CHAPTER I

BY A.S.M. HUTCHINSON

THE HAPPY WARRIOR

ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER--

THE CLEAN HEART

IF WINTER COMES

IF WINTER COMES

BY

A.S.M. HUTCHINSON

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1921

Published, August, 1921

Reprinted, August, 1921 (twice)

Reprinted, September, 1921 (four times)

Reprinted, October, 1921

PRINTED BY C.H. SIMONDS COMPANY

BOSTON, MASS., U.S.A.

"...O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

--SHELLEY

CONTENTS

PART ONE

PAGE

MABEL 1

PART TWO

NONA 77

PART THREE

EFFIE 187

PART FOUR

MABEL--EFFIE--NONA 317

PART ONE

MABEL

IF WINTER COMES

CHAPTER I

I

To take Mark Sabre at the age of thirty-four, and in the year 1912, and

at the place Penny Green is to necessitate looking back a little towards

the time of his marriage in 1904, but happens to find him in good light

for observation. Encountering him hereabouts, one who had shared school

days with him at his preparatory school so much as twenty-four years

back would have found matter for recognition.

A usefully garrulous person, one Hapgood, a solicitor, found much.

"Whom do you think I met yesterday? Old Sabre! You remember old Sabre at

old Wickamote's?... Yes, that's the chap. Used to call him Puzzlehead,

remember? Because he used to screw up his forehead over things old

Wickamote or any of the other masters said and sort of drawl out, 'Well,

I don't see that, sir.'... Yes, rather!... And then that other

expression of his. Just the opposite. When old Wickamote or some one had

landed him, or all of us, with some dashed punishment, and we were

gassing about it, used to screw up his nut in the same way and say,

'Yes, but I see what he _means_.' And some one would say, 'Well, what

does he mean, you ass?' and he'd start gassing some rot till some one

said, 'Good lord, fancy sticking up for a master!' And old Puzzlehead

would say, 'You sickening fool, I'm not sticking _up_ for him. I'm only

saying he's right from how he looks at it and it's no good saying he's

wrong.'... Ha! Funny days.... Jolly nice chap, though, old Puzzlehead

was.... Yes, I met him.... Fact, I run into him occasionally. We do a

mild amount of business with his firm. I buzz down there about once a

year. Tidborough. He's changed, of course. So have you, you know. That

Vandyke beard, what? Ha! Old Sabre's not done anything outrageous like

that. Real thing I seemed to notice about him when I bumped into him

yesterday was that he didn't look very cheery. Looked to me rather as

though he'd lost something and was wondering where it was. Ha!

But--dashed funny--I mentioned something about that appalling speech

that chap made in that blasphemy case yesterday.... Eh? yes, absolutely

frightful, wasn't it?--well, I'm dashed if old Sabre didn't puzzle up

his nut in exactly the same old way and say, 'Yes, but I see what he

_means_.' I reminded him and ragged him about it no end. Absolutely the

same words and expression. Funny chap ... nice chap....

"What did he say the blasphemy man meant? Oh, I don't know; some bilge,

just as he used to about the masters. You know the man talked some

rubbish about how the State couldn't have it both ways--couldn't

blaspheme against God by flatly denying that all men were equal and

basing all its legislation on keeping one class up and the other class

down; couldn't do that and at the same time prosecute him because he

said that religion was--well, you know what he said; I'm dashed if I

like to repeat it. Joke of it was that I found myself using exactly the

same expression to old Sabre as we used to use at school. I said, 'Good

lord, man, fancy sticking up for a chap like that!' And old Sabre--by

Jove, I tell you there we all were in a flash back in the playground at

old Wickamote's, down in that corner by the workshop, all kids again and

old Puzzlehead flicking his hand out of his pocket--remember how he used

to?--like _that_--and saying, 'You sickening fool, I'm not sticking _up_

for him, I'm only saying he's right from how he looks at it and it's no

good saying he's wrong!' Rum, eh, after all those years.... No, he

didn't say, 'You sickening fool' this time. I reminded him how he used

to, and he laughed and said, 'Yes; did I? Well, I still get riled, you

know, when chaps can't see--' And then he said 'Yes, "sickening fool";

so I did; odd!' and he looked out of the window as though he was looking

a thousand miles away--this was in his office, you know--and chucked

talking absolutely....

"Yes, in his office I saw him.... He's in a good business down there at

Tidborough. Dashed good. 'Fortune, East and Sabre'... Never heard of

them? Ah, well, that shows you're not a pillar of the Church, old son.

If you took the faintest interest in your particular place of worship,

or in any Anglican place of worship, you'd know that whenever you want

anything for the Church from a hymn book or a hassock or a pew to a

pulpit or a screen or a spire you go to Fortune, East and Sabre,

Tidborough. Similarly in the scholastic line, anything from a birch rod

to a desk--Fortune, East and Sabre, by return and the best. No, they're

_the_ great, _the_ great, church and school-furnishing people.

'Ecclesiastical and Scholastic Furnishers and Designers' they call

themselves. And they're IT. No really decent church or really

gentlemanly school thinks of going anywhere else. They keep at

Tidborough because they were there when they furnished the first church

in the year One or thereabouts. I expect they did the sun-ray fittings

at Stonehenge. Ha! Anyway, they're one of the stately firms of old

England, and old Sabre is the Sabre part of the firm. And his father

before him and so on. Fortune and East are both bishops, I believe. No,

not really. But I tell you the show's run on mighty pious lines. One of

them's a 'Rev.', I know. I mean, the tradition of the place is to be in

keeping with the great and good works it carries out and for which,

incidentally, it is dashed well paid. Rather. Oh, old Sabre has butter

with his bread all right....

"Married? Oh, yes, he's married. Has been some time, I believe, though

they've no kids. I had lunch at his place one time I was down Tidborough

way. Now there's a place you ought to go to paint one of your

pictures--where he lives--Penny Green. Picturesque, quaint if ever a

place was. It's about seven miles from Tidborough; seven miles by road

and about seven centuries in manners and customs and appearance and all

that. Proper old village green, you know, with a duck pond and cricket

pitch and houses all round it. No two alike. Just like one of Kate

Greenaway's pictures, I always think. It just sits and sleeps. You

wouldn't think there was a town within a hundred miles of it, let alone

a bustling great place like Tidborough. Go down. You really ought to.

Yes, and by Jove you'll have to hurry up if you want to catch the

old-world look of the place. It's 'developing' ... 'being developed.'...

Eh?... Yes; God help it; I agree. After all these centuries sleeping

there it's suddenly been 'discovered.' People are coming out from

Tidborough and Alton and Chovensbury to get away from their work and

live there. Making a sort of garden suburb business of it. They've got a

new church already. Stupendous affair, considering the size of the

place--but that's looking forward to this development movement, the new

vicar chap says. He's doing the developing like blazes. Regular tiger

he is for shoving things, particularly himself. Chap called

Bagshaw--Boom Bagshaw. Character if ever there was one. But they're all

characters down there from what I've seen of it....

"Yes, you go down there and have a look, with your sketch-book. Old

Sabre'll love to see you.... His wife?... Oh, very nice, distinctly

nice. Pretty woman, very. Somehow I didn't think quite the sort of woman

for old Puzzlehead. Didn't appear to have the remotest interest in any

of the things he was keen about; and he seemed a bit fed with her sort

of talk. Hers was all gossip--all about the people there and what a rum

crowd they were. Devilish funny, I thought, some of her stories. But old

Sabre--well, I suppose he'd heard 'em before. Still, there was

something--something about the two of them. You know that sort of--sort

of--what the devil is it?--sort of stiffish feeling you sometimes feel

in the air with two people who don't quite click. Well, that was it.

Probably only my fancy. As to that, you can pretty well cut the welkin

with a knife at my place sometimes when me and my missus get our tails

up; and we're fearful pals. Daresay I just took 'em on an off day. But

that was my impression though--that she wasn't just the sort of woman

for old Sabre. But after all, what the dickens sort of woman would be?

Fiddling chap for a husband, old Puzzlehead. Can imagine him riling any

wife with wrinkling up his nut over some plain as a pikestaff thing and

saying, 'Well, I don't quite see that.' Ha! Rum chap. Nice chap. Have a

drink?"

CHAPTER II

I

Thus, by easy means of the garrulous Hapgood, appear persons, places,

institutions; lives, homes, activities; the web and the tangle and the

amenities of a minute fragment of human existence. Life. An odd

business. Into life we come, mysteriously arrived, are set on our feet

and on we go: functioning more or less ineffectively, passing through

permutations and combinations; meeting the successive events, shocks,

surprises of hours, days, years; becoming engulfed, submerged, foundered

by them; all of us on the same adventure yet retaining nevertheless each

his own individuality, as swimmers carrying each his undetachable burden

through dark, enormous and cavernous seas. Mysterious journey!

Uncharted, unknown and finally--but there is no finality! Mysterious and

stunning sequel--not end--to the mysterious and tremendous adventure!

Finally, of this portion, death, disappearance,--gone! Astounding

development! Mysterious and hapless arrival, tremendous and mysterious

passage, mysterious and alarming departure. No escaping it; no volition

to enter it or to avoid it; no prospect of defeating it or solving it.

Odd affair! Mysterious and baffling conundrum to be mixed up in!...

Life!

Come to this pair, Mark Sabre and his wife Mabel, at Penny Green, and

have a look at them mixed up in this odd and mysterious business of

life. Some apprehension of the odd affair that it was was characteristic

of Mark Sabre's habit of mind, increasingly with the years,--with

Mabel.

II

Penny Green--"picturesque, quaint if ever a place was", in garrulous Mr.

Hapgood's words--lies in a shallow depression, in shape like a narrow

meat dish. It runs east and west, and slightly tilted from north to

south. To the north the land slopes pleasantly upward in pasture and

orchards, and here was the site of the Penny Green Garden Home

Development Scheme. Beyond the site, a considerable area, stands

Northrepps, the seat of Lord Tybar. Lord Tybar sold the Development site

to the developers, and, as he signed the deed of conveyance, remarked in

his airy way, "Ah, nothing like exercise, gentlemen. That's made every

one of my ancestors turn in his grave." The developers tittered

respectfully as befits men who have landed a good thing.

Westward of Penny Green is Chovensbury; behind Tidborough the sun rises.

Viewed from the high eminence of Northrepps, Penny Green gave rather the

impression of having slipped, like a sliding dish, down the slope and

come to rest, slightly tilted, where its impetus had ceased. It was

certainly at rest: it had a restful air; and it had certainly slipped

out of the busier trafficking of its surrounding world, the main road

from Chovensbury to Tidborough, coming from greater cities even than

these and proceeding to greater, ran far above it, beyond Northrepps.

The main road rather slighted than acknowledged Penny Green by the

nerveless and shrunken feeler which, a mile beyond Chovensbury, it

extended in Penny Green's direction.

This splendid main road in the course of its immense journey across

Southern England, extended feelers to many settlements of man,

providing them as it were with a talent which, according to the energy

of the settlement, might be increased a hundredfold--drained, metalled,

tarred, and adorned with splendid telegraph poles and wires--or might be

wrapped up in a napkin of neglect, monstrous overgrown hedges and

decayed ditches, and allowed to wither: the splendid main road, having

regard to its ancient Roman lineage, disdainfully did not care tuppence

either way; and for that matter Penny Green, which had ages ago put its

feeler in a napkin, did not care tuppence either.

It was now, however, to have a railway.

And meanwhile there was this to be said for it: that whereas some of the

dependents of the splendid main road constituted themselves abominably

ugly carbuncles on the end of shapely and well-manicured fingers of the

main road, Penny Green, at the end of a withered and entirely neglected

finger, adorned it as with a jewel.

III

A Kate Greenaway picture, the garrulous Hapgood had said of Penny Green;

and it was well said. At its eastern extremity the withered talent from

the splendid main road divided into two talents and encircled the Green

which had, as Hapgood had said, a cricket pitch (in summer) and a duck

pond (more prominent in winter); also, in all seasons, and the survivors

of many ages, a clump of elm trees surrounded by a decayed bench; a well

surrounded by a decayed paling, so decayed that it had long ago thrown

itself flat on the ground into which it continued venerably to decay;

and at the southeastern extremity a village pound surrounded by a

decayed grey wall and now used by the youth of the village for the

purpose of impounding one another in parties or sides in a game well

called "Pound I."

At the southwestern extremity of the Green, and immediately opposite the

Tybar Arms, was a blacksmith's forge perpetually inhabited and directed

by a race named Wirk. The forge was the only human habitation or

personal and individual workshop actually on the Green, and it was said,

and freely admitted by the successive members of the tribe of Wirk, that

it had "no right" to be there. There it nevertheless was, had been for

centuries, so far as anybody knew to the contrary, and administered

always by a Wirk. In some mysterious way which nobody ever seemed to

recognize till it actually happened there was always a son Wirk to

continue the forge when the father Wirk died and was carried off to be

deposited by his fathers who had continued it before him. It was also

said in the village, as touching this matter of "no right", that nobody

could understand how the forge ever came to be there and that it

certainly would be turned off one day; and with this also the current

members of the tribe of Wirk cordially agreed. They understood less than

anybody how they ever came to be there, and they knew perfectly well

they would be turned off one day; saying which--and it was a common

subject of debate among village sires of a summer evening, seated

outside the Tybar Arms--saying which, the Wirk of the day would gaze

earnestly up the road and look at his watch as if the power which would

turn him off was then on its way and was getting a bit overdue.

The present representatives of the tribe of Wirk were known as Old Wirk

and Young Wirk. Young Wirk was sixty-seven. No one knew where a still

younger Wirk would come from when Old Wirk died and when Young Wirk

died. But no one troubled to know. No one knows, precisely, where the

next Pope is coming from, but he always comes, and successive Wirks

appeared as surely. Old Wirk was past duty at the forge now. He sat on a

Windsor chair all day and watched Young Wirk. When the day was finished

Old Wirk and Young Wirk would walk across the Green to the pound, not

together, but Old Wirk in front and Young Wirk immediately behind him;

both with the same gait, bent and with a stick. On reaching the pound

they would gaze profoundly into it over the decayed, grey wall, rather

as if they were looking to see if the power that was going to turn out

the forge was there, and then, the power apparently not being there,

they would return, trailing back in the same single file, and take up

their reserved positions on the bench before the Tybar Arms.

IV

Mark Sabre, intensely fond of Penny Green, had reflected upon it

sometimes as a curious thing that there was scarcely one of the

village's inhabitants or institutions but had evidenced little

differences of attitude between himself and Mabel, who was not intensely

fond of Penny Green. The aged Wirks had served their turn. Mabel had

once considered the Wirks extremely picturesque and, quite early in

their married life, had invited them to her house that she might

photograph them for her album.

They arrived, in single file, but she did not photograph them for her

album. The photograph was not taken because Mark, when they presented

themselves, expressed surprise that the aged pair were led off by the

parlour maid to have tea in the kitchen. Why on earth didn't they have

tea with them, with himself and Mabel, in the garden?

Mabel did what Sabre called "flew up"; and at the summit of her flight

up inquired, "Suppose some one called?"

"Well, suppose they did?" Sabre inquired.

Mabel in a markedly calm voice then gave certain orders to the maid, who

had brought out the tea and remained while the fate of the aged Wirks

was in suspense.

The maid departed with the orders and Sabre commented, "Sending them

off? Well, I'm dashed!"

Half an hour later the aged pair, having been led into the kitchen and

having had tea there, were led out again and released by the maid on to

the village Green rather as if they were two old ducks turned out to

grass.

Sabre, watching them from the lawn beside the teacups, laughed and said,

"What a dashed stupid business. They might have had tea on the roof for

all I care."

Mabel tinkled a little silver bell for the maid. _Ting-a-ling-ting!_

V

The houses of Penny Green carried out the Kate Greenaway effect that the

Green itself established. Along the upper road of the tilted dish were

the larger houses, and upon the lower road mostly the cottages of the

villagers; also upon the lower road the five shops of Penny Green: the

butcher's shop which was opened on Tuesdays and Fridays by a butcher who

came in from Tidborough with a spanking horse in front of him and half a

week's supply of meat behind and beneath him; the grocer's shop and the

draper's shop which, like enormous affairs in London, were also a large

number of other shops but, unlike the London affairs, dispensed them all

within the one shop and over the one counter. In the grocer's shop you

could be handed into one hand a pound of tea and into the other a pair

of boots, a convenience which, after all, is not to be had in all Oxford

Street. The draper's shop, carrying the principle further, would not

only dress you; post-office you; linoleum, rug and wall paper you; ink,

pencil and note paper you; but would also bury you and tombstone you, a

solemnity which it was only called upon to perform for anybody about

once in five years--Penny Green being long-lived--but was always ready

and anxious to carry out. Indeed in the back room of his shop, the

draper, Mr. Pinnock, had a coffin which he had been trying (as he said)

"to work off" for twenty-two years. It represented Mr. Pinnock's single

and disastrous essay in sharp business. Two and twenty years earlier Old

Wirk had been not only dying but "as good as dead." Mr. Pinnock on a

stock-replenishing excursion in Tidborough, had bought a coffin, at the

undertaker's, of a size to fit Old Wirk, and for the reason that, buying

it then, he could convey it back on the wagon he had hired for the day

and thus save carriage. He had brought it back, and the first person he

had set eyes on in Penny Green was no other than Old Wirk himself,

miraculously recovered and stubbornly downstairs and sunning at his

door. The shock had nearly caused Mr. Pinnock to qualify for the coffin

himself; but he had not, nor had any other inhabitant of suitable size

since demised. Longer persons than Old Wirk had died, and much shorter

and much stouter persons than Old Wirk had died. But the coffin had

remained. Up-ended and neatly fitted with shelves, it served as a store

cupboard, without a door, pending its proper use. But it was a terribly

expensive store cupboard and it stood in Mr. Pinnock's parlour as a

gloomy monument to the folly of rash and hazardous speculation.

VI

Penny Green, like Rome, had not been built in a day. The houses of the

Penny Green Garden Home, on the other hand, were being run up in as near

to a day as enthusiastic developers, feverish contractors (vying one

with another) and impatient tenants could encompass. Nor was Penny Green

built for a day. The houses and cottages of Penny Green had been built

under the influence of many and different styles of architecture; and

they had been built not only by people who intended to live in them, and

proposed to be roomy and well cup boarded and stoutly beamed and floored

in them, but who, not foreseeing restless and railwayed generations,

built them to endure for the children of their children's children and

for children yet beyond. Sabre's house was of grey stone and it

presented over the doorway the date 1667.

"Nearly two hundred and fifty years," Mabel had once said.

"And I bet," Sabre had replied, "it's never been better kept or run than

you run it now, Mabel."

The tribute was well deserved. Mabel, who was in many ways a model

woman, was preëminently a model housewife. "Crawshaws" was spotlessly

kept and perfectly administered. Four living rooms, apart from the

domestic offices, were on the ground floor. One was the morning room, in

which they principally lived; one the dining room and one the

drawing-room. They were entered by enormously heavy doors of oak, fitted

with latches, the drawing-room up two steps, the dining room down one

step and the morning room and the fourth room on the level. All were

low-beamed and many-windowed with lattice windows; all were stepped into

as stepping into a very quiet place, and somehow into a room which one

had not expected to be there, or not quite that shape if a room were

there. Sabre never quite lost that feeling of pleasant surprise on

entering them. They had moreover, whether due to the skill of the

architect or the sagacity of Mabel, the admirable, but rare attribute of

being cool in summer and warm in winter.

The only room in the house which Sabre did not like was the fourth

sitting room on the ground floor; and it was his own room, furnished and

decorated by Mabel for his own particular use and comfort. But she

called it his "den", and Sabre loathed and detested the word den as

applied to a room a man specially inhabits. It implied to him a

masculine untidiness, and he was intensely orderly and hated untidiness.

It implied customs and manners of what he called "boarding-house

ideas",--the idea that a man must have an untidily comfortable apartment

into which he can retire and envelop himself in tobacco smoke, and where

he "can have his own things around him", and "have his pipes and his

pictures about him", and where he can wear "an old shooting jacket and

slippers",--and he loathed and detested all these phrases and the ideas

they connoted. He had no "old shooting jacket" and he would have given

it to the gardener if he had; and he detested wearing slippers and never

did wear slippers; it was his habit to put on his boots after his bath

and to keep them on till he put on shoes when changing for dinner. Above

all, he loathed and detested the vision which the word "den" always

conjured up to him. This was a vision of the door of a typical den being

opened by a wife, and of the wife saying in a mincing voice, "This is

George in his den," and of boarding-house females peering over the

wife's shoulder and smiling fatuously at the denizen who, in an old

shooting jacket and slippers, grinned vacuously back at them. To Mark

this was a horrible and unspeakable vision.

Mabel could not in the least understand it, and common sense and common

custom were entirely on her side; Mark admitted that. The ridiculous and

trivial affair only took on a deeper significance--not apparent to Mark

at the time, but apparent later in the fact that he could not make Mabel

understand his attitude.

The matter of the den and another matter, touching the servants, came up

between them in the very earliest days of their married life. From

London, on their return from their honeymoon, Mark had been urgently

summoned to the sick-bed of his father, in Chovensbury. Mabel proceeded

to Crawshaws. He joined her a week later, his father happily recovered.

Mabel had been busy "settling things", and she took him round the house

with delicious pride and happiness. Mark, sharing both, had his arm

linked in hers. When they came to the fourth sitting room Mabel

announced gaily, "And this is your den!"

Mark gave a mock groan. "Oh, lord, not den!"

"Yes, of course, den. Why ever not?"

"I absolutely can't stick den." He glanced about "Who on earth's left

those fearful old slippers there?"

"They're a pair of father's. I took them specially for you for this

room. You haven't got any slippers like that."

He gazed upon the heels downtrodden by her heavy father. He did not much

like her heavy father. "No, I haven't," he said, and thought grimly,

"Thank God!"

"But, Mark, what do you mean, you can't stick 'den'?"

He explained laughingly. He ended, "It's just like lounge hall. Lounge

hall makes me feel perfectly sick. You're not going to call the hall a

lounge hall, are you?"

She was quite serious and the least little bit put out. "No--I'm not.

But I can't see why. I've never heard such funny ideas."

He was vaguely, transiently surprised at her attitude towards his funny

ideas. "Well, come on, let's see upstairs."

"Yes, let's, dear."

He stepped out, and she closed the door after them. "Well, that's your

den."

As if he had never spoken! A vague and transient discomfort shot through

him.

VII

It was when they came down again, completely happy and pleased, that the

servant incident occurred. Mabel was down the stairs slightly before him

and turned a smiling face up to him as he descended. "By Jove, it's

jolly," he said. "We'll be happy here," and he kissed her.

"You'd better see the kitchen. It's awfully nice;" and they went along.

At the kitchen door she paused and began in a mysterious whisper a long

account of the servants. "I think they'll turn out quite nice girls.

They're sisters, you know, and they're glad to be in a place together.

They've both got young men in the village. Fancy, the cook told me that

at Mrs. Wellington's where she was, at Chovensbury, she wasn't allowed

to use soda for washing up because Mrs. Wellington fussed so frightfully

about the pattern on her china! Fancy, in their family they've got

eleven brothers and sisters. Isn't it awful how those kind of people--"

Her voice got lower and lower. She seemed to Mark to be quivering with

some sort of repressed excitement, as though the two maids were some

rare exhibit which she had captured with a net and placed in the

kitchen, and whom it was rather thrilling to open the door upon and peep

at. He could hardly hear her voice and had to bend his head. It was dim

in the lobby outside the kitchen door. The dimness, her intense whispers

and her excitement made him feel that he was in some mysterious

conspiracy with her. The whole atmosphere of the house and of this tour

of inspection, which had been deliciously absorbing, became mysteriously

conspiratorial, unpleasing.

"...She's been to a school of cookery at Tidborough. She attended the

whole course!"

"Good. That's the stuff!"

"Hush!"

Why hush? What a funny business this was!

VIII

Mabel opened the kitchen door. "The master's come to see how nice the

kitchen looks."

Two maids in black dresses and an extraordinary amount of stiffly

starched aprons and caps and streamers rose awkwardly and bobbed awkward

little bows. One was very tall, the other rather short. The tall one

looked extraordinarily severe and the short one extraordinarily glum,

Mark thought, to have young men. Mabel looked from the girls to Mark and

from Mark to the girls, precisely as if she were exhibiting rare

specimens to her husband and her husband to her rare specimens. And in

the tone of one exhibiting pinned, dried, and completely impersonal

specimens, she announced, "They're sisters. Their name is Jinks."

Mark, examining the exhibits, had been feeling like a fool. Their name

humanized them and relieved his awkward feeling. "Ha! Jinks, eh? High

Jinks and Low Jinks, what?" He laughed. It struck him as rather comic;

and High Jinks and Low Jinks tittered broadly, losing in the most

astonishing way the one her severity and the other her glumness.

Mabel seemed suddenly to have lost her interest in her exhibits and

their cage. She rather hurried Mark through the kitchen premises and,

moving into the garden, replied rather abstractedly to his plans for the

garden's development.

Suddenly she said, "Mark, I do wish you hadn't said that in the

kitchen."

He was mentally examining the possibilities of a makeshift racket court

against a corner of the stable and barn. "Eh, what in the kitchen,

dear?"

"That about High Jinks and Low Jinks."

"Mabel, I swear we could fix up a topping sort of squash rackets in that

corner. Those cobbles are worn absolutely smooth--"

"I wish you'd listen to me, Mark."

He caught his arm around her and gave her a playful squeeze. "Sorry, old

girl, what was it? About High Jinks and Low Jinks? Ha! Dashed funny

that, don't you think?"

"No, I don't. I don't think it's a bit funny."

Her tone was such that, relaxing his arm, he turned and gazed at her.

"_Don't_ you? Don't you really?"

"No, I don't. Far from funny."

Some instinct told him he ought not to laugh, but he could not help it.

The idea appealed to him as distinctly and clearly comic. "Well, but it

_is_ funny. Don't you see? High Jinks alone is such a funny

expression--sort of--well, you know what I mean. Apart altogether from

Low Jinks," and he laughed again.

Mabel compressed her lips. "I simply don't. Rebecca is not a bit like

High Jinks."

He burst out laughing. "No, I'm dashed if she is. That's just it!"

"I really do not see it."

"Oh, go on, Mabel! Of course you do. You make it funnier. High Jinks and

Low Jinks! I shall call them that."

"Mark." She spoke the word severely and paused severely. "Mark. I do

most earnestly hope you'll do nothing of the kind."

He stared, puzzled. He had tried to explain the absurd thing, and she

simply could not see it. "I simply don't."

And again that vague and transient discomfort shot through him.

IX

Sabre awoke in the course of that night and lay awake. The absurd

incident came immediately into his mind and remained in his mind. High

Jinks and Low Jinks _was_ comic. No getting over it. Incontestably

comic. Stupid, of course, but just the kind of stupid thing that tickled

him irresistibly. And she couldn't see it. Absolutely could not see it.

But if she were never going to see any of these stupid little things

that appealed to him--? And then he wrinkled his brows. "You remember

how he used to wrinkle up his old nut," as the garrulous Hapgood had

said.

A night-light, her wish, dimly illumined the room. He raised himself and

looked at her fondly, sleeping beside him. He thought, "Dash it, the

thing's been just the same from her point of view. That den business.

She likes den, and I can't stick den. Just the same for her as for me

that High Jinks and Low Jinks tickles me and doesn't tickle her."

He very gently moved with his finger a tress of her hair that had fallen

upon her face.... Mabel!... His wife!... How gently beneath her filmy

bedgown her bosom rose and fell!... How utterly calm her face was. How

at peace, how secure, she lay there. He thought, "Three weeks ago she

was sleeping in the terrific privacy of her own room, and here she is

come to me in mine. Cut off from everything and everybody and come here

to me."

An inexpressible tenderness filled him. He had a sudden sense of the

poignant and tremendous adventure on which they were embarked together.

They had been two lives, and now they were one life, altering completely

the lives they would have led singly: a new sea, a new ship on a new,

strange sea. What lay before them?

She stirred.

His thoughts continued: One life! One life out of two lives; one nature

out of two natures! Mysterious and extraordinary metamorphosis. She had

brought her nature to his, and he his nature to hers, and they were to

mingle and become one nature.... Absurdly and inappropriately his mind

picked up and presented to him the grotesque words, "High Jinks and Low

Jinks." A note of laughter was irresistibly tickled out of him.

She said very sleepily, "Mark, are you laughing? What are you laughing

at?"

He patted her shoulder. "Oh, nothing."

One nature?

CHAPTER III

I

One nature? In the fifth year of their married life thoughts of her and

of the poignant and tremendous adventure on which they were embarked

together were no longer possible while she lay in bed beside him. They

had come to occupy separate rooms.

In the fifth year of their married life measles visited Penny Green.

Mabel caught it. Their bedroom was naturally the sick room. Sabre went

to sleep in another room,--and the arrangement prevailed. Nothing was

said between them on the matter, one way or the other. They naturally

occupied different rooms during her illness. She recovered. They

continued to occupy different rooms. It was the most natural business in

the world.

The sole reference to recognition of permanency in this development of

the relations between them was made when Sabre, on the first Saturday

afternoon after Mabel's recovery--he did not go to his office at

Tidborough on Saturdays--carried out his idea, conceived during her

sickness, of making the bedroom into which he had moved serve as his

study also. He had never got rid of his distaste for his "den." He had

never felt quite comfortable there.

At lunch on this Saturday, "I tell you what I'm going to do this

afternoon," he said. "I'm going to move my books up into my room."

He had been a little afraid the den business would be reopened by this

intention, but Mabel's only reply was, "You'd better have the maids help

you."

"Yes, I'll get them."

"No, I'll give the order, if you don't mind."

"Right!"

And in the afternoon the books were moved, the den raped of them, his

bedroom awarded them. High Jinks and Low Jinks rather enjoyed it,

passing up and down the stairs with continuous smirks at this new

manifestation of the master's ways. The bookshelves proved rather a

business. There were four of them, narrow and high. "We'll carry these

longways," Sabre directed, when the first one was tackled. "I'll shove

it over. You two take the top, and I'll carry the foot."

In this order they struggled up the stairs, High Jinks and Low Jinks

backwards, and the smirks enlarged into panting giggles. Halfway up came

a loud crack.

"What the devil's that?" said Sabre, sweating and gasping.

"I think it's the back of my dress, sir," said High Jinks.

"Good lord!" (Convulsive giggles.) "You know, Low, you're practically

sitting on the dashed thing. You've twisted yourself round in some

extraordinary way--"

Agonising giggles.

Mabel appeared in the hail beneath. "Raise it up, Rebecca. Raise it,

Sarah. How can you expect to move, stooping like that?"

They raised it to the level of their waists, and progression became

seemly.

"There you are!" said Sabre.

There was somehow a feeling at both ends of the bookcase of having been

caught.

II

Sabre liked this room. Three latticed windows, in the same wall, looked

on to the garden. In the spaces between them, and in the two spaces

between the end windows and the end walls, he placed his bookshelves, a

set of shelves in each space.

