough to remain unmarried, that you must bring children into the world

because it would look so remarkably odd if you did not. As to the

meaning of it all, whether it is to the glory of God or your next-door

neighbour, the advertisement editor of the _Morning Post_ is the best

judge. Anyway, he is the person who immediately benefits.

"Did I tell you that Richard Farquharson and Dora Beadon were

indissolubly united at St. Margaret's, Westminster, yesterday afternoon,

by the bye? I suppose you read all in the papers; there was fuss

enough, in all conscience. Miss Beadon saw to that. I dislike that

girl more than ever. Is there anything more annoying than the

incompetence of a woman who cannot fill the position she was born to?

"And now what will happen? I feel responsible, having set the machinery

in motion. As a girl, I played with lives quite easily; it amused me to

turn fate, or juggle with purposes the meaning of which I could not

fathom. Now, in old age, I have grown afraid. Souls are such tiresome

things. I know old Akbar said, 'I never saw any one lost on a straight

road,' but occasionally one wonders if there are any straight roads

left, now the County Council has played so many tricks with London

streets?

"Dora Beadon is neither a fish nor a vegetable. She belongs to the new

world which we have created in this after-Victorian era. Don't think I

complain of her hypocrisy; I suppose we are all hypocrites more or less.

I was one when I tried to persuade a man with a career to marry a

selfish woman, with what I hoped to be a nondescript character, because

I wanted him to save the reputation of a woman who reminds me more of my

niece Asenath than any one I have ever met. As Dora is nondescript, she

may be amiable. But--that mouth of hers! Have you ever seen it in

repose?

"Well, now they are started for good or ill. I pin my faith on the

man's ambition. All life's a compromise. No woman can have both a

Grecian nose and a perfect figure; no man can have success and

happiness. And success means more to a man than to a woman. If we are

human, there's no single moment in which we would not lay down the

biggest prize the world can offer us at the feet of the man we love, and

say, 'Please take it, dear; I only won it for you.' But a man likes to

have his prize in a substantial form, and keep it on his sideboard, so

that his wife can show it, very highly polished, to his guests. Look at

the presentation cups in our men's messes! The trophies, challenge

cups! Why, a man can't even kill a big salmon without having it

photographed or modelled in a glass case. We women kill our salmon

every day and no one knows it.

"So I dispose of Richard Farquharson. He is off my conscience. Life

will give him something, although it is not the thing he wants. And

Dora--she need not complain; she will have a little more wealth, a

little more luxury, a little more panoply of amusement and flattery;

that is enough for her. But there's still Evelyn.

"She came to the wedding. He made her--her husband. Oh, if she were

only a less good Catholic! It is a magnificent system. It reduces its

subjects to such a pitch of subjection that they obey in spite of

themselves. The happiness, the welfare of one unworthy little

soul--what does it matter, so long as the Vatican coffers are full, so

long as the Celebrations on high days and festivals have still their

proper number of spectators? Inviolable, magnificent, the one wall that

will never be broken, it rears itself ever higher and higher as the ages

roll on, cemented with the blood of a thousand victims whose names will

never be written in any book of martyrology.

"You like human problems, so I give you one. There they stand, the three

of them, as opposed in temperament as any of the subjects in Browning's

_Ring and the Book_. I cannot depict them; I cannot even prophesy.

Very long ago I found that God knew a great deal more than I did--a fact

that hardly seems possible to the cocksureness of youth. So--wicked old

woman as I am supposed to be by many of my best friends--I end this

letter to you, who know me well, with a real pious intention.

"You remember the story of the bishop who was told the ship upon which

he was travelling was about to sink? I will try and quote it from

memory--

"'The sea it was rough and the ship it did lurch,

And it blew without reason or ruth;

And the consequence was this mainstay of the Church

Suffered much for the sake of the truth.

And the sea it grew rough, and the night it grew black,

And the rain-drops fell heavy and thick,

And the bishop he heartily wished himself back,

While Rangoon--it might go to Old Nick!

"Oh, skipper, I really enjoy a good blow,

And 'tis truly a glorious sight;

But your candid opinion I'm anxious to know--

Do you think there is danger to-night?"

The skipper he hitched himself up, and he laughed,

Then he suddenly grew very grave,

As a hurricane squall seemed to stagger the craft,

And she buried her nose in a wave.

And he said, "Well, your Grace, it's a dirtyish night,

But whether the vessel will ride,

I really can't tell you; you'll know before night,

In Providence we must confide."

"Good gracious!" the bishop exclaimed in dismay

As he clutched at his old shovel hat;

"This is terrible, skipper; you don't mean to say

That really it has _come to that_!"'

"I think it has 'come to that' in this instance too!"

*PART IV*

*THE BESTOWAL*

"Human endurance is the one miracle left in the world."--E. ROBINS.

*CHAPTER I*

"Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar,

But cannot get the wood to burn;

It hardly flames ere it begins to falter,

And to the dark return.

'Tis all I have--smoke, failure, foiled endeavour,

Coldness and doubt and palsied lack;

Such as I have I send Thee; perfect Giver,

Send Thou Thy lightning back."

GEORGE MACDONALD.

"Let men see, let them know a real man who lives as he was meant to

live."--MARCUS AURELIUS.

The sensation of pain does not immediately strike a man who is severely

wounded; first, he feels a sting like a lash, then numbness succeeds,

presently he falls.

Mental pain is, after all, very like physical. Acute shock paralyzes

mind and soul; it puts a clog in the wheel of human machinery. Great

calamities do not necessarily stop human functions from fulfilling their

duties; a man eats or drinks, or may, in exceptional cases, even sleep

as well in the first moment of a great crisis as before. Body and soul

are braced to the day's routine; for a time they continue their offices

unchecked. But presently the chill and paralysis of thought and action

spread throughout his being. Then ordinary work is impossible. Merely

to live is a labour, the most trivial effort an arduous achievement.

In paralysis, limbs refuse to obey the message of the brain, or,

misinterpreting it, do the thing they would not. So, when the roots of

a life's happiness have been struck, the soul cannot hear the message of

the over-wrought body that pleads to it for help in vain.

In the days that followed, Farquharson and Evelyn travelled again,

invisible companions, down the same _via crucis_ of agony and shame. To

Evelyn, perhaps, the path was the more difficult to tread because for

the first time faith had failed her. "Doubt comes," says the Catholic

Church, "to those who wilfully play with sin." Unyielding, inflexible,

she would have those who profess her faith remove themselves from the

first taint of guilt, failing to help even the sorely wounded if he who

suffered were one whose imminence brought danger. It is another of the

paradoxes with which faith abounds; there are times when these same

paradoxes raise an impenetrable wall against which the human heart beats

vainly--bruised, bleeding, outwardly broken.

Doggedly Evelyn kept to the open evidences of her belief, sure of their

truth, though unable to find comfort in them. She knew priests who had

done the same, men who had striven for weeks and years against

overwhelming apathy, alone in the desert of temptation. She knew one

who had died so, to whom no ray of illumination had come even at the

last, although only she and his confessor knew as much. He was a man

who had helped more men and women than any other member of his

brotherhood; faith seemed to be given him merely to be spent in the

service of others.

But he was a man, and she was only a woman. And peace of some kind must

surely have approached him, if one believes at all in supernatural

influences, from the very atmosphere of the praying souls he stood

amongst at Mass, from the mere nearness of the Sacred Host. Evelyn

lived in an atmosphere of cynicism and doubt; it pressed upon her,

bearing her down now that she had no rival force with which to combat

it. And because by the narrow channel through which one doubt enters a

thousand may follow, she found that the silence and solitude she had

once loved were now thronged with ghosts, ghostly visions of the love

she might have had but would not, and the life she might have lived with

him she loved, one in companionship, one in ambition, one in the most

dear and sacred intimacy of marriage, one in failure, one in success,

one in the love of the children whose feet they would never now hear,

whose lips would never now meet their own.

There is no hell which equals in intensity the hell of an imagination so

vivid as to create being from what is void. When Farquharson left the

church with his wife, Evelyn followed them every step of the way home.

She looked on to the future; she forced herself to pray for their

happiness, while in her heart she knew that happiness would be her

death-blow. As she had striven for him in the past, using all the human

forces at her command in helping him attain the thing he wished, so she

strove now to make herself desire that he should have the best life has

to offer, not the mere earthly wreath of laurels, but the unfading crown

of peace.

But Farquharson, although she did not know it, had a harder task. He

had tied himself for life to a woman who violated his every belief,

whose nature warred with his at every turn. Realist and man of purpose

as he was, his dear belief that in the world somewhere, somehow, there

lived a second Margaret Cunningham whom he would ultimately possess, had

sweetened all his work since he left Glune. When he met Evelyn he knew

the dream was true, and Glune and she were absolutely at one. He

pictured her its fitting mistress, visiting every haunt of his

childhood, satisfying every memory and tradition, washing away with her

tender tears the bitterness that had grown part of his heritage, as

labourers would clear away useless timber and refuse, making all

wholesome and clean.

Glune was his now again, a princely wedding gift from Calvert and

Beadon, but all pleasure in the possession was gone.

A French writer once said that it is impossible to predict of any woman

the exact change that marriage will make in her. We have all seen love

turn to hate in a few hours under certain circumstances, but there are

subtler changes still. Great emotions may bring havoc to certain

natures; change comes inevitably, whether the emotions be great or

small. Perhaps Dora had cared for Farquharson so far as in her lay

before he became her husband, but now he was her property, an object of

daily use, as important, perhaps, as her sponge or toothbrush, but quite

unworthy of any deep regard. It was better to be with him than without

him. It never struck her that she owed him any duty; if she thought

about the matter at all it was merely to consider that a beneficent

Creator had brought him into being for the special purpose of

accompanying her when she wanted him, and transacting the business that

she had slurred even as an unmarried woman; investing her money to its

best advantage, and paying bills about whose magnitude she no longer

felt even the smallest compunction.