Mabel displayed no interest in the move nor made any reference to it at

teatime. In the evening, hearing her pass the door on her way to dress

for dinner, he called her in.

He was in his shirt sleeves, arranging the books. "There you are! Not

bad?"

She regarded them and the room. "They look all right. All the same, I

must say it seems rather funny using your bedroom for your things when

you've got a room downstairs."

"Oh, well, I never liked that room, you know. I hardly ever go into it."

"I know you don't."

And she went off.

III

But the significance of the removal rested not in the definite

relinquishment of the den, but in her words "using your bedroom": the

definite recognition of separate rooms.

And neither commented upon it.

After all, landmarks, in the course of a journey, are more frequently

observed and noted as landmarks, when looking back along the journey,

than when actually passing them. They belong generically to the past

tense; one rarely says, "This is a landmark"; usually "That was a

landmark."

IV

The bookcases were of Sabre's own design. He was extraordinarily fond of

his books and he had ideas about their arrangement. The lowest shelf was

in each case three feet from the ground; he hated books being "down

where you can't see them." Also the cases were open, without glass

doors; he hated "having to fiddle to get out a book." He liked them to

be just at the right height and straight to his hand. In a way he could

not quite describe (he was a bad talker, framing his ideas with

difficulty) he was attached to his books, not only for what was in them,

but as entities. He had written once in a manuscript book in which he

sometimes wrote things, "I like the feel of them and I know the feel of

them in the same way as one likes and knows the feel of a friend's hand.

And I can look at them and read them without opening them in the same

way as, without his speaking, one looks at and can enjoy the face of a

friend. I feel towards them when I look at them in the shelves,--well,

as if they were feeling towards me just as I am feeling towards them."

And he had added this touch, which is perhaps more illuminating. "The

other day some one had had out one of my books and returned it upside

down. I swear it was as grotesque and painful to me to see it upside

down as if I had come into the room and found my brother standing on his

head against the wall, fastened there. At least I couldn't have sprung

to him to release him quicker than I did to the book to upright it."

The first book he had ever bought "specially"--that is to say not as one

buys a bun but as one buys a dog--was at the age of seventeen when he

had bought a Byron, the Complete Works in a popular edition of very

great bulk and very small print. He bought it partly because of what he

had heard during his last term at school of Don Juan, partly because he

had picked up the idea that it was rather a fine thing to read poetry;

and he kept it and read it in great secrecy because his mother (to whom

he mentioned his intention) told him that Byron ought not to be read and

that her father, in her girlhood, had picked up Byron with the tongs and

burnt him in the garden. This finally determined him to buy Byron.

He began to read it precisely as he was accustomed to read books,--that

is to say at the beginning and thence steadily onwards. "On the Death of

a Young Lady" (Admiral Parker's daughter, explained a footnote); "To

E----"; "To D----" and so on. There were seven hundred and eight pages

of this kind of thing and Don Juan was at the end, in the five hundreds.

When he had laboriously read thirty-six pages he decided that it was not

a fine thing to read poetry, and he moved on to Don Juan, page five

hundred and thirty-three. The rhymes surprised him. He had no idea that

poetry--_poetry_--rhymed "annuities" with "true it is" and "Jew it is."

He turned on and numbered the cantos,--sixteen; and then the number of

verses in each canto and the total,--two thousand one hundred and

eighty.... _Who-o-o!..._ It was as endless as the seven hundred and

eight pages had appeared when he had staggered as far as page

thirty-six. He began to hunt for the particular verses which had caused

Don Juan to be recommended to him and presumably had caused his

grandfather to carry out Byron with the tongs and burn him in the

garden. He could not find them. He chucked the rotten thing.

But as he was putting the rotten thing away, his eye happened upon two

lines that struck into him--it was like a physical blow--the most

extraordinary sensation:

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece

Where burning Sappho loved and sung.

He caught his breath. It was extraordinary. What the dickens was it? A

vision of exquisite and unearthly and brilliantly coloured beauty seemed

to be before his eyes. Islands, all white and green and in a sea of

terrific blue.... And music, the thin note of distant trumpets....

Amazing! He read on. "Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung! Eternal

Summer gilds them yet." Terrific, but not quite so terrific. And then

again the terrific, the stunning, the heart-clutching thing. On a

different note, with a different picture, coloured in grays.

The mountains look on Marathon--

And Marathon looks on the sea.

Music! The trumpets thinned away, exquisitely thin, tiny, gone! And high

above the mountains and far upon the sea an organ shook.

He said, "Well, I'm dashed!" and put the book away.

V

It was years after the Byron episode--after he had come down from

Cambridge, after he had travelled fairly widely, and luckily, as tutor

to a delicate boy, and after he had settled down, from his father's

house at Chovensbury, to learn the Fortune, East and Sabre business that

he began to collect the books which now formed his collection. His

intense fondness for books had come to him late in life, as love of

literature goes. He was reading at twenty-eight and thirty literature

which, when it is read at all, is as a rule read ten years younger

because the taste is there and is voracious for satisfaction,--as a

young and vigorous animal for its meals. But at twenty-eight and thirty,

reading for the first time, he read sometimes with a sense of

revelation, always with an enormous satisfaction. Especially the poets.

And constantly in the poets he was coming across passages the sheer

beauty of which shook him precisely as the Byron lines had first shaken

him.

His books appeared to indicate a fair number and a fair diversity of

interests; but their diversity presented to him a common quality or

group of qualities. Some history, some sociology, some Spencer, some

Huxley, some Haeckel, a small textbook of geology, a considerable

proportion of pure literature, Morley's edition of lives of literary

men, the English essayists in a nice set, Shakespeare in many forms and

so much poetry that at a glance his library was all poetry. All the

books were picked up at second-hand dealers' in Tidborough, none had

cost more than a few shillings. The common quality that bound them was

that they stirred in him imaginative thought: they presented images,

they suggested causes, they revealed processes; the common group of

qualities to which they ministered were beauty and mystery, sensibility

and wonder. They made him think about things, and he liked thinking

about things; the poets filled his mind with beauty, and he was

strangely stirred by beauty.

VI

Here, in the effect upon him of beauty and of ideas communicated to his

mind by his reading--first manifested to him by the Byron

revelation--was the mark and label of his individuality: here was the

linking up of the boy who as Puzzlehead Sabre would wrinkle up his nut

and say, "Well, I can't quite see that, sir," with the man in whom the

same habit persisted; he saw much more clearly and infinitely more

intensely with his mind than with his eye. Beauty of place imagined was

to him infinitely more vivid than beauty seen. And so in all affairs:

it was not what the eye saw or the ear heard that interested him; it was

what his mind saw, questing behind the scene and behind the speech, that

interested him, and often, by the intensity of its perception, shook

him. And precisely as beauty touched in him the most exquisite and

poignant depths, so evil surroundings, evil faces dismayed him to the

point of mysterious fear, almost terror--

On a Sunday of his honeymoon in London he had conceived with Mabel the

idea of a bus ride through the streets,--"anywhere, the first bus that

comes." The first bus that came took them through South London, dodged

between main roads and took them through miles of mean and sordid

dwelling houses. At open windows high up sat solitary women, at others

solitary, shirt-sleeved men; behind closed windows were the faces of

children. All staring,--women and men and children, impassively

prisoned, impassively staring. Each house door presented, one above the

other, five or six iron bell-knobs, some hanging out and downwards, as

if their necks were broken. On the pavements hardly a soul. Just street

upon street of these awful houses with their imprisoned occupants and

the doors with their string of crazy bells.

An appalling and abysmal depression settled upon Sabre. He imagined

himself pulling the dislocated neck of one of those bells and stepping

into what festered behind those sinister doors: the dark and malodorous

stairways, the dark and malodorous rooms, their prisoned occupants

opening their prisons and staring at him,--those women, those men, those

children. He imagined himself in one of those rooms, saw it, felt it,

smelt it. He imagined himself cutting his throat in one of those rooms.

At tea in their hotel on their return Mabel chattered animatedly on all

they had seen. "I'm awfully glad we went. I think it's a very good thing

to know for oneself just how that side of life lives. Those awful people

at the windows!"--and she laughed. He noticed for the first time what a

sudden laugh she had, rather loud.

Sabre agreed. "Yes, I think it's a good thing to have an idea of their

lives. I can't say I'm glad I went, though. You've no idea how awfully

depressed that kind of thing makes me feel."

She laughed again. "Depressed! How ever can it? How funny you must be!"

Then she said, "Yes, I'm glad I've seen for myself. You know, when those

sort of people come into your service--the airs they give themselves and

the way they demand the best of everything--and then when you see the

kind of homes they come from--!"

"Yes, it makes you think, doesn't it?"

"It _does_!"

But what it made Sabre think was entirely different from what it made

Mabel think.

VII

"Puzzlehead" they had called him at his preparatory school,--Old

Puzzlehead Sabre, the chap who always wrinkled up his nut over things

and came out with the most extraordinary ideas. He had remained, and

increasingly become, the puzzler. And precisely as he ceased to share a

room with Mabel and carried himself with satisfaction to his own

apartment, so, by this fifth year of his married life, he had come to

know well that he shared no thoughts with her: he carried them, with

increasing absorption in their interest, to the processes of his own

mind.

An incident of those early school days had always remained with him, in

its exact words. The exact words of a selectly famous professor of

philosophy who, living the few years of his retirement in the

neighbourhood of the preparatory school, had given--for pure love of

seeing young things and feeling the freshness of young minds--a weekly

"talk on things" to the small schoolboys. And whatever the subject of

his talk, he almost invariably would work off his familiar counsel:

"And a very good thing (he used to say), an excellent thing, the very

best of practices, is to write a little every day. Just a little scrap,

but cultivate the habit of doing it every day. I don't mean what is

called keeping a diary, you know. Don't write what you do. There's no

benefit in that. We do things for all kinds of reasons and it's the

reasons, not the things, that matter. Let your little daily scrap be

something you've thought. What you've done belongs partly to some one

else; often you're made to do it. But what you think is you yourself:

you write it down and there it is, a tiny little bit of you that you can

look at and say, 'Well, really!' You see, a little bit like that,

written every day, is a mirror in which you can see your real self and

correct your real self. A looking-glass shows you your face is dirty or

your hair rumpled, and you go and polish up. But it's ever so much more

important to have a mirror that shows you how your real self, your mind,

your spirit, is looking. Just see if you can't do it. A little scrap.

It's very steadying; very steadying...."

And his small hearers, desiring, like young colts in a field, nothing so

little as anything steadying, paid as much attention to this "jaw" as to

any precept not supported by cane or imposition. They made of it,

indeed, a popular school joke, "Oh, go and write a little every day and

boil yourself, you ass!" But it appealed, dimly, to the reflective

quality in the child Sabre's mind. He contracted the habit of writing,

in a "bagged" exercise book, sentences beginning laboriously with "I

thought to-day--." It remained with him, as he grew up, in the practice

of writing sometimes ideas that occurred to him, as in the case of his

feelings about his books and--much more strongly--in deliberately

thinking out ideas.

"You yourself. The real you."

In the increasing solitariness of his married life, it came to be

something into which he could retire, as into a private chamber; which

he could put on, as a garment: and in the privacy of the chamber, or

within the sleeves of the garment, he received a sense of detachment

from normal life in which, vaguely, he pondered things.

VIII

Vaguely,--without solution of most of the problems that puzzled him, and

without even definite knowledge of the line along which solution might

lie. Here, in these cloisters of another world--his own world--he paced

among his ideas as a man might pace around the dismantled and scattered

intricacies of an intricate machine, knowing the parts could be put

together and the thing worked usefully, not knowing how on earth it

could be done.... "This goes in there, and that goes in there, but how

on earth--?" Here, into these cloisters, he dragged the parts of all the

puzzles that perplexed him; his relations with Mabel; his sense, in a

hundred ways as they came up, of the odd business that life was; his

strong interest in the social and industrial problems, and in the

political questions from time to time before the public attention.

He could be imagined assembling the parts, dragging them in, checking

them over, slamming the door, and--"How on earth? What on earth?" There

was a key to all these problems. There was a definite way of

coördinating the parts of each. But what?

He began to have the feeling that in all the puzzles, not only, though

particularly, of his own life as he had come to live it, but of life in

general as it is lived, some mysterious part was missing.

That was as far as he could get. He was like a man groping with his hand

through a hole in a great door for a key lying on the other side.

Nothing was to be seen through the hole, and only the arm to the elbow

could get through it. Not the shape of the key nor its position was

known.

But he was absolutely certain it was there.

One day he might put his hand on it.

CHAPTER IV

I

Mabel was two years younger than Sabre, twenty-five at the time of her

marriage and just past her thirtieth birthday when the separate rooms

were first occupied. Her habit of sudden laughter, rather loud, which

Sabre first noticed in connection with their differing views on the mean

streets visit, was rather characteristic of her. Her laugh came

suddenly, and very heartily, at anything that amused her and without her

first smiling or suggesting by any other sign that she was amused. And

it came thus abruptly out of a face whose expression was normally rather

severe. Probably of the same mentality was her habit of what Sabre

called "flying up." She "flew up" without her speech first warming up;

but of her flying up, unlike her sudden burst of laughter, Sabre came to

know certain premonitory symptoms in her face. Her face what he called

"tightened." In particular he used to notice a curious little

constriction of the sides of her nose, rather as though invisible

tweezers were pressing it.

She had rather a long nose and this pleased her, for she once read

somewhere that long noses were aristocratic. She stroked her nose as she

read.

Her complexion was pale, though this was perhaps exaggerated by her

colouring, which was dark. Her features were noticeably regular and

noticeably refined, though her eyes were the least little bit inclined

to be prominent: when Sabre married the Dean of Tidborough's only

daughter, it was said that he had married "a good-looking girl"; also

that he had married "a very nice girl"; those were the expressions used.

She liked the company of men and she was much liked by men (the opinion

of the garrulous Hapgood may be recalled in this connection). She very

much liked the society of women of her own age or older than herself,

and she was very popular with such. She did not like girls, married or

unmarried.

II

Mabel belonged to that considerable class of persons who, in

conversation, begin half their sentences with "And just imagine--"; or

"And only fancy--"; or "And do you know--." These exclamations,

delivered with much excitement, are introductory to matters considered

extraordinary. Their users might therefore be imagined somewhat easily

astonished. But they have a compensatory steadiness of mind in regard to

much that mystifies other people. To Mabel there was nothing mysterious

in birth, or in living, or in death. She simply would not have

understood had she been told there was any mystery in these things. One

was born, one lived, one died. What was there odd about it? Nor did she

see anything mysterious in the intense preoccupation of an insect, or

the astounding placidity of a primrose growing at the foot of a tree. An

insect--you killed it. A flower--you plucked it. What's the mystery?

Her life was living among people of her own class. Her measure of a man

or of a woman was, Were they of her class? If they were, she gladly

accepted them and appeared to find considerable pleasure in their

society. Whether they had attractive qualities or unattractive qualities

or no qualities at all did not affect her. The only quality that

mattered was the quality of being well-bred. She called the classes

beneath her own standard of breeding "the lower classes", and so long as

they left her alone she was perfectly content to leave them alone. In

certain aspects the liked them. She liked "a civil tradesman" immensely;

she liked a civil charwoman immensely; and she liked a civil workman

immensely. It gave her as much pleasure, real pleasure that she felt in

all her emotions, to receive civility from the classes that ministered

to her class--servants, tradespeople, gardeners, carpenters, plumbers,

postmen, policemen--as to meet any one in her own class. It never

occurred to her to reckon up how enormously varied was the class whose

happy fortune it was to minister to her class and she would not have

been in the remotest degree interested if any one had told her how

numerous the class was. It never occurred to her that any of these

people had homes and it never occurred to her that the whole of the

lower classes lived without any margin at all beyond keeping their homes

together, or that if they stopped working they lost their homes, or that

they looked forward to nothing beyond their working years because there

was nothing beyond their working years for them to look forward to. Nor

would it have interested her in the remotest degree to hear this. The

only fact she knew about the lower classes was that they were

disgustingly extravagant and spent every penny they earned. The woman

across the Green who did her washing had six children and a husband who

was an agricultural labourer and earned eighteen and sixpence a week.

These eight lived in three rooms and "if you please" they actually

bought a gramophone! Mabel instanced it for years after she first heard

it. The idea of that class of person spending money on anything to make

their three rooms lively of an evening was scandalous to Mabel. She

heard of the gramophone outrage in 1908 and she was still instancing it

in 1912. "And those are the people, mind you," she said in 1912, "that

we have to buy these National Insurance stamps for!"

III

Mabel was not demonstrative. She had no enthusiasms and no sympathies.

Enthusiasms and sympathies in other people made her laugh with her

characteristic burst of sudden laughter. It was not, as with some

persons, that matters calling for sympathy made her impatient,--as very

robust people are often intensely impatient with sickness and infirmity.

She never would say, "I have no patience with such and such or so and

so." She had plenty of patience. It was simply that she had no

imagination whatsoever. Whatever she saw or heard or read, she saw or

heard or read exactly as the thing presented itself. If she saw a door

she saw merely a piece of wood with a handle and a keyhole. It may be

argued that a door is merely a piece of wood with a handle and a

keyhole, and that is what Mabel would have argued. But a door is in fact

the most intriguing mystery in the world because of what may be the

other side of it and of what goes on behind it. To Mabel nothing was on

the other side of anything she saw and nothing went on behind it.

A person or a creature in pain was to Mabel a person or a creature "laid

up." Laid up--out of action--not working properly: like a pencil without

a point. A picture was a decoration in paint and was either a pretty

decoration in paint or a not pretty decoration in paint. Music was a

tune, and was either a tune or merely music. A book was a story, and if

it was not a story it was simply a book. A flower was a decoration.

Poetry, such as

"While the still morn went out with sandals grey,"

was simply writing which, obviously, had no real meaning whatsoever, and

obviously--well, read the thing--was not intended to have any meaning. A

fine deed was fine precisely in proportion to the social position of the

person who performed it. Scott's death at the South Pole, when that was

announced in 1913, was fine because he was a gentleman. The disaster of

the colliers entombed in the Welsh Senghenydd mine which happened in the

same year was sad. "How sad!" She read the account, on the first day,

with the paper held up wide open and said "How sad!" and turned on to

something for which the paper might be folded back at the place and read

comfortably. Scott's death she read with the paper folded back at the

account. She liked seeing the pictures of Lady Scott and of Scott's

little boy. She read the caption under one of the pictures of the wives

and families of the four hundred and twenty-nine colliers killed in the

Senghenydd mine, but not under any of the others. The point she noted

was that all the women "of that class" wore "those awful cloth

caps",--the colliers' women just the same as the women in the mean

streets of Tidborough Old Town.

She was never particularly grateful for anything given to her or done

for her; not because she was not pleased and glad but because she could

invest a gift with no imagination of the feelings of the giver. The

thing was a present just as a pound of bacon was a pound of bacon. You

said thank you for the present just as you ate the bacon. What more was

to be said?

She revelled in gossip, that is to say in discussion with her own class

of the manners and doings of other people. She thought charity meant

giving jelly and red flannel to the poor; she thought generosity meant

giving money to some one; she thought selfishness meant not giving money

to some one. She had no idea that the only real charity is charity of

mind, and the only real generosity generosity of mind, and the only real

selfishness selfishness of mind. And she simply would not have

understood it if it had been explained to her. As people are judged, she

was entirely nice, entirely worthy, entirely estimable. And with that,

for it does not enter into such estimates, she had neither feelings of

the mind nor of the heart but only of the senses. All that her senses

set before her she either overvalued or undervalued: she was the

complete and perfect snob in the most refined and purest meaning of the

word.

She was much liked, and she liked many.

CHAPTER V

I

The Penny Green Garden House Development Scheme was begun in 1910. In

1908, the year of the measles and the separated bedrooms, no shadow of

it had yet been thrown. It never occurred to any one that a railway

would one day link Penny Green with Tidborough and all the rest of the

surrounding world, or that a railway to Tidborough was desirable. Sabre

bicycled in daily to Fortune, East and Sabre's, and the daily ride to

and fro had become a curious pleasure to him.

There had once occurred to him as he rode, and thereafter had persisted

and accumulated, the feeling that, on the daily, solitary passage

between Tidborough and Penny Green, he was mysteriously detached from,

mysteriously suspended between, the two centres that were his two

worlds,--his business world and his home world.

With its daily recurrence the thought developed: it enlarged to the

whimsical notion that here, on his bicycle on the road, he was magically

escaped out of his two worlds, not belonging to or responsible to either

of his two worlds, which amounted to delicious detachment from all the

universe. A mysteriously aloof, free, irresponsible attitude of mind was

thus obtained: it was a condition in which--as one looking down from a

high tower on scurrying, antlike human beings--their oddness, their

futility, the apparent aimlessness of their excited scurrying became

apparent; hence frequent thought, on these rides, on the rather odd

thing that life was.

He was not in the least aware that so simple, so practical and so

obviously essential a thing as his daily ride--as simple, practical and

obviously essential as getting out of bed in the morning and returning

to bed at night--was moulding a mind always prone to develop meditative

grooves. But it did develop his mind in the extraordinary way in which

minds are moulded by the most simple habits. In this mere matter of

conveyance a philosopher might trace back a singularly brutal and

callous murder to the moulding into callous and brutal regard of other

people's sufferings rendered into a perfectly gentle mind by the habit

of daily travelling to business in London on the top of a motor omnibus.

It would only need to be shown that the gentle mind secured his seat

with dignity and comfort at the bus's starting point and daily for years

watched with amusement, and then with callousness and so with brutality

the struggles of the unhappy fellow creatures who fought to assail it at

its stopping places on the way to the City.

Mark Sabre was not in the least aware of any steadily permeating

influence from his sense of detachment on this daily habit of years. But

he was influenced. On entering his Penny Green world on the return home,

or on entering his Tidborough office world, on the way out, he had

sometimes a curious feeling of descending into this odd affair of life

to which he did not really belong. And for the few moments while the

feeling persisted he sometimes, more or less unconsciously, took towards

affairs a rather whimsical attitude, as though they did not really

matter: an irritating attitude, unpractical, it was sometimes hinted by

his partners; an irritating attitude--"You really are very difficult to

understand sometimes"--it was often told him by Mabel.

II

This very matter of the bicycle ride, indeed, apart altogether from its

effect upon his mood, supplied an instance of the kind of thing Mabel

found it so difficult to understand in her husband.

He made what she called a childish game of it. Every day on the ride

home, Sabre ceased pedalling at precisely the same point on the slope

down into Penny Green and coasted until the machine came to a standstill

within a few yards of his own gate. This point of cessation was never

twice in a week at the same spot; and Sabre found great interest in

seeing every day exactly where it would be, and by intense wriggling of

his front wheel and prodigious feats of balancing, squeezing out of the

machine's momentum the last possible fraction of an inch. There was a

magnificent distance record when, on one single occasion only, he had

been deposited plumb in line with his own gate; and there was a

divertingly lamentable shortage record, touched on more than one

occasion, when he had come to ground plumb in line with the gate of Mr.

Fargus, his neighbour on that side.

Each of these records, though marked by the gates, was also and more

exactly marked by a peg hammered into the edge of the Green.

This was childish; and Mabel said it was childish when her attention was

drawn to the diversion. On the day the great distance record was created

he came rather animatedly into the kitchen where she happened to be. "I

say, what's happened to that small wood axe? Is it in here?"

Mabel followed the direction of the convulsive start made by Low Jinks

and produced the small wood axe from under the dresser, also directing

at Low Jinks a glance which told Low Jinks what she perfectly well

knew: namely that under the dresser was not the place for the small

wood axe. "Whatever do you want it for all of a sudden?" Mabel asked.

He felt the edge with his thumb. "Low"--Mabel's face twitched. He had

persisted in the idiotic and indecorous names, and her face always

twitched when he used them--"Low, do you keep my axe for chopping coal

or what?" And he addressed Mabel. "I'm getting fat, I think. I don't

want the axe to cut lumps off myself, though. I'm going to chop a

marking peg. I've done a heavyweight world's record on that run in on my

bike--"

"Oh, _that_!" said Mabel.

And when he had gone out into the wood yard, Low Jinks staring after him

with the uplifted eyebrows with which both sisters, the glum and the

grim, commonly received the master's "ways", Mabel said in the gently

pained way which was her admirable method of administering rebukes in

the kitchen: "The woodshed is the place for the small wood axe,

Rebecca."

Rebecca promptly unsmirked her smirk. "Yes, m'm."

A little later the sound of loud hammering took Mabel to the gate.

Across the road, at the edge of the Green, Sabre was energetically

driving in the peg with the back of the axe. He was squatting and he

looked up highly pleased with himself and, his words implied, with her.

"Come to see it? Good! How's that for an effort, eh? Look here now.

Yesterday I only got as far as here," and he walked some paces towards

Mr. Fargus's gate and struck his heel in the ground and looked at her,

smiling. "Absolutely the same conditions, mind you. No wind. And I

always start from the top practically at rest; and yet always finish up

different. Jolly funny, eh?"

She opened the gate for him. "What you can see in it!" she murmured.

He said, "Oh, well!"

III

But on the following day he was surprised and intensely pleased to see

his champion peg gleaming white in the sunshine. Mabel was in the

morning room, sewing.

"Hullo, sewing? I say, did you paint my peg? How jolly nice of you!"

She looked up. "Your peg? Whatever do you mean?"

"That record distance peg of mine. Painted it white, haven't you?"

"No, I didn't paint it!"

"Who the dickens--? Well, I'll just wash my hands. Not had tea, have

you? Good."

When Low Jinks came to his room with hot water--a detail of the perfect

appointment of the house under Mabel's management was her rule that

Rebecca always came to the door for the master's bicycle, handed him the

brush for his shoes and trousers, and then took hot water to his

room--he asked her, "I say, Low Jinks, did you paint that peg of mine?"

Low Jinks coloured and spoke apologetically: "Well, I thought it would

show up better, sir. There was a drop of whitewash in--"

"By Jove, it does. It looks like a regular winning-post. Jolly nice of

you, Low."

Two months afterwards the bicycle did the worst on record. This was a

surprising affair; the runs had recently been excitingly good; and when

Low Jinks came out to take the bicycle he greeted her: "I say, Low

Jinks, I only got just up to Mr. Fargus's gate just now. Worst I've

ever done."

Low Jinks was enormously concerned. "Well! I never did!" exclaimed Low

Jinks. "If those bicycles aren't just things! You'll want a peg for

that, sir. Like you had one for the best."

"That's an idea, Low. What about painting it?"

"Oh, I _will_, sir!"

But he did not mention the new record to Mabel.

CHAPTER VI

I

The other end of the daily bicycle ride, the Tidborough end, provided no

feats of cycling interest. The extremely narrow, cobbled thoroughfare in

which the offices of Fortune, East and Sabre were situated usually

caused Sabre's approach to them to be made on foot, wheeling his

machine.

Fortune, East and Sabre, Ecclesiastical and Scholastic Furnishers and

Designers, had in Tidborough what is called, in business and

professional circles, a good address. A good address for a metropolitan

money lender is the West End in the neighbourhood of Bond Street; a good

address for a solicitor is Bloomsbury in the neighbourhood of Bedford

Square: for an architect Westminster in the neighbourhood of Victoria

Street, for commerce the City in the neighbourhood of the Bank. The idea

is that, though clothes do not make the man, a good address makes, or

rather bestows the reputation, and conveys the impression that the owner

of the good address, being in that neighbourhood, is not within many

thousands of miles (or pounds) of the neighbourhood of Bankruptcy.

The address of Fortune, East and Sabre was emphatically a good address

because its business was with the Church and for the Church; with

colleges, universities and schools and for colleges, universities and

schools; with bishops, priests and clergy, churchwardens, headmasters,

headmistresses, governors and bursars, and for bishops, priests and

clergy, churchwardens, headmasters, headmistresses, governors and

bursars.

Its address was The Precincts,--Fortune, East and Sabre, The Precincts,

Tidborough.

The Precincts has a discreet and beautiful sound, a discreet and

beautiful suggestiveness. High Street, Tidborough, or Cheapside,

Tidborough, or Commercial Street, Tidborough, have only to be compared

with The Precincts, Tidborough, to establish the discretion and beauty

of the situation of the firm. And the names of the firm were equally

euphonious and equally suggestive of high decorum and cultured

efficiency. Fortune, East and Sabre had a discreet and beautiful sound.

Finally Tidborough, the last line of the poem, though not in itself

either discreet or beautiful, being intensely busy, suggested to all the

cultured persons from bishops to bursars, with whom business was done,

the discreet and beautiful lines of Tidborough Cathedral and of

Tidborough School, together with all that these venerable and famous

institutions connoted. Not Winchester itself conveys to the cultured

mind thoughts more discreet and beautiful than are conveyed by

Tidborough. The care of the cathedral, for many years in a highly

delicate state of health, and the care of the school, yearly ravaged by

successive generations of the sons of those who could afford to educate

their sons there were, it may be mentioned, established sources of

income to the firm.

Thus the whole style and title of the firm had a discreet and beautiful

sound, in admirable keeping with its business. Fortune, East and Sabre,

The Precincts, Tidborough. Was any one so utterly removed from affairs

as not to know them as ecclesiastical furnishers? "They're at

Tidborough. They _do_ Tidborough" (meaning the world-famous cathedral).

Or as scholastic providers? "They're at Tidborough. They _do_

Tidborough" (meaning the empire-famous school).

The frontage of Fortune, East and Sabre on The Precincts consisted of a

range of three double-fronted shops. The central shop gave one window to

a superb lectern in the style of a brass eagle whose outstretched wings

supported a magnificent Bible; to a richly embroidered altar cloth on

which stood a strikingly handsome set of communion plate; to a font

chastely carried out in marble; to an altar chair in oak and velvet that

few less than a suffragan bishop would have dared take seat in; and to

an example or two of highest art in needlework and embroidery in the

form of offertory bags and testament markers. The other window of the

central shop was a lesson to the profane in the beauty, the dignity and

the variety of vestments. It also informed rural choirboys, haply in

Tidborough on a treat, what surplices can be like if the funds and the

faith are sufficiently high to support them.

The windows of the shop to the left (as you faced the lectern and the

vestments) displayed school furniture and school fittings bearing the

characteristic "F.E. & S." stamp. Here were adjustable desks for boys at

which no boy could possibly sit round-shouldered, which could be

adjusted upwards for tall boys and downwards for short boys, and the

seats of which could be advanced for boys afflicted with short legs and

retired for boys in the possession of long legs. It was believed by

those who had seen the full range of "F.E. & S." desk models that, if a

headmaster or bursar had telegraphed to Fortune, East and Sabre the

arrival of a Siamese twin boy at his school, a desk specially contrived

for the nice accommodation of a Siamese twin boy would have been put on

the railway before the telegraph messenger had loitered his way out of

the shadow of The Precincts.

By an ingenious contrivance ink could not be spilt from the inkwells of

the "F.E. & S." models; rubber beading most properly nullified the

boyish idea that desk lids were made for the purpose of slamming to

blazes the nerves of masters and the calm in which alone high education

can be served.

Equal skill, science, art, and the experience of generations had

produced the model of a master's desk which partnered the desks of the

pupil. Maps of as many countries as might be desired showed in frames up

and down which they followed one another by the silent turning of a

handle. A blackboard on an easel looked across the desks at a wall into

which was let a solid slab of blackboard. The window adjoining this

display exhibited a miniature classroom in which the "F.E. & S." system

of classroom ventilation maintained air so pure and fresh that the most

comatose pupil could not but keep alert and receptive in it.

The shop front to the right paid testimony to the standing of Fortune,

East and Sabre in their capacity as educational and ecclesiastical book

publishers and binders. One window gave chastely, on purple velvet, not

more than two or at most three exquisitely wrought Bibles and prayer

books for lectern and altar; the other showed severely, on green baize,

school textbooks of every subject and degree grouped about superbly

handsome prize volumes in blue calf displaying the classic arms of

Tidborough School.

Public entrance to these premises was gained by doors of the central

shop only. It was considered proper and in keeping with the times to

have window displays, but it was considered improper and out of keeping

with the traditions of Fortune, East and Sabre to present more than the

extreme minimum of shoppish appearance. You entered therefore by but one

door, which was, moreover, not a shop door but a church door and one of

the several models which Fortune, East and Sabre had designed and

executed; you entered, between the vestments and the lecterns, not a

shop but a vestry; and you passed, on the left, not into a shop but into

a classroom, and on the right not into a shop but into a book-lined

study.

It is said that if you loitered long enough in Fortune, East and Sabre's

you would meet every dignitary of the Church and of education in the

United Kingdom; and it was added that you would not have to wait long.

Fortune, East and Sabre, The Precincts, Tidborough.

II

Maintaining the unshoplike character of the ground-floor rooms upon

which the plate-glass windows looked, virtually no business, in the

vulgar form of buying and selling, was carried on in the vestry, in the

classroom or in the book-lined study. Many modern and entirely worthy

businesses are conducted under the strident banner of "Cash Only."

Fortune, East and Sabre's did not know the word cash. One would as soon

look for or expect a till, to say nothing of one of those terrific

machines known as cash registers, in the vestry, the classroom or the

study as one would look for a lectern or an adjustable school desk in a

beer-house. "Credit only" was here the principle, and accounts were

rendered, never on delivery, but quarterly. One does not, after all, pay

for a font out of one's trouser pocket and carry it off under one's arm;

nor for a school desk out of a purse and bear it away on one's head.

Only in the book-lined study were trifling transactions occasionally

carried out and these very rarely, constituting something of an event

(and an event greatly deprecated by the Reverend Sebastian Fortune), the

tactless misadventure of some pedagogue or student on excursion to the

sights of Tidborough.

No one, in any case, committed twice the indiscretion of purchasing a

single volume for cash. The book-lined study was in the care of a Mr.

Tombs, a gentleman who combined the appearance of a mute at a funeral

with the aloof and mysterious manner of a man waiting for his wife in a

ladies' underwear department, and the peculiar faculty of making the

haphazard visitor feel that he had strayed into a ladies' underwear shop

also. "Have you an account with us, sir?" Mr. Tombs would inquire; and

on being told "No" would look guiltily all around (as it were at

partially undressed ladies) and whisper, "Except to the masters at the

School, sir, who all have accounts, we are not supposed to sell single

volumes. It is against our rule, sir."

And no one, once escaped, made Mr. Tombs break the rule on a second

occasion.

III

Business--on credit only--was conducted on the first floor whereon were

apartmented the three principals--the Reverend Sebastian Fortune, Mr.

Twyning and Sabre. There was no longer an East in the firm. From the

central, vestry-like showroom a broad and shallow stairway led to a

half-landing, containing the clerks' office, and thence to the spacious

apartment of Mr. Fortune with which, by doors at either end,

communicated the offices of Sabre and of Mr. Twyning. Many stately and

eminent persons--and no ill-to-do or doubtful persons--passed up and

down this stairway on visits to the principals. It was not used by the

clerks, the half-landing communicating with the outer world by the

clerks' stairs leading to the clerks' entrance at the back of the

building, and with the showrooms by the clerks' stairs leading at one

end to the book-lined study and at the other to the model classroom. The

clerks' office, by the taking down of original walls, ran the whole

length of the building, and accommodated not only the clerks, but the

designing room, the checking room and the dispatch room. This

arrangement was highly inconvenient to the performers of the various

duties thus carried on, but was essential to the more rapid execution of

Mr. Fortune's habit of "keeping an eye" on everything. This habit of the

Reverend Sebastian Fortune was roundly detested by all on whom his eye

fell. He was called Jonah by his employees; and he was called Jonah

partly because his visits to the places of their industry invariably

presaged disaster, but principally for the gross-minded and

wrongly-adduced reason that he had (in their opinion) a whale's belly.

IV

He bore a certain resemblance to a stunted whale. He was chiefly

abdominal. His legs appeared to begin, without thighs, at his knees, and

his face, without neck, at his chest. His face was large, both wide and

long, and covered as to its lower part with a tough scrub of grey beard.

The line of his mouth showed through the scrub and turned extravagantly

downwards at the corners. He had a commanding, heavily knobbed brow, and

small grey eyes of intense severity. His voice was cold, and his manner,

though intensely polished and suave, singularly stern and decisive. He

had an expression of "I have decided" and Sabre said that he kept this

expression on ice. It had an icy sound and it certainly had the rigidity

and imperviousness of an iceberg. Hearing it, one might believe that it

could have a cruel sound.

The Reverend Sebastian Fortune had come into the business at the age of

twenty-eight. He was now sixty-two. He had come in to find the

controlling interest almost entirely in the hands of the Fortune branch

of the firm, and in his thirty-four years of association, indeed in the

first twenty, he had, by fortuitous circumstances, and by force of his

decisive personality, achieved what amounted to sole and single control.

Coming in as a young man of force and character, he had added to these

qualities, by marriage, a useful sum of money (to which was attached a

widow) and proceeded to deal decisively with the East and the Sabre

(Mark Sabre's grandfather) of that day. Both were old men. The East,

young Mr. Fortune bought out neck and crop. The Sabre, who owned then a

fifth instead of a third interest in the business, and had developed, as

an obsession, an unreasonable fear of bankruptcy, he relieved of all

liability for the firm at the negligible cost of giving himself a free

hand in the conduct of the business. The deed of partnership was altered

accordingly. It was to this fifth share, without control, that Sabre's

father and, in his turn, Sabre succeeded.

V

Sabre had been promised full partnership by Mr. Fortune. He desired it

very greatly. The apportionment of duties in the establishment was that

Sabre managed the publishing department. Twyning supervised the factory

and workshops wherein the ecclesiastical and scholastic furniture was

produced, and Fortune supervised his two principals and every least

employee and smallest detail of all the business. Particularly orders.

He very strongly objected to clients dealing directly with either Sabre

or Twyning. His view was that it was the business of Sabre and of

Twyning to produce the firm's commodities. It was his place to sell

them. It was his place, to deal with clients who came to buy them, and

it was his place to sign all letters that went out concerning them.

Sabre, in so far as his publications were concerned, resented this.

"If I bring out a new textbook," he had said on the occasion of a formal

protest, "it stands to reason that I am the person to interest clients

in it; to discuss it with them if they call and to correspond with those

who take up our notices of it."

Mr. Fortune wheeled about his revolving chair by a familiar trick of his

right leg against his desk. It presented his whale-like front to

impressive advantage. "You do correspond with them."

"But you sign the letters. You frequently make alterations."

"That is what I am here for. They are my letters. It will be time to

bring up this matter again when you are admitted to partnership."

Sabre gave the short laugh of one who has heard a good thing before.

"When will that be?"

"Not to-day."

"Well, all I can say is--"

Mr. Fortune raised a whale-like but elegantly white fin. "Enough, I have

decided."

With the same clever motion of his feet he spun his chair and his

whale-like front to the table. A worn patch on the carpet and an

abraised patch on the side of the desk marked the frequent daily use of

these thrusting points.

Sabre kicked out of the room, using a foot to open the door, which stood

ajar, and hooking back a foot to shut it, because he knew that this

slovenly method of dealing with a door much annoyed Mr. Fortune.

He was not in the least in awe of Mr. Fortune, though Mr. Fortune had

power to sever him from the firm. Mr. Fortune was aware that he struck

no awe into Sabre, and this caused him on the one hand to dislike Sabre,

and on the other (subconsciously, for he would emphatically have denied

it) to respect him.

Twyning, Sabre's fellow sub-principal, did stand in awe of Mr. Fortune

and did not resent having his letters signed for him and his callers

interviewed for him. Indeed he frequently took opportunity to thank Mr.

Fortune for alterations made in his letters and for dealings carried out

with his clients, also for direct interference in his workshops. Mr.

Fortune liked Twyning, but he did not respect Twyning, consciously or

subconsciously.

VI

Sabre greatly desired the promised admission to partnership. He desired

it largely for what he knew he would make it bring in the form of

greater freedom from Mr. Fortune's surveillance, but much more for the

solid personal satisfaction its winning would give him. It would be a

tribute to his work, of all the greater value because he knew it would

be bestowed grudgingly and unwillingly, and he was keenly interested in

and proud of his work. The publishing of educational textbooks "for the

use of schools" had been no part of the firm's business until he came

into it. The idea had been his own, and Mr. Fortune, because the idea

was not _his_ own, had very half-heartedly assented to it and very

disencouragingly looked upon it in the fiddlingly small way in which he

permitted it to be begun.

From the outset it had been a very considerable success. Sabre was

interested in books and interested in education. He had many friends

among the large staff of Tidborough School masters and had developed

many acquaintances among the large body of members of the teaching

profession with whom the firm was in touch. He was fond of discussing

methods and difficulties of encouraging stubborn youth in the arid paths

of assimilating knowledge, and he had a peculiarly fresh and sympathetic

recollection of his own boyish flounderings in those paths. To these

tastes and qualities, and perhaps because of them, he found he was able

to bring what was incontestably a flair for discovering the sort of book

that needed to be compiled and, what was equally important, the sort of

man to compile it. Also, in his capacity of general editor of the

volumes, to give much stimulating suggestion and advice to the authors.

He had never been so pleased as on the day when the _Spectator_, in an

extended notice of four new textbooks, had written, "It is always a

pleasure to open one of the school textbooks bearing the imprint of

Fortune, East and Sabre and issued in the pleasing format which this

firm have made their own. Their publications give the impression of a

directing mind inspired with the happy thought of presenting textbooks,

not for the master, but for the pupil, and of carrying out this design

with singular freshness and originality."

On the day when that notice appeared, Mr. Fortune, who considered that

his mind was--or would be supposed to be--the directing mind referred

to, had repeated his promise of partnership, first made when the

enterprise began to show unexpected signs of responding to Sabre's

enthusiasm. "Very good, Sabre, very good indeed. I am bound to say

capital. I may tell you, as your father probably told you, that it was

always understood between him and me that you should be taken into

partnership if you showed signs of promise. Unquestionably you do. When

you have brought the publishing into line with our established

departments we will go into the matter and--" he made one of his nearest

approaches to pleasantry--"take steps to restore the house of Sabre in

some part to its ancient glories in the firm--in some part."

And when Sabre expressed his gratification, "Enough, I have decided."

In 1912 Sabre felt that he had now brought the publishing into line with

the established departments. He had emphasized the firm's reputation in

this activity by the considerable success that attended two textbooks

bearing (one in collaboration) his own name. "Sabre and Owen's

Elementary Mathematics" had been notably taken up by the schools.

"Sabre's Modern History", shunned by the public schools in accordance

with their principle of ignoring all history mellowed by fewer than

three thousand years, had been received enthusiastically by the lesser

schools wherein was then dawning the daring idea of presenting to the

rising generation some glimmering conception of the constitutional and

sociological facts into which it was arising.

The tributes with which this slim primer of one hundred and fifty pages

for eighteen pence had been greeted inspired Sabre towards a much bolder

work, on which the early summer of 1912 saw him beginning and into which

he found himself able to pour in surprising volume thoughts and feelings

which he had scarcely known to be his until the pen and the paper began

to attract them. The title he had conceived alone stirred them in his

mind and drew them from it as a magnet stirs and draws iron filings.

"England." Just "England." He could see it printed and published and

renowned as "Sabre's England." Kings were to enter this history but

incidentally, as kings have in fact ever been but incidental to

England's history. It was to be just "England"; the England of the

English people and how and why. And the first sentence said so.

"This England" (it said) "is _yours_. It belongs to _you_. Many enemies

have desired to take it because it is the most glorious and splendid

country in the world. But they have never taken it, because it is

_yours_ and has been kept for you. This book is to tell you how it has

come to be yours and how it has been kept for you,--not by kings or by

statesmen, or by great men alone, but by the English people. Down the

long years they have handed it on to you, as a torch is sent from hand

to hand, and you in your turn will hand it on down the long years before

you. They made the flame of England bright and ever brighter for you;

and you, stepping into all that they have made for you, will make it

bright and brighter yet. They passed and are gone; and you will pass and

go. But England will continue. Your England. _Yours._"

CHAPTER VII

I

Mabel called Sabre's school textbooks "those lesson books." After she

had thus referred to them two or three times he gave up trying to

interest her in them. The expression hurt him, but when he thought upon

it he reasoned with himself that he had no cause to be hurt. He thought,

"Dash it, that's what they are, lesson books. What on earth have I got

to grouse about?" But they meant to him a good deal more than what was

implied in the tone and the expression "those lesson books."

However, "England" was going to be something very different. No one

would call "England" a lesson book. Even Mabel would see that; and in

his enthusiasm he spoke of it to her a good deal, until the day when it

came up--of all unlikely connections in the world--in a discussion with

her on the National Insurance Act, then first outraging the country.

One day when English society was first shaken to its depths by the

disgusting indignity of what Mabel, in common with all nice people,

called "licking stamps for that Lloyd George", she mentioned to Sabre

that, "Well, thank goodness some of us know better than to steal the

money out of the poor creatures' wages."

She knew that this would please her husband because he was always doing

what she called "sticking up for the servants and all that class."

That it did not please him was precisely an example of his "absolutely

un-understandable" ways of looking at things that so desperately annoyed

her.

Sabre asked, "How do you mean--knowing better than to steal the money

out of their wages?"

"Why, making them pay their thruppence for those wretched stamps. I

believe Mrs. Castor does. How she's got the face to I can't imagine."

"Why, aren't you going to make them pay, Mabel?"

Mabel was quite indignant. "Is it likely? I should hope not!"

"Really? Haven't you been making High and Low pay their share of the

stamps all this time?"

"Of course I've not."

"You've been paying their contribution?"

"Of course I have."

"Well, but Mabel, that's wrong, awfully wrong."

She simply stared at him. "You really are beyond me, Mark. What do you

mean 'wrong'?"

"Well, it's not fair--not fair on the girls--"

"Not fair to pay them more than their wages!"

"No, of course it's not. Don't you see half the idea of the Act is to

help these people to learn thrift and forethought--to learn the wisdom

of putting by for a rainy day. And to encourage their independence. When

you go and pay what they ought to pay, you're simply taking away their

independence."

She gave her sudden burst of laughter. "You're the first person I've

ever heard say that the lower classes want their independence

encouraged. It's just what's wrong with them--independence."

He began to talk with animation. This was one of the things that much

interested him. He seemed to have quite forgotten the origin of the

conversation. "No, it isn't, Mabel--it isn't. That's jolly interesting,

that point. It's their _dependence_ that's wrong with them. They're

nearly all of them absolutely dependent on an employer, and that's bad,

fatal, for anybody. It's the root of the whole trouble with the

less-educated classes, if people would only see it. What they want is

pride in themselves. They just slop along taking what they can get, and

getting so much for nothing--votes and free this, that and the

other--that they don't value it in the least. They're dependent all the

time. What you want to help them to is independence, pride in themselves

and confidence in themselves--that sort of independence. You know, all

this talk that they put up, or that's put up for them, about their right

to this and their right to that--of course you can't have a right to

anything without earning it. That's what they want to be shown, see? And

that's what they want to be given--the chance to earn the right to

things, see? Well, this Insurance Act business--"

She laughed again. "I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming

back to that."

He noticed nothing deprecatory in her remark. "Yes, rather. Well, this

Insurance Act business--that's really a jolly good example of the way to

do things. You see, it's not giving them the right to free treatment

when they're ill; it's giving them the chance to earn the right. That's

what you want to explain to High and Low. See--you want to say to them,

'This is your show. Your very own. Fine. You're building this up, I'm

helping. You're helping all sorts of poor devils and you're helping

yourself at the same time. You're stacking up a great chunk of the State

and it belongs to you. England's yours and you want to pile it up all

you know'--"

He was quite flushed.

"That's the sort of thing I'm putting into that book of mine. 'England's

yours', you know. Precious beyond price; and therefore grand to be

making more precious and more your own. I wish you'd like to see how the

book's getting on; would you?"

"What book?"

"Why 'England.' I told you, you know. That history."

"Oh, that lesson book! I wish you'd write a novel."

He looked at her. "Oh, well!" he said.

II

After that he never mentioned "England" again to her. But he most

desperately wanted to talk about it to some one. There was no one in

Penny Green from whom he could expect helpful suggestions; but it was

not helpful suggestions he wanted. He wanted merely to talk about it to

a sympathetic listener. And not only about the book,--about all sorts of

things that interested him. And indirectly they all helped the book. To

talk with one who responded sympathetically was in some curious way a

source of enormous inspiration to him. Not always precisely

inspiration,--comfort. All sorts of warming feelings stirred pleasurably

within him when he could, in some sympathetic company, open out his

mind.

He was not actively aware of it, but what, in those years, he came to

crave for as a starved child craves for food was sympathy of mind.

He found it, in Penny Green, with what Mabel called "the most

extraordinary people." "What you can find in that Mr. Fargus and that

young Perch and his everlasting mother," she used to say, "I simply

cannot imagine."

He found a great deal.

III

Mr. Fargus, who lived next door down the Green, and outside whose gate

the bicycle had made its celebrated shortage record, was a grey little

man with grey whiskers and always in a grey suit. He had a large and

very red wife and six thin and rather yellowish daughters. Once a day,

at four in summer and at two in winter, the complete regiment of

Farguses moved out in an immense mass and proceeded in a dense crowd for

a walk. The female Farguses, having very long legs, walked very fast,

and the solitary male Fargus, having very short legs, walked very

slowly, and was usually, therefore, trotting to keep up with the pack.

He had, moreover, not only to keep pace but also to keep place. He was

forever getting squeezed out from between two tall Farguses and trotting

agitatedly around the heels of the battalion to recover a position in

it. He always reminded Sabre of a grey old Scotch terrier toddling along

behind and around the flanks of a company of gaunt, striding mastiffs.

He returned from those walks panting slightly and a little perspiring,

and at the door gave the appearance of being dismissed, and trotted away

rather like a little grey old Scotch terrier toddling off to the

stables. The lady Farguses called this daily walk "exercise"; and it

certainly was exercise for Mr. Fargus.

The eldest Miss Fargus was a grim thirty-nine and the youngest Miss

Fargus a determined twenty-eight. They called their father "Papa" and

used the name a good deal. When Sabre occasionally had tea at the

Farguses' on a Sunday afternoon Mr. Fargus always appeared to be sitting

at the end of an immense line of female Farguses. Mrs. Fargus would pour

out a cup and hand it to the Miss Fargus at her end of the line

with the loud word "Papa!" and it would whiz down the chain from

daughter to daughter to the clamorous direction, each to each,

"Papa!--Papa!--Papa!--Papa!" The cup would reach Mr. Fargus at the speed

of a thunderbolt; and Mr. Fargus, waiting for it with agitated hands as

a nervous fielder awaits a rushing cricket ball, would stop it

convulsively and usually drop and catch at and miss the spoon, whereupon

the entire chain of Farguses would give together a very loud "_Tchk_!"

and immediately shoot at their parent a plate of buns with

"Buns--Buns--Buns--Buns" all down the line. Similarly when Mr. Fargus's

grey little face would sometimes appear above the dividing wall to Sabre

in the garden there would come a loud cry of "Papa, the plums!" and from

several quarters of the garden this would he echoed "Papa, the plums!"

"Papa, the plums!" and the grey little head, in the middle of a

sentence, would disappear with great swiftness.

The Farguses kept but one servant, a diminutive and startled child with

one hand permanently up her back in search of an apron shoulder string,

and permanently occupied in frantically pursuing loud cracks, like

pistol shots, of "Kate!--Kate!--Kate!" Each Miss Fargus "did" something

in the house. One "did" the lamps, another "did" the silver, another

"did" the fowls. And whatever it was they "did" they were always doing

it. Each Miss Fargus, in addition, "did" her own room, and unitedly they

all "did" the garden. Every doing was done by the clock; and at any hour

of the day any one Miss Fargus could tell a visitor precisely what, and

at what point of what, every other Miss Fargus was doing.

In this well-ordered scheme of things what Mr. Fargus principally "did"

was to keep out of the way of his wife and daughters, and this duty took

him all his time and ingenuity. From the back windows of Sabre's house

the grey little figure was frequently to be seen fleeting up and down

the garden paths in wary evasion of daughters "doing" the garden, and

there was every reason to suppose that, within the house, the grey

figure similarly fleeted up and down the stairs and passages. "Where

_is_ Papa?" was a constant cry from mouth to mouth of the female

Farguses; and fatigue parties were constantly being detached from their

duties to skirmish in pursuit of him.

In his leisure from these flights Mr. Fargus was intensely absorbed in

chess, in the game of Patience, and in the solution of acrostics. Sabre

was also fond of chess and attracted by acrostics; and regular evenings

of every week were spent by the two in unriddling the problems set in

the chess and acrostic columns of journals taken in for the purpose.

They would sit for hours solemnly staring at one another, puffing at

pipes, in quest of a hidden word beginning with one letter and ending

with another, or in search of the two master moves that alone would

produce Mate. (It was a point of honour not to work out chess problems

on a board but to do them in your head.) Likewise for hours the two in

games of chess and in competitive Patience, one against the other, to

see who would come out first. And to all these mental exercises--chess,

acrostics and Patience--an added interest was given by Mr. Fargus's

presentation of them as illustrative of his theory of life.

Mr. Fargus's theory of life was that everybody was placed in life to

fulfil a divine purpose and invested with the power to fulfil it. "No,

no, it's not fatalism," Mr. Fargus used to say. "Not predestination.

It's just exactly like a chess problem or an acrostic. The Creator sets

it. He knows the solution, the answer. You've got to work it out. It's

all keyed for you just as the final move in chess or the final discovery

in an acrostic is keyed up to right from the start." And on this

argument Mr. Fargus introduced Sabre to the great entertainment in

"working back" when a game of Patience failed to come out or after a

defeat in chess. You worked back to the immense satisfaction of finding

the precise point at which you went wrong. Up to that point you had

followed the keyed path; precisely there you missed it.

"Tremendous, eh?" Mr. Fargus used to say. "Terrific. If you hadn't done

that you'd have got it. That one move, all that way back, was calamity.

Calamity! What a word!"

And they would stare bemused eyes upon one another.

"You put that into life," Mr. Fargus used to say. "Imagine if every

life, at death, was worked back, and where it went wrong, where it made

its calamity, and the date, put on the tombstone. Eh? What a record!

Who'd dare walk through a churchyard?"

Sabre's objection was, "Of course no one would ever know. Suppose your

idea's correct, who's to say what a man's purpose in life was, let alone

whether he'd fulfilled it? How can you work towards a purpose if you

don't know what it is?"

Then little old Mr. Fargus would grow intense. "Why, Sabre, that's just

where you are with an acrostic or in chess. How can you work out the

solution when you don't know what the solution is?"

"Yes, but you know there is a solution."

Mr. Fargus's eyes would shine. "Well, there you are! And you know that

in life there is a purpose."

And what attracted and interested Sabre was that the little man, living

here his hunted life among the terrific "doings" of the seven female

Farguses, firmly believed that he was working out and working towards

his designed purpose. He had "worked back" his every event in life, he

said, and it had brought him so inevitably to Penny Green and to

skipping about among the seven that he was assured it was the keyed path

to his purpose. He amazed Sabre by telling him, without trace of

self-consciousness and equally without trace of religious mania, that he

was waiting, daily, for God to call upon him to fulfil the purpose for

which he was placed there. He expected it as one expects a letter by the

post. When he talked about it to Sabre he positively trembled and shone

with eagerness as a child trembling and shining with excitement before

an unopened parcel.

One day Sabre protested. "But look here, Fargus. Look here, how are you

going to know when it comes? It might be anything. You don't know what

it is and--well, you won't know, will you?"

The little man said, "I believe I shall, Sabre. I've 'worked back' for

years, as far as ever my memory will carry, and everything has been so

exactly keyed that I'm convinced I'm in the way of my purpose. I believe

you can feel it if you've waited for it like that. I believe you're

asked 'Ready?' and I want to say, whatever it is, 'Aye, Ready!'"

Mysterious and awful suggestion, Sabre thought. To believe yourself at

any moment to be touched as by a finger and asked "Ready?" "Aye, Ready!"

Mysterious and awful intimacy with God!

IV

And then there were the Perches--"Young Perch and that everlasting old

mother of his", as Mabel called them.

Sabre always spoke of them as "Young Rod, Pole or Perch" and "Old Mrs.

Rod, Pole or Perth." This was out of what Mabel called his childish and

incomprehensible habit of giving nicknames,--High Jinks and Low Jinks

the outstanding and never-forgiven example of it. "Whatever's the joke

of it?" she demanded, when one day she found Sabre speaking of Major

Millet, another neighbour and a great friend of hers, as "Old Hopscotch

Millet."

"Whatever's the joke of it? He doesn't play hopscotch."

"No, but he bounds about," Sabre explained. "You know the way he bounds

about, Mabel. He's about ninety--"

"I'm sure he isn't, nor fifty."

"Well, anyway, he's past his first youth, but he's always bounding about

to show how agile he is. He's always calling out 'Ri--te _O_!' and

jumping to do a thing when there's no need to jump. Hopscotch. What can

you call him but Hopscotch?"

"But why call him _anything_?" Mabel said. "His name's Millet."

Her annoyance caused her voice to squeak. "Why call him _anything_?"

Sabre laughed. "Well, you know how a ridiculous thing like that comes

into your head and you can't get rid of it. You know the way."

Mabel declared she was sure she did not know the way. "They don't come

into _my_ head. Look at the Perches--not that I care what name you call

them. Rod, Pole or Perch! What's the sense of it? What does it _mean_?"

Sabre said it didn't mean anything. "You just get some one called Perch

and then you can't help thinking of that absurd thing rod, pole or

perch. It just comes."

"I call it childish and rude," Mabel said.

V

Mrs. Perch was a fragile little body whose life should have been and

could have been divided between her bed and a bath chair. She was,

however, as she said, "always on her legs." And she was always on her

legs and always doing what she had not the strength to do, because, as

she said, she "had always done it." She conducted her existence in the

narrow space between the adamant wall of the things she had always done,

always eaten, and always worn, and the adamant wall of the things she

had never done, never eaten, and never worn. There was not much room

between the two.

She was intensely weak-sighted, but she never could find her glasses;

and she kept locked everything that would lock, but she never could find

her keys. She held off all acquaintances by the rigid handle of "that"

before their names, but she was very fond of "that Mr. Sabre", and Sabre

returned a great affection for her. With his trick of seeing things with

his mental vision he always saw old Mrs. Perch toddling with moving lips

and fumbling fingers between the iron walls of her prejudices, and this

was a pathetic picture to him, for ease or pleasure were not discernible

between the walls. Nevertheless Mrs. Perch found pleasures therein, and

the way in which her face then lit up added, to Sabre, an indescribable

poignancy to the pathos of the picture. She never could pass a baby

without stopping to adore it, and an astounding tide of rejuvenation

would then flood up from mysterious mains, welling upon her silvered

cheeks and through her dim eyes, stilling the movement of her lips and

the fumbling motions of her fingers.

Also amazing tides of glory when she was watching for her son, and saw

him.

Young Perch was a tall and slight young man with a happy laugh and an

air which suggested to Sabre, after puzzlement, that his spirit was only

alighted in his body as a bird alights and swings upon a twig, not

engrossed in his body. He did not look very strong. His mother said he

had a weak heart. He said he had a particularly strong heart and used to

protest, "Oh, Mother, I do wish you wouldn't talk that bosh about me."

To which Mrs. Perch would say, "It's no good saying you _haven't_ got a

weak heart because you _have_ got a weak heart and you've always _had_ a

weak heart. Surely I ought to know."

Young Perch would reply, "You ought to know, but you don't know. You get

an idea in your head and nothing will ever get it out. Some day you'll

probably get the idea that I've got two hearts and if Sir Frederick

Treves swore before the Lord Chief Justice that I only had one heart

you'd just say, 'The man's a perfect fool.' You're awful, you know,

Mother."

He used to reprove his mother like that.

Mrs. Perch would give a grim little laugh, relishing her strength, and

then Young Perch would give an involuntary little laugh, accepting his

weakness.

That was how they lived.

Young Perch always carried about in one pocket a private pair of

spectacles for his mother and in another a private set of keys for her

most used receptacles. When the search for her spectacles had exhausted

even her own energy, Young Perch would say, "Well, you'd better use

these, Mother." It was of no use to offer them till she was weakening in

the search, and she would take them grudgingly with, "They don't suit

me." Similarly with the keys, accepted only after prolonged and

maddening search. "Well, you'd better try these, Mother."--"They injure

the lock."

Sabre often witnessed and took part in these devastating searches.

Young Perch would always say, "Now just sit down, Mother, instead of

rushing about, and try to think quite calmly when you last used them."

Mrs. Perch, intensely fatigued, intensely worried:

"How very silly you are, Freddie! I don't know when I last used them. If

I knew when I used them, I should know where they are now."

"Well, you'd better use these now, Mother."

"They don't suit me. They ruin my eyes."

Yet Mrs. Rod, Pole or Perch, who confided much in Sabre, and who had no

confidences of any kind apart from her son, would often say to Sabre:

"Freddie always finds my keys for me, you know. He finds everything for

me, Mr. Sabre."

And the tide of glory would flood amazingly upon her face, transfiguring

it, and Sabre would feel an immensely poignant clutch at the heart.

VI

The Perchs' house was called Puncher's--Puncher's Farm, a few hundred

yards along the lane leading to the great highroad--and it was the

largest and by far the most untidy house in Penny Green. Successive

Punchers of old time, when it had been the most considerable farm in all

the country between Chovensbury and Tidborough, had added to it in

stubborn defiance of all laws of comfort and principles of domestic

architecture, and now, shorn alike of its Punchers and of its pastures,

the homestead that might easily have housed twenty, was mysteriously

filled to overflowing by two. Mrs. Perch was fond of saying she had

lived in nineteen houses "in her time", and Sabre had the belief that

the previous eighteen had all been separately furnished and the entire

accumulation, together with every newspaper taken in during their

occupation, brought to Puncher's. Half the rooms of Puncher's were so

filled with furniture that no more furniture, and scarcely a living

person, could be got in; and half the rooms were so filled with boxes,

packages, bundles, trunks, crates, and stacks of newspapers that no

furniture at all could be got in. Every room was known to Mrs. Perch and

to Young Perch by the name of some article it contained and Mrs. Perch

was forever "going to sort the room with your Uncle Henry's couch in

it", or "the room with the big blue box with the funny top in it", or

some other room similarly described.