With those early days of marriage she was entirely content and

satisfied. No doubt of her ability to please him crossed her mind; the

useless are invariably self-satisfied. She had mapped out a motor tour

which was intended to outdo anything that other brides had accomplished;

restless, untiring, she swept Farquharson on from place to place, great

towns and cities whose very stones breathed glory and mystery, under the

shadows of mountains which at night looked cold and full of awe, types

of the crushing power that seemed to rule men's destinies, but which

were warmed and quickened to life by the first gleam of the morning sun.

Beauty, tradition, mystery, these things meant nothing to Dora, and

Farquharson, who longed to stay, was openly derided. Of late years he

had had little or no time to spare for the love of nature which had

trained him as a boy; he steeped his soul in colour which she did not

even see.

They went from big hotel to big hotel; nights spent in little village

inns bored Dora inexpressibly. Day after day she went out of their road

to buy the English papers. If their tour was not mentioned in them she

flung them aside; when it was, she collected the cuttings eagerly.

Farquharson realized that for his wife the meaning of life was resolved

into a single hope--that the glare of publicity should be for ever upon

them. He thought of the future. He could picture her at Glune,

entertaining the Press, dragging out his relics, giving chapter and

verse succinctly of all those dear records which had made him what he

was. She would gossip with the villagers, she would leave no stone

unturned to find out all about his childhood, and then repeat it at her

next afternoon call. Nothing was sacred to her, and now for Evelyn's

sake he had learned to look upon women as sacred, and to try to

understand something even of his mother's nature. Women like Dora would

drag her memory and his brother's in the dust that they might make

suitable headlines for an "interview."

It was for this he had bartered his dream--for this and to save a

woman's honour.

Well, there was work to do; thank God for work. Daily routine has saved

many a man's brain from snapping, before now.

Farquharson returned to town after six weeks' absence to find great

arrears and accumulation of work, which he welcomed. Various

by-elections were taking place all over the country; the issue of the

next election mainly depended upon the people's decision concerning

Tariff Reform _versus_ Free Trade. Since the great Protectionist leader

was unable through illness to carry on the contest, Farquharson was

appealed to on all sides as the worthiest exponent of the cause. He was

invited to speak in the north, in the midlands, south and west alike.

In Taorna, too, there were difficulties. The position of the man he had

left to act for him wanted strengthening. The Council for once was

undecided; Farquharson's message flashed across the sea and was obeyed.

Beadon read its terms and smiled.

"Men talk of grit," he said, "but you've got grip. Do you never lose

touch of what you've once held?"

"That's a real man," was Hare's comment as he read next morning's paper.

"What he has done for Taorna, he can do for England. I am beginning to

have hopes for her. One man has saved his nation before now."

That the country was passing through a crisis was apparent. Farquharson

had set men talking. His speeches spread dissatisfaction and dissension,

and unrest alone will make a nation rise. The Ministry sent its best

men to oppose him; in one important ward it was even rumoured that the

Liberals had bribed men to heckle and annoy the candidate whom he

supported. But on the night in question it was Farquharson who faced

them, having persuaded his somewhat timid follower to plead temporary

illness. And as he spoke better than he had ever spoken before, even

his enemies were silenced.

Up in the north, that hot-bed of Liberalism, men weighed his words and

were discomfited. It was their force, their overwhelming conviction

which told with these level-headed men of business, who, unlike their

Irish neighbours across the sea, were seldom swayed by impulse or

carried away by enthusiasm. In Rowan, the nearest town to Bruchill, a

Radical constituency from time immemorial, a meeting was held

eventually, at which it was decided to ask Farquharson to stand in place

of the retiring candidate. The news came at breakfast. It touched him

very deeply; he had waited for this, hoping against hope, and refusing

other invitations against the wishes of his party. He handed it to Dora

without comment.

She flung it down.

"A trumpery second-rate place like that! You'll refuse, of course," she

said.

Farquharson took his seat in the House as Member for Rowan three weeks

later. After that matters moved more dramatically than usual in the

undramatic House of Commons. Amongst its members may be found a great

crowd of wavering and irresponsible beings delighted to identify

themselves with a real leader; they followed Farquharson like sheep. A

certain Bill, just brought forward, had roused the nation's indignation;

it touched all classes, since every insurance office held large shares

in the especial traffic which it threatened. The Bill gave Farquharson

an early opportunity of taking his stand in the House, and he made the

most of it.

A few weeks later, in a crowded assembly representative not only of

British but of foreign interest, as the Strangers' and the Speaker's

Galleries were both full, Beadon proposed a vote of censure on the

Government, which was seconded by Farquharson in a speech that turned

the scale. The motion was carried by an overwhelming majority. The

inevitable General Election followed, and event followed event in quick

succession. Conservative agencies mustered all their forces, and

Farquharson was bidden to speak in every direction. The pendulum swung

round, and the Conservatives returned to power with a gain of twelve

seats on the last amazing Liberal majority of three and a half years

before.

*CHAPTER II*

"If glory does not intoxicate you continually, do not stand beneath her

banners."--THE PRINCE DE LIGNE.

"Historians and the Press make the mistake," said Hare, "of treating the

nation as a party. She is an individual, subject to fluctuations of

health and reason, capable, like a true woman, of reaching any height or

any depth. She is baffling, inconsistent, base, and noble within a

breath. Wise men predict her rise or fall according to her temperament

and environment. Look at Spain. Melancholy to the roots of her being,

mysterious, ardent--she has those qualities which attain to the utmost

height of glory for a while, then decline. The Escorial shows one side

of the nation; much the same brooding silence and enmity as were the

hall-marks of the Inquisition. I doubt if any man or woman can fully

understand what made inquisitors act as they did until they have been to

Spain. There is no power so cruel as that of a faith which literally

obeys the scriptural injunction of destroying limb by limb the body

which turns to evil and forsakes good. In Grenada you have another

side, everything steeped in colour and mystery. Moorish, of course--how

few of us realize, by the bye, that Spain was held by the Moors for an

even longer period than she has been under the sway of the Spaniards.

But Spain needs balance. Till she gets it she will never be a great

nation. Take Italy, again. Had she cultivated her pagan

characteristics, as opposed to the qualities which priests would tell

you make for ultimate happiness, she would have done better. As it is,

she is rebellious, chaotic, a mass of intrigue and suspicion, unreliable

and weak. Germany--ah! there's a power to be reckoned with, scarcely,

in my mind, to fear. Her death-blow is ambition. She is a one-man

country, and one man is liable to err. France is a house divided against

itself; a nation of charming women and irreligious men. In her

dissensions our security lies. Russia"--he shrugged his

shoulders--"with her internal troubles and her exchequer at so low an

ebb, we need not fear her. In the future aspect of the Alliance, I

fancy China and Japan united may be our bitter enemies. Theirs is a

waiting game. At Berlin and Paris and London you will find students

from these countries assimilating all that we can teach them, wisely

using the best means that other nations can furnish for their own ends.

You have the dominant characteristics of different types in every case.

The real diplomatist deals rather with the Russian, the Italian, the

Spaniard, than with Russia, Italy, and Spain."

"Quite a good lesson in foreign affairs at first hand," said Lady

Wereminster, turning to her neighbour, Meavy, who, a disappointed man,

had had to resign his post through ill-health. "Given, if I mistake

not, to some end. Has anything unusual struck you about our little

party to-night?"

Meavy looked round.

"Calvert, our host--Farquharson and his wife, Creagh, Beadon, Hare, the

Brands, your husband, you and myself--your sex is in the minority, Lady

Wereminster."

"Precisely the same party that was down at Creagh to meet Mr.

Farquharson on his first introduction to English social life," said Lady

Wereminster. "That was a year ago. Since then----"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Tides ebb and flow, men come and go," quoted Meavy dreamily.

"One man's arrived," said Lady Wereminster. "A year ago we were

bemoaning the drowsiness of the Empire. She has awakened now. I

suppose, to carry on Mr. Hare's simile, she has had a good shaking.

Every one needs it in his day."

"I'm sure _I_ don't," said Dora Farquharson, breaking in. "Richard, do

scold Lady Wereminster. She says I need shaking--I'm sure I don't, do

I?"

"Oh, if we all got our deserts----" put in Hare somewhat grimly.

"Now Richard needs shaking if you like," continued Dora, who had begun,

since marriage, to consider herself something of a wit. "He is the most

_impossible_ husband. Always off somewhere, at anybody's beck and call

but mine. A dear boy, of course, but hopeless to live with. If he had

married an unamiable wife I don't know what he would have done. When

he's at home, he always says he is too busy to be disturbed."

"You don't agree with the axiom that women ought to marry men they

dislike because it is the only way of avoiding them, then?" said Lady

Wereminster.

Dora simpered.

"Oh no. I was always romantic--just the opposite to Richard. Not that

I want to complain of you, old boy." She leant across the table and

tapped her husband on the arm. "You're quite a good sort in your way;

you don't mind your little wife chaffing you occasionally, do you?"

"No man is a hero to his--wife," Creagh misquoted gently.

Lady Wereminster flashed.

"Don't tar us all with the same brush. There are wives and wives,

remember; most of us ought to go through a training school for marriage.

I'm sure useless subjects enough are taught in modern schools. 'How to

be a good wife' would be an attractive variety."

"Modern girls' schools are becoming more like boys'--delightful

playgrounds."

"I approve of hockey and the rest in their way," said Lady Wereminster.