Mrs. Perch was always "going to", but as the task was always contingent

upon either "when I have got a servant into the house", or "when I have

turned the servant out of the house"--these two states representing Mrs.

Perch's occupation with the servant problem--the couch of Uncle Henry,

the big blue box with the funny top, and all the other denizens of the

choked rooms remained, like threatened men, precariously but securely.

But not unvisited!

Sabre once spent a week in the house, terminating a summer holiday a

little earlier than Mabel, and he had formed the opinion that mother and

son never went to bed at night and never got up in the morning. In

remote hours and in remote quarters of the house mysterious sounds

disturbed his sleep. Eerily peering over the banisters, he discerned the

pair moving, like lost souls, about the passages, Mrs. Perch with the

skirts of a red dressing-gown in one hand and a candle in the other,

Young Perch disconsolately in her wake, yawning, with another candle.

Young Perch called this "Prowling about the infernal house all night";

and one office of the prowl appeared to Sabre to be the attendance of

pans of milk warming in a row on oil stoves and suggesting, with the

glimmer of the stoves and the steam of the pans, mysterious oblations to

midnight gods.

VII

Mrs. Perch believed her son could do anything and, in the matter of his

capabilities, had the strange conviction that he had only to write and

ask anybody, from Mr. Asquith downwards, for employment in the highest

offices in order to obtain it. Young Perch--who used to protest, "Well,

but I've _got_ my work, Mother"--was in fact a horticulturist of very

fair reputation. He specialised in sweet peas and roses; and Sabre, in

the early days of his intimacy with the Rod, Pole or Perch household,

was surprised at the livelihood that could apparently be made by the

disposal of seeds, blooms and cuttings.

"Fred's getting quite famous with his sweet peas," Sabre once said to

Mrs. Perch. "I've been reading an illustrated interview with him in _The

Country House_."

Tides of glory into Mrs. Perch's face. "Ah, if only he hadn't worn that

dreadful floppy hat of his, Mr. Sabre. It couldn't have happened on a

more unfortunate day. I fully intended to see how he looked before the

photographs were taken and of course it so happened I was turning a

servant out of the house and couldn't attend to it. That dreadful floppy

hat doesn't suit him. It never did suit him. But he will wear it. It's

no good my saying anything to him."

This was an opinion that old Mrs. Perch was constantly reiterating.

Young Perch was equally given to declaring, "I can't do anything with my

Mother, you know." And yet it was Sabre's observation that each life was

entirely guided and administered by the other. Young Perch once told

Sabre he had never slept a night away from his mother since he was

seventeen, and he was never absent from her half a day but she was at

the window watching for his return.

Sabre was extraordinarily attracted by the devotion between the pair.

Their interests, their habits, their thoughts were as widely sundered as

their years, yet each was wholly and completely bound up in the other.

When Sabre sat and talked with Young Perch of an evening, old Mrs. Perch

would sit with them, next her son, in an armchair asleep. At intervals

she would start awake and say querulously, "Now I suppose I must be

driven off to bed."

Young Perch, not pausing in what he might be saying, would stretch a

hand and lay it on his mother's. Mrs. Perch, as though Freddie's hand

touched away enormous weariness and care, would sigh restfully and sleep

again. It gave Sabre extraordinary sensations.

* * * * *

If he had been asked to name his particular friends these were the

friends he would have named. He saw them constantly. Infrequently he saw

another. Quite suddenly she came back into his life.

Nona returned into his life.

PART TWO

NONA

CHAPTER I

I

Sabre, ambling his bicycle along the pleasant lanes towards Tidborough

one fine morning in the early summer of 1912, was met in his thoughts by

observation, as he topped a rise, of the galloping progress of the light

railway that was to link up the Penny Green Garden Home with Tidborough

and Chovensbury. In the two years since Lord Tybar had, as he had said,

beneficially exercised his ancestors in their graves by selling the land

on which the Garden Home Development was to develop, Penny Green Garden

Home had sprung into being at an astonishing pace.

The great thing now was the railway.

And the railway's unsightly indications strewn across the

countryside--ballast heaps, excavations, noisy stationary engines,

hand-propelled barrows bumping along toy lines, gangs of men at labour

with pick and shovel--met Sabre's thoughts on this June morning because

he was thinking of the Penny Green Garden Home and of Mabel, and of

Mabel and of himself in connection with the Penny Green Garden Home.

Puzzling thoughts.

Here was a subject, this ambitiously projected and astonishingly popular

Garden Home springing up at their very doors, that interested him and

that intensely interested Mabel, and yet it could never be mentioned

between them without.... Only that very morning at breakfast.... And

June--he always remembered it--was the anniversary month of their

wedding.... Eight years ago.... Eight years....

II

What interested Sabre in the Garden Home was not the settlement

itself--he rather hated the idea of Penny Green being neighboured and

overrun by crowds of all sorts of people--but the causes that gave rise

to the modern movement of which it was a shining example. The causes had

their place in one of the sections he had planned for "England" and it

encouraged his ideas for that section to see the results here at his

doors. Overcrowding in the towns; the desire of men to get away from

their place of business; the increasing pressure of business and the

increasing recreational variety of life that, deepening and widening

through the years, actuated the desire; the extension of traffic

facilities that permitted the desire; all the modern tendencies that

made work less of a pleasure and more of a toil,--and out of that the

whole absorbing question of the decay of joy in craftsmanship, and

why.--Jolly interesting!

These were the pictures and the stories that Sabre saw in the roads and

avenues and residences and public buildings leaping from mud and chaos

into order and activity in the Garden Home; these were the reasons the

thing interested him and why he rather enjoyed seeing it springing up

about him. But these, he thought as he rode along, were not the reasons

the thing interested Mabel. And when he mentioned them to her.... And

when she, for her part, spoke of it to him--and she was always speaking

of it--the reasons for her enthusiasm retired him at once into a shell.

Funny state of affairs!

Mabel was convinced he loathed and detested the Penny Green Garden Home

Development; and actually he rather liked the Penny Green Garden Home

Development; and yet he couldn't tell her so; and she did not understand

in the least when he tried to tell her so. Funny--eight years ago this

month....

His thoughts went on. And, come to think of it, the relations between

them were precisely similar in regard to nearly everything they ever

discussed. And yet they would be called, and were, a perfectly happy

couple. Perfectly? Was every happy married couple just what they were?

Was married happiness, then, merely the negation of violent unhappiness?

Merely not beating your wife, and your wife not drinking or running up

debts? He thought: "No, no, there's something more in it than that." And

then his forehead wrinkled up in his characteristic habit and he

thought: "Of course, it's my fault. It isn't only this dashed Garden

Home. It's everything. It isn't only once. It's always. It can't

possibly be her fault always. It's mine. I can see that.

"Take this morning at breakfast. Perfectly good temper both of us. Then

she said, 'Those houses in King's Close are going to be eighty pounds a

year; and, what do you think, Mrs. Toller is going to take one!'

Immediately I was riled. Why should I get riled because she says that

Mrs. Toller is going to take a house for eighty pounds a year? I just

rustled the newspaper. Why on earth couldn't I say, 'Good lord, is she?'

or something like that? Why on earth couldn't I even not rustle the

newspaper? She knows what it means when I rustle the paper. I meant her

to know. Why should I? It's the easiest thing on earth for me to respond

to what she says. I know perfectly well what she's getting at. I could

easily have said that Mrs. Toller would have old Toller in the workhouse

one of these days if he didn't watch it. I could have said, 'She'll be

keeping three servants next, and she can't keep one as it is.' Mabel

would have loved that. She'd have laughed."

He thought, "Why should she love that sort of tripe--gossip?"

He thought, "Damn it, why shouldn't she? Why should I mind? Why should I

rustle the newspaper? She can't enter into things that interest me; but

I can, I could enter into things that interest her. Why don't I? Of

course I can see perfectly clearly how she looks at things. It's just as

rotten for her that I can't talk with her about her ideas as it is

rotten for me that she doesn't see my ideas. And it isn't rotten for me.

I don't mind it. I don't expect it. I don't expect it...."

And at that precise moment of his thoughts, the garrulous Hapgood,

seeing his face, could have said to another, as he said before, "There!

See what I mean? Looks as though he'd lost something and was wondering

where it was. Ha!"

III

A genial shouting and the clatter of agitated hoofs jerked Sabre from

his thoughts.

"Hullo! Hi! Help! Out collision-mats! Stop the cab! Look out, Sabre!

_Sabre!_"

He suddenly became aware--and he jammed on his brakes and dismounted by

straddling a leg to the ground--that in the narrow lane he was between

two plunging horses. Their riders had divided to make way for his

bemused approach. They had violently sundered, expecting him to stop,

until he was almost on top of them, and one of the pair was now engaged

in placating his horse, which resented this sudden snatching at bit and

prick of spur, and persuading it to return to the level road.

On one side the lane was banked steeply up in a cutting. The horse of

the rider on this side stood on its hind legs and appeared to be

performing a series of postman's double knocks on the bank with its

forelegs. Lord Tybar, who bestrode it, and who did not seem to be at all

concerned by his horse copying a postman, looked over his shoulder at

Sabre, showing an amused grin, and said, "Thanks, Sabre. This is jolly.

I like this. Come on, old girl. This way down. Keep passing on, please."

The old girl, an extraordinarily big and handsome chestnut mare, dropped

her forelegs to the level of the road, where she exchanged the postman's

knocking for a complicated and exceedingly nimble dance, largely on two

legs.

Lord Tybar, against her evident intentions, skilfully directed the steps

of this dance into a turning movement so that she and her rider now

faced Sabre; and while she bounded through the concluding movements of

the _pas seul_ he continued in the same whimsical tone and with the same

engaging smile, "Thanks still more, Sabre. This is extraordinarily good

for the liver. Devilish graceful, aren't I? See, I'm only holding on

with one hand! Marvellous. No charge for this." And as the mare came to

rest and quivered at Sabre with her beautiful nostrils, "Ah, the music's

stopped. Delicious. How well your step suits mine!"

"Ass!" laughed a voice above them; and Sabre, who had almost forgotten

there was another horse when he had abruptly wakened and dismounted,

looked up at it.

The other horse was standing with complete and entirely unconcerned

statuesqueness on the low bank which bounded the lane on his other side.

Lady Tybar had taken it--or it had taken Lady Tybar--out of danger in a

sideways bound, and horse and rider remained precisely where the

sideways bound had taken them as if it were exactly where they had

intended to go all that morning, and as if they were now settled there

for all time as a living equestrian statue,--a singularly striking and

beautiful statue.

"We are up here," said Lady Tybar. Her voice had a very clear, fine

note. "We are rather beautiful up here, don't you think? Rather

darlings? No one takes the faintest notice of us; we might be off the

earth. But we don't mind a bit. Hullo, Derry and Toms, Marko is actually

taking off his hat to us. Bow, Derry."

Her horse, as if he perfectly understood, tossed his head, and she drew

attention to it with a deprecatory little gesture of her hand and then

said, "Shall we come down now? Is your dance quite finished, Tony? Are

you content, Marko? All right. We'll descend. This is us descending.

Lady Tybar, who is a superb horsewoman, descending a precipice on her

beautiful half-bred Derry and Toms, a winner at several shows."

Derry and Toms stepped down off the bank with complete assurance and

superb dignity. With equal precision, moving his feet as though there

were marked for them certain exact spots which he covered with infinite

lightness and exactitude, he turned about and stood beside his partner

in exquisite and immobile pose.

IV

Thus the two riders faced Sabre, smiling upon him. He stood holding his

bicycle immediately in front of them. The mare continued to quiver her

beautiful nostrils at him; every now and then she blew a little agitated

puff through them, causing them to expand and reveal yet more

exquisitely their glorious softness and delicacy.

Sabre thought that the riders, with their horses, made the most

striking, and somehow affecting picture of virile and graceful beauty he

could ever have imagined.

Lord Tybar, who was thirty-two, was debonair and attractive of

countenance to a degree. His eyes, which were grey, were extraordinarily

mirthful, mischievous. A supremely airy and careless and bold spirit

looked through those eyes and shone through their flashes and glints and

sparkles of diamond light. His face was thin and of tanned olive.

His face seemed to say to the world, challengingly, "I am here!

I have arrived! Bring out your best and watch me!" There were

people--women--who said he had a cruel mouth. They said this, not with

censure or regret, but with a deliciously fearful rapture as though the

cruel mouth (if it were cruel) were not the least part of his

attraction.

Lord Tybar's lady, who was twenty-eight, carried in her countenance and

in her hair the pleasing complement of her lord's tan and olive hue and

of his cropped black poll. She was extraordinarily fair. Her skin was of

the hue and of the sheen of creamy silk, and glowed beneath its hue. It

presented amazing delicacy and yet an exquisite firmness. Children,

playing with her, and she delighted in playing with children (but she

was childless), often asked to stroke her face. They would stare at her

face in that immensely absorbed way in which children stare, and then

ask to touch her face and just stroke it; their baby fingers were not

more softly silken. Of her hair Lady Tybar had said frequently, from her

girlhood upwards, that it was "a most sickening nuisance." She bound it

tightly as if to punish and be firm with the sickening nuisance that it

was to her. And these close, gleaming plaits and coils children also

liked to touch with their soft fingers.

Her name was Nona.

Out of a hundred people who passed her by quite a considerable number

would have denied that she was beautiful. Her face was round and saucy

rather than oval and classical. Incontestable the striking attraction of

her complexion and of her hair; but not beautiful,--quite a number would

have said, and did say. Oh, no; pretty, perhaps, in a way, but that's

all.

But her face was much more than beautiful to Sabre.

V

Until this moment, standing there with his bicycle, she on her beautiful

horse, he had not seen her, nor Lord Tybar, for two years. They had been

travelling. Now seeing her, thus unexpectedly and thus gallantly

environed, his mind, with that astonishing precision of detail and

capriciousness of selection with which the mind retains pictures,

reproduced certain masculine discussion of her looks at a time when, as

Nona Holiday of Chovensbury Court, daughter of Sir Hadden Holiday, M.P.

for Tidborough, she had contributed to local gossip by becoming engaged

to Lord Tybar.

"Pretty girl, you know," masculine discussion had said; and Sabre had

thought, "Fools!"

"Oh, hardly pretty," others had maintained; and again "Fools!" he had

thought. "Pretty--_pretty_! Hardly pretty--hardly--!" Furious, he had

flung away from them.

The time and the place of the discussion had been when the news of her

engagement had just been brought into the clubhouse of the Penny Green

Golf Club. He had flung out into the rain which had caused the pavilion

to be crowded. Fools! Was she pretty! Did they mean to say they couldn't

see in her face what he saw in her face? And then he thought, "But of

course they haven't loved her. It's nothing to them what they've only

just heard, but what she told me herself this morning.... And she knew

what it meant to me when she told me.... Although we said nothing. Of

course I see her differently."

He saw her "differently" now after two years of not seeing her, and ten

years since that day of gossip at the golf club. Pretty!... Strange how

he could always remember that smell of the rain as he had come out of

the clubhouse ... and a strange fragrance in the air as now he looked

upon her.

Upon the warm and trembling air, as he stood with his bicycle before the

horses, were borne to him savour of hay newly turned in the fields

about, and of high spring-tide blowing in the hedgerows; and with them

delicious essence from the warm, gleaming bodies of the horses, and

pungent flavour of the saddlery, and the mare's sweet breath puffed

close to his face in little gusty agitations.

The shining, tingling picture of strength and beauty superbly modelled

that the riders and their horses made, seemed, as it were, to arise out

of and be suspended shimmering in the heart of the warm incense that he

savoured. So when a sorcerer casts spiced herbs upon the flame, and

scented vapour uprises, and in the vapour images appear.

Exquisite picture of strength and beauty superbly modelled: the horses'

glossy coats glinting all a polished chestnut's hues; the perfect

artistry and symmetry of slender limbs, and glorious, arching necks, and

noble heads, and velvet muzzles; the dazzling bits and chains and

buckles; the glinting bridles, reins and saddles; Lord Tybar's

exquisitely poised figure, so perfectly maintaining and carrying up the

symmetry of his horse as to suggest the horse would be disfigured,

truncated, were he to dismount; his taking swagger, his gay, fine face;

and she....

An incantation: jingle of bits mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof

pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of

saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads

were tossed and shaken. Remotely the whirr of a reaping machine. And

somewhere birds....

Pretty!

VI

Greetings had been exchanged; his apologies for his blundering descent

upon them laughed at. Lord Tybar was saying, "Well, it's a tiger of a

place, this Garden Home of yours, Sabre--"

"It's not mine," said Sabre. "God forbid."

"Ah, you've not got the same beautiful local patriotism that I have.

It's one of my most elegant qualities, my passionate devotion to my

countryside. That was what that corker of a vicar of yours, Boom

Bagshaw, told me I was when I wept with joy while he was showing me

round. Yes, and now I'm a patron of the Garden Home Trust or a governor

or a vice-priest or something. I am really. What is it I am, Nona?"

"You're a bloated aristocrat and a bloodsucker," Nona told him in her

clear, fine voice. "And you're living on estates which your brutal

ancestors ravaged from the people. That's what you are, Tony. I showed

it you in the _Searchlight_ yesterday. And, I say, don't use 'elegant';

that's mine."

"Oh, by gad, yes, so I am," said Lord Tybar. "Bloodsucker! Good lord,

fancy being a bloodsucker!"

He looked so genuinely rueful and abashed that Sabre laughed; and then

said to Nona, "Why is elegant 'yours', Lady Tybar?"

She made a little pouting motion at him with her lips. "Marko, I wish to

goodness you wouldn't call me Lady Tybar. Dash it, we've called one

another Nona and Marko for about a thousand years, long before I ever

knew Tony. And just because I'm married--"

"And to a mere loathsome bloodsucker, too," Lord Tybar interposed.

"Yes, especially to a bloodsucker. Just remember to say Nona, will you,

otherwise there'll be a cruel scene between us. I told you about it

before I went away. You don't suppose Tony minds, do you?"

"And Sabre," said Lord Tybar, "what the devil does it matter what a

bloated robber minds, anyway? That's the way to look at me, Sabre.

Trample me underfoot, my boy. I'm a pestilent survivor of the feudal

system, aren't I, Nona?"

"Absolutely. So, Marko, don't be a completer noodle than you already

are."

"Ah, you're getting it now." Lord Tybar murmured. "I'm a noodle, too,

the _Searchlight_ says."

He somehow gave Sabre the impression of taking an even deeper enjoyment

in the incident between his wife and Sabre than the enjoyment he clearly

had in his own facetiousness. He was slightly turned in his saddle so as

to look directly at Nona, and he listened and interposed, and turned his

eyes from her face to Sabre's, and from Sabre's back to hers, with his

handsome head slightly cocked to one side and with much gleaming in his

eyes; rather as if he had on some private mock.

Fantastical notion! What mock could he have?

"Well, about my word 'elegant'," Nona was going on, "and why it is

mine--weren't you asking?"

Sabre said he had. "Yes, why yours?"

"Why, you see, Derry and Toms is a case of it." She tickled her horse's

ears with her riding switch, and he stamped a hoof on the ground and

arched his neck as though he knew he was a case of it and was proud of

being a case of it. "I wanted an elegant name for him and I always think

two names are so elegant for a firm--"

"Bloodsucker and Noodle are mine," said Lord Tybar in a very gloomy

voice; and they laughed.

"--So I called him Derry and Toms."

Sabre pointed out that this still left her own possession of the word

unexplained.

"Oh, Marko, you're dreadfully matter-of-fact. You always were. Why, Tony

and I get fond of a word and then we have it for our own, whichever of

us it is, and use it for everything. And elegant's mine just now. I'm

dreadfully fond of it. It's so--well, elegant: there you are, you see!"

Lord Tybar announced that he had just become attached to a new word and

desired to possess it. He was going to have blood. "You see, if I live

by sucking blood--"

"Tony, you're disgusting!"

"I know. I'm the most frightful things. I'm just beginning to realise

it. Yes, blood's mine, Nona. Copyright. All rights reserved. Blood."

"Well, so long as you stick to the noun and don't use the adjective,"

she said; and they all laughed again.

Lord Tybar gathered up his reins and stroked his left hand along them.

"Well, kindness to animals!" he said. "That's another of my beautiful

qualities. The perfect understanding between me and my horses tells me

the mare has seen enough of you, Sabre. She tells me all her thoughts in

her flanks and they Marconi up my nervous and receptive legs. I must

write and tell the _Searchlight_ that. Perhaps they'll think better of

me."--The mare, feeling his hand, began to dance coquettishly. "You'll

come up and see us often, now you know we're back, won't you? Nona likes

seeing you, don't you, Nona?" And again he looked from Nona to Sabre and

back at Nona again with that look of mocking drollery.

"Oh, you're all right, Marko," Nona agreed, "when you're not too

matter-of-fact. Yes, do come up. There's always a harsh word and a blow

for you at Northrepps."

The mare steadied again. She stretched out her neck towards Sabre and

quivered her nostrils at him, sensing him. He put up a hand to stroke

her beautiful muzzle and she threw up her head violently and swerved

sharply around.

Not in the least discomposed, Lord Tybar, his body in perfect rhythm

with her curvettings, laughed at Sabre over his shoulder. "She thinks

you're up to something, Sabre. She thinks you've got designs on us.

Marvellous how I know! Whisper and I shall hear, loved one. You'll hurt

yourself in a minute."

The light in his smiling eyes was surely a mocking light. "Thinks you're

up to something! Thinks you've got designs on us!"

The mare was wheedled round again to her former position; against her

will, but somehow as the natural result of her dancing. Marvellous how

he directed her caprices into his own intentions and against her own.

But Lord Tybar was now looking away behind him to where the adjoining

meadow sloped far away and steeply to a copse. In the hollow only the

tops of the trees could be seen. His eyes were screwed up in distant

vision. He said, "Dash it, there's that old blighter Sooper. He's been

avoiding me. Now I've got him. Nona, you won't mind getting back alone?

I must speak to Sooper. I'm going to have his blood over that fodder

business. Blood! My word! Good!"

He twisted the mare in a wonderfully quick and dexterous movement.

"Good-by, Sabre. You don't mind, Nona?" And he flashed back a glance. He

lifted the mare over the low bank with a superbly easy motion. He turned

to wave his hand as she landed nimbly in the meadow, and he cantered

away, image of grace, poetry of movement. Fortune's favourite!

The two left watched him. At the brow of the meadow he turned again in

his saddle and waved again jauntily. They waved reply. He was over the

brow. Out of sight.

VII

The features of the level valley beyond the brow where only he could

have seen the individual he sought, were, at that distance, of Noah's

Ark dimensions. "How he could have recognised any one!" said Nona, her

gaze towards the valley. "I can't even see any one. He's got eyes like

about four hawks!"

Sabre said, "And rides like a--what do they call those things?--like a

centaur."

She turned her head towards him. "He does everything better than any one

else," she said. "That's Tony's characteristic. Everything. He's

perfectly wonderful."

These were enthusiastic words; but she spoke them without enthusiasm;

she merely pronounced them. "Well, I'm off too," she said. "And what

about you, Marko? You're going to work, aren't you? I don't think you

ought to be able to stop and gossip like this. You're not getting an

idler, are you? You used to be such a devoted hard-worker. My word!" and

she laughed as though at some amused memory of his devotion to work.

He laughed too. They certainly had many recollections in common, though

not all laughable. "I don't think I'm quite so--so earnest as I used to

be," he smiled.

"Ah, but I like you earnest, Marko."

There was the tiniest silence between them. Yet it seemed to Sabre a

very long silence.

She was again the one to speak, and her tone was rather abrupt and

high-pitched as if she, too, were conscious of a long silence and broke

it deliberately, as one breaks, with an effort, constraint.

"And how's Mabel?"

"She's all right. She's ever so keen on this Garden Home business."

"She would be," said Nona.

"And so am I!" said Sabre. Something in her tone made him say it

defiantly.

She laughed. "I'm sure you are, Marko. Well, good-by"; and as Derry and

Toms began to turn with his customary sedateness of motion she made the

remark, "I'm so glad you don't wear trouser clips, Marko. I do loathe

trouser clips."

He told her that he rode "one of those chainless bikes."

He said it rather mumblingly. Exactly in that tone she used to say

things like, "I do like you in that brown suit, Marko."

VIII

He resumed his ride. A mile farther on he overtook, on a slight rise, an

immense tree trunk slung between three pairs of wheels and dragged by

two tremendous horses, harnessed tandemwise. As he passed them came the

smell of warm horseflesh and his thought was "Pretty!"

He shot ahead and a line came into his mind:

"_Was this the face that launched a thousand ships_?"

Well, he had had certain aspirations, dreams, visions....

He was upon the crest whence the road ran down into Tidborough. Beneath

him the spires of the Cathedral lifted exquisitely above the surrounding

city.

"Those houses in King's Close are going to be eighty pounds a year, and

what do you think, Mrs. Toller is going to take one!"...

CHAPTER II

I

Sabre found but little business awaiting him when he got to his office.

When he had disposed of it he sat some little time staring

absent-mindedly at the cases whereon were ranged the books of his

publication. Then he took out the manuscript of "England" and turned

over the pages. He wondered what Nona would think of it. He would like

to tell her about it.

Twyning came in.

Twyning rarely entered Sabre's room. Sabre did not enter Twyning's twice

in a year. Their work ran on separate lines and there was something,

unexpressed, the reverse of much sympathy between them. Twyning was an

older man than Sabre. He was only two years older in computation by age

but he was very much more in appearance, in manner and in business

experience. He had been in the firm as a boy checker when Sabre was

entering Tidborough School. He had attracted Mr. Fortune's special

attention by disclosing a serious scamping of finish in a set of desks

and he had risen to head clerk when Sabre was at Oxford. On the day that

Sabre entered the firm he had been put "on probation" in the position he

now held, and on the day that Sabre's father retired he had been

confirmed in the position. He regarded Sabre as an amateur and he was

privately disturbed by the fact that a man who "did not know the ropes"

and had not "been through the mill" should come to a position equal in

standing to his own. Nevertheless he accepted the fact, showing not the

smallest animosity. He was always very ready to be cordial towards

Sabre; but his cordiality took a form in which Sabre had never seen eye

to eye with him. The attitude he extended to Sabre was that he and Sabre

were two young fellows under a rather pig-headed old employer and that

they could have many jokes and grievances and go-ahead schemes in

companionship together. Sabre did not accept this view. He gave Twyning,

from the first, the impression of considering himself as working

alongside Mr. Fortune instead of beneath him; and he was cold to and

refused to participate in the truant schoolboy air which Twyning adopted

when they were together. Twyning called this "sidey." He was anxious to

show Sabre, when Sabre first came to the firm, the best places to lunch

in Tidborough, but Sabre was frequently lunching with one of the School

housemasters or at the Masters' common room. Twyning thought this

stand-offish.

II

Twyning was of middle height, very thin, black-haired. His clean-shaven

face was deeply furrowed in rigid-looking furrows which looked as though

shaving would be an intricate operation. He held himself very stiffly

and spoke stiffly as though the cords of his larynx were also rigidly

inclined. When not speaking he had a habit of breathing rather noisily

through his nose as if he were doing deep breathing exercises. He was

married and had a son of whom he was immensely proud, aged eighteen and

doing well in a lawyer's office.

He came in and closed the door. He had a sheet of paper in his hand.

Sabre, engrossed, glanced up. "Hullo, Twyning." He wrote a word and then

put down his pen. "Anything you want me about?" He lay back in his chair

and stared, frowning, at the manuscript before him.

"Nothing particular, if you're busy," Twyning said. "I just looked in."

He advanced the paper in his hand and looked at it as if about to add

something else. But he said nothing and stood by Sabre's chair, also

looking at the manuscript. "That that book?"

"M'm." Sabre was trying to retain his thoughts. He felt them slipping

away before Twyning's presence. He could hear Twyning breathing through

his nose and felt incensed that Twyning should come and breathe through

his nose by his chair when he wanted to write.

But Twyning continued to stand by the chair and to breathe through his

nose. He was reading over Sabre's shoulder.

The few pages of "England" already written lay in front of Sabre's pad,

the first page uppermost. Twyning read and interjected a snort into his

nasal rhythm.

"Well, that book's not written for me, anyway," he remarked.

Sabre agreed shortly. "It isn't. But why not?"

Twyning read aloud the first words. "'This England you live in is

yours.' Well, I take my oath it isn't mine. Not a blooming inch of it.

D'you know what's happening to me? I'm being turned out of my house.

The lease is out and the whole damned house and everything I've put on

to it goes to one of these lordlings--this Lord Tybar--just because one

of his ancestors, who'd never even dreamt of the house, pinched the land

it stands on from the public common and started to pocket ground rent.

Now I'm being pitched into the street to let Lord Tybar have a house

that's no more his than the man in the moon's. D'you call that right?"

"No, I don't," said Sabre, but with a tinge of impatience. "I call it

rotten."

Twyning seemed surprised. "Do you, though? Well, how about that book? I

mean to say--"

"I shall say so in the book. Or as good as say so."

Twyning pondered. "Shall you, by Jove? Well, but I say, that's

liberalism, radicalism, you know. That's not the sort of pap for kids."

"Well, the book isn't going to be pap for kids."

Twyning snorted a note of laughter through his nose. "Sorry, old man.

Don't get shirty. But I say though, seriously, we can't put out that

sort of stuff, you know. Radicalism. Not with our connection. I mean to

say--"

Sabre gathered up the papers and dropped them into a drawer. "Look here,

Twyning, suppose you wait till the book's written before you criticise

it. How about that for an idea?"

"All right, all right, old man. I'm not criticising. What's it going to

be called?"

"England."

Silence.

Sabre, appreciating, with the author's intense suspicion for his child,

something in the silence, looked up at Twyning. "Anything wrong about

that? 'England.' You read the first sentence?"

Twyning said slowly, "Yes, I know I did. I thought of it then."

"Thought of what?"

"Well--'England'--'this England.' I mean to say--What about Scotland?"

"Well, what about Scotland?"

Twyning seemed really concerned. The puckers on his face had visibly

deepened. He used a stubborn tone. "Well, you know what people are. You

know how damned touchy those Scotchmen are. I mean to say, if we put

out a book like that, the Scotch--"

Sabre smote the desk. This kind of thing from Twyning made him furious,

and he particularly was not in the mood for it this morning. He struck

his hand down on the desk: "Well, damn the Scotch. What's it got to do

with the Scotch? This book isn't about Scotland. It's about England.

England. I'll tell you another thing. You say if 'we' put out a book

like that. It isn't 'we.' Excuse me saying so, but it certainly isn't

you. It's I." He stopped, and then laughed. "Sorry, Twyning."

III

Twyning's face had gone very dark. His jaw had set. "Oh, all right." He

turned away, but immediately returned again, his face relaxed. "That's

all right. Only my chipping, you know. I say though," and he laughed

nervously. "That 'not we.' You've said it! I'd come in to tell you. It's

going to be 'we.'" He advanced the paper he had been holding in his

hand, his thumb indicating the top left-hand corner. "What do you think

of me above the line, my boy?"

The paper was a sheet of the firm's notepaper. In the upper left-hand

corner was printed in small type, "The Rev. Sebastian Fortune." Beneath

the name was a short line and beneath the line, "Mr. Shearman Twyning.

Mr. Mark Sabre":

The Rev. Sebastian Fortune.

----------

Mr. Shearman Twyning.

Mr. Mark Sabre.

Sabre said slowly, "What do you mean--you 'above the line'?"

Twyning indicated the short line with a forefinger. "That line, my boy.

Jonah's going to take me into partnership. Just told me."

He had released the paper into Sabre's hand. Sabre handed it back with a

single word, "Good."

Twyning's face darkened again and darkened worse. He crumpled the paper

violently in his hand and spoke also but a single word, "Thanks!" He

turned sharply on his heel and went to the door.

"I say, Twyning!" Sabre jumped to his feet and went to Twyning with

outstretched hand. "I didn't mean to take it like that. Don't think I'm

not--I congratulate you. Jolly good. Splendid. I tell you what--I don't

mind telling you--it was a bit of a smack in the eye for me for a

moment. You know, I've rather sweated over this business,"--his glance

indicated the stacked bookshelves, the firm's publications, _his_

publications.... "See what I mean?"

A certain movement in his throat and about his mouth indicated, more

than his words, what he meant. A slight.

Twyning took the hand and gripped it with a firmness characteristic of

his handshake.

"Thanks, old man. Thanks awfully. Of course I know what you mean. But

after all, look at the thing, eh? I mean to say, you've been

here--what--ten or twelve years. Well, I've been over twenty-five.

Natural, eh? And you're doing splendidly. Every one knows that. It's

only a question of time. Thanks awfully." He reached for Sabre's hand

again and again gripped it hard.

Sabre went back and sat against his desk. "What rather got me, you know,

coming all of a sudden like that, was that Fortune promised me

partnership, twice, quite a bit ago."

Twyning, who had been speaking with an emotion in consonance with the

grip of his hand, said a little blankly, "Did he? That so?"

"Yes, twice. And this looked like, when you told me--well, like

dissatisfaction since, see? Eh?"

Twyning did not take up the point. "I say, you never told me."

"I'm telling you now," Sabre said. And he laughed ruefully. "It comes to

much the same thing--as it turns out."

"Yes, but still.... I wish we worked in a bit more together, Sabre. I'm

always ready to, you know. Let's, shall we?"

Sabre made no reply. Twyning repeated "Let's" and nodded and left the

room. Immediately he opened the door again and reappeared. "I say, you

won't say anything to Jonah, of course?"

Sabre smiled grimly. "I'm going to."

Again the darkening. "Dash it, that's not quite playing the game, is

it?"

"Rot, Twyning. Fortune's made me a promise, and I'm going to ask if he

has any reason for withdrawing it, that's all. It's nothing to do with

your show."

"You're bound to tell him I've told you."

"Well, man alive, I'm bound to know, aren't I?"

"Yes--in a way. Oh, well, all right. Remember about working in more

together." He withdrew and closed the door.

Outside the door he clenched his hands. He thought, "Smack in the eye

for you, was it? You'll get a damn sight worse smack in the eye one of

these days. Dirty dog!"

IV

Immediately the door was closed Sabre went what he would have called

"plug in" to Mr. Fortune; that is to say, without hesitation and without

reflection. He went in by the communicating door, first giving a single

tap but without waiting for a reply to the tap. Mr. Fortune, presenting

a whale-like flank, was at his table going through invoices and making

notes in a small black book which he carried always in a tail pocket of

his jacket.

"Can I speak to you a minute, Mr. Fortune?"

Mr. Fortune entered a note in the small black book: "Twenty-eight,

sixteen, four." He placed a broad elastic band round the book and with

the dexterity of practice passed the book round his bulk and into the

tail pocket. He flicked his hands away and extended them for an instant,

palms upward, much as a conjurer might to show there was nothing in

them. "Certainly you may speak to me, Sabre." He performed his neat

revolving trick. "As a matter of fact, I rather wanted to speak to you."

He pointed across the whale-like front to the massive leathern armchair

beside his desk.

The seat of the armchair marked in a vast hollow the cumulative

ponderosity of the pillars of Church and School who were wont to sit in

it. Sabre seated himself on the arm. "Was it about this partnership

business?"

Mr. Fortune had already frowned to see Sabre upon the arm of the chair,

a position for which the arm was not intended. His frown deepened. "What

partnership business?"

"Well, you recollect promising me--being good enough to promise

me--_twice_--that I was going to come into partnership--"

Mr. Fortune folded his hands upon the whale-like front. "I certainly do

not recollect that, Sabre." He raised a hand responsive to a gesture.

"Allow me. I recollect no _promise_. Either twice or any other number of

times, greater or fewer. I _do_ recollect mentioning to you the

_possibility_ of my making you such a proposal in my good time. Is that

what you refer to as 'this partnership business'?"

"Yes--partly. Well, look here, sir, it's _been_ a pretty good time,

hasn't it? I mean since you spoke of it."

Mr. Fortune tugged strongly at his watch by its gold chain and looked at

the watch rather as though he expected to see the extent of the good

time there recorded. He forced it back with both hands rather as though

it had failed of this duty and was being crammed away in disgrace. "I am

expecting Canon Toomuch." He hit the watch, cowering (as one might

suppose) in his pocket. "You know, my dear Sabre, I do think this is a

little odd. A little unusual. You cannot _bounce_ into a partnership,

Sabre. I know your manner. I know your manner well. Oblige me by not

fiddling with that paper knife. Thank you. And I make allowances for

your manner. But believe me a partnership is not to be _bounced_ into.

You give me the impression--I do not say you mean it, I say you _give_

it--of suddenly and without due cause or just im--just opportunity,

trying to _bounce_ me into taking you into partnership. I most

emphatically am not to be _bounced_, Sabre. I never have been bounced

and you may quite safely take it from me that I never propose or intend

to be _bounced_."

Sabre thought, "Well, it would take a steam crane to bounce you,

anyway." He said. "I hadn't the faintest intention of doing any such

thing. If I made you think so, I'm sorry. I simply wanted to ask if you

have changed your mind, and if so why. I mean, whether I have given you

any cause for dissatisfaction since you prom--since you first mentioned

it to me."

Mr. Fortune's whale-like front had laboured with some agitation during

his repudiation of liability to being bounced. It now resumed its normal

dignity. "You certainly have not, Sabre. No cause for dissatisfaction.

On the contrary. You know quite well that there are certain

characteristics of yours of which, constituted as I am, I do not

approve. I really must beg of you not to fiddle with those scissors.

Thank you. But they are, happily, quite apart from your work. I do not

permit them to influence my opinion of you by one jot or tittle. You may

entirely reassure yourself. May I inquire why you should have supposed I

had changed my mind?"

"Because I've just heard that you've told Twyning you're going to take

_him_ into partnership."

The whale-like front gave a sudden leap and quiver precisely as if it

had been struck by a cricket ball. Mr. Fortune's voice hardened very

remarkably. "As to that, I will permit myself two remarks. In the first

place, I consider it highly reprehensible of Twyning to have

communicated this to you--"

Sabre broke in. "Well, he didn't. I'd like you to be quite clear on that

point, if you don't mind. Twyning didn't tell me. It came out quite

indirectly in the course of something I was saying to him. I doubt if he

knows that I know even. I inferred it. It seems I inferred correctly."

There flashed through Mr. Fortune's mind a poignant regret that, this

being the case, he had not denied it. He said, "I am exceedingly glad to

hear it. I might have known Twyning would not be capable of such a

breach of discretion. Resuming what I had to say--and, Sabre, I shall

indeed be most intensely obliged if you will refrain from fiddling with

the things on my table--resuming what I had to say, I will observe in

the second and last place that I entirely deprecate, I will go further,

I most strongly resent any questioning by any one member of my staff

based on any intentions of mine relative to another member of my staff.

This business is my business. I think you are sometimes a little prone

to forget that. If it seems good to me to strengthen your hand in your

department that has nothing whatever to do with Twyning. And if it seems

good to me to strengthen Twyning's hand in Twyning's department that has

nothing whatever to do with you."

Sabre, despite his private feelings in the matter, characteristically

followed this reasoning completely, and said so. "Yes, that's your way

of looking at it, sir, and I don't say it isn't perfectly sound--from

your point of view--"

Mr. Fortune inclined his head solemnly: "I am obliged to you."

"--Only other people look at things on the face of them, just as they

appear. You know--it's difficult to express it--I've put my heart into

those books." He made a gesture towards his room. "I can't quite explain

it, but I felt that the slight, or what looks like a slight, is on them,

not on me." He put his hand to the back of his head, a habit

characteristic when he was embarrassed or perplexed. "I'm afraid I can't

quite express it, but it's the books. Not myself. I'm--fond of them.

They're not just paper and print to me. I feel that they feel it. You

won't quite understand, I'm afraid--"

"No, I confess that is a little beyond me," said Mr. Fortune, smoothing

his front; and they remained looking at one another.

A sudden and unearthly moan sounded through the room. Mr. Fortune spun

himself with relief to his desk and applied his lips to a flexible

speaking tube. "Yes?" He dodged the tube to his ear, then to his lips

again.

"Beg Canon Toomuch to step up to my room." He laid down the tube.

Sabre roused himself and stood up abruptly. "Ah, well! All right, sir."

He moved towards his door.

"Sabre," inquired Mr. Fortune, "you get on well with Twyning, I trust?"

"Get on? Oh yes. We don't have much to do with each other."

"Do you dislike Twyning?"

"I don't dislike him. I'm indifferent to him."

"I regret to hear that," said Mr. Fortune.

From the door Sabre put a question in his turn: "When are you going to

make this change with Twyning?"

"Not to-day."

"Am I still to remember that you held out partnership to me?"

"Certainly you may."

"When is it likely to be?"

"Not to-day."

Maddening expression!

Sabre, in his room, went towards his chair. He was about to drop into it

when he recollected something. He went out into the corridor and along

the corridor, past Mr. Fortune's door (Canon Toomuch coming heavily up

the stairs) to Twyning's room. He put in his head. "Oh, I say, Twyning,

if Fortune should ever ask you if you told me about that business, you

can tell him you didn't."

"Oh--oh, right-o," said Twyning; and to himself when the door closed,

"Funked speaking to him!"

V

Arrived again in his room, Sabre dropped into his chair. In his eyes was

the look that had been in them when he had tried to explain to Mr.

Fortune about the books, what Mr. Fortune had confessed he found a

little beyond him. He thought: "The books.... Of course Fortune hasn't

imagined them ... seen them grow helped them to grow.... But it hurts.

Like hell it hurts.... And I can't explain to him how I feel about

them.... I can't explain to any one."

His thoughts moved on: "I've been twelve years with him. Twelve years

we've been daily together, and when I said that about the books I sat

there and he sat there--and just looked. Stared at each other like

masks. Masks! Nothing but a mask to be seen for either of us. I sit

behind my mask and he sits behind his and that's all we see. Twelve

mortal years! And there're thousands of people in thousands of

offices ... thousands of homes ... just the same. All behind masks.

Mysterious business. Extraordinary. How do we keep behind? Why do we

keep behind? We're all going through the same life. Come the same way.

Go the same way. You look at insects, ants, scurrying about, and not

two of them seem to have a thing in common, not two of them seem to

know one another; and you think it's odd, you think it's because they

don't know they're all in the same boat. But we're just the same. They

might think it of us. And we _do_ know. And yet you get two lives and

put them together twelve years in an office ... in a house.... Mabel

and I ... practically we just sit and look at each other. Her mask. My

mask...."

He thought: "One knows what it is, what it looks like, with ants.

They're all plugging about like mad like that, not knowing one another,

nor caring, because they all seem to be looking for something. I

wonder.... I wonder--are we? Is that the trouble? All looking for

something.... You can see it in half the faces you see. Some wanting,

and knowing they are wanting something. Others wanting something but

just putting up with it, just content to be discontented. You can see

it. Yes, you can. Looking for what? Love? But lots have love. Happiness?

But aren't lots happy? But are they?"

He knitted his brows: "It goes deeper than that. It's some universal

thing that's wanting. Is it something that religion ought to give, but

doesn't? Light? Some new light to give every one certainty in religion,

in belief. Light?"

His thoughts went to Mabel. "Those houses in King's Close are going to

be eighty pounds a year, and what do you think, Mrs. Toller is going to

take one." And he had not answered her but had rustled the newspaper and

had intended her to know why he had rustled the paper: to show he

couldn't stick it! Unkind. His heart smote him for Mabel. Such a

pathetically simple thing for Mabel to find enjoyment in! Why, he might

just as reasonably rustle the newspaper at a baby because it had

enjoyment in a rattle. A rattle would not amuse him, and Mrs. Toller

taking a house beyond her means did not amuse him; but why on earth

should he--?

He put the thing to himself in his reasoning way, his brow wrinkled up:

She was his wife. She had left her home for his home. She had a right to

his interest in her ideas. He had a duty towards her ideas. Unkind.

Rotten.

Upon a sudden impulse he looked at his watch. Only just after twelve. He

could get back in time for lunch. Lonely for her, day after day, and

left as he had left her that morning. They could have a jolly afternoon

together. He could make it a jolly afternoon. Nona kept coming into his

thoughts--and more so after this Twyning business. He would have Mabel

in his thoughts.

He went in and told Mr. Fortune he rather thought of taking the

afternoon off if he was not wanted. He mounted his bicycle and rode

purposefully back to Mabel.

CHAPTER III

I

The free-wheel run down into Perry Green landed him a little short of

his gate,--not bad! Pirrip, the postman, whom he had passed in the

bicycle's penultimate struggles, overtook him in its death throes and

watched with interest the miracles of balancing with which, despite his

preoccupation of mind, habit made him prolong them to the uttermost

inch.

He dismounted. "Anything for me, Pirrip?"

"One for you, Mr. Sabre."

Sabre took the letter and glanced at the handwriting.

It was from Nona.

Her small, neat, masculine script had once been as familiar to him as

his own. It was curiously like his own. She had the same trick of not

linking all the letters in a word. Her longer words, like his own,

looked as if they were two or three short words close together. To this

day, when he did not get a letter from her once in a year--or in five

years--his address on an envelope in her handwriting was a thing he

could bring, and sometimes did bring with perfect clearness before his

mental vision.

He glanced at it, regarded it for slightly longer than a glance, and

with a little pucker of brows and lips, then made the action of putting

it, unopened, in his pocket. Then he rested the bicycle against his hip

and opened her letter.

"Northrepps. Tuesday." She never dated her letters. He used to be

always telling her about that. Tuesday was yesterday.

Dear Marko--We're back. We've been from China to Peru--almost. Come

up one day and be bored about it. How are you?

Nona.

He thought: "Funny she didn't mention she'd written just now. Perhaps

she thought it was funny I didn't say I'd had it. I must tell her."

He returned her letter to its envelope and put the envelope in his

pocket. Then wheeled his bicycle into his gate. He smiled. "Mabel will

be surprised at me back like this."

Mabel was descending the stairs as he entered the hall. In the white

dress she wore she made a pleasant picture against the broad, shallow

stairway and the dark panelling. But she did not appear particularly

pleased to see him. But he thought, "Why should she be? That's just it.

That's why I've come back."

"Hullo?" she greeted him. "Have you forgotten something?"

He smiled invitingly. "No, I've just come back. I suddenly thought we'd

have a holiday."

She showed puzzlement. "A holiday? What, the office? All of you?"

She had paused three steps from the foot of the stairs, her right hand

on the banisters.

His wife!...

He slid his hand up the rail and rested it on hers. "Good lord, no. Not

the office. No, I suddenly thought we'd have a holiday. You and I."

He half hoped she would respond to the touch of his hand by turning the

palm of her own to it. But he thought, "Why should she?" and she did

not. She said, "But how extraordinary! Whatever for?"

"Well, why not?"

"But what did you say at the office? What reason did you give?"

"Didn't give any. I just said I thought I wouldn't be back."

"But whatever will Mr. Fortune think?"

"Oh, what does it matter what he thinks? He won't think anything about

it."

"But he'll think it's funny."

He thought, "Dash these buts!" This was what he called "niggling." It

was on the tip of his tongue to say, "Why niggle about the thing?" but

he recollected his purpose; that was him all over and that was just it!

He said brightly, "Let him. Do him good. The idea suddenly came to me as

a bit of a lark to have an unexpected holiday with you, and I just

cleared off and came!"

She had descended and he moved along the hall with her towards the

morning room.

"It's rather extraordinary," she said.

She certainly was not enthusiastic over it. She asked, "Well, what are

you going to do?"

He wished he had thought of some plan as he came along. "What time's

lunch? Half-past one? What about getting your bike and going for a bit

of a run first?"

She was at a drawer of her table where she kept, with beautiful

neatness, implements for various household duties. A pair of long

scissors came out. "I can't possibly. I've things to do. Besides some

one's coming to lunch."

He began to feel he had been a fool. The feeling nettled him and he

thought, "Why 'some one'? Dash it, I might be a stranger in the house.

Why doesn't she say who?" And then he thought, "Why should she? This is

just _it_. I'd have heard all about it at breakfast if I'd been decently

communicative."

He said, "Good. Who?"

She took a shallow basket from the shelf. He knew this and the long

scissors for her flower-cutting implements. "Mr. Bagshaw."

And before he could stop himself he had groaned, "Oh, lord!"

She "flew up" and he rushed in tumultuously to make amends for his

blunder and prevent her flying up.

"Mark, I do wish--"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I really am most awfully sorry, Mabel. 'Oh,

lord''s not really profanity. You know it's not. It's just my way--"

"I know that."

But he persevered. "As a matter of fact, it's clear connection of

thought in this case. Bagshaw's a clergyman, and my mind flew instantly

to celestial things."

She did not respond to this. "In any case, I really cannot see why you

should object to Mr. Boom Bagshaw."

"I don't. I don't in the least."

"I've heard you say--often--that he's far and away the best preacher

you've ever heard."

"He is. Absolutely."

"Well, then?"

"It's just his coming to lunch. He's such a terrific talker and you know

I can't stick talkers."

"Yes, that's just why I invite them when you're not here."

He laughed and came across the room towards her impulsively. He was

going to carry this through. "You've got me there. Properly." He took

the basket from her hand. "Come on, we'll cut the flowers. I'll be

absolutely chatty with old Bagshaw."

She smiled and her smile encouraged him tremendously. This was the way

to do it! They went through the glass doors into the garden and he

continued, "Really chatty. I'm going to turn over a new leaf. As a

matter of fact, that's why I came back. I got out of bed the wrong side

this morning, didn't I?"

He felt as he always remembered once feeling as a boy when, after going

to bed, he had come downstairs in his nightshirt and said to his father,

"I say, father, I didn't tell the truth this morning. I had been

smoking." He had never forgotten the enormous relief of that confession,

nor the bliss of his father's, "That's all right, old man. That's fine.

Don't cry, old chap." And he felt precisely that same enormous relief

now.

She said, "Was that the reason? How awfully funny of you!" and she gave

one of her sudden bursts of laughter.

He had a swift feeling that this was not quite the same as the reception

of his confession by his father in that long-ago; but he thought

immediately, "The thing's quite different." Anyway, he had confessed.

She knew why he had come back so suddenly. He felt immensely happy. And

when she said, "I think we'll have some of the roses," he gaily replied,

"Yes, rather. These roses!"

Fine! How easy to be on jolly terms!

And immediately it proved not so easy. He had got over the rocks of

"niggling"; he found himself in the shoals of exasperation.

II

She cut the first rose and held it to her lips, smelling it. "Lovely.

Who was your letter from, Mark?"

He thought, "How on earth did she know?" He had forgotten it himself.

"How ever did you know? From Lady Tybar. They're back."

"I saw you from the window with the postman. Lady Tybar! Whatever was

she writing to you about?"

He somehow did not like this. Why "_whatever_"? And being watched was

rather beastly; he remembered he had fiddled about with the

letter,--half put it in his pocket and then taken it out again. And why

not? What did it matter? But he had a prevision that it was going to

matter. Mabel did not particularly like Nona. He said, "Just to say

they're back. She wants us to go up there."

"An invitation? Whyever didn't she write to me?"

"Whyever" again!--"May I see it?"

He took the letter from his pocket and handed it to her. "It's not

exactly an invitation--not formal."

She did what he called "flicked" the letter out of its envelope. He

watched her reading it and in his mind he could see as perfectly as she

with her eyes, the odd, neat script; in his mind he read it with her,

word by word.

Dear Marko--We're back. We've been from China to Peru almost. Come

up one day and be bored about it. How are you?

Nona.

His thought was, "Damn the letter!"

Mabel handed it back, without returning it to its envelope. She said,

"No, it's not formal."

She snipped three roses with astonishing swiftness,--_snip, snip, snip_!

Sabre sought about in his mind for something to say. There was nothing

in his mind to say. He had an absurd vision of his two hands feeling

about in the polished interior of a skull, as one might fumble for

something in a large jar.

At the end of an enormous cavity of time he found some slight remark

about blight on the rose trees--the absence of it this year--and

ventured it. He had again an absurd vision of dropping it into an

enormous cavern, as a pea into an immense bowl, and it seemed to tinkle

feebly and forlornly, as a pea would. "No blight this year, eh?"

"No; is there?" agreed Mabel,--_snip_!

Nevertheless conversation arose from the forlorn pea and was maintained.

They moved about the garden from flower bed to flower bed. In half an

hour the shallow basket was beautified with fragrant blooms and Mabel

thought she had enough.

"Well, that's that," said Sabre as they reëntered the morning room.

III

Low Jinks, her matchless training at the level of mysteriously performed

duties pat to the moment and without command, appeared with a tray of

vases. Each vase was filled to precisely half its capacity with water.

There were also a folded newspaper, a pair of small gilt scissors and a

saucer. Low Jinks spread the newspaper at one end of the table, arranged

the vases in a semicircle upon it, and placed the gilt scissors

precisely in alignment with the right-hand vase of the semicircle, and

the saucer (for the stalk ends) precisely in alignment with the

left-hand vase. She then withdrew, closing the door with exquisite

softness. Sabre had never seen this rite before. The perfection of its

performance was impressive. He thought, "Mabel is marvellous." He said,

"Shall I take them out of the basket?"

"No, leave them. I take them up just as I want them."

She took up a creamy rose and snipped off a fragment of stalk over the

saucer. "Why does she call you 'Marko'?"

He was utterly taken aback. If the question had come from any one but

Mabel, he would have quite failed to connect it with the letter. But

there had distinctly been an "incident" over the letter, though so far

closed, as he had imagined, that he was completely surprised.

He said "Who? Nona?"

"Yes, Nona, if you like. Lady Tybar."

"Why, she always has. You know that."

Mabel put the rose into a specimen vase with immense care and touched a

speck off its petals with her fingers. "I really didn't."

"Mabel, you know you do. You must have heard her."

"Well, I may have. But long ago. I certainly didn't know she used it in

letters."

He felt he was growing angry.

"What on earth's the difference?"

"It seems to me there's a great deal of difference. I didn't know she

wrote you letters."

He was angry. "Damn it, she doesn't write me letters."

She shrugged her shoulders. "You seem to get them anyway."

Maddening!

And then he thought, "I'm not going to let it be maddening. This is just

what happens." He said, "Well, this is silly. I've known her--we've

known one another--for years, since we were children, pretty well. She's

called me by my Christian name since I can remember. You must have heard

her. We don't see much of her--perhaps you haven't. I thought you had.

Anyway, dash the thing. What does it matter?"

"It doesn't _matter_"--she launched a flower into a vase--"a bit. I only

think it's funny, that's all."

"Well, it's just her way."

Mabel gave a little sniff. He thought it was over. But it wasn't over.

"If you ask me, I call it a funny letter. You say your Christian name,

but it isn't your Christian name--_Marko_! And then saying, 'How are

you?' like that--"

"Like what? She just said it, didn't she?"

"Yes I know. And then 'Nona.' Don't you call that funny?"

"Well, I always used to call her 'Nona.' She'd have thought it funny, as

you call it, to put anything else. I tell you it's just her way."

"Well, I think it's a very funny way and I think anybody else would

think so. I don't like her. I never did like her."

There seemed no more to say.

IV

He walked up to his room. He closed the door behind him and sat on a

straight-backed chair, his legs outthrust. Failure? He had come back

home thus suddenly with immensely good intentions. Failure? On the

whole, no. There was a great deal more he could have said downstairs,

and a great deal more he had felt uncommonly inclined to say. But he had

left the morning room without saying it, and that was good; that

redeemed his sudden return from absolute failure.

Why had he returned? He "worked back" through the morning on the Fargus

principle. Not because of his thoughts after the Twyning business; not

because of the disturbance of the Twyning business. No. He had returned

because he had seen Nona. Thoughts--feelings--had been stirred within

him by meeting her. And it had suddenly been rather hateful to have

those thoughts and to feel that--that Mabel had no place in them.

Well, why had he come up here? What was he doing up here? Well, it

hadn't been altogether successful. Mabel hadn't been particularly

excited to see him. No, but that didn't count. Why should she be? He had

gone off after breakfast, glum as a bear. Well, then there was that

niggling business over why he had returned. Always like that. Never

plump out over a thing he put up. Niggling. And then this infernal

business about the letter. That word "funny." She must have used it a

hundred times. Still.... The niggling had been carried off, they had

gone into the garden together; and this infernal letter business--at

least he had come away without boiling over about it. Much better to

have come away as he did.... Still....

V

A gong boomed enormously through the house. It had been one of her

father's wedding presents to Mabel and it always reminded Sabre of the

Dean's, her father's voice. The Dean's voice boomed, swelling into a

loud boom when he was in mid-speech and reverberating into a distant

boom as his periods terminated. This was the warning gong for lunch. In

ten minutes, in this perfectly ordered house, a different gong, a set of

chimes, would announce that lunch was ready. The reverberations had

scarcely ceased when Low Jinks, although she had caused the

reverberations, appeared in his room with a brass can of hot water.

"Mr. Boom Bagshaw has not arrived yet, sir," said Low Jinks; "but the

mistress thought we wouldn't wait any longer."

She displaced the ewer from the basin and substituted the brass can. She

covered the can with a white towel, uncovered the soap dish, and

disappeared, closing the door as softly as if it and the doorpost were

padded with velvet. Perfect establishment!

Sabre washed his hands and went down. Mabel was in the morning room,

seated at the centre table where the flowers had been and where now was

her embroidery basket. She was embroidering, an art which, in common

with all the domestic arts, she performed to perfection. "Bagshaw's

late?" said Sabre.

Mabel glanced at the clock. Her gesture above her busy needle was

pretty.

"Well, he wasn't absolutely sure about coming. I thought we wouldn't

wait. Ah, there he is."

Sabre thought, "Good. That business is over. Nothing in it. Only Mabel's

way."

Sounds in the hall. "In the morning room," came Low Jinks's voice.

"Lunch ... wash your hands, sir?"

There was only one person in all England who, arriving at Crawshaws,

would not have been gently but firmly enfolded by the machine-like order

of its perfect administration and been led in and introduced with rites

proper to the occasion. But that one person was the Reverend Cyril Boom

Bagshaw, and he now strolled across the threshold and into the room.

VI

He strolled in. He wore a well-made suit of dark grey flannel, brown

brogue shoes and a soft collar with a black tie tied in a sailor's knot.

He disliked clerical dress and he rarely wore it. He was dark. His

good-looking face bore habitually a rather sulky expression as though he

were a little bored or dissatisfied. You would never have thought, to

look at him, that he was a clergyman, or, as he would have said, a

priest, and in not thinking that you would have paid him the compliment

that pleased him most. This was not because Mr. Boom Bagshaw lacked

earnestness in his calling, for he was enormously in earnest, but

because he disliked and despised the conventional habits and manners and

appearance of the clergy and, in any case, intensely disliked being one

of a class. For the same reasons he wore a monocle; not because the

vision of his right eye was defective but because no clergyman wears a

monocle. It is not done by the priesthood and that is why the Reverend

Cyril Boom Bagshaw did it.

He strolled negligently into the morning room, his hands in his trouser

pockets, the skirt of his jacket rumpled on his wrists. He gave the

impression of having been strolling about the house all day and of now

strolling in here for want of a better room to stroll into. He nodded

negligently to Sabre, "Hullo, Sabre." He smiled negligently at Mabel and

seated himself negligently on the edge of the table, still with his

hands in his pockets. He swung one leg negligently and negligently

remarked, "Good morning, Mrs. Sabre. Embroidery?"

Sabre had the immediate and convinced feeling that the negligent and

reverend gentleman was not in his house but that he was permitted to be

in the house of the negligent and reverend gentleman. And this was the

feeling that the negligent and reverend gentleman invariably gave to his

hosts, whoever they might be; likewise to his congregations. Indeed it

was said by a profane person (who fortunately does not enter this

history) that the Deity entered Mr. Boom Bagshaw's church on the same

terms, and accepted them.

As he sat negligently swinging his leg he frequently strained his chin

upwards and outwards, rather as if his collar were tight (but it was

neatly loose), or as if he were performing an exercise for stretching

the muscles of his neck. This was a habit of his.

VII

A silver entrée dish was placed before Mabel, another before Sabre. Low

Jinks removed her mistress's cover and Mr. Boom Bagshaw pushed aside a

flower vase to obtain a view.

"I don't eat salmon," he remarked. The vase was now between himself and

Sabre. He again moved it, "Or cutlets."

Mabel exclaimed, "Oh, dear! Now I got this salmon in specially from

Tidborough."

"I'll have some of that ham," said Mr. Boom Bagshaw; and he arose

sulkily and strolled to the sideboard where he rather sulkily cut from a

ham in thick wedges. The house was clearly his house.

He addressed himself to Mabel. "Now in a very few weeks you'll no longer

have to get things from Tidborough, Mrs. Sabre--salmon or anything else.

The shops in Market Square are going the minute they're complete. I got

a couple of fishmongers only yesterday."

He spoke as if he had shot a brace of fishmongers and slung them over

his shoulder and flung them into Market Square. Market Square was that

portion of the Garden Home designed for the shopping centre.

"Two!" said Mabel.

"Two. I encourage competition. No one is going to sleep in the Garden

Home."

"What will all the bedrooms be used for then?" Sabre inquired.

Mr. Boom Bagshaw, who was eating his ham with a fork only, holding it at

its extremity in the tips of his fingers and occasionally flipping a

piece of ham into his mouth and swallowing it without visible

mastication, flipped in another morsel and with his right hand moved

three more vases which stood between himself and Sabre. He moved each

deliberately and set it down with a slight thump, rather as if it were a

chessman.