"If the modern woman would only take her marriage as seriously as she

does her games she might even bring human nature into repute again.

Marriage is the only profession which a woman enters with absolutely no

doubt of her competency. She may be the most irresponsible creature in

the world, but she thinks the art of ruling a household is like love or

measles--easily caught. I don't know how it is in your Church, Evelyn,

but in ours no spiritual director would dream of suggesting advice in

such a matter unless he were directly asked to interfere. And yet the

duties are apparent. Any woman may make or mar any man with whom she is

in daily contact. A woman can drag a man down in more ways than one. A

wife can belittle her husband at every turn--can, by persistently

treating him as an inferior in his own house, end by making him

inferior. She can swamp his energy with her idleness, freeze his love

of work with her indifference, fritter his money away on trifles until

he loses all desire to save for a rainy day, deny him pleasure and

outlet at every turn. I have no sympathy for such wives when their

husbands leave them. In many cases, indeed, they would never stay but

for the children."

"'A training school for wives founded by the Countess of Wereminster,'"

said Brand maliciously. "High fees, of course. Shall we draw up the

prospectus now? Will you accept my wife and Mrs. Farquharson as

teachers, Lady Wereminster?"

"Delighted--if you'll agree to go in for the necessary examination as a

husband," said Lady Wereminster promptly.

"'We do not what we ought,

What we ought not, we do,

And lean upon the thought

That chance will bring us through,'"

suggested Creagh, smiling.

"Talk of duties," interposed Mrs. Farquharson, raising her voice, "mine

are simply appalling. They were bad enough in my father's house; they

are a hundred times worse now. But, of course, in my position they

would necessarily be very arduous. And in the future--oh, but I mustn't

talk of that; that's a political secret."

"Rather an open one," said Brand very softly. "We have eyes and ears,

Mrs. Farquharson. Your husband deserves the splendid luck you have

brought him."

"Oh well, it is a good thing, isn't it?" said Dora proudly. "But how

did you know? Of course it has been rumoured for some time, but my

father only decided things to-day, and we don't want it in the papers

for another twenty-four hours."

"It's an appointment in which his peculiar talents will tell," said

Brand, drawing a bow at a venture.

"At first it was a toss-up between that and the Colonies," said Dora.

"But--but in the present state of----"

"Foreign affairs?" suggested Brand.

"They thought--yes, they thought he would be more useful in that

Office."

"Yes, it's a big post," said Brand abstractedly. He looked at his watch.

"I wonder how much longer we're going to sit here. I have to make my

excuses early to Calvert to-night; a friend of mine is ill, and I

promised to go to him straight after dinner." He lowered his voice

again. "I tell you this in confidence, of course. My wife has taken

out a patent in the art of little human kindnesses, you know; she

doesn't like it infringed even by me." He smiled a little pathetically.

Dora put out her hand.

"I know how good you are--no one better. Why, you even helped me once!"

"Ah, that--that was nothing. But some day I shall come upon you for the

fulfilment of your promise, Mrs. Farquharson."

Dora looked up, vaguely startled. Brand's tone was intentionally grave.

"My promise? Oh, I remember. Of course I'll do what I can. There's

the signal to move," she said hurriedly, gathering her fan and gloves

together.

Farquharson stifled a sigh of relief as his wife left the room.

"That woman's insufferable," said Lady Wereminster. "How the man stands

her I don't know. She trades on the patience that she knows he must

possess to have reached his present position. Any woman, alas! has it

in her personal power to make life unendurable for her husband, but I

know of no surer method than persistently to wound his dearest

susceptibilities. Dora treats Richard like a schoolboy--she would

degrade a grocer if she lived with him long enough. 'My this, my

that'--she makes me sick One feels tempted to remind her that the wife.

who lays so frequent a stress on the possessive pronoun where her

husband and children and house are concerned, is always suspected of

holding them insecurely. Did you ever hear the story of the man who

married a rich, vulgar wife, inclined to talk of 'my money, my garden,

my furniture my dinner party,' etc., by way of pointing out the fact

that she had paid for them? Before a room full of people one day she

asked him, after some temporary absence, where he had been. 'Trying on

your new trousers, which have just come back from the tailor's,' he

answered. I hope she laid the lesson to heart."

"I wish you'd learn to take care of yourself, Evelyn," she went on,

inconsequently, peering sharply at Mrs. Brand. "There ought to be some

one at hand who would take care of you, and pet you, and carry you off

to the country every time those hollows come under your eyes. You think

too much, Evelyn. And unless you can kill thought, thought kills you,

remember. That's why light amusements that take one out of oneself are

popular."

"I get a lot of change one way and another," said Evelyn. "I go out, I

mean."

"It's no good to go out if you don't go out with the right person," said

Lady Wereminster. "One has always to pay a price for happiness,

although it does not seem to cost much at the time. Women sign a blank

cheque for it--a most foolish proceeding. It's filled in by the

recipient, and when the amount falls due there's nothing left to meet

it. But we are poor economists, and even spend ourselves if we have

nothing else to spend."

"I can't have you two monopolizing each other all the evening,"

complained Dora Farquharson, looking up, aggrieved. "I wish those men

would come up. How long they are. It's always so dull without men.

And you must both be longing to be let in to this evening's secret--oh,

perhaps you don't even know there is a secret?"

"If you know it, it can no longer be called one," said Lady Wereminster

tartly.

Dora bridled.

"I think a woman should begin as she means to go on, in marriage. I

told Richard from the first that I expected to know everything about his

work--all the secrets, I mean; not the dull part."

"And what did Mr. Farquharson say?"

"Say!" Dora laughed. "Why, he never says anything. I suppose the

so-called great people are usually dull and commonplace in private life.

I always tell Richard that if I had only been allowed a trial trip in

marriage I should never have said yes. He's a dreadful old stay-at-home,

you know; doesn't really care to go out or to bother about one at all.

He doesn't realize what a change it means to a girl who has been

accustomed to a whole train of admirers all her life."

Lady Wereminster put up her lorgnette.

"My dear Dora, don't talk about your youth to a woman who was present at

your christening."

"Oh, she can afford to," said Evelyn gently. She slipped her hand into

Mrs. Farquharson's. "Are we ever to know the secret, Dora? and is it one

that will please us all, or only you?"

"Oh, everybody will know it in forty-eight hours," said Dora, mollified;

"but I think you are to be told to-night. It was Mr. Calvert's plan; he

thought the announcement would make rather a charming climax to the

evening. What an old cat Lady Wereminster is," she added, watching her

opponent withdraw to a distant corner and settle herself comfortably in

an arm-chair with the evening paper. "She never has a kind word for

anybody. Fancy her trying to snub me; luckily I can afford to overlook

that sort of thing in my position. Why, they say Richard may be anything

at this rate. Of course, after a time I shall make father resign in his

favour; he's nearly sixty-five, and no man's really worth anything in

politics at that age. Besides, he should make way for Richard. I'm very

ambitious, you know; there's nothing I don't mean to get for my husband.

Look what I've done for him already. He would never have been heard of

but for that Albert Hall meeting. Oh, it's no good talking of Taorna.

Who in the world cares about Taorna except a few people on the Stock

Exchange? I think it's only my duty to impress upon Richard a proper

sense of the obligation he's under, don't you?"

There is a limit to endurance.

"Obligation?" cried Evelyn indignantly. Mrs. Farquharson started.

There was something in the other woman's voice that struck even her as

unusual. "You've married a man in a million, Dora; a man in whose

dictionary the word impossible is unknown; whom people are proud to

know; whom you told me you loved. I don't believe he owes you anything,

or any one else for that matter. If he did, there could be no possible

question of obligation. In real love there's no bickering over trifles;

you give, if you must call it giving, as you breathe, and as easily.

Oh, Dora, Dora"--she put her hand on the girl's arm again--"don't make

the mistake most women do and quarrel over the ridiculous difference in

the change of a letter or two between meum and tuum!"

Mrs. Farquharson rose, with an assumption of dignity.

"My dear Evelyn, if I didn't know you so well, I should really think you

were jealous. Never mind, dear; I'll try to forget it. I was always

one of your best friends, you know. By the bye, would you mind just

putting a pin in my waist-band? It seems to have slipped somehow. Yes,

it's a pretty frock, isn't it? But Paquin's getting very tiresome; I

had to send up for it three times. They said it took five women

forty-eight hours each, sitting up all night, merely to finish that

embroidery. That alone cost six guineas a yard--but it looks nice,

doesn't it? I always think you look so nice in that dear old frock of

yours--you really do wear your things wonderfully, Evelyn."

"Time makes one's dresses become trusted friends," said Evelyn wearily.

How useless either to protest with or advise such a woman! "Was that

your husband's voice?"

As the men entered she moved again to Lady Wereminster's side, and

Meavy, in obedience to her signal, crossed to Mrs. Farquharson.

"Well, what do you think of my boy's progress?" said Calvert. He seated

himself between the two women, and Creagh and Beadon joined the group.

"That last speech of his added a very important seat to your long list

of victories. I'm a Liberal myself, as you know, but I can't say I was

sorry we were beaten on that occasion."

Creagh laughed.

"For once I was right, eh, Beadon? Do you remember one afternoon when

we were talking about the man and the hour?"

"You have the man, but the hour has not yet struck," said Hare gravely.

"After triumph, reaction."

"You mean that in our national cocksureness lies our peril?" said

Beadon. "We say we expect a fight, and then go to sleep on feather-beds

in comfortable security."

"I often think we are like careless housemaids," said Lady Wereminster,

"who let the dust accumulate in corners, and bitterly resent the

necessity of cleaning them out."

"The truth is," said Hare, "we're getting too luxurious. Even for

sport, men don't deny themselves now as they did at the beginning of the

century. Love of luxury has spread even to the lower classes. A

district messenger boy thinks himself very ill-used if he hasn't got his

own bicycle, and our grooms' sons learn the piano. We make extravagance

our god, not duty. Palatial hotels and motor-cars between them have

killed home life in England. People won't realize it's a much greater

compliment to be asked by their friends to dine in private houses

instead of restaurants."

"I know that modern girls spend more on their dress in a month than I

did in a year," said Lady Wereminster. "I remember a young niece

telling me that it was impossible to go through a London season with

less than twenty-five new evening frocks. I used to wear book-muslins,

and looked a great deal nicer in them then, Wereminster says, than my

own great-grandchildren do now in hand-painted chiffon."

"It's the tendency of the age," said Hare; "our class sins worse than

any other in that respect. Luxury is a blight which has fallen upon the

world; within the last ten years it has grown to be part and parcel of

our existence. In the old days politicians and diplomatists took their

duties seriously, and never grumbled at hard work. If a man does eight

hours' work now he thinks himself ill-used, and goes to the country to

recuperate. Duty is irksome--it always was--but fifty years ago men

faced it as a force to be reckoned with, not to evade. Our blood was

blood then, and ran red. Moral anaemia had not paled it."

"The good old days," said Creagh, smiling. "Let us hope our

grandchildren will talk of us as we are now talking of our forbears, and

bend the knee before our memories as we do now before the memories of

our heroes. Beadon's the man to go for, Hare; we are in his hands.

Tell him to preach your gospel to his Ministry, to impress upon them the

policy of constant energy and watchfulness, as opposed to drastic

reforms which, alas! too often end in sloth."

"The policy of the late Government reminds one of Lady Wereminster's

simile," said Beadon. "The Ministers certainly swept out a good many

rooms, but they left them bare."

"Isn't it nearly time to tell our news?" said Calvert. "I have a little

_bonne bouche_ for you, Mrs. Brand--I know how much it will mean to you,

the woman to whom Richard owes so much. Neither he nor I forget it, if

you have." He took her hand, and patted it affectionately.

Evelyn could not answer. There was a mist before her eyes.

"By the way, what I am about to say is in the strictest confidence,"

said Beadon. "But where is Mr. Brand? Oh, he had to leave early, I

remember. I don't want it to reach the Press for fully forty-eight

hours, as Richard's is the first appointment to be filled in my new

Ministry. He is to be the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; the

appointment has only just been confirmed. I think nothing can suit him

better. His gift of languages, his tact and diplomacy and unwearying

patience--all will tell to their fullest."

Lady Wereminster clapped her hands.

"Hurrah! How glad I am! Come here, Mr. Farquharson, to be

congratulated. Now you'll go on from strength to strength."

"I'm delighted, my dear fellow," said Creagh, his face glowing with

satisfaction. "It's the best thing for the country. But I don't know

that I envy our neighbours across the sea, though; they'll tackle a

rough customer in you."

"Good," was Hare's comment; "you deserve it.

"Now we can sleep in peace," said Lord Wereminster benignly, "and sing

'I fear no foe' with some conviction."

Evelyn alone of the congratulatory group was dumb. To have one's

prayers answered openly is sometimes a betrayal of what those prayers

have meant to one. Farquharson came quietly up to her, and, voiceless

still, her eyes searched his face. How he had aged the last few months!

There was a great patch of grey hair on the right-hand side of his brow.

She wondered if she would ever see again the look of boyish exaltation

he had had that night at Bramley.

Hare, glancing at them, quietly drew Lady Wereminster's attention to the

fact that Mrs. Farquharson was still sitting apart from the rest with

Meavy. "Would it not be correct to congratulate her too?" he suggested.

"And you--have you nothing to say?" Farquharson asked. They were

practically alone for the first time since his marriage.

Evelyn looked down. Her eyes were wet.

"Don't--don't!" she said; "it's beyond all words--the gladness, I mean.

You know the little desert song--

"'No one but God and I

Know what is in my heart.'

That's what I feel."

"Now, Evelyn, Evelyn, come over here with my husband, or I shall feel

quite jealous," called Mrs. Farquharson from the other end of the room.

*CHAPTER III*

"A sacred burden is the life ye bear:

Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly;

Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly;

Fail not for sorrow; falter not for sin,

But onward, upward, till the goal ye win."

F. A. KEMBLE.

"Once upon a time," said Lady Wereminster, "I used to meet treachery

with openness. I believed that to raise the standard of right meant

victory. Now I know it doesn't, from this world's point of view. Men

and women who batten upon each other, who, being insensitive to the

feelings of others, mock at the halt and blind, get all they want from

life. Life, like the judge in the importunate widow story, gives only

to those who ask persistently."

"I used to pride myself on asking very little from life; now I've found

out that what I want is priceless," said Evelyn. Lady Wereminster had

come in to see her one afternoon after a big function at Holland House,

and stayed, as was her custom.

"You think you're alone in your suffering," said Lady Wereminster;

"well, you're not. Your friends suffer with you, they see you shamed

and broken in the world's eyes, and they stand on the pillory with you,

and are beaten with stripes as you are. Don't think I'm trying to force

your confidence. I'm not. I only want you to know what people like you

so seldom realize, that, as you walk to the Cross, a host of invisible

followers pursue you, the people you've helped, the people who love you,

the people to whom your hurt is more than their own. We're not all of

us called upon to make great sacrifices, Evelyn. It's only a few people

like you in a century upon whom the demand is made. If I were a pagan I

should say that the gods were jealous of the gift of love. Take any of

the lives you know, and you'll see that, where love is, the real

communion between men and women, the tie is rudely broken either by

death or some more imminent disaster. I keep my faith in spite of being

sure that the Great Power behind only allows us to taste supreme joy for

a short time. Human beings are born with the capacity of holding a

certain amount of strength and force and happiness. If they take all

their happiness at once, as those of us do who drink the cup at its

fullest, they must go thirsty for the remainder of their days."

She turned suddenly and held out her hand to Evelyn.

"You don't want to talk about it, I know. I don't, either. I had to

tell you, for I'm an old woman who has seen many seeming injustices in

the world, and who will rebel against them to the end--and so I am sorry

for you. Because I believe in happiness I should have arranged the

world differently to the way in which God has arranged it. But because

He is God, and has rolling centuries to match my little half-hour of

knowledge, I fold my hands and trust His purposes, although I absolutely

fail to see their meaning. Now let's talk of something else. Have you

seen Dora Farquharson lately?"

"Only casually in the street," said Evelyn. "She seems rather to have

avoided me of late."

"Nor her husband?" asked Lady Wereminster, intent on fastening her

cloak.

Evelyn shook her head.

"We live very far out, you know, and of late, even had the Farquharsons

been disengaged, we've entertained so little that I've had no excuse for

asking them."

"If you had asked her, she'd have refused to come," said Lady

Wereminster from the door. "She's jealous. A woman who is common at

heart takes common means of showing jealousy. But, mark my words, the

time will come when Dora's in trouble, and she'll send for you then

irrevocably as the one person she can trust."

Fond as she was of Lady Wereminster, Evelyn saw her go with a sigh of

relief. Unseen wounds hurt enough in any case, without being torn open

daily by our friends.--How hot and sultry it was!

One of the minor evils of what is called the artistic temperament is its

dependence on the changes of the season. So far, Evelyn had loved

spring and summer, had counted the days till April like a child awaiting

some coveted adventure. She loved to see the orchards break into bloom,

on the way to Kew; the first pink flush of almond blossom, the coming of

little green shoots on barren trees had struck her with a new

significance each year till now. The gradual coming of life was so

tender, so wonderful, so mysterious.... But this year, the light and

glow, the call of mating birds, the caress of the soft air, only served

to deepen her sense of pain. Everything spoke of the joy and promise of

life from which she stood aloof. Nature itself seemed to have taken up

arms against her, and its array of happy changes found her lonely and

sad.

The ordinary routine of life went on, untouched by mood or whim. It was

an especially busy season, but lately she had lost her hold on things,

and found it difficult to keep up even the little weekly salon in which

she had once taken such pride. To be mated with sorrow is little by

little to lose all vitality and youth; the lassitude that had come upon

Evelyn presently became physical, gripped her closer day by day, as she

strove against it with ever-weakening strength. Society had no longer

any power to amuse her; indeed she dreaded going out, lest she should be

forced to listen to more of Dora's confidences about Farquharson.

Religion left her cold. At home, Brand was perhaps a trifle more

cynical than before; he had found her vulnerable spot, and turned his

knowledge to account. On those rare evenings when they were alone

together in the little flat at West Kensington (she often dined now in

her own room), she would surprise him sometimes watching her through

half-closed lids, and smiling as if at some private reminiscence.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked one night, when for the

third time she had met his mocking look fixed full upon her.

"Oh, I grant you it's rather amazing that a man should find anything to

look at in his wife after so many years of marriage," said Brand,

flicking the ash from his cigarette. "You should be flattered at the

compliment. A husband's tribute to his wife's charms is worth at least

twice as much as that of any--other. By the way, our Secretary of State

for Foreign Affairs is mounting steadily up the ladder of fame, isn't

he?"

"The papers seem to think well of him," said Evelyn coldly.

The postman's knock at the door brought welcome interruption in the

shape of a bulky letter from Cummings. She took it to her room.