He directed the fork at Sabre and after an impressive moment spoke:

"You know, Sabre, I don't think you're quite alive to what it is that is

growing up about you. Flippancy is out of place. I abominate flippancy."

("Well, dash it, it's my house!" Sabre thought.) "This Garden Home is

not a speculation. It's not a fad. It's not a joke. What is it? You're

thinking it's a damned nuisance. You're right. It _is_ a damned

nuisance--"

Sabre began, "Well--"

"Now, listen, Sabre. It _is_ a damned nuisance; and I put it to you

that, when a toad is discovered embedded in a solid mass of coal or

stone, that coal or stone, when it was slowly forming about that toad,

was a damned nuisance to the toad."

Sabre asked, "Well, am I going to be discovered embedded--"

"Now, listen, Sabre. Another man in my place would say he did not intend

to be personal. I do intend to be personal. I always am personal. I say

that this Garden Home is springing up about you and that you are not

realising what is happening. This Garden Home is going to enshrine life

as it should be lived. More. It is going to make life be lived as it

should he lived. Some one said to me the other day--the Duchess of

Wearmouth; I was staying at Wearmouth Castle--that the Garden Home is

going to be a sanctuary. I said 'Bah!' like that--'Bah!' I said, 'Every

town, every city, every village is a sanctuary; and asleep in its

sanctuary; and dead to life in its sanctuary; and dead to Christ in its

sanctuary.' I said, 'The Garden Home is not going to be a sanctuary, nor

yet a sepulchre, nor yet a tomb. It is going to be a symbol, a signal, a

shout.' More ham."

He paused, pushed his plate to one side more as if it had bitten him

than as if he desired more ham to be placed upon it, and looked around

the room before him, sulkily, and exercising his chin.

Sabre had a vision of dense crowds of bishops in lawn sleeves, duchesses

in Gainsborough hats, and herds of intensely fashionable rank and file

applauding vigorously. He could almost hear the applause. But how to

deal with this man he never knew. He always felt he was about fourteen

when Mr. Boom Bagshaw thus addressed him. He therefore said, "Great!"

and Mabel murmured, "How splendid!"

VIII

But Sabre's thought was--and it remained with him throughout the meal,

acutely illustrated by the impressive monologues which Mr. Boom Bagshaw

addressed to Mabel, and by her radiant responses--his thought was, "I

simply can't get on with this chap--or with any of Mabel's crowd. They

all make me feel like a kid. I can't answer them when they talk. They

say things I've got ideas about but I never can explain my ideas to

them. I never can argue my ideas with them. They've all got convictions

and I believe I haven't any convictions. I've only got instincts and

these convictions come down on instincts like a hammer on an egg."

Mr. Boom Bagshaw was saying, "And we shall have no poor in the Garden

Home. No ugly streets. No mean surroundings. Uplift. Everywhere uplift."

There slipped out of Sabre aloud, "There you are. That's the kind of

thing."

Mr. Boom Bagshaw, as if to disclose without fear precisely where he was,

dismantled from between them the hedge of flowers which he had replaced

and looked sulkily across. "What kind of thing?"

Sabre had a vision of himself advancing an egg for Mr. Bagshaw's hammer.

"About having no poor in the Garden Home. Isn't there something about

the poor being always with us?"

"Certainly there is."

"In the Bible?"

"In the Bible. Do you know to whom it was addressed?"

Sabre admitted that he didn't.

"To Judas Iscariot." (Smash went the egg!)

Sabre said feebly--he _could_ not handle his arguments--"Well, anyway,

'always with us'--there you are. If you're going to create a place where

life is going to be lived as it should be lived, I don't see how you're

going to shut the poor out of it. Aren't they a part of life? They've

got as much right to get away from mean streets and ugly surroundings as

we have--and a jolly sight more need. Always with us. It doesn't matter

tuppence whom it was said to."

"It happens," pronounced Mr. Boom Bagshaw, "to matter a great deal more

than tuppence. It happens to knock the bottom clean out of your

argument. It was addressed to the Iscariot because the Iscariot was

trying to do just what you are trying to do. He was trying to make duty

to the poor an excuse for grudging service to Christ. Now, listen,

Sabre. If people thought a little less about their duty towards the poor

and a little more about their duty towards themselves, they would be in

a great deal fitter state to help their fellow creatures, poor or rich.

That is what the Garden Home is to do for those who live in it, and that

is what the Garden Home is _going_ to do."

He stabbed sharply with the butt of a dessert knife on the dessert

plate which had just been placed before him. The plate split neatly into

two exact halves. He gazed at them sulkily, put them aside, drew another

plate before him, and remarked to Mabel:

"You know we are moving into the vicarage to-morrow? We are giving an At

Home to-morrow week. You will come."

The plural pronoun included his mother. He was intensely celibate.

IX

The day ended in a blazing row.

In the afternoon Mr. Boom Bagshaw carried off Mabel to view the progress

of the Garden Home. While they dallied over coffee at the luncheon

table, Sabre was fidgeting for Bagshaw to be gone. Mabel, operating

dexterously behind the blue flame of a spirit lamp, Low Jinks hovering

around in well-trained acolyte performances, said, "Now I rather pride

myself on my Turkish coffee, Mr. Boom Bagshaw."

Mr. Bagshaw, who appeared to pride himself at least as much on his

characteristics, replied by sulkily looking at his watch; and a moment

later by sulkily taking a cup, rather as if he were a schoolboy bidden

to take lemonade when mannishly desirous of shandygaff, and sulkily

remarking, "I must go."

Sabre fidgeted to see the words put into action. He wanted Bagshaw to be

off. He wanted to resume his sudden intention of remedying his normal

relations with Mabel and the afternoon promised better than the

intention had thus far seen. That niggling over the unexpectedness of

his return,--well, of course it was unexpected and upsetting of her

household routine; but the unexpectedness was over and the letter

incident over, and Mabel, thanks to her guest, delightfully mooded.

Good, therefore, for the afternoon. When the dickens was this chap

going?

Then Bagshaw, rising sulkily, "Well, you'd better come up and have a

look round."

And Mabel, animatedly, "I'd like to"; and to Sabre, "You won't care to

come, Mark."

Sabre said, "No, I won't."

X

Throughout dinner--Mabel returned only just in time to get ready for

dinner--Sabre examined with dispassionate interest the exercise of

trying to say certain words and being unable to say them. They conversed

desultorily; in their usual habit. He told himself that he was speaking

several hundred "other" words; but the intractable words that he desired

to utter would not be framed. He counted them on his fingers under the

table. Only seven: "Well, how was the Garden Home looking?" Only seven.

He could not say them. The incident they brought up rankled. He had come

home to take a day off with her. She knew he was there at the luncheon

table to take a day off with her. It had interested her so little, she

had been so entirely indifferent to it, that she had not even expressed

a wish he should so much as attend her on the inspection with Bagshaw.

The more he thought of it the worse it rankled. She knew he was at home

to be with her and she had deliberately walked off and left him....

"Well, how was the Garden Home looking?" No. Not much. He couldn't. He

visualised the impossible seven written on the tablecloth. He saw them

in script; he saw them in print; he imagined them written by a finger on

the wall. Say them--no.

Mabel left him sitting at the table with a cigarette. There came

suddenly to his assistance in the fight with the stubborn seven, abreast

of the thoughts in the office that had brought him home, a realisation

of her situation such as he had had that first night together in the

house, eight years before; there she was in the morning room, alone. She

had given up her father's home for his home--and there she was: a happy

afternoon behind her and no one to discuss it with. Just because he

could not say, "Well, how was the Garden Home looking?"

He thought, "I'm hateful." He got up vigorously and strode into the

morning room: "Well, how was the Garden Home looking?" His voice was

bright and interested.

She was reading a magazine. She did not raise her eyes front the page.

"Eh? Oh, very nice. Delightful."

"Tell us about it."

"What? Oh ... yes." Her mind was in the magazine. She read on a moment.

Then she laid the magazine on her lap and looked up. "The Garden Home?

Yes--oh, yes. It was charming. It's simply springing up. You ought to

have come."

He stretched himself in a big chair opposite her. He laughed. "Well,

dash it, I like that. You didn't exactly implore me to."

She yawned. "Oh, well. I knew you wouldn't care about it." She yawned

again, "Oh dear. I'm tired. We must have walked miles, to and fro." She

put down her hands to take up her magazine again. She clearly was not

interested by his interest. But he thought, "Well, of course she's not.

For her it's like eating something after it's got cold. Dinner was the

time."

He said, "I expect you did--walk miles. Bagshaw all over it, I bet."

She did what he called "tighten herself." "Well, naturally, he's

pleased--enthusiastic. He's done more than any one else to keep the idea

going."

Sabre laughed. "I should say so! Marvellous person! What's he going to

do about not wearing clerical dress when he has to wear gaiters?"

"What do you mean--gaiters?"

Signs of flying up. What on earth for? "Why, when he's a bishop. Don't

you--"

She flew up. "I suppose that's some sneer!"

"Sneer! Rot. I mean it. A chap like Bagshaw's not going to be a parish

priest all his life. He's out to be a bishop and he'll be a bishop. If

he changed his mind and wanted to be a Judge or a Cabinet Minister, he'd

be a Judge or a Cabinet Minister. He's that sort."

"I knew you were sneering."

"Mabel, don't be silly. I'm not sneering. Bagshaw's a clever--"

"You say he's 'that sort.' That's a sneer." She put her hands on the

arms of her chair and raised herself to sit upright. She spoke with

extraordinary intensity. "Nearly everything you say to me or to my

friends is a sneer. There's always something behind what you say. Other

people notice it--"

"Other people."

"Yes. Other people. They say you're sarcastic. That's just a polite

way--"

He said, "Oh, come now, Mabel. Not sarcastic. I swear no one thinks I'm

sarcastic. I promise you Bagshaw doesn't. Bagshaw thinks I'm a fool. A

complete fool. Look at lunch!"

She caught him up. She was really angry. "Yes. Look at lunch. That's

just what I mean. Any one that comes to the house, any of my friends,

anything they say you must always take differently, always argue about.

That's what I call sneering--"

He, flatly, "Well, that isn't sneering. Let's drop it."

She had no intention of dropping it. "It is sneering. They don't know it

is. But I know it is."

XI

He had the feeling that his anger would arise responsive to hers, as one

beast calling defiance to another, if this continued. And he did not

want it to arise. He had sometimes thought of anger as a savage beast

chained within a man. It had helped him to control rising ill-temper. He

thought of it now: of her anger. He had a vision of it prowling, as a

dark beast among caves, challenging into the night. He wished to retain

the vision. His own anger, prowling also, would not respond while he

retained the picture. It was prowling. It was suspicious. It would be

mute while he watched it. While he watched it....

He pulled himself sharply to his feet.

"Well, well,", he said. "It's not meant to be sneering. Let's call it my

unfortunate manner."

He stood before her, half-smiling, his hands in his pockets, looking

down at her.

She said, "Perhaps you're different with your friends. I hope you are.

With your friends."

He caught a glint in her eye as she repeated the words. Its meaning did

not occur to him.

He bantered, "Oh, I'm not as bad as all that. And anyway, the friends

are all the same friends. This place isn't so big."

Then that quick glint of her eye was explained--the flash before the

discharge.

"Perhaps your friends are just coming back," she said. "Lady Tybar."

The vision of his dark anger broke away. Mute while he watched it,

immediately it lifted its head and answered her own. "Look here--" he

began; and stopped. "Look here," he said more quietly, "don't begin that

absurd business again."

"I don't think it is absurd."

"No, you called it 'funny.'"

She drew in her feet as if to arise. "Yes, and I think it's funny. All

of it. I think you've been funny all day to-day. Coming back like that!"

"I told you why I came back. To have a day off with you. Funny day off

it's been! You're right there!"

"Yes, it _has_ been a funny day off."

He thought, "My God, this bickering! Why don't I get out of the room?"

"Come back for a day off with me! It's a funny thing you came back just

in time to get that letter! Before it was delivered! There! Now you

know!"

He was purely amazed. He thought, and his amazement was such that,

characteristically, his anger left him; he thought, "Well, of all

the--!"

But she otherwise interpreted his astonishment. She thought she had made

an advantage and she pressed it. "Perhaps you knew it was coming?"

"How on earth could I have known it was coming?"

She seemed to pause, to be considering. "She might have told you. You

might have seen her."

He said, "As it happens, I did see her. Not three hours before I came

back."

She seemed disappointed. She said, "I know you did. We met Lord Tybar."

And he thought, "Good lord! She was trying to catch me."

She went on, "You never told me you'd met them. Wasn't that funny?"

"If you'd just think a little you'd see there was nothing funny about

it. You found the letter so amazingly funny that, to tell you the truth,

I'd had about enough of the Tybars. And I've had about enough of them."

"I daresay you have--with me. Perhaps you'll tell me this--would you

have told me about the letter if I hadn't seen you get it?"

He thought before he answered and he answered out of his thoughts. He

said slowly, "I--don't--believe--I--would. I wouldn't. I wouldn't

because I'd have known perfectly well that you'd have thought

it--funny."

XII

No answer he could have made could have more exasperated her.

"I--don't--believe--I--would." Deliberation! Something incomprehensible

to her going on in his mind, and as a result of it a statement that no

one on earth (she felt) but he would have made. Any one else would have

said boldly, blusteringly, "Of course I would have told you about the

letter." She would have liked that. She would have disbelieved it and

she could have said, and enjoyed saying, she disbelieved it. Or any one

else would have said furiously, "No, I'm damned if I'd have shown you

the letter." She would have liked that. It would have affirmed her

suspicions that there was "something in it"; and she wished her

suspicions to be affirmed. It would have been something definite.

Something justifiably incentive of anger, of resentment, of jealousy.

Something she could understand.

For she did not understand her husband. That was her grievance against

him. She never had understood him. That den incident in the very

earliest days of their marriage had been an intimation of a way of

looking at things that to her was entirely and exasperatingly

inexplicable; and since then, increasingly year by year, her

understanding had failed to follow him. He had retired farther and

farther into himself. He lived in his mind, and she could by no means

penetrate into his mind. His ideas about things, his attitude towards

things, were wholly and exasperatingly incomprehensible to her.

"It's like," she had once complained to her father, "it's like having a

foreigner in the house."

Things, in her expression, "went on" in his mind, and she could not

understand what went on in his mind, and it exasperated her to know they

were going on and that she could not understand them.

"I--don't--believe--I--would." Characteristic, typical expression of

those processes of his mind that she could not understand! And then the

reason: "I wouldn't because I'd have known perfectly well that you'd

have thought it--funny."

And, exasperation on exasperation's head, he was right. She did think it

funny; and by his very reply--for she knew him well enough, so

exasperatingly well, to know that this was complete sincerity, complete

truth--he proved to her that it was not really funny but merely

something she could not understand. Robbery of her fancy, her hope that

it was something definite against him, something justifiably incentive

of resentment, of jealousy!

It was as if he had said, "You can't understand a letter like this.

There's nothing in it to understand. And that's just what you can't

understand. Look here, you see my head. I'm in there. You can't come in.

You don't know how to. I can't tell you how to. Nobody could tell you.

And you wouldn't know what to make of it if you did get in."

Exasperating. Insufferable. Insupportable!

She could not express her feelings in words. She expressed them in

action. She arose violently and left the room. The whole of her emotions

she put into the slam of the door behind her. The ornaments shivered. A

cup sprang off a bracket and dashed itself to pieces on the floor.

XIII

Sabre regarded the broken cup much as Sir Isaac Newton presumably

regarded the fallen apple. He "worked back" from the cup through the

events of the day, and through the events of the day returned to the

cup. It interested him to find that the fragments on the floor were as

logical a result of the movements of the day as they would have been of

getting the small hand axe out of the woodshed, aiming a blow at the

cup, and hitting the cup.

He thought, "I started to break that cup when I rustled the newspaper at

breakfast. I went on when I suddenly came back and got into that

niggling business over why I had come back. Went on when I walked off to

my room after that letter business. Practically took up the axe when I

couldn't say, 'Well, how's the Garden Home going on?' at dinner. And

smashed it when I chaffed about Bagshaw an hour ago. Rum business!

Rotten business."

That was the day's epitaph. But for the murder of the cup he found--gone

to bed and lying awake--a culprit other than himself. He thought, "It

was meeting Nona made me come home like that. But if that had been the

first time I'd ever met Nona I shouldn't have returned. So it goes back

further than that. Nine--ten years. The day she married Tybar. If she

hadn't married Tybar she'd have married me. The cup wouldn't have been

broken. Nona broke that cup."

CHAPTER IV

I

These events were on a Monday. On the following Thursday Nona came to

see him at his office.

She was announced through the speaking-tube on his desk:

"Lady Tybar to see you, sir."

Nona! But he was not really surprised. He had taken no notice of her

letter. He had wanted to go up to Northrepps to see her, but he had not

been. When two days passed and still he prevented himself from going, he

began to have the feeling--somehow--that she would come to see him. It

was the third day and she was here, downstairs.

"Ask her to come up," he said.

She came in. She wore (as Sabre saw it) "a pale-blue sort of thing" and

"a sort of black hat." He had considered it as an odd thing, in his

thoughts of her since their meeting, that, though he could always have

some kind of notion what other women were wearing, he never could

remember any detail of Nona's dress.

But it was her face he always looked at.

She stood still immediately she was across the threshold and the door

closed behind her. She was smiling as though she felt herself to be up

to some lark. "Hullo, Marko. Don't you hate me for coming in here like

this?"

"It's jolly surprising."

"That's another way of saying it. Now if you'd said it was surprisingly

jolly! Well, shake hands, Marko, and pretend you're glad."

He laughed and put out his hand. But she delayed response; she first

slipped off the gauntlets she was wearing and then gave him her hand.

"There!" she said.

"There!" It was as though she had now done something she much wanted to

do; as one says "There!" on at last sitting down after much fatigue.

She tossed her gauntlets on to a chair. She walked past him towards the

window. "You got my letter?"

"Yes."

Her face was averted. Her voice had not the bantering note with which

she had spoken at her entry.

"You never answered it."

"Well, I'd just seen you--just before I got it."

She was looking out of the window. "Why haven't you been up?"

"Oh--I don't know. I was coming."

"Well, I had to come," she said.

He made no reply. He could think of none to make.

II

She turned sharply away from the window and came towards him, radiant

again, as at her entry. And in her first bantering tone, "I know you

hate it," she smiled, resuming her first suggestion, "me coming here,

like this. It makes you feel uncomfortable. You always feel

uncomfortable when you see me, Marko. I'd like to know what you thought

when they told you I was here--"

He started to speak.

She went on, "No, I wouldn't. I'd like to know just what you were doing

before they told you. Tell me that, Marko."

"I believe I wasn't doing anything. Just thinking."

"Well, I like you best when you're thinking. You puzzle, don't you,

Marko? You've got a funny old head. I believe you live in your old

head, you know. Puzzling things. Clever beast! I wish I could live in

mine." And she gave a note of laughter.

"Where do you live, Nona?"

"I don't live. I just go on"--she paused--"flotsam."

Strange word to use, strangely spoken!

It seemed to Sabre to drop with a strange, detached effect into the

conversation between them. His habit of visualising inanimate things

caused him to see as it were a pool between them at their feet, and from

the word dropped into it ripples that came to his feet upon his margin

of the pool and to her feet upon hers.

III

He took the word away from its personal application. "I believe that's

rather what I was thinking about when you came, Nona. About how we just

go on--flotsam. Don't you know on a river where it's tidal, or on the

seashore at the turn, the mass of stuff you see there, driftwood and

spent foam and stuff, just floating there, uneasily, brought in and left

there--from somewhere; and then presently the tide begins to take it and

it's drawn off and moves away and goes--somewhere. Arrives and floats

and goes. That's mysterious, Nona?"

She said swiftly, as though she were stirred, "Oh, Marko, yes, that's

mysterious. Do you know sometimes I've seen drift like that, and I've

felt--oh, I don't know. But I've put out a stick and drawn in a piece of

wood just as the stuff was moving off, just to save it being carried

away into--well, into that, you know."

"Have you, Nona?"

She answered, "Do you think that's what life is, Marko?"

"It's not unlike," he said. And he added, "Except about some one coming

along with a stick and drawing a bit into safety. I'm not so sure about

that. Perhaps that's what we're all looking for--"

He suddenly realised that he was back precisely at the thoughts his mind

had taken up on the morning he had met her. But with a degree more of

illumination. Two feelings came into his mind, the second hard upon the

other and overriding it, as a fierce horseman might catch and override

one pursued. He said, "It's rather jolly to have some one that can see

ideas like that." And then the overriding, and he said with astonishing

roughness, "But you--you aren't flotsam! How can you be flotsam--the

life you've--taken?"

And, lo, if he had struck her, and she been bound, defenceless, and with

her eyes entreating not to be struck again, she could not deeper have

entreated him than in the glance she fleeted from her eyes, the quiver

of her lids that first released, then veiled it.

It stopped his words. It caught his throat.

IV

He got up quickly. "I say, Nona, never mind about thinking. I'll tell

you what's been doing. Rotten. Happened just after I met you the other

day."

"The dust on these roads!" she said. She touched her eyes with her

handkerchief. "What, Marko?"

"Well, old Fortune promised to take me into partnership about an age

ago."

"Marko, he ought to have done it an age ago. What's there rotten about

that?" Her voice and her air were as gay as when she had entered.

"The rotten thing is that he's turned it down. At least practically has.

He--" He told her of the Twyning and Fortune incident. "Pretty rotten

of old Fortune, don't you think?"

"Old fiend!" said Nona. "Old trout!"

Sabre laughed. "Good word, trout. The men here all say he's like a

whale. They call him Jonah," and he told her why.

She laughed gaily. "Marko! How disgusting you are! But I'm sorry. I am.

Poor old Marko.... Of course it doesn't matter a horse-radish what an

old trout like that thinks about your work, but it does matter, doesn't

it? I know how you feel. They had an author man at a place we were

staying at the other day--Maurice Ash--and he told me that although he

says it doesn't matter, and knows it doesn't matter, when an absolutely

trivial person says something riling about any of his stuff, still it

does matter. He said a thing you've produced out of yourself you can't

bear to have slighted--not by the butcher. Gladys Occleve made us laugh.

Maurice Ash said to her, 'It's like a mother's child. Look here, you're

a countess,' he said to her. 'You oughtn't to mind what a butcher thinks

of your children; but supposing the butcher said your infant Henry was a

stupid little brat; what would you do?' Gladys said she'd dash a best

end of the neck straight into his face."

Sabre laughed. "Yes, that's the feeling. But of course, all these

books"--he indicated the shelves--"aren't mine, not my children, more

like my adopted children."

She declared it was the same thing. "More so, in a way. You've invented

them, haven't you, called them out of the vasty deep sort of thing and

brought them up in the way they should go. I do think it's rather fine,

Marko."

She was at the shelves, scanning the books. Her fond, her almost tender

sympathy made him, too, feel that it was rather fine. Her light words

in her high, clear tone voiced exactly his feelings towards the books.

Talking with her was, in the reception and return of his thoughts,

nearer to reading a book that delighted him than to anything else with

which he could compare it. There was the same interchange of ideas, not

necessarily expressed; the same creation and play of fancy, imagined,

not stated.

Her hands were moving about the volumes, pulling out a book here and

there; she mused the titles. "'Greek Unseens--Prose'; 'Greek

Unseens--Verse'; 'Latin Unseens--Verse.' Marvellous person, Marko! 'The

Shell Algebra'; 'The Shell Latin Grammar'; 'The Shell English

Literature': 'The Shell Modern Geography.' That's a series 'The Shell,'

eh? I _do_ call that a good idea. 'The Six Terms Chemistry'; 'The Six

Terms Geology.'"

"Yes, that's another series," he said. He was standing beside her.

Delightful this! His pride in his work thrilled anew. "You see the idea

of the thing. Gives the boy the feeling of something definite to get

through in a definite time."

She was reading one of the prefaces, signed with his initials. "Yes,

that's ever so good. I see what you've written here, '...avoiding the

formidable and unattractive wilderness that a new textbook commonly

presents to the pupil's mind.' I call that jolly good, Marko. I call it

all awfully good. Fancy you sitting in here and thinking out all those

ideas. Or do you think them out at home? Do you talk them out with

Mabel?"

He thought of Mabel's expression. "Those lesson books." He lied. "Oh,

yes. Pretty often."

"Show me which was the first one of all--the one you began with."

He showed her. "Fancy!" She handled it. "How fearfully proud of it you

must have been, Marko. And Mabel; wasn't she proud? The very first!" She

called it "Dear thing" and returned it to its place with a little pat,

as of affection.

He turned away. "Oh, well, that's enough," he said.

V

She moved about the room, touching things, looking at things.

"Show me something else. Is that where the old trout basks? Can he hear

us? I'm glad I've seen your room, Marko. I shall imagine you puzzling in

here."

Touching things, looking at things.... He thought the room would always

look different--after this. He felt strangely disturbed. He could with

difficulty reply to her. His mind threw back, in its habit, to some dim

occasion when he had felt in some degree as he was feeling now. When?

Certainly he had felt it before. When?

He remembered. It was a Saturday in the first month of his first term at

Tidborough School when his father had come over to see him. The

loneliness of newness was still upon him. He had been affected almost to

tears by being with some one whose mind was open, as it were, for him to

jump into: some one to whom he could open his mind, unseal the home

thoughts, unlock the timid tongue. He had talked how he had talked! He

had felt bursting to talk; and only talking could ease the feeling; and

how it had eased! Yes, this was the same again. He did not want her to

go. He wanted to talk--how he wanted to talk!--to tell, unseal, unlock,

expose.

He said, "I tell you what, Nona. I'll tell you something. I've an idea

sometimes of cutting out from all this place and starting an

educational publishing business on my own."

She was enormously interested. "Oh, Marko, if only you would!"

"Well, I think about it. I do. I can see a biggish thing in it. The

Tidborough Press, I'd call it. Like the University Press, you know,

Oxford and Cambridge. By Jove, it might go any distance, you know!"

"Oh, you must! You must!"

He began to pour out the tremendous and daring scheme.

VI

He talked animatedly,--these long pent up enthusiasms. She attended,

rapt and gleaming-eyed, following him with most delicious "Yes--yes" and

with little nods; and he suddenly became aware of how poignant to him

was the sympathy of her interest,--and stopped. Thus to pour out, thus

to be heard, was to experience the exquisite pain that comes with sudden

relief of intolerable pain, as when an anodyne steals through the veins

of torture. He stopped. He could not bear it.

"Well, that's all," he said.

She declared, "It's splendid. How well you're doing, Marko. I knew you

would." She paused. "Not that that matters," she said.

He asked her, "What do you mean--'not that that matters'?"

She made a little face at him. "Marko, you're not to snap me up like

that. I've noticed it two or three times. I mean it doesn't matter what

a man does. It's what he is that matters."

He laughed. "Well, that lets me down pretty badly if that's the

estimate. I'm awful, you know."

She shook her head. "Oh, you're not so bad."

"You don't know me. I've been growing awful these years."

"Tell me how awful you are. Does Mabel think you're awful?"

"You ask her! I'm the most unsatisfactory sort of person it's possible

to meet. Really."

"Go on; tell me, Marko. I like this."

"What, like hearing how unsatisfactory I am?"

"I like hearing you talk. You've got rather a nice voice--I used to tell

you that, didn't I?--and I like hearing you stumbling about trying to

explain your ideas. You've got ideas. You're rather an ideary person. Go

on. Why are you unsatisfactory?"

How familiar her voice was on that note,--caressing, drawing him on.

He said, "I'll tell you, Nona. I'm unsatisfactory because I've got the

most infernal habit of seeing things from about twenty points of view

instead of one. For other people, that's the most irritating thing you

can possibly imagine. I've no convictions; that's the trouble. I swing

about from side to side. I always can see the other side of a case, and

you know, that's absolutely fatal--"

She said gently, "Fatal to what, Marko?"

He was going to say, "To happiness"; but he looked at her and then

looked away. "Well, to everything; to success. You can't possibly be

successful if you haven't got convictions--what I call bald-headed

convictions. That's what success is, Nona, the success of politicians

and big men whose names are always in the papers. It's that: seeing a

thing from only one point of view and going all out for it from that

point of view. Convictions. Not mucking about all round a thing and

seeing it from about twenty different sides like I do. You know, you

can't possibly pull out this big, booming sort of stuff they call

success if you're going to see anybody's point of view but your own. You

must have convictions. Yes, and narrower than that, not convictions but

conviction. Only one conviction--that you're right and that every one

who thinks differently from you is wrong to blazes." He laughed. "And

I'm dashed if I ever _think_ I'm right, let alone conviction of it. I

can always see the bits of right on the other side of the argument.

That's me. Dash me!"

She said, "Go on, Marko. I like this."

"Well, that's all there is to it, Nona. These conviction chaps, these

booming politicians and honours-list chaps, these Bagshaw chaps--you

know Bagshaw?--they go like a cannon ball. They go like hell and smash

through and stick when they get there. My sort's like the footballs you

see down at the school punt-about. Wherever there's a punt I feel it and

respond to it. My sort's out to be kicked--" He laughed again. "But I

couldn't be any other sort."

She said, "I'm glad you couldn't be, Marko. You're just the same as you

used to be. I'm glad you're the same."

He did not reply.

VII

She sat briskly forward in the big armchair in which she faced him,

making of the motion a movement as though throwing aside a turn the

conversation had taken. "Well, go on, Marko. Go on talking. I'm not

going to let you stop talking yet. I love that about how people get

success nowadays. It's jolly true. I never thought of it before. Yes,

you're still a terribly thinky person, Marko. Go on. Think some more.

Out loud."

Caressing--drawing him on--just as of old.

He said thoughtfully, "I tell you a thing I often think a lot about,

Nona. You being here like this puts it in my mind. Conventions."

She smiled teasingly. "Ah, poor Marko. I knew you'd simply hate it, my

coming in like this. Does it seem terribly unconventional, improper, to

you, shut up with me in your office?"

He shook his head. "It seems very nice. That's all it seems. But it does

bring into my mind that you're the sort of person that doesn't think

tuppence about what's usually done or what's not usually done; and that

reminded me of things I've thought about conventions. Look here, Nona,

this really is rather interesting--"

"Yes," she said. "Yes."

Just so he used to bring ideas to her; just so, with "Yes--yes," she

used to receive them.

But he went on. "Why, convention, you know, it's the most mysterious,

extraordinary thing. It's a code society has built up to protect itself

and to govern itself, and when you go into it it's the most marvellous

code that ever was invented. All sorts of things that the law doesn't

give, and couldn't give, our conventions shove in on us in the most

amazing way. And all probably originated by a lot of Mother Grundy-ish

old women, that's what's so extraordinary. You know, if all the greatest

legal minds of all the ages had laid themselves out to make a social

code they could never have got anywhere near the rules the people have

built up for themselves. And that's what I like, Nona--that's what I

think so interesting and the best thing in life: the things the people

do for themselves without any State interference. That's what I'd

encourage all I knew how if I were a politician--"

He broke off. "I say, aren't I the limit, gassing away like this? I

hardly ever get off nowadays and when I do!--Why don't you stop me?"