"By the time this reaches you I shall have set sail for the East once

more," he wrote. "I have got all the good I shall out of my trip; it's

no use staying any longer. It was like you to try to make my father and

mother see me again--I knew they would not. Amongst many jealous

mistresses--ambition, pleasure, the quest of forgetfulness or

peace--love of home never loses her sway on a man's heart. A man may

travel far and try to stifle, in other countries and other surroundings,

the claims of his own lands and his own people, but their voices compel

him, until at last he is bound either to obey or else for ever to cut

himself adrift. And for the future I shall cut myself adrift.

"It was like you, too, to collect all that array of good things for my

people; thank you for them all. Not one will be wasted, and I shall look

upon them with very especial gratitude, because you thought of me in

your own trouble.

"For that you have got to face trouble--perhaps are facing it now--I

know. I have thought about you again and again lately, when fighting my

own battles. The hardest test of faith, after all, is to fight when one

is not sure the cause is good. Thank God that you and I both know ten

thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. Beneath every paradox of

the Catholic Church truth lies concealed, if we will but dig down to it.

But there are days when toil is impossible; when merely to attempt work

so hard and difficult brings sweat to one's brow. And you will tell me,

very truly, that, face to face with mental wreckage, to talk of paradox

is small comfort.

"You are a unit of a big battalion; only a unit, but you count. There

are others to right and to left, in front and in rear of you; they will

fall if you fail. You know that a regiment once was lost through one

man's cowardice. You and I have got to go on, whatever happens. We are

not great generals--we are under command. Obedience is our watchword.

"I remember in the South African War, before a certain action, the

general sent out an army order to his men, which I copied at the time,

but cannot lay my hands on just now. It ran something like this: 'You

are dealing with a treacherous enemy; one who seeks to lower your honour

by his own intrigue. Face that fact, and face him; it is the only way.'

The one simple thing in life for you and me lies in the fact that, after

all, we have but one thing to do. We are fighting under a standard that

we are going to uphold to the end. We shall bleed for it--a few drops

of blood, more or less, really don't matter; we shall probably fall for

it--we shall have to remember then to hold our heads up, because the

world might think that we were afraid; we shall die for it, knowing that

it is still raised high in the sight of men, and that it will so rise,

please God, through all the coming centuries as it has done in all its

glorious past.

"Rather cold comfort I am giving you, I suppose you will say. But you

have been abroad, and seen life under different aspects, and watched

great issues come to a climax as I have. Out in India, at the great

Mahomedan festivals, I have walked ankle-deep through narrow streets

reeking with blood. I once stood by the unlit _ghat_, and watched a

man's dead body thereon, and saw his little widow of twenty years old

set a light to the pyre with her own slender fingers, in default of a

son old enough to undertake the office. Such things make one think.

"I shall never forget her shriek when the flame rose, nor the dreary

misery of her look when, afterwards, she collected her husband's ashes,

and, being only a peasant, was stripped of her fine garments, stripped

of her ornaments, stripped of all that made life bearable from her

limited point of view, to begin a new life of drudgery working in the

fields, scorned and mocked by all, an unclean being to be stoned by the

very boys in the street because, as a widow, she had lost her caste.

"Experiences like these wrench you out of yourself, and make you thank

God you are not God to judge between the sins and errors of nations and

of individuals. You and I rebel at drinking our cup of vinegar and gall

because we are merely human, and so don't like the bitter draught. But

it is because sin came first, that there is so much suffering now.

Better drink the bitter cup to its dregs here than pay the penalty of

drinking it hereafter. And whether or no it comforts us at the moment,

the light of faith is still ours. 'May we walk therein until the day of

eternal light breaks forth, and the shadows and figures pass away.'"

"You've been worrying again," said Lady Wereminster, returning. "Don't.

Nothing in the world is worth worrying about more than half-an-hour.

_Worrying_ about, I said, not grieving over. Legitimate grief at a

legitimate blow is one thing--racking your brains out adjusting

something which ought never to have gone askew is another. Worry puts a

spoke in the wheel of thought; it may stop the machinery from moving.

And then----" She shrugged her shoulders significantly.

"I don't think any self-respecting person can be well in this weather,"

said Evelyn; "it would be rather rude not to acknowledge its power."

"It's no use looking at the door," said Lady Wereminster; "I am not

going for hours yet. I returned with the intention of bullying you, and

shan't stir until I've done it. I am in a bad temper, and must wreak it

on somebody. One ought to give way to one's temper sometimes, you know,

on the principle of a kettle boiling over and doing serious damage."

"I'm quite impervious to your tempers," said Evelyn; "they are more easy

to deal with than the amenities of other people!"

"This is an unlucky day," said Lady Wereminster, seating herself.

"Wherever I turn I run up against Dora Farquharson. Nothing annoys me

more. I shopped in Sloane Street this morning--she was there. I

lunched with Lady Ennly quite unexpectedly; unluckily, that dear idiot

Creagh had run across Dora in the Park, and brought her on. She patted

her husband on his back all luncheon time; metaphorically, of

course--mercifully for him he was absent. If I were a caricaturist I

should draw her putting him flat on his stomach across her knee and

thumping him as if he were a troublesome infant. If that woman lived

with Savonarola, she would bring him down eventually to the level of

Simple Simon in the old nursery rhyme."

"Oh, she can't do him any real harm," Evelyn said. "You do exaggerate

things so delightfully. The marriage is not successful, I know--but no

one would know it wasn't if she had any tact. For he's patient enough

and forbearing."

"Too forbearing," said Lady Wereminster. "If a man marries a fool he

should treat her according to her folly. Once to give in to a blatant

self-sufficient creature like Dora Farquharson is to give in for all

eternity, and so pave the way to your own downfall. Fools and

scandal-mongers are at the bottom of all the mischief in the world.

There are very few systematic schemers and plotters, in spite of

Sicilian melodrama. Mrs. Farquharson has a common soul. One doesn't

know how to deal with such a woman; the whole art of social warfare has

to be re-learned. She's flagrant; she uses every one; she's used you;

in the old days she traded on her father's influence; now she trades on

her husband's."

"Dora is rather inconsiderate," said Evelyn. "Her husband's success

might well turn her head."

"Oh, her head's a tee-to-tum," said Lady Wereminster; "you have only got

to touch it with the finger of flattery for it to spin round and round

like a top. She gives me a sort of moral vertigo. It's rather a

dangerous quality, by the bye, for the wife of a Minister in so

important an office. A judicious questioner could get anything in the

world out of Dora Farquharson; she'd be worth a fortune to Fleet

Street----" She stopped abruptly.

The eyes of the two women met.

"Yes?" said Evelyn.

"This is a secret," said Lady Wereminster, dropping her voice; "a real

secret, mind. Your husband's out, isn't he? and the servant, I suppose,

is concealed in that dark hole of yours you call a kitchen. All the

same, I would be rather glad if you would open the door and take the

trouble to look well down the passage before I tell you what I've got to

say."

"How absurd you are," said Evelyn, returning. "You're quite safe;

there's no one in the house. I've looked in every room and under the

beds!"

"Thank you," said Lady Wereminster, with a sigh of relief. "It's a

serious matter, really, Evelyn. You know what friends Wereminster and

Beadon have always been--allies from boyhood. Wereminster, of course, is

like a rock. You strike and strike at him, and you don't get even the

vaguest echo. He's the safest man in the world to confide in. He

always declares he would never have found out that he was in love with

me if I hadn't told him first. And though I talk so much, I don't as a

rule talk personalities. That's why people look upon us as safety

valves, and we learn a good deal about small intrigues and difficulties

that other people never hear."

"Don't say names, will you? I do so hate being told what I'm not meant

to know."

"If I don't tell somebody I shall burst," said Lady Wereminster.

"You're safe. You're a well; people pour their souls into you, and

other people lean over from the brink and see nothing. It appears that

various small matters have leaked out lately in the Press, and no one

can account for the authorship. And in each case, unluckily, the

impression given has been true. So far only comparatively minor matters

have been disclosed; but who knows when something really important won't

be given away before its time, and so lead to irreparable harm? I know,

as a fact, that the P.O. is worried about it."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Six or eight months. That's the unfortunate part of it. It dates back

to the time when Richard Farquharson was made Secretary of State for

Foreign Affairs. Oh, don't look like that--nobody suspects him, but

it's an unlucky incident. Why, even his appointment, which was, so far

as we know, known only to the King and his immediate household, to the

Prime Minister and to the _personnel_ who met at Mr. Calvert's famous

dinner party on the second of November, was announced in all the morning

papers, although Mr. Beadon had expressly told us that it was to be kept

private for the next forty-eight hours."

"Mr. Beadon has new secretaries, I suppose," said Evelyn. "He would

probably require more help as Prime Minister than as Leader of the

Opposition."

"Oh, they're above reproach," said Lady Wereminster; "personal friends

mostly, and all men who have worked with him for years. Besides, it's

not necessarily John Beadon's news that has been given away. It is

chiefly minute turns of the tide which affect the rise and fall of

shares, etc. Anyway, the whole position is discomforting, a source of

real annoyance to the Prime Minister and his colleagues."

"Stocks and shares," repeated Evelyn. She had grown very pale. "Yes,

of course an intimate knowledge of foreign affairs would make all the

difference in speculation. But no one, however base, could do such a

thing--no one in our set, I mean----" She faltered.

"Some men and women would do anything for money," said Lady Wereminster.

"What's happened so far does not affect the nation _en grand_. It's

merely that events have proved that small founts of knowledge, whose

source is supposed to be only known to the initiated, have obviously

been tapped by some mysterious person, whose identity is as yet unknown.

And as these things deal mainly with his office they look like stabs in

the dark aimed at Mr. Farquharson himself. Such a man must have

enemies, of course, but I never knew--did you?--that any special person

bore him a grudge?"

"I want to ask you a question," said Evelyn. Her husband found her in

the hall, awaiting him, when, some time after midnight, he turned the

key in the door. "You have been comparatively generous to me lately.

So far as I know, our income is the same as it has always been, but you

have been less troubled about money matters. Why?"

Brand put one hand on her shoulder heavily, and with the other dragged

her face sharply upwards into the full glare of the electric light, and

looked at her searchingly.

"I think I shouldn't make too many inquiries into the question if I were

you," he said deliberately. "Your way of life and mine are not quite the

same. I am a plain man, and I go a man's way to work. I don't pose or

talk cant. Luck comes my way now and again, although it's more often

dead against me. It's with me now, and I mean to make the most of it.

I owe part of it to you, you know, and that's why I've been generous."

"You owe it to me--to _me_?" said Evelyn blankly.

He pulled the door-chain, laughing, and she heard him laughing again as

he went up-stairs. The night was warm, but she stood shivering like a

frightened child in the empty hall at the thought which struck her.

*CHAPTER IV*

"If we could see ourselves as others see us, many of us would wear a

mask"--ANON.

"It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human

being."--LORD BEACONSFIELD.

In work, says an old philosopher, a man may find his refuge for all ills

of the mind; to drink deep of the fount of knowledge is to bring peace

to the troubled soul. But work had been too long the mainspring of

Farquharson's life for him to find in it now the comfort which might

have lulled another man's anxiety. His life had been one of toil

throughout. At Glune he had wrestled and fought for freedom; in the

succeeding years, after his escape, he had struggled for knowledge and

mere daily bread; in Taorna, fortune and fame had been his two

objectives; in England he sought power. And after a time strain tells

even upon the strong. It is often the most brilliant brain that snaps.

A normal man must have an outlet for his feelings and emotions.

Farquharson's long self-repression in the past had made him the readier

to be swayed by the right woman's influence when it came. He had never

fully realized all that his daily communion with Evelyn had meant until

after the wrench of their parting at Bramley.

The pain that can be sympathized with openly is endurable, but hidden

pain is crushing. There is conceivable relief for a surcharged brain

which can explain the why and wherefore of its sorrow; but in the world

daily we meet widows who were never wives, and whose despair is the more

hopeless because they have no lawful claim upon our sympathy.

In his separation from Evelyn, Farquharson had lost the friend,

companion, helpmate, and bride of his dreams. Work--to a habitual

worker--cannot heal so deep a wound as this; only complete change of

circumstance and scene might possibly change a man's thoughts after such

a blow. And for him there was no change. Shorn of all joy and pride in

his work, he yet toiled ceaselessly at it; returning daily to a home

which, worse than being bare and desolate, contained the wrong woman.

There are women who pry into the smallest details of a man's privacy.

Farquharson's dressing-room even was not his own. In certain moods Dora

discovered that the angle of his looking-glass pleased her better than

her own; short of actually locking the door against her, he was never

secure from interruption even there. She had developed a thousand whims

and fancies since her marriage. She had her own boudoir and

drawing-room, and a little sanctum on the stairs which she called her

library, where she began to write many letters which were never

finished, and to grapple with accounts which were always thrown aside a

moment later. Farquharson, unaccustomed to women's society, never once

thought of forbidding her to invade his own large and austerely

furnished study at the back of the house; it was not until returning

unexpectedly one day he found her rummaging amongst some papers on the

table that he spoke to her with unusual severity.

"You have your own room, Dora; kindly keep there. I can't allow you to

come here. There are papers of importance which mustn't be touched.

What's that you've got crumpled up in your hand? It looks like--why,

these are some notes Blair made for me this morning. How did you manage

to get hold of them?"

"It's perfectly absurd that Mr. Blair should be allowed to come in here

and go out as he likes even if he is your secretary, when you forbid

your own wife to come in," said Dora angrily. "Stupid old notes, I'm

sure I don't want them; I brought in papers of my own, and I suppose

they've got mixed up, somehow. They're written on just the same sort of

paper as Louise's bill. How on earth was I to know the difference?

Besides, anyway it's absurd to make such a fuss about a trifle like

that. If I did happen to glance at your dull notes and see a word or

two, who has a better right than I to read them, after all?"

Farquharson smoothed out the paper and glanced down it.

"There's nothing that matters in this as it happens. Blair's quite a

careful boy; he would never leave out anything really important. But we

are rather busy people, Dora, he and I, and he has his own way of

arranging things. He's complained to me before now that they're upset

and made disorderly by your coming in. Now, I don't suppose, for

instance, that you've the smallest notion where you got this from. Try

and tax your memory, and put it back in exactly the same place."

"How absurd, how maddening you are!" said Dora, fuming. "What on earth

does it matter where the stupid old things come from?" She tore the

paper into a dozen pieces and flung them down, white with rage. "You

shut me out from everything. What's the good of being the wife of a man

in your position if you keep everything so secret? I'm the same as

yourself; I've a right to know everything that you know. I know there

is some big intrigue going on at this very moment between England

and--well, you know which foreign Power better than I; all the

newspapers are hinting at it--anybody would give anything to get hold of

a little private knowledge about it. But here you are keeping it all to

yourself, when it's my right to know, when you ought to confide in me.

It's hateful, it's despicable, it's absolutely lowering; no wife in the

world was ever treated so cruelly as you treat me."

Farquharson sighed hopelessly.

"We had better understand each other once and for all. I should have

thought that you, the daughter of a man who, in the past, was once

Colonial Minister, would have understood matters without need of

explanation. With an ordinary wife things may be different, I don't

know. The wife of a man holding my office must be content to know

neither more nor less than the rest of the world about the work he is

engaged in. A man's political and domestic life are absolutely apart.

We have a lot of years before us, Dora, to live out side by side. This

point must be made clear now. You must submit to me utterly in this; in

everything else I give you your own way, so far as is compatible with

common sense. It seems to me a monstrous thing that you should even

contemplate the possibility of my being a spy to satisfy your curiosity.

Leave my room now, at once, and remember that I put you on your honour

never to enter it again without permission."

"How dare you? how dare you?" cried Dora, catching her breath

hysterically. "It's my right, it's my due, to go where I like and do as

I choose. I won't be shut out of your life like this. You owe

everything to me, and this is your gratitude. Taorna--who cares

twopence-halfpenny about Taorna and what's done there? If I hadn't

pleaded with and begged my father to give you some place in the

Ministry, do you think you'd be there now? If you hadn't married me you

would have been nowhere and done nothing. And what have I gained

through marriage with you? I was happier before. People loved me and

admired me. You never give me a word of love or admiration. You go out

with me--yes, because you've got to; because it's to your advantage to

show me off at parties. But you never even notice my new gowns; you

never even take the trouble to pay me one of the compliments I was

surfeited with, till I met you. I might be--why, I might be just like

anybody else the way you treat me; not a woman of importance, a woman

with wealth and charm, and all the rest of it--who expects to hear a

trumpery secret now and again, as her right, and is grudged even that."

She stopped for want of breath, and caught at the table for support.

Farquharson leant back in his chair and looked at her critically. He

was very pale.

"Three minutes by the clock, my dear Dora. There's a prize given at

Dunmow annually to the woman who talks longer and faster than any other

in the competition. It doesn't matter what nonsense she talks. You

would do well to enter for it. I believe it comes off in July."

Dora turned suddenly and confronted him. He looked at her as at a

stranger. He had had little experience of hysterical women; the outward

signs of his mother's conflicts with self had been so sternly repressed

that it was only lately that he had guessed how often that rigid figure

quailed under the strain of its inward wounds. No other woman had come

into his life as more than a momentary pastime till he met Evelyn. The

sight of his wife's short, stricken figure roused no pity in him, only

disgust. He had had no very high ideal of women in childhood; that he

should have linked himself to a woman whose motives were so mean, one

who, having no real interest in the cause, could seek to degrade her

husband's honour for the mere sake of satisfying personal curiosity, of

flaunting her knowledge in the eyes of others, roused his disgust and

shame.

He put his watch down on the table.

"In five minutes I shall expect you to leave the room," he said. "If

you haven't withdrawn by then I shall ring for your maid. In any case I

should advise you to send for her. You aren't yourself. I think even

the glass in my dressing-room would fail to satisfy you as to your

appearance at the present moment."

His cigarette case lay on the table; he reached his hand out for it, but

paused midway.

Dora sprang at him, her eyes blazing. She clutched his arm in her

grasp, almost like a mad woman.

"I hate you," she gasped. "You've killed my love. What right have you

to make me suffer? to hurt me so appallingly, mentally, spiritually,

physically? When I think of all I've got to bear for you it almost

drives me mad. It's too humiliating and degrading. Weeks, months of

pain for you--for you that I hate. I've seen the doctor to-day; he left

just before you came. Nothing can save me. I've got to have a child--a

child that will be like you, hard, cruel and implacable."

For a moment Farquharson sat in silence, aghast, shaken at the torrent

of words. This was the explanation, then; the excuse of all the

waywardness and hysteria he had not understood. He hardly knew if he

was glad or sorry at the news. The dream-wife he had longed for would

never now be his; ... the dream-child he had longed for, for whose dear

sake he had striven to win Glune....

Dream-bride, dream-mother--he shut his eyes. And Dora was the reality,

and Dora was suffering.... His anger died, and a wave of tenderness and

sympathy, pity for her as well as for himself, and awe and wonder that

even in this moment the new tie pulled at his heart-strings, made him

stretch out his arms to her, and take her on his knee almost as though

he loved her.

"My dear, my dear, forgive me. I didn't understand or know--I ought to

have guessed and been kinder to you," he said, holding her close.