She made a little gesture deprecatory of his suggestion. "Because I like

to hear you. I like to watch your funny old face when you're on one of

your ideas. It gets red underneath, Marko, and the red slowly comes up.

Funny old face! Go on. I want to hear this because I'm going to disagree

with you, I think. I think conventions, most of them, are odious,

hateful, Marko. I hate them."

VIII

He had been strangely affected by the words of her interruptions: a

contraction in the throat,--a twitching about the eyes.... But he was

able, and glad that he was able to catch eagerly at her opinion.

"Yes, yes, I know, odious, hateful, and much more than that,

cruel--conventions can be as cruel, as cruel as hell. I was just coming

to that. But they're all absolutely rightly based, Nona. That's the

baffling and the maddening part of them. That's what interests me in

them. In their application they're often unutterably wrong, cruel,

hideously cruel and unjust, but when you examine them, even at their

cruellest, you can't help seeing that fundamentally they're absolutely

right and reasonable and necessary. Look, take quite a silly example.

There's a convention against going to church in any but your best

clothes. It's easy to conceive wrongness in the application of it. It's

easy to conceive a person wanting to go to church and likely to benefit

by going to church, but staying away because of feeling too shabby. But

you can't help seeing the rightness at the bottom of it--the idea of

presenting yourself decently at worship, as before princes. That makes

you laugh--"

"It doesn't, Marko. I can see much worse things just on the same

principle."

He said pleasedly, "Of course you can, can't you? Look at all this stuff

there's been in the papers lately about what they call the problem of

the unmarried mother. Now there's a brute of a case for you: a girl gets

into trouble and while she sticks to her baby she's made an outcast;

every door is shut to her; her own people will have nothing to do with

her; no one will take her in--so long as she's got the baby with her.

That's convention and you can imagine cases where it's cruel beyond

words. But it's no good cursing society about it. You can't help seeing

that the convention is fundamentally right and essential. Where on earth

would you be if girls with babies could find homes as easily as girls

without babies?" He smiled. "You'd have babies pouring out all over the

place. See it?"

She nodded. "I _do_ think that's interesting, Marko. I think that's most

awfully interesting. Yes, cruel and hateful and preposterous, many of

them, but all fundamentally right. I think that's _absorbing_. I shall

look out for conventions now, and when they annoy me most I'll think out

what they're based on. I will!"

"Well, it's not a bad idea," he said. "It helps in all sorts of ways to

think things out as they happen to you. You don't realise what a

mysterious business life is till you begin to do that; and once you

begin to feel the mysteriousness of it there's not much can upset you.

You get the feeling that you're part of an enormous, mysterious game,

and you just wonder what the last move means. Eh?"

She did not answer.

Presently she said, "Yes, you do still think things, Marko. You haven't

changed a bit, you know. You're just the same."

He smiled. "Oh, well, it's only two years, you know--less than two years

since you went away."

"I wasn't thinking of two years."

"How many years were you thinking of?"

"Ten."

They just sat there.

IX

The insistent shrieking of a motor siren in the street below began to

penetrate their silence. When it came to Sabre's consciousness he had

somehow the feeling that it had been going on a very long time. He

jumped to his feet. The siren had the obscene and terrific note of a

gigantic hen in delirium. "What the devil's that?"

She received his question with the blank look of one whose mind had no

idea of the question's reason. The strangled gurgle and shriek from

without informed her in paroxysms of hideous sound. With a motion of her

body, as of one shaking off dreams, she threw away the be-musement in

which she had sat. She screwed up her face in torture. "Oh, _wow!_ Isn't

it too awful! That's Tony. In the car. I told him I'd look in here." She

glanced at the clock. "Marko; it's one o'clock. I've been here two

mortal hours!"

The gigantic hen screamed in delirious death agony.

"Oh, good heavens, that noise!" She stepped to the window and opened the

casement. "Tony! That noise! Tony, for goodness' sake!"

An extravagantly long motor car was drawn against the curb. Lord Tybar,

in a dust coat and a sleek bowler hat of silver grey, sat in the

driver's seat. He was industriously and without cessation winding the

handle of the siren. An uncommonly pretty woman sat beside him. She was

massed in furs. In her ears she held the index finger of each hand, her

elbows sticking out on each side of her head. Thus severally occupied,

she and Lord Tybar made an unusual picture, and a not inconsiderable

proportion of the youth and citizens of Tidborough stood round the front

of the car and enjoyed the unusual picture that they made.

The spectators looked up at Nona's call; Lord Tybar ceased the handle

and looked up with his engaging smile; the uncommonly pretty woman

removed her fingers from her ears and also turned upwards her uncommonly

pretty face.

"Hullo!" called Lord Tybar. "Did you happen to hear my sighs?"

"That appalling noise!" said Nona. "You ought to be prosecuted!"

"If you'd had it next to you!" piped the uncommonly pretty lady in an

uncommonly pretty voice. "It's like a whole ship being seasick

together."

"It's nothing of the kind," protested Lord Tybar. "It's the plaintive

lament of a husband entreating his wife." He directed his eyes further

backward. "Good morning, Mr. Fortune. Did you recognize my voice calling

my wife? There were tears in it. Perhaps you didn't."

"Good lord," said Sabre, "there's old Fortune at his window. I'll come

down with you, Nona."

As they went down he asked her, "Who's that with him in the car?"

"One of his friends. Staying with us."

Something in her voice made it--afterwards--occur to him as odd that she

spoke of one of "his", not one of "our" friends, and did not mention her

name.

"Well, the whole of Tidborough knows where you've been, Nona," Lord

Tybar greeted them. "And a good place too." He addressed the lady by his

side. "Puggo, look at those pulpits and things in the window. You never

go to church. It'll do you good. That's a pulpit, that tall thing. They

preach from that."

The lady remarked, "Thanks. I can remember it. At least I was married in

a church, you know."

"And, of course," said Nona, "you always remember you're married, don't

you?"

Sabre glanced quickly at her. Her tone cut across the frivolous

exchanges with an acid note. So utterly unlike Nona!

And the thing was real, not imagined; and went further. The uncommonly

pretty woman addressed as Puggo replied, "Oh, always. And so do you,

don't you, dear?" and her uncommonly pretty eyes went in a quick glance

from Nona's face to Sabre's, where they hovered the fraction of a

moment, and thence to Lord Tybar's where also they hovered, and smiled.

And Lord Tybar, his small, handsome head slightly on one side, looked

from one to another with precisely that mock in his glance that Sabre

had noticed, and transiently wondered at, on the day he had met them

riding.

Funny!

"But, Puggo, you don't know Sabre, do you?" Lord Tybar said. "Sabre,

this is Mrs. Winfred. A woman of mystery. One mystery is how she ever

won Fred and the other why she is called Puggo. There must be something

pretty dark in her past to have got her a name like Puggo."

The woman of mystery shrugged her shoulders. "Of course Tony's simply a

fool," she observed. "You know that, don't you, Mr. Sabre?"

"It's not her face," Lord Tybar continued. "You might think it's her

figure the way she hides it up under all those furs on a day like this.

But a pug's figure--"

Nona broke in. "I suppose we're going to start some time?"

"Will you come and sit here?" Puggo inquired, but without making any

movement.

"No, I'll sit behind."

She got in. "Good-by, Marko." Her voice sounded tired. She gave Sabre

her hand. "Jolly, the books," she said. "And our talk."

"Now throw yourself in front, any boy who wants to be killed," Lord

Tybar called to the idlers. "No corpses to-day?" He let in the clutch.

"Good-by, Sabre. Good-by, good-by." He waved his hand airily. The big

car slid importantly up the street.

Sabre watched them pass out of sight. As the car turned out of The

Precincts into High Street--a nasty corner--Lord Tybar, alone of the

three, one hand on the steering wheel, half turned in his seat and

twirled the silver-grey bowler in gay farewell.

Or mockery?

X

Through the day Sabre's thoughts, as a man sorting through many

documents and coming upon and retaining one, fined down towards a

picture of himself alone with Nona--alone with her, watching her

beautiful face--and saying to her: "Look here, there were three things

you said, three expressions you used. Explain them, Nona."

Fined down towards this picture, sifting the documents.

He thought, "Tybar--Tybar.--They're just alike in their way of saying

things, Nona and Tybar. That bantering way they talk when they're

together--when they're together. Tybar does, whoever he's with. Not

Nona. Not with me. But with Tybar. She plays up to him when they're

together. And he plays up to her. Everybody says how amusing they are.

They're perfectly suited. They look so dashed handsome, the pair of

them. And always that bantering talk. Nona chose deliberately between

Tybar and me. I know she did. She loved me, till he came along. It's

old. Ten years old. I can look at it. She chose deliberately. I can see

her choosing: 'Tybar or Marko?--oh, dash it, Tybar.' And she chose

right. She's just his mate. He's just her mate. They're a pair. That

bantering, airy way of theirs together. That's just characteristic of

the oneness of their characters. I couldn't put up that bantering sort

of stuff. I never could. I'm a jolly sight too serious. And Nona knew

it. She used to laugh at me about it. She still does. 'You puzzle, don't

you, Marko?' she said this very morning."

He thought, "No, that wasn't laughing at me. Not that. No, it wasn't.

Not that--nor any of it. What did she mean when she said 'There!' like

that when she gave me her hand when she first came in? And took off her

glove first. What did she mean when she said she had to come? 'Well, I

had to come,' she said.--What did she mean when she said she was

flotsam?--_Flotsam_! Why? Made me angry in my voice when I asked her. I

said, 'How can you be flotsam?' And how the devil can she?--Nona, with

Tybar, flotsam? But she said it. I said, 'How can you be flotsam, the

life you've--taken?' I didn't mean to say 'taken' like that. I meant to

have said 'the life you've got, you live.' But I meant taken, chosen.

She did take it, deliberately. She chose between us. I might almost have

heard her choose 'Marko or Tybar? Oh, dash it--Tybar.' I never

reproached her, not by a look. I saw her point of view. My infernal

failing, even then. Not by a look I ever reproached her. I thought I'd

forgotten it, absolutely. But I haven't. It came out in that moment that

I haven't. 'The life you've--taken!' I meant it to sting. Damn me, it

did sting. That look she gave! As if I had struck her.--What rot! How

could it sting her? How could she mind? Only if she regretted.--Is it

_likely_?"

He thought, "But _is_ she happy? Is it all what it appears between them?

That remark she made to that woman and the extraordinary way she said

it. 'You never forget you're married, do you?' Amazing thing to say, the

way she said it. What did she mean? And that woman. She said something

like, 'Nor you, do you?' and looked at me and then at Tybar. And Tybar

looked--at Nona, at me, as if he'd got some joke, some mock...."

He thought, "What rot! She chose. She knew he was her sort. She knew I

wasn't. She chose deliberately...."

Clearly, as it were yesterday, he remembered the day she had declared to

him her choice. In the Cathedral cloisters. Walking together. And

suddenly, in the midst of indifferent things, she told him, "I say,

Marko, I'm going to marry Lord Tybar."

And his reply, the model of indifference. "Are you, Nona?"

Nothing else said of it between them. There would certainly have been

more discussion if she had said she was going to buy a packet of

hairpins. And his thought had immediately been, not this nor that nor

the other of a hundred thoughts proper to a blow so stunning, but merely

and immediately and precisely that he would tell his father Yes to what

that very morning he had told him No,--that he would go into the

Fortune, East and Sabre business. Extraordinary effect from such a

cause! Grotesque. Paradoxical. Going into Fortune, East and Sabre meant

"settling down"; marriage conventionally involved settling down; yet,

while he had visioned marriage with Nona, settling down had been the

last thing in the world to think of,--because he projected marriage with

Nona, he had that very morning rejected settling down. He was not to

marry her; therefore, yes, he would settle down. Amazing. He had not

realised how amazing till now.

And catastrophic. Not till now had he realised to what catastrophe he

then had plunged. He thought, "The fact was Nona touched things in me

that helped me. Without her I just shut down--I just go about--longing,

longing, and all shut up, day after day, year after year--all shut up.

And now there's this--she's come back like this--"

He came upon the picture of himself alone with Nona--alone with her

watching her beautiful face--and saying to her, "Look here, there were

three things you said, three expressions you used. Explain them, Nona.

Explain 'There!' with your glove off. Explain 'Flotsam.' Explain 'Well,

I had to come.' Explain them, Nona--for God's sake."

CHAPTER V

I

But it was October before he asked her to explain them. The Tybars, as

he learnt when next he met her, a week after her visit to the office,

were only at Northrepps for a breathing space after their foreign tour.

Through the summer they were going the usual social round, ending in

Scotland. Back in October for the shooting, and wintering there through

the hunting season.

So she told him; and he thought while she was speaking, "All right. I'll

accept that. That helps to stop me asking her. If an opportunity occurs

before she goes I'll ask her. I must. But if it doesn't occur I'll

accept that. I won't make an opportunity."

It did not occur, and he abode by his resolution. He met her once or

twice, always in other company. And she was always then particularly

gay, particularly airy, particularly bantering. But answering her banter

he once caught an expression behind her airiness. He thought, "It is a

shield"; and he turned away abruptly from her. He could not bear it.

This was on the occasion of a little dinner party at Northrepps to which

he had come with Mabel; Major Hopscotch Millet and one or two others

were among the guests. Major Millet, who had been in particularly

hopscotch, Ri--te _O_! form throughout the evening, was walking back,

but Mabel invited him to accompany them in the ancient village fly.

"Ri--te _O_!" said Major Millet with enormous enthusiasm.

Nona came with them to the door on their departure. Sabre was last down

the steps. "Well, I shan't see you again till October," she said.

"No, till October." He no more than touched her hand and turned away. He

had kept his resolution.

She was close behind him. He heard her give the tiniest little catch at

her breath. She said, "Shall I write to you, Marko?"

He turned towards her. She was smiling as though it was a chaffing

remark she had made. Her shield!

And he answered her from behind his own shield, "Oh, well, I'm bad at

letters, you know."

But their eyes met with no shields before them; and she was wounded, for

he just caught her voice as he went down the steps, "Oh, Marko, do write

to me!"

The Ri--te O voice of the Hopscotch. "Come on, Sabre, my boy! Come on!

Come on!"

He got into the cab. Major Millet had taken the seat next Mabel. "Ri--te

_O_, Cabby!" the Hopscotch hailed.

As the horse turned with the staggering motions proper to its burden of

years and infirmity, Mabel inquired, "What was Lady Tybar talking to you

about all that time?"

He said, "Oh, just saying good-by."

But he was thinking, "That's a fourth question: Why did you say, 'Oh,

Marko, do write to me'? Or was that the answer to the other questions,

although I never asked them?"

II

He did not write to her. But in October a ridiculous incident impelled

afresh the urgent desire to ask her the questions: an incident no less

absurd than the fact that in October Low Jinks knocked her knee.

Mabel spent two months of the summer on visits to friends. In August

she was with her own people on their annual holiday at Buxton. There

Sabre, who had a fortnight, joined her. It happened to be the fortnight

of the croquet tournament, and it happened that Major Millet was also in

Buxton. Curiously enough he had also been at Bournemouth, whence Mabel

had just come from cousins, and they had played much croquet there

together. It was projected as great fun to enter the Buxton tournament

in partnership, and Sabre did not see a great deal of Mabel.

It was late September when they resumed life together at Penny Green. In

their absence the light railway linking up the Garden Home with

Tidborough and Chovensbury had been opened with enormous excitement and

celebration; and Mabel became at once immersed in paying calls and

joining the activities of the new and intensely active community.

Then Low Jinks knocked her knee.

The knee swelled and for two days Low Jinks had to keep her leg on a

chair. It greatly annoyed Mabel to see Low Jinks sitting in the kitchen

with her leg "stuck out on a chair." She told Sabre it was extraordinary

how "that class of person" always got in such a horrible state from the

most ridiculous trifles. "I suppose I knock my knee a dozen times a

week, but my knee doesn't swell up and get disgusting. You're always

reading in the paper about common people getting stung by wasps, or

getting a scratch from a nail, and dying the next day. They must be in a

horrible state. It always makes me feel quite sick."

Sabre laughed. "Well, I expect poor old Low Jinks feels pretty sick

too."

"She enjoys it."

"What, sitting there with a knee like a muffin? I had a look at her just

now. Don't you think she might have one of those magazines to read? She

looks pretty sorry for herself."

Signs of "flying up." "You haven't given her a magazine, have you?"

"No--I haven't. But I told her I would after dinner."

"If you don't mind you won't. Rebecca has plenty to occupy her time. She

can perfectly well clean the silver and things like that, and she has

her sewing. She has upset the house quite enough with her leg stuck out

on a chair all day without reading magazines."

And then in the extraordinary way in which discussions between them were

suddenly lifted by Mabel on to unsuspected grievances against him, Sabre

suddenly found himself confronted with, "You know how she hurt her knee,

I suppose?"

He knew the tone. "No. My fault, was it?"

"Yes. As it happens, it was your fault--to do with you."

"Good lord! However did I manage to hurt Low Jinks's knee?"

"She did it bringing in your bicycle."

He thought, "Now what on earth is this leading up to?" During the weeks

of his separation from Mabel, thinking often of Nona, he had caused

himself to think from her to Mabel. His reasoning and reasonable habit

of mind had made him, finding extraordinary rest in thought of Nona,

accuse himself for finding none in thought of Mabel. She was his wife;

he never could get away from the poignancy of that phrase. His wife--his

responsibility towards her--the old thought, eight years old, of all she

had given up in exchanging her own life for his life--and what was she

getting? He set himself, on their reunion, always to remember the

advantage he had over her: that he _could_ reason out her attitude

towards things; that she could not,--neither his attitude nor, what was

more, her own.

Now. What was this leading up to? "She did it bringing in your bicycle."

Puzzling sometimes over passages with Mabel that with mysterious and

surprising suddenness had plunged into scenes, he had whimsically

envisaged how he had been, as it were, led blindfolded to the edge of a

precipice, and then, _whizz!_ sent flying over on to the angry crags

below.

Bantering protest sometimes averted the disaster. "Well, come now,

Mabel, that's not my fault. That was your idea, making Low Jinks come

out and meet me every evening as if the old bike was a foam-flecked

steed. Wasn't it now?"

"Yes, but not in the dark."

Mysterious manoeuvring! But he felt he was approaching the edge. "In the

dark?"

"Yes, not in the dark. What I mean is, I really cannot imagine why you

must keep up your riding all through the winter. It was different when

there was no other way. Now the railway is running I simply cannot

imagine why you don't use it."

"Well, that's easy--because I like the ride."

"You can't possibly like riding back on these pitch dark nights, cold

and often wet. That's absurd."

"Well, I like it a jolly sight better than fugging up in those carriages

with all that gassing crowd of Garden Home fussers."

And immediately, _whizz!_ he went over the edge.

"That's just it!" Mabel said. And he thought, "Ah!"

"That's just it. And of course you laugh. Why you can't be friendly with

people like other men, I never can imagine. There're heaps of the nicest

people up at the Garden Home, but from the first you've set yourself

against them. Why you never like to make friends like other people!"

He did not answer.

They were at dinner. She made an elaborate business of reaching for the

salt. "If you ask me, it's because you don't think they're good enough

for you."

He thought, "That's to rouse me. I'm dashed if I'm going to be roused."

He thought, "It's getting the devil, this. There's never a subject we

start but we work up to something like this. We work on one another like

acid on acid. In a minute she'll have another go at it, and then I shall

fly off, and then there we'll be. It's my fault. She doesn't think out

these things like I do. She just says what comes into her head, whereas

I know perfectly well where we're driving to, so I'm really responsible.

I rile her. I either rile her by saying something in trying not to fly

off, or else I let myself go, and off I fly, and we're at it. Acid on

acid. It's getting the devil, this. But I'm dashed if I'll fly off. It's

up to me."

He tried in his mind for some matter that would change the subject.

Extraordinary how hard it was to find a new topic when some other

infernal thing hung in the air. It was like, in a nightmare, trying with

leaden limbs to crawl away from danger.

And then she began:

She resumed precisely at the point where she had left off. While his

mind had journeyed in review all around and about the relations between

them, her mind had remained cumbrously at the thought of her last words.

There, he told himself, was the whole difference between them. He was

intellectually infinitely more agile (he did not put it higher than

that) than she. She could not get away from things as he could. They

remained in her mind and rankled there. To get impatient with her, to

proceed from impatience to loss of temper, was flatly as cruel as to

permit impatience and anger with one bedridden and therefore unable to

join in robust exercises. He thought, "I'll not do it."

She said, actually repeating her last words, "Yes, if you ask me, it's

because you don't think they're good enough for you. As it happens,

there're all sorts of particularly nice men up there, only you never

take the trouble to know them. And clever--the only thing you pretend to

judge by; though what you can find clever in Mr. Fargus or those Perches

goodness only knows. There're all sorts of Societies and Circles and

Meetings up there that I should have thought were just what would have

attracted you. But, no. You prefer that pottering Mr. Fargus with his

childish riddles and even that young Perch without spirit enough to go

half a yard without that everlasting old mother of his--"

It was longer and fiercer than he had expected. He intercepted. "I say,

Mabel, what's the point of all this, exactly?"

"The point is that it makes it rather hard for me, the way you go on.

I've made many, many friends up at the Garden Home. Do you suppose it

doesn't seem funny to them that my husband is never to be seen, never

comes near the place, never meets their husbands? Of course they must

think it funny. I know I feel it very awkward."

He thought, "Girding! Sneering! Can't I get out of this?" Then he

thought, "Dash it, man, it's only just her way. What is there in it?" He

said, "Yes, but look here, Mabel, we started at my riding home in the

dark--or rather at old Low Jinks's muffin knee. Let's work out the

trouble about that."

"That's what I'm talking about. I think it's extraordinary of you to go

riding by yourself all through the winter just to avoid people I'd like

you to be friendly with. I ask you not to and you call it 'fugging up in

railway carriages with them.' That was the elegant expression you used."

"Elegant." That was the word Nona had said she was going to have for her

own.

He sat up in his chair. He was glad he had kept his mind detached all

through this business. He was going to make an effort.

He said, "Well, listen, Mabel. I'll explain. This is me explaining.

Behind this fork. I see what you mean. Perfectly well. I'm sorry. I'm

absolutely rotten at meeting new people. I always have been. I never

seem to have any conversation. They always think I'm just a fool--which,

as a matter of fact, I always feel in a crowd. But apart from that.

You've no idea how much I enjoy the bike ride. I wouldn't give it up for

anything. I've tried to explain to you sometimes. It gets me away from

things, and I like getting away from things. I feel--it's hard to

explain a stupid thing like this--I feel as if I were lifted out of

things and able to look at things from a sort of other-world point of

view. It's jolly. Don't you remember I suggested to you, oh, years ago,

when we were first--when we first came here, suggested you might ride in

part of the way with me of a morning, and told you the idea of the

thing? You didn't quite understand it--"

She pushed back her chair. "I don't understand it now," she said.

His eyes had been shining as they shone when he was interested or eager.

He threw himself back in his seat. "Oh, well!"

She got up. She said in a very loud, very thin and edged voice, the

little constrictions on either side of her nose extraordinarily deep:

"I never can understand any of your ideas, except that no one else ever

seems to have them. Except your Fargus friends perhaps. I should keep

them for them if I were you. Anyway, all I wanted to say I've said. All

I wanted to say was that, if you persist in riding home in the dark, I

really cannot allow Rebecca to go out and bring in your bicycle. After

this leg of hers is over, if it ever is over, I really cannot allow it

any more. That's all I wanted to say."

She left the room.

He began to fumble with extraordinary intensity in the pocket of his

dinner jacket for his cigarette case. He could feel it, but his fingers

seemed all thumbs. He got it out and it slipped through his fingers on

to the table. His hands were shaking.

CHAPTER VI

I

A draper occupied the premises opposite Fortune, East and Sabre's. On

the following afternoon, just before five o'clock, Sabre saw Nona alight

from her car and go into the draper's. He put on his hat and coat and

descended into the street. As he crossed the road she came out.

"Hullo, Marko!"

"Hullo. Well, there's evidently one woman in the world who can get out

of a draper's in under an hour. You haven't been in a minute."

"Did you see me go in? As a matter of fact I didn't want anything. As a

matter of fact, I was making up my mind--"

"Whether to come in and see me?"

She nodded.

"What about having some tea somewhere?"

"I think that's a good idea."

He suggested the Cloister Tea Rooms. She spoke to the chauffeur and

accompanied him.

II

The Cloister Tea Rooms were above a pastry cook's on the first floor of

one of the old houses in The Precincts. The irregularly shaped room

provided several secluded: tables, and they took one in a remote corner.

But their conversation would have suffered nothing in a more central

and neighboured situation. Nona began some account of her summer

visitations. Sabre spoke a little of local businesses: had she seen the

new railway? Had he been round the Garden Home since her return? But the

subjects were but skirmishers thrown out before dense armies of thoughts

that massed behind; met, and trifled, and rode away. When pretence of

dragging out the meal could no longer be maintained, Nona looked at her

watch. "Well, I must be getting back. We haven't had a particularly

enormous tea, but the chauffeur's had none."

Sabre said, "Yes, let's get out of this." It was as though the thing had

been a strain.

He put her into the car. She was so very, very quiet. He said, "I've

half a mind to drive up with you. I'd like a ride, and a walk back."

She said the car could run him back, or take him straight over to Penny

Green. "Yes, come along up, Marko. They have rather fun in the billiard

room after tea."

He got in and she shared with him the heavy fur rug. "Not that I want

fun in the billiard room," he said.

She asked him lightly, "Pray what can we provide for you, then?"

"I just want to drive up with you."

III

It was only three miles to Northrepps. It seemed to Sabre an incredibly

short time before a turn in the road fronted them with the park gates.

And they had not spoken a word! He said, "By Jove, this car travels!

I'll get down at the gates, Nona. I'm not coming in. I want the walk

back."

She made no attempt to dissuade him. She leaned forward and called to

the chauffeur; but as the car began to slow down, she gave a little

catch of emotion and said, "Well, we have had a chatty drive. You'd

better change your mind and come along up, Marko."

He disengaged the rug from about him. "No, I think I'll get out here."

He turned towards her. "Look here, Nona. Get out here and walk up." He

echoed the little sound of feeling she had given, pretended laughter.

"It will do you good after that enormous tea."

She said something about the tea being too enormous for exertion.

The car drew up. He got out and turned to her. "Look here. Please do."

He saw the colour fade away upon her face. "What for?"

"To talk." It was all he could say.

She put away the rug and gave him her hand. Warm, and she said, "How

dreadfully cold your hand is! Go on and get your tea, Jeffries. I'm

going to walk up."

The man touched his cap. The car slid away and left them.

IV

They were within the gates. It had been a dull day. Evening stood

mistily far up the long avenue of the drive and in the distances about

the park on either hand. Among October's massing leaves, a small

disquiet stirred. The leaves banked orderly between their parent trunks.

Sabre noticed as a curious thing how, when they stirred, they only

trembled in their massed formations, not broke their ranks, as if some

live thing ran beneath them.

He said, "Do you know what this seems to me? It seems as though it was

only yesterday, or this morning, that you came to see me at the office

and we talked. Well, I want it to be only yesterday. I want to go on

from there."

She said, "Yes."

He hardly could hear the word. He looked at her. She was as tall as he.

Not least of the contributions to her beauty in his eyes was the slim

grace of her stature. But her face was averted; and he wanted most

terribly to see her face. "Stand a minute and look at me, Nona." He

touched her arm. "I want to see your face."

She turned towards him and raised her eyes to his eyes. "Oh, what is it

you want to say, Marko?"

There was that which glistened upon her lower lids; and about her mouth

were trembling movements; and in her throat a pulse beating.

He said, "It's you I want to say something. I want you to explain some

things. Some things you said. Nona, when you came into my room that day

and shook hands you said, 'There!' when you gave me your hand. You took

off your glove and said, 'There!' I want to know why you said 'There!'

And you said, 'Well, I had to come.' And you said you were flotsam. And

that night--when we'd been up to you--you said, 'Oh, Marko, do write to

me.' I want you to explain what you meant."

She said, "Oh, how can you remember?"

He answered, "Because I remember, you must explain."

"Please let me sit down, Marko." She faltered a little laugh. "I can

explain better sitting down."

A felled trunk had been placed against the trees facing towards the

parkland. They went to it and he sat beside her. She sat upright but

bending forward a little over her crossed knees, her hands clasped on

them, looking before her across the park.

"No, you must look at me," he said.

She very slowly turned her body towards him. He thought her most

beautiful and the expression of her beautiful face was most terrible to

him in all his emotions.

V

She spoke very slowly; almost with a perceptible pause between each

word. She said, "Well, I'll tell you. I said 'flotsam', didn't I? If I

explain that--you know what flotsam is, Marko. Have you ever looked it

up in the dictionary? The dictionary says it terribly. 'Goods

shipwrecked and found floating on the sea.' I'm twenty-eight, Marko. I

suppose that's not really very old. It seems a terrible age to me. You

see, you judge age by what you are in contrast with what you were. If

you're very happy I think it can't matter how old you are. If you look

back to when you were happy and then come to the now when you're not, it

seems a most terrible and tremendous gulf--and you see yourself just

floating--drifting farther and farther away from the happy years and

just being taken along, taken along, to God knows where, God knows to

what." She put out the palms of her hands towards where misty evening

banked sombrely across the park. "That's very frightening, Marko."

The live thing ran beneath the leaves banked at their feet. A stronger

gust came in the air. A scattering of leaves clustered together and

moved with sudden agitation across the sward before them; paused and

seemed to be trying to flutter a hold into the ground; rushed aimlessly

at a tangent to their former direction; paused again; and again seemed

to be holding on. Before a sudden gust they were spun helplessly upward,

sported aloft in mazy arabesques, scattered upon the breeze.

"Those leaves!" she said. And as if she had not made the interjection

she went on, "Most awfully frightening. Well, all the time there was

you, Marko. You were always different from anybody I ever knew. Long ago

I used to chaff you because you were so different. In those two years

when we were away it got awful. In those two years I knew I was flotsam.

One day--in India--I went and looked at it in the little dictionary in

my writing case, and I knew I was. Do you know what I did? I crossed out

flotsam in the dictionary and wrote Nona. There it was, and it was the

most exact thing--'Nona: goods shipwrecked and found floating in the

sea.' I meant to have torn out the page. I forgot. I left it there and

Tony saw it."

Sabre said, "What did he say?" In all she had told him there was

something omitted. He knew that his question approached the missing

quantity. But she did not answer it.

She went on, "Well, there was you. And I began to want you most awfully.

You were always such a dear, slow person; and I wanted that most

awfully. You were so steady and good and you had such quiet old ideas

about duty and rightness and things, and you thought about things so,

and I wanted that most frightfully. You see, I'd known you all my

life--well, that's how it was, Marko. That explains all the things you

asked. I said 'There'; and I said I had to come; because I'd wanted it

so much, so long. And I wanted you to write to me because I did want to

go on having the help I had from you--"

He had desired her to look at him, but it was he who had turned away. He

sat with his head between his hands, his elbows on his knees.