But even in the moment of reconciliation a picture shaped itself before

his eyes--a picture which he resolutely strove to put away, but which

returned again and again during the night. How differently the

dream-wife would have told him--and what would it not have meant to him

and to her?

*CHAPTER V*

"Every work that is corruptible shall fail, and the worker thereof shall

go with it."--ECCLESIASTICUS.

To achieve success by certain ways is not, after all, very difficult.

The schemers and plotters, even the merely selfish, have all in their

hands for a time. One need not necessarily be wicked to flourish as a

green bay-tree. Persistently to use other people to your own ends, to

appeal to pity at the right moment, to take what is offered you as your

due, without gratitude or sense of obligation, is to lay a very sure

nest-egg of security for the future.

Brand had planned and schemed to some avail. He had every right to be

satisfied with the result. For years he had cherished the remembrance of

slights long since forgotten by their authors. Well, he had been able

to wipe off a great many of such slights lately. He had struck at

Evelyn through Farquharson; he had struck at Lady Wereminster through

Evelyn; he had struck at Farquharson through Dora; he would strike at

Calvert through Farquharson. It was quite simple, after all, to pull

the strings of puppets so foolish as to be swayed by the great forces of

love and honour, no matter how important the stage on which they played.

Sitting at ease in the lounge of the Grand Hotel at Brighton one

afternoon in June, he reviewed the situation critically. He was better

off than he had been, too--always a pleasant matter of contemplation.

Secretly as he worked, he was recognized by the Press as a man who could

tap many mines of marketable knowledge, "one in the know," as the phrase

goes, unhampered by petty scruples as to parting with his knowledge for

a valuable sum. He had easily learned the journalists' knack of dressing

his knowledge in pertinent phrase; that fact told too. Thanks to

Evelyn, he was received everywhere now; the world forgets very easily,

unless its memory is jogged. The inscriptions on his sisters'

tombstones were now illegible for want of care, and Brand himself was

not the type of man whom ghosts haunt.

He was careful in small details, sure in his heart that Evelyn could not

do more than suspect him, and had no means of proving her knowledge.

Her hands were tied too. To prove that Dora Farquharson had told her

husband's secrets to a man who, in turn, sold them to the daily Press,

was, after all, to drag down Farquharson from his high place. Caesar's

wife--he laughed; in this case she had proved a very useful buffer!

Since the episode in the hall, Brand had been more careful in concealing

matters from his wife. He went to another banker, and kept his

cheque-book under lock and key, for instance--not that that was

necessary with Evelyn--but he took care that she should no longer

benefit by the price he was paid for his items of news.

And, little by little, he was sowing seeds of suspicion among the

Opposition. It was his dearest hope to drag Farquharson's name in the

dust. He never forgot that it was Farquharson who had ousted him for

ever from the place which he might have taken in Calvert's regard. For

ever?--the man was old and weak now; who knew but if Farquharson failed

him he might not lend a more willing ear to the voice of the ready

sympathizer, who was also a near connection?

In any case Brand was content to wait. Until he is found out, a cheat

is bound to win the greatest number of tricks in a game of skill.

Then, too, a physically weak man likes to show his power; he is often

more cruel than a stronger man. Brand's meetings with Dora afforded him

constant amusement. At first she had tried to baffle and evade him;

Dora was the last woman in the world to hold to a bargain when once she

had reaped its full benefits. They had quite a disturbing scene one

day. She was fully alive to the advantages of her position. As

Farquharson's wife she could go anywhere, do anything. And she knew

that, did he once learn by what means she had won him--that she had

allowed Evelyn's name to be brought into disrepute that she might win

her little pitiful triumph, he was capable of repudiating her at once.

No love bound them. Separation, scandal, the dreariness of life under

such changed conditions--these were unpleasant changes which no woman of

sense would wish to face.

Brand worried her very little at first, merely drawing her on to

disclose small items of news more on the level with Farquharson's

appointment. Little by little his demands grew. Much of Farquharson's

work was done in cypher at the Foreign Office, but there were certain

notes and jottings often in his personal possession at Chester Street.

From time to time Dora had got possession of these notes for him. Lady

Wereminster was right. In one way and another a good many important

disclosures had been made. Some of these Brand sold directly to the

Press, others he used entirely for his own advantage, and was the richer

man thereby.

He had a great scheme in view now--to get a copy of some of the terms of

this Foreign Treaty about which there was so much controversy. A third

Power would give the weight of each word in gold for even a hint of its

contents.... But how to get it? Dora had given herself away so

ridiculously on that occasion when Farquharson had found her in his

room; she had admitted losing her head through absolute terror after his

discovery that she was searching amongst his papers. That was the worst

of women, particularly women in her condition. Never level-headed at

best, approaching motherhood threw some of them completely off their

mental balance, particularly those who, like Dora, rebelled against its

very thought.

Oh, he had got to the crux of the difficulty, doubtless. He smoked on

meditatively, eyeing, one by one, the typical little groups of men and

women who were gathered near him: rich Jews, with over-dressed families,

actresses, manufacturers' wives from the Midlands, a loud-voiced,

blatant throng. Places like these always amused Brand; their little

pitiful attempts to compete with the attractions of foreign hotels were

so lamentable in their failure, they reminded him of a young bride's

efforts to rival an experienced woman of the world.

An _habituee_ of the place, a woman to whom he had spoken casually on

one or two occasions, came up and seated herself beside him. "You

always remind me of Burns' poem, Mr. Brand," she said archly. "You look

'like a chiel amangst us takin' notes.' Aren't you often abused

socially for being so critical?"

"Critical--now I wonder what you mean by critical?" said Brand.

The woman laughed again, tugging ruthlessly at her gloves.

"Oh, pulling holes, I suppose. You look at us all as though you could

strip us threadbare. I've heard lots of people say the same. Now tell

me, aren't you a great personage in London?"

Brand smiled.

"I am only a looker-on, dear lady. Now and again I give or withhold a

word of advice. That's all. Few people have your perspicacity. Men of

force are usually supposed to have athletic physiques. Now sport, and

all things appertaining thereto, have always seemed to me--rather cruel

and terrible. They are always subtle pleasures which appeal to me.

Goths and Philistines say that the taste of absinthe reminds them of bad

drains; whereas to me it's of a quite unparalleled purity. Now there's

an odd flavour about life as there is about absinthe; and the odder it

is the more it appeals to me."

"I think my friend wants me," said the lady, rather nervously. She

swept away hurriedly. Brand watched her exit with a smile. Provincial

women have only one charm; it is easy to be rid of them when once they

bore you. You have only to hint at abnormality, or give the merest

suggestion of what, in their own vernacular, would be called "improper,"

to send them scuttling away like frightened sheep.

He rose leisurely and looked at the clock in the hall. Two--no, Mrs.

Farquharson was eight minutes late. Careless, that. For the future he

must make her realize that he expected her to be punctual. The position

had shifted; it was he who now directed, and she who had to obey.

He crossed to the far corner of the lounge, seating himself under the

alcove immediately facing the door. Presently the green car arrived,

and he saw Dora emerge from it hurriedly, and run up the broad steps,

with some amusement. Her obvious inner tremors were a tribute to his

power. She spoke to the hall porter anxiously, and was ushered in full

of apologies and mental disturbance.

"I thought I should never get off," she said. "It takes such an awful

time to get down here, and the chauffeur took a wrong turning at

Croydon. I daren't risk coming to such a place again. What should I do

if Richard were to question the man as to where I've been? He knows I

never do anything without a motive."

"I should have thought you were accustomed to inventing excuses by now,"

said Brand deliberately. "You've had a good deal of experience, one way

and another. You have brought the papers, I suppose? Here, look at the

Sketch. Hold it in your left hand, so. Put your bag underneath on your

lap; take out the papers, and pass them to me presently. Not just yet,

those people over there are looking. Thanks. You're sure they are what

I want?"

"Of course they are what you want," said Dora. "Understand, this is the

very last thing I'm going to do for you. I've paid you back a

thousandfold for the little you did. For that matter, you did me the

worst turn you ever did to any one in all your life. My marriage has

brought me nothing but misery and discomfort."

"Oh, so you think you have paid your debt, do you?" said Brand. "Tea

for two, waiter, please. Hot cakes I think you like, Mrs. Farquharson;

or, as it's summer, would you prefer sandwiches? Yes, cucumber

sandwiches, I think, please--anything cool. You were saying--by the

way, how much you amuse me, Mrs. Farquharson!"

"Amuse you!" repeated Dora. She pulled her veil down again, shrinking

back into the corner as two strangers from the sea front, who had come

in for tea, passed by and glanced at the pair curiously.

"Cream? Sugar?" asked Brand. "What, no sugar? I should take it if I

were you."

He handed her her teacup with some deliberation. "There's one quality

that you lack, Mrs. Farquharson--you have all other charms, of course.

You don't balance things quite aptly. Now, as a matter of fact, you owe

me a debt that can never be properly repaid. I've done the utmost that

a man can do for any woman--I've even jeopardized my wife's honour that

you might gain what you desired." He shrugged his shoulders. "The fact

that what you then gained is now of no value to you doesn't matter at

all. The point is that you haven't paid your debt off yet--that there's

still more to be done before you and I can properly call quits."

"More still!" said Dora. She was very pale, and her hand was shaking.

"More still!" Her voice rose hysterically.

Brand leant back in his chair.

"You shall be free after this one more act, I promise you. It's

comparatively a difficult job, I grant. You know that, owing to

widespread dissension on the frontier, there's a question of a certain

treaty between a very important Power and England. The terms of that

treaty intimately concern another Power--she is anxious to know how far

her welfare is attacked. Your husband is sure to have notes relating to

the negotiations amongst his papers. He is a careful man--you may find

it difficult to distinguish them from the rest of his possessions. So

on this occasion I must ask you to be wholesale in your methods; you

must get at the whole contents of his safe and send them to me. What I

don't want I shall destroy--be sure of that."

"The whole contents of his safe!" repeated Dora. "What you ask is

monstrous. I can't do it--no one can; no one but I and his secretaries

know where he keeps his keys. Why, he has often locked up the door of

his room himself, since he found me there. The other matters were

comparatively easy--mere questions of notes and things that were filed

with his ordinary papers. This is impossible; I can't do it---I won't.

It could be traced to me, and he would kill me if he knew."

Brand watched her blandly. He thought suddenly of his wife, and of how

she would have met such an appeal. The question of her husband's

honour, the welfare of her country, meant absolutely nothing to Dora

Farquharson. All she dreaded was punishment of her own action, the fear

of being found out. She was, indeed, panic-stricken at the thought;

little livid patches had broken out on her cheek.

"You would prefer that I should tell your husband the truth, then?" said

Brand pleasantly. "Do take another sandwich. The truth not only about

what happened before his marriage, but what has happened since? You are

not a very discreet woman, you know. All the communications you've sent

me--that you have got hold of so cleverly at my request--have been

addressed in your own handwriting; most have been accompanied by

personal letters explaining the nature of the matter sent. I am afraid

your position in the world would not be very secure, Mrs. Farquharson,

when these facts were made known socially. Farquharson is an implacable

sort of person, you know; he would always put the honour of his country

above that of his own. There would be no question as to which he would

sacrifice, and very unpleasant things are said of women who do as you

have done. Now, with one little act you can free yourself from me and

my demands. The very wholesale nature of the case will look like

commonplace burglary. I've got a little instrument here with which you

can break the lock of your husband's safe quite easily, also a duplicate

key of the study door in case of accidents--an expert made it, and your

work will look like that of an expert. I shall want those papers before

the end of the week after next. When once they are in my hands I'll

never trouble you again." He took out his watch. "It's time you were

starting off, isn't it? I've got an appointment in ten minutes. You'll

just get back in time for dinner. Good-bye now. Don't forget your

promise."

"My promise? But----" began Dora again, and broke off, as if hypnotized

by his angry movement. She seemed incapable of doing more than repeat

his words. She stared at him in hopeless bewilderment, swaying, as

though the light of ordinary intelligence had been wiped from her face.

He looked at her sharply and then rang the electric bell behind him.

When he spoke again his voice was kinder.

"Get this lady a brandy and soda--a stiff one, please. Drink it off at

once; that's right." He took her hand in his and closed her fingers

over the key and little instrument. "Put that in your pocket. If I

were you I should set about that task to-night, Mrs. Farquharson--it is

always better to get a job over. It's quite a little thing really, you

know. And in twenty-four hours you will feel a new woman, free from all

your worries and difficulties and obligations. You will have done good

to a friend who is sincerely fond of you, and, if you are wise, no harm

can possibly come either to you or to anybody you care about through

your action. You promise, then? That's right. Good-bye."

He walked bare-headed out to the vestibule and watched the car out of

sight, speeding back on its way home to Chester Street.

*CHAPTER VI*

"For you, for me, the cup of trembling...."

It seemed to Farquharson in the days that followed Dora's announcement,

that he lived and moved in a dream. As a rule, the realization of

fatherhood only dawns upon a man when his child is in his arms. But to

him, already, the dream-child was a tender promise. It swept away so

many of the supernatural barriers between him and Dora. She had failed

him in every office of friend and companion and wife, but she might yet

redeem the past by giving him this dear possession, the child whose

future he could mould in his own lines, to whom he could give the fruits

of his own toil and his ambition. Beadon, Hare, Creagh and Lady Ennly

alike noticed the change in his manner to his wife. Her shortcomings

and failings no longer seemed to disturb him; where he had been merely

patient before he was now gentle and tender. He studied her comfort even

in the merest trifles; he toiled the more hopefully at his work in the

knowledge that sure comfort and help would dawn presently. To a man of

a certain temperament, the presence of his living child may even atone

for the otherwise irreparable loss of his dearest hope. Farquharson

wanted to give his son all that he himself had been robbed of in

childhood. He could look back on his past life now with the detachment

of a mere spectator, for every rough place that he had trod, he meant to

make a happy playground for the boy. That is after all a fitting end of

toil and labour, that a man should forge the sword which his heir's hand

is to wield, that he should deny and discipline himself that his son may

be the better braced for conflict with the foes within.

So Dora's reproaches left him unmoved, only a little pitiful, perhaps,

that she could not see things as he did, that to her the coming joy was

no joy at all, only annoyance and restraint. Not a day passed but she

made some further claim upon his purse; never economical, she became

absolutely reckless in her expenditure, and when he attempted to

restrain her he was met by a flood of tears and angry protestations.

"Any one but you would be glad to do what little you can for me at such

a time," she would cry out, flushing and paling in turn. "The doctor

said I was not to have one moment's worry, and anxiety about money

matters is worse for me than anything. If you grudge me what I need, I

shall ask Mr. Calvert for money--he wouldn't be a multi-millionaire if

it were not for you. Oh, so you see reason at last! Any other man in

your place would have given me a cheque at once, instead of making such

a cruel scene about it."

In Dora Farquharson's excuse it may be urged that she was temporarily

beside herself with discomfort and anxiety. Brand had given her as his

utmost limit of time a fortnight in which to do him a service which she

thought it would be impossible to carry out. He had expected the papers

to be in his hands within two or three days of her visit to Brighton;

when they did not reach him, he wrote her the first of a series of

letters which, though couched in careful language, contained veiled

threats which were only too intelligible to her. Fortunately for her,

the actual negotiations were suspended for a week, owing to some

official delay, which gave her time to mature her plans. She was not a

clever enough woman to scheme and plot for herself, she had been

accustomed in the past merely to state her wants and have them fulfilled

by those about her. Where other matters had been concerned, Brand had

given his directions, and she had obeyed implicitly.

But this was irksome, dangerous even--it required even a certain

mechanical aptitude to be carried through successfully. She offered him

money; besought him to release her from her promise. But Brand refused.

"It's not a very serious matter after all that I am asking you," he

said. "A man is never surprised at his wife's curiosity. If you're

careful you won't run the least chance of your husband's discovery; if

he were even to find you in his room again, he would merely think you

were suspecting him of some intrigue or temporary breach of faith. No

one knows his movements so well as you do. You have only to take the

first opportunity of his being kept late at the House to get me exactly

what I want."

"But sometimes he goes back to his study on his return and sits up all

night working," said Dora.

Brand shrugged his shoulders.

"What if he should on this occasion? It only means that he will

discover his loss a few hours earlier, that's all. You've only got to

warn me, to send me a code telegram under an assumed name three hours

before you get the papers, as we have already arranged, for me to be

punctually outside your window ready to receive them at the hour you

name. If you do your work properly, Farquharson could turn the whole

house topsy-turvy, ravage it from garret to cellar and find no traces.

I assure you it's all as simple as the alphabet," he laughed; "the very

ABC of trivial burglary to help a friend."

"For the first time in my life I feel almost sorry for Mrs.

Farquharson," said Lady Wereminster a few days later. "She's got the

most extraordinarily furtive and hang-dog air; I met her just now in a

Bond Street shop and touched her on the shoulder, and she started as if

she were being shot. Are you going to the House to-morrow night,

Evelyn? Mr. Calvert says the Government expects a rather furious attack

upon this Treaty question; it will resolve itself, of course, mainly

into a personal attack upon Richard Farquharson. He's hated by the

Press, you know; I suppose because they can get nothing out of him. For

that matter, I suppose all the public is longing to know something about

this business of the Treaty; it involves so many issues. The prospect of

a Continental war isn't cheering in view of the fact that our Army was

decimated, and the strength of our Fleet lowered, by the late

Government. One can't wipe out their mistakes with a sweep of the pen,

or an eloquent word or two. By the way, my nephew was lucky in the

ballot, and sent me two spare seats in the gallery. If you can come,

I'll sit there with you if you like."

"Oh, I've been longing to go," said Evelyn. "How good you are. It seems

to me that we are on the brink of a worse crisis than we have faced for

years--only absolute tact and diplomacy will see us through. Mr.

Farquharson has both, luckily; he will need them to-morrow night."

"I should think he would," said Lady Wereminster grimly. "What the

House of Commons is coming to I don't know. We are getting as bad as

the French Chamber. The language we use is absolutely scriptural in its

plain speaking. At the beginning of the century it was said of our

political system that it resolved itself into a succession of great

duels; it seems to me now to have become an arena in which one man faces

an angry rabble of men who shriek defiance and invective. We are losing

our national dignity and reserve, Mr. Hare says; I think he's right. I

suppose Mr. Farquharson knows what he has to expect, if not I should

like to warn him. They say he exceeds his rightful powers of

office--they always say that, of course, of a strong man. They forget

that when he came into office he had to deal with what in many ways was

an almost impossible situation, that in spite of all our royal visits to

other nations and our own reception of royal guests, there is not a

Power but covets our possessions. A fig for alliance, I say. There is

a Power that is very nearly allied to us by blood which has done us

serious mischief before now in our diplomatic relations, and will

again."

"I think that Mr. Farquharson can stand the sort of personal challenge

you speak of better than most men," said Evelyn. "A man in his position

expects disparagement and injustice. He laughs at it all, to begin

with--and then he has the proud patience which lives down taint and

contumely. Mud may be thrown at him; it may even soil him for a time,

but not for long. Love of country is the strongest force in him, and

impersonal love raises a man to great heights."