She repeated, with rather a plaintive note, as though in his pose she

saw some pain she had caused him, "You see, I had known you all my life,

Marko--"

He said, still looking upon the ground between his feet, "But you

haven't explained anything. You've only told me. You haven't explained

why."

She said with astounding simplicity, "Well, you see, Marko, I made a

mistake. I made a most frightful mistake. I chose. I chose wrong. I

ought to have married you, Marko."

And his words were a groan. "Nona--Nona--"

CHAPTER VII

I

He was presently walking back, returning to Tidborough.

He was trying very hard, all his life's training against sudden

unbridling of his bridled passions, to grapple his mind back from its

wild and passionate desires and from its amazed coursings upon the

immense prairies, teeming with hazards, fears, enchantments, hopes,

dismays, that broke before this hour as breaks upon the hunter's gaze,

amazingly awarded from the hill, savannas boundless, new,

unpathed,--from these to grapple back his mind to its schooled thought

and ordered habit, to its well-trodden ways of duty, obligation,

rectitude. He had not left them. But for that cry of her name wrung from

him by sudden application of pain against whose shock he was not

steeled, he had answered nothing to her lamentable disclosure. This

which he now knew, these violent passions which now he felt, but lit for

him more whitely the road his feet must take. If he had ever tried

consciously to see his life and Mabel's from Mabel's point of view, now,

when his mind threatened disloyalty to her, he must try. And would! The

old habit, the old trick of seeing the other side, acted never so

strongly upon him as when unkindness appeared to lie in his own

attitude. Unkindness was unfairness and unfairness was above all

qualities the quality he could not tolerate. And here was unfairness,

open, monstrous, dishonourable.

Mabel should not feel it.

But he was aware, he was informed as by a voice in his ears, "You have

struck your tents. You are upon the march."

II

He approached the town. The school lay in this quarter and his way ran

through its playing fields and its buildings. Nature in her moods much

fashioned his thoughts when he walked the countryside or rode his daily

journey on his bicycle. He now carried his thoughts into her mood that

stood about him.

Nature was to him in October, and not in spring, poignantly suggestive,

deeply mysterious, in her intense and visible occupation. She was

enormously busy; but she was serenely busy. She was stripping her house

of its deckings, dismantling her habitation to the last and uttermost

leaf; but she stripped, dismantled, extinguished, broke away, not in

despair, defeat, but in ordered preparation and with exquisite certitude

of glory anew. That, in October, was her voice to him, stirring

tremendously that faculty of his of seeing more clearly, visioning life

more poignantly, with his mind than with his eye. She spoke to him of

preparation for winter, and beyond winter with ineffable assurance for

spring, bring winter what it might. He saw her dismantling all her house

solely to build her house again. She packed down. She did not pack up,

which is confusion, flight, abandonment. She packed down, which is

resolve, resistance, husbandry of power to build and burst again; and

burst again,--in stout affairs of outposts in sheltered banks and secret

nooks; in swift, amazing sallies of violet and daffodil and primrose; in

multitudinous clamour of all her buds in May; and last in her resistless

tide and flood and avalanche of beauty to triumph and possession.

That was October's voice to him; that he apprehended and tingled to it,

as the essence of its strange, heavy odours; secret of its veiling

mists; whisper of its moisture-laden airs; song of its swollen ditches,

brooks and runnels. It was not "Take down. It is done." It was "Take

down. It is beginning."

Mankind, frail parasite of doubt, seeks ever for a sign, conceives no

certainty but the enormous certitude of uncertainty. A sign! In death:

"Take down, then; but leave me this--and this--for memory. Perhaps--who

knows?--it may be true.... But leave me this for memory." In promise:

"So be it, then--but give me some pledge, some proof, some sign." Not

thus October. October spoke to Sabre of Nature's sublime imperviousness

to doubt; of her enormous certainty, old as creation, based in the sure

foundations of the world. "Take down. It is beginning."

Sabre used to think, "It gets you--terrifically. It's stupendous. It's

too big to bear." He had this thought out of October: "You can't,

_can't_ walk along lanes or in woods in October and see all this

mysterious business going on without knowing perfectly well that this

astounding certainty must apply equally to human life. I'd wish the

death of any one I loved to be in early autumn. No one can possibly

_doubt_ in early autumn. In winter, perhaps; and in spring and in summer

you can know, cynically, it will pass. But in October--no. Impossible

then. And not only death, Life. Life as one lives it. You can't, _can't_

feel in autumn that in the lowest depths there is lower yet. You only

can feel, _know_, that the thing will break, that there's an uplift at

the bottom of it all. There _must_ be."

III

Take down: it is beginning. The spirit and the message of the season (as

they communicated themselves to him) began, as opiate among enfevered

senses, to steal about his thoughts. Had anything happened? His feeling

was rather that he was at the beginning of something; or at the end of

something, which was the same thing. The place whereon he stood entered

into his thoughts. He had left the main road and was skirting through

the school precincts. He was crossing The Strip, historic sward whereon

were played the First XV football matches. Impossible to be upon The

Strip without peopling it again with the tremendous battles that had

been here, the giants of football who here had made their fame and the

school's fame; the crowded, tumultuous touch lines; the silent,

tremendous combat in between. Memories came to him of his own two

seasons in the XV; his own name from a thousand throats upon the wintry

air. His muscles tautened as again he fought some certain of those

enormous moments when the whole of life was bound up solely in the

unspeakable necessity to win. Astounding trick of thought from what

beset him! He was alone upon The Strip, in an overcoat, on the way to

forty, not a sound, not a soul, and with that brooding sense of being

upon the edge and threshold of something vast, dark, threatening,

unfathomable.

IV

Down the steep hill flanked by masters' houses. Twilight merging now

into darkness. Boys passing in and out of the gateways. Past Telfer's

which had been his own house. All this youth was preparing for life; all

these houses eternally, generation after generation, pouring boys out

into life as at Shotley iron foundry he had seen molten metal poured out

of a cauldron. And every boy, poured out, imagined he was going to live

his own life. O hapless delusion! Lo, as the same moulds awaited and

confined the metal, so the same moulds awaited and confined the living

stuff. Mysterious conventions, laws, labours; imperceptibly receiving;

implacably binding and shaping. The last day he had come down the steps

of Telfer's--jumped down--how distinctly he remembered it! It was his

own life he was coming down, eagerly jumping down, into.--Well, here he

was, passing those very steps, and whose life was he living? Mabel's?

Old Fortune's? And to what end?

V

Whose life was Nona living?

He had asked her, "Tell me about you and Tybar."

With pitiable gentleness of voice she had approached that quantity which

had been missing from her first statement of her position. And she had

done tribute to her husband's parts with generosity, nay with pride.

"Tony does everything better than any one else." She had said it on that

occasion of their first reëncounter; its burthen had been the opening of

her recital of what else she had for him.

"Marko, I think Tony's the most wonderful person that ever was. He does

everything that men do and he does everything best. And everybody

admires him and everybody likes him. You've no idea. You've no idea how

he wins everybody he meets. People will do anything for him. They love

him. Well, you've only got to look at him, haven't you? Or hear him

talk? I think there's never been any one so utterly captivating as Tony

is to look at and to hear."

Most engagingly, with such words, she had presented him: one that passed

through life airily, exquisitely; much fairy-gifted at his cradle with

gifts of beauty, charm, preëminence in all he touched; knowing no care,

knowing no difficulty, knowing no obstacle, or danger, or fear, or

illness, or fatigue, or anything in life but gay and singing things,

which touching, he made more bright, more tuneful yet; meeting no one,

of whatever age or degree, but his charm was to that age or degree

exactly touched; captivating all, leading all, by all desired in

leadership. Fortune's darling!

"And, Marko," she at last had come to. "And Marko--this is the

word--graceless. Utterly, utterly graceless. Without heart, Marko,

without conscience, without morals, without the smallest scrap of an

approach to any moral principle. Marko, that's an awful, a wicked, an

abominable thing for a wife to say of her husband. But he wouldn't mind

a bit my telling you. Not a bit. He'd love it. He'd laugh. He'd utterly

love to know he had stung me so much. And he'd utterly love to know he'd

driven me to tell you. He'd think--he'd love like anything to drive me

to do awful things. He's tried--especially these two years. He'd love to

be able to point a finger at me and laugh and say, 'Ah! Ha-ha! Ah!' You

know, he hasn't got any feelings at all--love or hate or anything else;

and it simply amuses him beyond anything to arouse feeling in anybody

else. There have been women all the time we've been married and he

simply amuses himself with them until he's tired of them, and until the

next one takes his fancy, and he does it quite openly before me, in my

house, and tells me what I can't see before my own eyes just for the

love of seeing the suffering it gives me. You saw that Mrs. Winfred.

He's done with her now. And he's as shameless about me with them as he

is about them with me. And what he loves above all is the way I take it;

and I can take it in no other way. You see I won't, I simply will not,

Marko, let these women of his see--or let any one in the world

suspect--that I--that I suffer. So when we are together before people I

keep up the gay way we always show together. He loves it; it's

delicious to him, because it's a game played over the torture

underneath. And I won't do any other way, Marko. I will keep my face to

the world--I won't have any one pity me."

"I pity you," he had said.

"Ah, you...."

VI

And he was suddenly shot into an encounter of extraordinary incongruity

with his thoughts and of extraordinary intensity. A voice accosted him.

He was astounded, as if suddenly awakened out of heavy sleep, to see to

where he had come. He was in the narrow old ways of Tidborough Old Town,

approaching The Precincts, by the ancient Corn Exchange. A keen-looking

young man, particularly well set up and wearing nice tweeds, was

accosting him. Sabre recognised Otway, captain and adjutant of the

depot, up at the barracks, of the county regiment, one of the crack

regiments, famous as "The Pinks."

Otway said, "Hullo, Sabre. How goes it? Are you going to this show

to-morrow?"

He was pointing with his stick to a poster displayed against the Corn

Exchange. Sabre read it. It announced that Field Marshal Lord Roberts

was speaking there, under the auspices of the National Service League,

on Home Defence--a Citizen Army.

"I hadn't thought about going," Sabre said. He wanted to get away.

Otway was staring at the poster as though he had never seen it before;

but he had been staring at it when Sabre came along the street. "You

ought to," Otway said. "You ought to hear old Bobs. Of course the little

chap's all wrong."

He seemed to be talking to himself, staring at the poster, more than to

Sabre. Sabre, despite his preoccupation, was surprised. "All wrong? Good

lord, I should have thought you of all people--" And immediately a

torrent of Otway was let loose upon him, bursting into his thoughts like

a stone chucked through a study window.

Otway spun around in his keen, quick way to face him. "All wrong in the

way he's putting his case, I mean. All these National Service chaps are.

Home defence they talk about, nothing but Home Defence. It's like

chucking sawdust into a fire--the fire being all the bloody fools who

are opposed to military training. Any fool can knock the bottom out of

this Home Defence business. The Blue Water fools are champions at it.

They say the only defence against invasion is the Navy and that half a

million spent on the Navy is worth untold millions chucked away on this

'Nation in Arms' shout. And they're damn right."

"Well, then?" said Sabre. "What's the argument? What's the harm in

knocking the bottom out of--this?" he nodded towards the poster.

Otway spoke with astonishing intensity. "Why, good God alive, man, don't

you see, we do want a nation in arms; we want it like hell. But we don't

want it for here, at home; we want it to fight on the Continent. That's

where we've got to fight,--out there. And that's where we're _going_ to

fight before we're many years older."

In his intensity he had extended his left hand and was beating his

points into it with the handle of his stick. "See that?"

Sabre was not in the mood to see anything. He only wanted to be away.

"No, I'm dashed if I do. What are we going to fight on the Continent

for--supposing we ever do have to fight anywhere?"

The stick hammered away again. "Because we've got _obligations_ there.

We've got to defend Belgium, for one. And if we hadn't--if we hadn't any

obligations we'd pretty soon, we'd damn soon find them as soon as ever

Germany breaks loose. That's what these National Service Johnnies ought

to tell the people, that's what Bobs ought to tell them, that's what

these blasted politicians ought to tell them: you don't want National

Service to defend your perishing homes. The Navy's going to do that. You

want it like hell because you've got to defend your _lives_--out there."

He waved his stick towards "out there." "My God!" he said. He was

consumed with the intensity of his own emotions. "My God!"

Despite himself, Sabre was impressed. The man would have impressed

anybody. His eyes were extraordinarily penetrating. There actually were

tiny little points of perspiration about his nose.

"I never thought about that," Sabre said doubtfully. "I never thought

there were any obligations. I doubt any member of the Government would

admit there were any."

"I know damn well they wouldn't," Otway declared. "And they'd be helped

to deny it, or to evade it, by the howl of laughter there'd be in the

Commons if any one had the guts to get up and ask if we had any

obligations. There's no joke goes down like that sort of joke. Well--"

His manner changed. He tucked his stick under his arm and took out a

silver cigarette case. "Cigarette? Well--they'll laugh the other side of

their chuckle heads one of these days."

Sabre took a cigarette. "You're pretty sure there's going to be a war,

aren't you?"

The extraordinary man, who had become smiling and airy, immediately

became extraordinary again. He had struck a match, held it to Sabre's

cigarette, and was applying it to his own. He extinguished it with

violent jerks of his arm and dashed it on to the pavement. "Sure? My

God, sure? I tell you, Sabre, you won't be five years, I don't believe

you'll be two years, one year, older before you'll not only be

sure--you'll know! I've just finished a course at the Staff College, you

know. We finished up with a push over to Belgium to do the battlefields.

We went into Germany, some of us. They fed us in some of their messes.

Do you know, those chaps in those messes there talked about fighting us

as naturally and as certainly as you talk with your opponents about a

coming footer match. They talked about 'When we fight you'--not '_if_ we

fight you'--'when', as if it was as fixed as Christmas. And they didn't

talk any of this bilge about fighting us in England; they knew, as I

know, and every soldier knows--every soldier who's keen--that it's going

to be out there. In Europe." He had not taken two puffs at his cigarette

before he wrenched it from his mouth and dashed it after the match.

"Sabre, why the hell aren't people here told that? Why are they stuck up

with this rot about defending their shores when they can see for

themselves that only the Navy can defend their shores? What are they

going to do when the war comes? Are they going to lynch these bloody

politicians who haven't told them they've got to fight for their lives?

Are they going to turn around and say they never knew it so they'll be

damned if they'll fight for their lives? Are they going to follow any of

these politicians who will have betrayed them? Do you suppose any man

who's been party to this betrayal is going to be found big enough to run

a war? I tell you that's another thing. Do you suppose a chap who's

been a miserable vote-snatcher all his life is going to turn round

suddenly and be a heaven-sent administrator in a war? You can take your

oath Heaven doesn't send out geniuses on that ticket. What you've lived

and done in fat times--that's what you're going to live and do in lean.

Heaven's chucked stocking divine fire."

"I'm with you there," Sabre said. He did not believe half this intense

man said, but he conceived a sudden and great admiration for his

intensity. And he had had no idea that a soldier ever thought so far

away from his own subject--which was sport and one chance in a million

of fighting--as to produce aphorisms on habit and development. "But you

know, Otway," he said, "it's jolly hard to believe all this

inevitableness of war stuff that chaps like you put up. Do you read the

articles in the reviews and the quarterlies? They all pretty well prove

that, apart from anything else, a big European war is impossible by

the--well, by the sheer bigness of the thing. They say these modern

gigantic armies couldn't operate, couldn't provision themselves. And

there's the finance. They prove you can't fight without money and that

credit would go and the thing would stop before it had begun, pretty

well. I don't know anything about that sort of thing, but the arguments

strike me as absolutely sound."

Otway was waiting with fidgety impatience. "I've heard all that. I don't

give a damn for it. Of course you don't know anything about it. No one

does. Least of all those writing chaps. It's all theory. Every one

thought that with modern this, that and the other you were as safe on

the last word in liners as in your own bedroom. Then comes along that

_Titanic_ business in April, and where the hell are you with your modern

conditions? Fifteen hundred people done in. I tell you it isn't that

things that used to happen can't happen now; it's simply that they'll

happen a million times worse. What's the good of theories when you've

got facts? Look at the things there've been with Germany just this year

alone. Old Haldane over in Germany in February for 'unofficial

discussions', Churchill threatening two keels to one if the German Navy

law is exceeded. That was March. In April the Germans whack up their

Navy Law Amendment, twelve more big ships. That chap Bertrand Stewart

getting three and a half years for espionage in Germany; and two German

spies caught by us here,--that chap Grosse over at Winchester Assizes,

three years, and friend Armgaard Graves up at Glasgow, eighteen months.

An American cove at Leipzig taking four years' penal for messing around

after plans of the Heligoland fortifications. Those five yachting chaps

in July arrested for espionage at Eckernforde. War, too, skits of it.

Turkey and Italy hardly done when all these Balkan chaps set to and

slosh Turkey. Have you seen to-day's papers? I'll bet you they'll send

Turkey to hell at Kirk Kilisse or thereabouts before the week's out."

He had been ticking these points off on his fingers, much astonishing

Sabre by his marshalling of scattered incidents that had been merely

rather pleasing newspaper sensations of a couple of days. He presented

the ticked-off fingers bunched up together. "There, there's concrete

facts for you, Sabre. Can you say things aren't tightening up? Why, if

war--_when_ war comes people will look back on this year, 1912, and

wonder where in hell their eyes were that they didn't see it. What are

they seeing?--" He threw his fingers apart. "None of these things. Not

one. All this doctors and the Insurance Bill tripe, Marconi Inquiry,

_Titanic_, Suffragettes smashing up the West End, burning down Lulu

Harcourt's place, trying to roast old Asquith in the Dublin Theatre,

Seddon murder, this triangular cricket show. Hell's own excitement

because there's so much rain in August and people in Norwich have to go

about in boats, and then hell's own hullaballoo because there's no rain

for twenty-two days in September and people get so dry they can't spit

or something." His keen face wrinkled up into laughter. "Eh, didn't you

read that?" He laughed but was immediately intense again. "That's all

that really interests the people. By God, they'll sit up and take notice

of the real stuff one of these days. Pretty soon. Tightening up, I tell

you. Well, I'm off, Sabre. When are you coming up to the Mess again?

Friday? Well, guest night the week after. I'll drop you a line. So

long." He was off, carrying his straight back alertly up the street.

VII

His going was somehow as sudden and startling as his appearance had been

sudden and tumultuous. He had carried away Sabre's thoughts as a jet

from a hosepipe will spin a man out of a crowd; smashed into his

preoccupation as a stone smashing through a window upon one deep in

study; galloped across his mind as a cavalcade thundering through a

village street,--and the effect of it, and the incongruity of it as,

getting his bicycle from the office, he rode homewards, kept returning

to Sabre's mind, as an arresting dream will constantly break across

daylight thoughts.

Nona had said that Tybar knew she thought often of him. "He knows I

think of you." That was the way she had put it. It explained that mock

in his eyes when they met that day on the road, and Mrs. Winfred's

remark and her look, and Tybar's, that day outside the office.

Extraordinary, Otway bursting in like that with all those ridiculous

scares. Here he was riding along with all this reality pressing

enormously about him, and with this strange and terrible feeling of

being at the beginning of something or at the end of something, with

this voice in his ears of, "You have struck your tents and are upon the

march"; and there was Otway, up at the barracks, miles away from

realities, but as obsessed with his impossible stuff as he himself with

these most real and pressing dismays. What would he, with his

apprehension of what might lie ahead, be saying to a chap like Otway in

two or three years and what would Otway with his obsessions be saying to

him? Ah, two or three years...!

But Nona loved him.... But his duty was here.... And he could have taken

her beautiful body into his arms and held her beloved face to his....

But he had said not a word of love to her, only his cry of

"Nona--Nona...." His duty was here.... But what would the years

bring...? But what might have been! What might have been!

VIII

He finished his ride in darkness. The Green, as he passed along it on

the free-wheel run, merged away through gloom into obscurity. Points of

light from the houses showed here and there. The windows of his home had

lamplight through their lattices. The drive was soft with leaves beneath

his feet.

Lamplight, and the yielding undertread and all around walled about with

obscurity. It was new. It had shown thus now for some nights on his

return. But it was the first time he had apprehended it. New. Different.

A commencement. An ending.

He left his bicycle in the roomy porch. He missed Low Jinks with her

customary friendly greeting. It was very lonely, this. He opened the

hall door and entered. Absolute silence. He had grown uncommonly

accustomed to Low Jinks being here.... Absolute silence. It was like

coming into an empty house. And he had got to go on coming into it, and

living in it, and tremendously doing his duty in it.

Like an empty house. He stood perfectly still in the perfect stillness.

Take down: it is beginning. You have struck your tents and are upon the

march.

PART THREE

EFFIE

CHAPTER I

I

But life goes on without the smallest regard for individual

preoccupations. You may take up what attitude you like towards it or,

with the majority, you may take up no attitude towards it but immerse

yourself in the stupendous importance of your own affairs and disclaim

any connection with life. It doesn't matter tuppence to life. The

ostrich, on much the same principle, buries its head in the sand; and

just as forces outside the sand ultimately get the ostrich, so life, all

the time, is massively getting you.

You have to go along with it.

And in October of the following year, October, 1913, life was going

along at a most delirious and thrilling and entirely fascinating speed.

There never was such a delicious and exciting and progressive year as

between October, 1912, and October, 1913.

And it certainly took not the remotest notice of Sabre.

In February, Lord Roberts, at Bristol, opened a provincial campaign for

National Service. The best people--that is to say those who did not

openly laugh at it or, being scaremongers, rabidly approve

it--considered it a great shame and a great pity that the poor old man

should thus victimise those closing years of his life which should have

been spent in that honourable retirement which is the right place for

fussy old people of both sexes and all walks of life.

Sabre, reading the reports of the campaign--two or three lines--could

not but reflect how events were falsifying, and continued to falsify the

predictions of the intense Otway in this regard. Deliciously pleasant

relations with Germany were variously evidenced throughout 1913. The

King and Queen attended in Berlin the wedding of the Kaiser's daughter,

and the popular Press, in picture and paragraph, told the genial British

public what a thoroughly delightful girl the Kaiser's daughter was. The

Kaiser let off loud "Hochs!" of friendly pride, and the Press of the

world responded with warm "Hochs" of admiration and tribute; and the

Kaiser, glowing with generous warmth, celebrated the occasion by

releasing and handsomely pardoning three of those very British "spies"

to whose incarceration in German fortresses (Sabre recalled) the intense

Otway had attached such deep significance. This was a signal for more

mutual "Hochs." Later the Prince of Wales visited Germany and made there

an extended stay of nine weeks; and in June the twenty-fifth anniversary

of the Emperor William's accession was "Hoch'd" throughout the German

Empire and admiringly "Hoch'd" back again from all quarters of the

civilised globe.

It was all splendid and gratifying and deeply comforting. So many

"Hochs!" and such fervent and sincere "Hochs!" never boomed across the

seas of the world, and particularly the North Sea or (nice and friendly

to think) German Ocean, in any year as in the year 1913.

II

Not that relations with Germany counted for anything in the whirl of

intensely agreeable sensations of these excellent days. Their entirely

pleasing trend prevented the scaremongers from interfering with full

enjoyment of the intensely agreeable sensations; otherwise they were,

by comparison with more serious excitements, completely negligible. The

excitements were endless and of every nature. At one moment the British

Public was stirred to its depths in depths not often touched (in 1913)

by reading of Scott's glorious death in the Antarctic; at another it was

unspeakably moved by the disqualification of the Derby winner for

bumping and boring. In one week it was being thrilled with sympathy by

the superb heroism and the appalling death-roll, four hundred

twenty-nine, in the Welsh colliery disaster at Senghenydd; in another

thrilled with horror and indignation at the baseness of a sympathetic

strike. In one month was immense excitement because the strike of eleven

thousand insufferable London taxi-drivers drove everybody into the

splendid busses; and in another month immense excitement because the

strike of all the insufferable London bus-drivers drove everybody into

the splendid taxis. M. Pegond accomplished the astounding feat of flying

upside down at Juvisy without being killed and then came and flew upside

down without being killed at Brooklands. One man flew over the Simplon

Pass and another over the Alps. Colonel Cody flew to his death in one

waterplane, and Mr. Hawker made a superb failure to fly around Great

Britain in another waterplane. The suffragists threw noisome and

inflammable matter into the letter boxes, bombs into Mr. Lloyd George's

house at Walton and into other almost equally sacred shrines of the

great, stones into windows, axes into pictures, chained their misguided

bodies to railings and gates, jammed their miserable bodies into

prisons, hunger-struck their abominable bodies out again, and hurled

their outrageous bodies in front of the sacred race for the Derby at

Epsom, and the only less sacred race for the Gold Cup at Ascot.

It was terrific!

At one moment the loyal public were thrilled by the magnificent

enrolment of the Ulster Volunteers, and at another moment outraged by

the seditious and mutinous enrolment of the Nationalist Volunteers; in

one month the devoted Commons read a third time the Home Rule Bill, the

Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill and the Plural Voting Bill, and in

the very same month the stiff-necked and abominable Lords for the third

time threw out the Home Rule Bill, the Welsh Church Disestablishment

Bill and the Plural Voting Bill. It was terrific. The newspapers could

scarcely print it--or anything--terrifically enough. Adjectives and

epithets became exhausted with overwork and burst. The word crisis lost

all meaning. There was such a welter of crises that the explosions of

those that came to a head were unnoticed and pushed away into the

obscurest corners of the newspapers, before the alarming swelling of

those freshly rushing to a head. It was magnificent. It was a

deliciously thrilling and emotional year. A terrific and stupendous

year. Many well-known people died.

III

It was naturally a year of strong partisanship. A year of violent

feelings violently expressed; and amidst them, and because of them,

Sabre found with new certainty that he had no violent feelings.

Increasingly he came to know that he had well expressed his

constitutional habit, the outstanding trait in his character, when, on

the day of that talk in the office with Nona, he had spoken of his

disastrous inability--disastrous from the point of view of being

satisfactory to single-minded persons, or of pulling out that big

booming stuff called success--to see a thing, whatever it might be, from

a single point of view and go all out for it from that point of view.

"Convictions," he had said, and often in the welter of antagonistic

convictions of 1913 thought again, "Convictions. If you're going to pull

out this big booming stuff they call success, if you're going to be

_satisfactory_ to anybody or to anything, you must shut down on

everybody's point of view but your own. You must have convictions. And

narrower than that--not only convictions but conviction. Conviction that

your side is the right side and that the other side is wrong, wrong to

hell."

And he had no such convictions. Above all, and most emphatically, he had

never the conviction that his side, whichever side it might be in any of

the issues daily tabled for men's discussion, was the right side and the

other side the wrong and wicked and disastrous side.

He used to think, "I can't stand shouting and I can't stand smashing.

And that's all there is. These newspapers and these arguments you

hear--it's all shouting and smashing. It's never thinking and building.

It's all destructive; never constructive. All blind hatred of the other

views, never fair examination of them. You get some of these Unionists

together, my class, my friends. They say absolutely nothing else but

damning and blasting and foaming at Lloyd George and Asquith and the

trade-unionists. Absolutely nothing else at all. And you get some of

these other chaps together, or their newspapers, and it's exactly the

same thing the other way about. And yet we're all in the same boat.

There's only one _life_--only one _living_--and we're all in it. Come

into it the same way and go out of it the same way; and all up against

the same real facts as we are against the same weather. That fire the

other night in High Street. All sorts of people, every sort of person,

lent a hand in putting it out. And that frightful railway disaster at

Aisgill; all sorts of people worked together in rescuing. No one stopped

to ask whether the passengers were first class or third. Well, that's

the sort of thing that gets me. Fire and disaster--those are facts and

everybody gets to and deals with them. And if there was a big war

everybody would get to and fight it. And yet all these political and

social things are just as much facts that affect everybody, and all

anybody can do is to shout and smash up the other man's rights in them.

They all do it--in everything. Religion's as bad as any--worse. Here's

one of these bishops saying he can't countenance Churchmen preaching in

chapels or dissenters being invited to preach in churches because the

Church must stand by the rock principles of its creed, and to preach in

a chapel would mean politely not touching on those principles. You'd

think heaven didn't come into the business at all. And you'd think that

life doesn't come into the business of living at all. All smashing....

Well, I can't stick shouting and I can't stick smashing."

IV

Something of these views he one day expressed to Pike, the Editor of the

_Tidborough County Times_. He was taken into the _County Times_ office

by business connected with an error in the firm's standing account for

advertisement notices and, encountering Pike outside his room, entered

with him and talked.

Pike was a man of nearly sixty with furiously black and luxuriant hair.

He had been every sort of journalist in America and in London, and some

years previously had been brought into the editorship of the _County

Times_. The Press, broad-based on the liberty of the English people and

superbly impervious to whatever temptation to jump in the direction the

cat jumps, is, on the other hand, singularly sensitive to apparently

inconsequent trifles in the lives of its proprietary. Pike, with his

reputation, was brought into the editorship of the _County Times_ solely

because the proprietor late in life suddenly married. The wife of the

proprietor desiring to share a knighthood with her husband, the

proprietor, anxious to please but unwilling to pay, incontinently sacked

the tame editor who was beguiling an amiable dotage with the _County

Times_ and looked about for a wild editor, whom unquestionably he found

in Mr. Pike.

The breath of the _County Times_ became as the breath of life to the

Tory tradition and burst from its columns as the breath of a fiery

furnace upon all that was opposed to the Tory tradition. The proprietor

felt that his knighthood was assured as soon as the tide of liberalism

turned; and the _County Times_, which could not notice even a Baptist

harvest festival without snorting fire and brimstone upon it, said that

the tide of radicalism--it did not print the words Liberal or

Liberalism--was turning every day. About once a week the _County Times_

said that the tide of radicalism "definitely turned last night."

Pike was a man of extraordinarily violent language. Consequent, no

doubt, on the restraint of having to write always in printable language,

his vocal discussion of the subjects on which he wrote was mainly in

unprintable. He spoke of trade-unionists always as "those swine and

dogs" and of the members of the Government as "those dogs and

swine",--swine and dogs being refined and temperate euphuisms for the

epithets Mr. Pike actually employed.

However he heard Sabre's stumbling periods tolerantly out and tolerantly

dealt with him.

"Excuse me, Sabre, but that sort of stuff's absolutely fatal--fatal.

It's simply compromise. Compromise. The most fatal defect in the English

character."

Sabre happened to be stout enough on this particular point. "That's

just what it isn't. Precisely what it isn't. I loathe compromise. More

than anything. Compromise is accepting a little of what you know to be

wrong in order to get a little of what you imagine to be right."

Pike made a swift note in shorthand on his blotting pad. "Exactly.

Well?"

"Well, that's just the opposite to what I mean. I mean accepting,

admitting, what you know to be _right_."

Pike smote his hand upon the blotting pad. "But, damn it, those dogs and

swine never _are_ right."

"There you are!" said Sabre.

And there they were, shouting, smashing; and Sabre could not do either

and retired dismayed from the arenas of both.